The importance of understanding not only Search but also the Sentiment
Search trend Volkswagen 2015 (source Google trends)
Search and sentiment index Volkswagen 2015 (source MyTelescope)
When working with marketing it is often said to be the voice of the customer, but how can one be that when the traditional marketing analytics might show you the wrong results?
To become the next generation marketer you need to think like a financial planner, have an understanding of human psychology and be able build hypothetical models.
“Conventional tracking is slow, expensive, and doesn’t always predict sales”.
- Les Binet
Step one in your journey is to figure out how to diagnosis the market and keep having the ear towards the ground on an ongoing basis.
Conventional tracking is slow, expensive, and doesn’t always predict sales. So we’ve been looking at an alternative approach based on search data. It’s fast, cheap & predicts surprisingly far ahead.
Not only that, it can measure both short and long term ad effects.”Share of Search is the most promising metric of measuring effectiveness, says one of the innovators behind Share of Search Les Binet.
With that being said, with all “new and improved” metrics it’s important to step back and question: what is the metric really saying and what shortcomings are there.
Share of search shows us an output of your marketing initiatives in the form of a behavioral change which is people searching your brand. They do this because:
They want to buy from you
They are already a customer
They are just interested in you
What is the difference between my Search and Sentiment score and Share of Search And why do you need it?
In order to remove search interest generated by negative PR and therefore show true consideration which is people actively searching for your brand with positive intention we have combined your search trend with the sentiment you are receiving from the market at the current time. Therefore, if you have a large volume of search interest but a lot of negative sentiment at a given time, then your trend line will be weighed down.
Your Search and Sentiment score compares how you are comparing against yourself in growing your search trend and sentiment. Your share of search is a share compared to your competitors.
Since share of search is a slow moving metric and only updated once a month, your Search and Sentiment Score allows you to keep track that you are creating share of search by maintaining an interest in the short term.
A Case Study of Share of Search on the Volkswagen scandal 2015
Interest for Volkswagen diesel cars (source Google Trends)
Search for Volkswagen diesel cars went through the roof and was then back to normal after just a couple of weeks. With a peak in search some would say the result should have been a huge sell out, somewhere in September 2015.
Share of Search as a lone metric to measure brand health is not sufficient. What good is having high search numbers if people’s searches are based on the wrong reasons?
But as you are probably guessing, this wasn’t a very positive interest! Volkswagen had an emission scandal and had a massive drop in sales.
Share of Search as a lone metric to measure brand health is not sufficient. What good is having high search numbers if people’s searches are based on the wrong reasons? If people have a skeptical or negative intention when executing their search it will have a negative impact on both brand and sales.
To remove misinterpretation we need to know the emotions behind the searches: is it a positively or negatively driven interest? Therefore us at My Telescope created the Search & Sentiment trend index to tackle this issue:
Search interest in Volkswagen
Search trend without sentiment analysis (source Google Trends)
Search trend including sentiment analysis interest in Volkswagen (source My Telescope)
When overlaying the search data with sentiment data, it tells a slightly different story… of a sudden decline and a somewhat longer recovery.
With My Telescope’s Search and sentiment index you can see that due to the negative sentiment during this period, there is a clear negative effect on Volkswagen’s brand as well as that this effect took a year to recover.