Market Analysis

Get the Information You Need to Make Important Decisions

An ecommerce client recently came to us saying, “The Google algorithm hurt us and we aren’t selling X product anymore.” Sound familiar? It turns out the Google algorithm had little to do with it. Over the past 4 years search demand for that product had declined by 38%. People just weren’t looking for it as much. We did identify products that were increasing in demand, so our retailer could work towards carrying those brands.

When businesses build marketing strategies without the right information, they make mistakes, wasting time and money.

What Our Market Analysis Provides

At SEOKY, we start every engagement with this analysis. Not every project is the same, because not every business is the same. Here are some examples of insights you’ll get:

• Short & Long-Term Trends: What is the health of search demand for the products you’re selling? Are there emerging opportunities that your business is missing out on?
• Demand Seasonality: Are your advertising campaigns timed to make the most out of your ad spend when demand is high?
• Geographical Trends: Are you missing opportunities by not advertising in places where you’re more likely to get business?
• Website Performance: Find weaknesses in your website, whether that is in its speed, lack of content or security problems.
• Competitive Analysis: What are your opponents’ marketing strategies? What are they ranking well (and poorly) for? There are strengths and weaknesses that you can take advantage of.

Examples of Useful Marketing Insights

So how exactly can our market analysis help your business? While every business is different, here are a few examples. Many of these are real stories from our clients, while others are hypothetical.

Short & Long-Term Trends

• In 2023, Google began showing its own “free shopping” product grids above many organic search results with shopping intent. Knowing this factored into a small ecommerce client’s decision to begin selling direct-to-consumer and capturing $20,000 per year in new incremental revenue.
• An ecommerce client learned that demand for one of their previously popular products had fallen by over 30% over the past two years. Data on the rising popularity of similar brands within that category enabled them to start focusing sales efforts on the more popular brands.
• A healthcare client learned that search demand was rising for a variation on the name of a medical condition they treated, and there was a gap in the search results. By publishing material on this topic they were able to get a featured snippet at the top of many search results related to that condition.
• A grocery company noticed strong spikes in search demand for product alternatives in the wake of shortages, and was able to publish content related to using substitutes.

Demand Seasonality

• A client selling basketball shoes knew that demand was stronger in the leadup to basketball season, but they learned from our analysis that there was also a demand spike in the summer when kids were going to basketball camps. This allowed them to increase ad spend during that period.
• A merchandising department at an ecommerce company notices demand fluctuations for specific categories of products and can make smarter merchandising decisions on key web pages based on what’s popular during that time.

Geographical Trends

• An engineering training firm used geographic search trends to advertise more heavily and create content targeted at the places where much of their traffic was coming from, including overseas.
• A home building client learned which neighborhoods in Cincinnati were most desirable when it came to custom homes, and were able to create content tailored to home developments in those areas.
• A basketball shoe client learned that there was a geographical difference between “sneakers” and “shoes” when customers searched for their products. This enabled them to test new terminology in their ads.

Website Performance

• A cleaning company learned that because of how their website was structured, too many internal links were pointing to irrelevant pages, driving down the page authority of their more important service pages.
• An ecommerce client discovered that because of how their website was set up, product descriptions and UPCs were not being passed to Google Merchant Center, hampering search performance.
• A client learned that when a previous developer built their site, most of the content was not server-side rendered, making it more difficult for Google to crawl and understand their content.

Competitive Analysis

• A pet food company discovered that while a leading competitor was ranking for breed-related informational content, their pages were weak. By producing similar but better content, the client’s site was able to capture 1,200 SERP features at the top of Google results.
• An ecommerce client, faced with the dominance of big box stores in search, was shown the relative weakness of their video efforts on YouTube. Rather than trying to overcome the impossible, they began building out their YouTube content to get brand loyalty.

Get Started on Your Market Analysis

Having the best information at hand gives you peace of mind knowing that you know the truth about your current performance and the market you’re in. Contact SEOKY today to learn more about how we can help your business grow.