Google finds yet another way to hone its simple brand promise
Seek and ye shall find. Marketers seeking an even better way to hone the right message to the right person at the right time need seek no further than Google’s newest service called Insights for Search. As a marketer, I’m fascinated by this latest tool of the trade which allows us to analyze search engine queries to help determine who’s buying what, where, when, and why. As a brand professional, I’m fascinated by Google’s ability to continue to hone its simple brand promise to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” It’s a branding truism that the best brands on the planet are built on simple, focused ideas. When you identify a simple idea on which to base a brand, it’s easy to brilliantly execute against it. It’s also a branding truism that the best brands stay the best brands because they identify new and innovative ways to keep their simple ideas relevant, even as the world turns and times change. They do so by finding even more brilliant ways to bring their simple brand ideas to life. Google’s launch of Insights serves to strengthen the idea we have of Google as the go-to brand for the answers to all of our questions. And therein is the value of this new service to smart marketers. You can get more insight about people by the questions they ask than by the answers they give. Yet another branding truism is that to serve your customers better than the competition you have to get meaningful insight about what they want and use it to deliver what they want. Being able to track and analyze the questions consumers are asking about a given topic is a powerful way to get insight about what’s really on their minds, what desires, fears, interests, pastimes, hobbies, or endeavors. The collection of search queries that people type into Google has been called a “database of intentions,” a window into what they’re interested in learning about. Insights is great for marketers because its functionality allows us to determine more precisely what consumers want. Insights is great for the Google brand because its insight into what marketers want has only further secured its place in our minds as the leader in its category.