Identifying and understanding your potential customer base can help you market your business more effectively by keeping your advertising spend in the right places.
Knowing where to find this information can often seem like a challenge, but the good news is that there are free tools you can access to help you find out more about your potential customer base and their online habits.
The SBDC team had the opportunity to sit down with Justin and Tommy from Google Australia on their recent trip to Perth for the Digital Garage workshops to find out more about the ‘Think with Google’ tools that can help small businesses.
Market Finder
If you are looking to increase your sales online or are considering exporting your products, Google’s Market Finder tool can help you research who your potential customers are and where they are located. The tool provides insights into monthly searches, market trends and user demographics for the products and services you provide, helping you better pinpoint the regions to focus your marketing or exporting efforts on.
Consumer Barometer
If you’re running digital advertising, knowing how your target audience uses the internet to research and purchase products and services is invaluable. Google's Consumer Barometer provides you with access to these insights. The Consumer Barometer can be used to identify how people in different countries use the internet, including their research and on/offline product purchases. The tool provides you with a range of options to identify your target market behaviour, which can then be used to shape marketing messages and the online platforms you use to advertise your business.
Google Trends
Google Trends can help you identify the volume of traffic generated by search terms related to your business, as well as times of the year when those search terms are at their highest. This data can help you identify the peak times of the year users are searching for your products and services. If you sell a seasonal product, you can time your advertising right and capture a larger share of online sales by being able identify search spikes relating to your products.
Don’t forget industry benchmarking information
In addition to the free resources from Google, there are other high quality resources available that can help you conduct market research such as IBISWorld, Australia’s largest provider of industry-based research. You can get free access to IBISWorld reports and data by contacting us.
More information
Our website has a range of free information to help you boost your business marketing (including free templates) and find out more about exporting. You can also contact our free business advisory service to speak to one of our business advisers on a range of business topics.
