Do your customers in central California crave candy corn or circus peanuts? Do those in rural North Dakota have the same kind of sweet tooth? And what about the Florida Panhandle?
New Shopping Insights data from Google expands on existing Google Trends information with additional product, location, and device details designed to help retailers target their ads and offers based on what consumers want. For example, people in Berkeley look for Star Wars costumes three times as often as people in Madison, who prefer Minions (although you’d think that cold Wisconsin temps might make a Chewbacca costume appealing).
Shopping Insights have the potential to help retailers do a lot more than simply target their online ads (an obvious motivator for Google to share the data). By successfully integrating these insights with information from other internal systems, retailers can not only optimize ads, but also consider implications for inventory, ordering, and even returns. Rather than miss out on a post-trailer costume frenzy, retailers that have already connected the right systems and data sources can be ready to respond to customer demand faster than the competition.
Of course, automatically ordering three times as many Minions based on a few searches could set retailers up for trouble. But is it worse than running out of inventory and missing out on possible profits? Because people love to jump on hot trends, highlighting the latest looks on your site could further boost sales for what you’ve already ordered more of. And maybe you could even embed buy buttons for hot products next to local newsfeeds, further capitalizing on the Shopping Insights that Google provides.
Right now, Shopping Insights covers 5,000 products in 16,000 locations, so it can’t help everyone yet, but the information it provides could still spark ideas for creative promotions. For additional integration inspiration, read case studies from our retail customer Mophie, or check out more integration information by industry.
