This Week I will be using Google Trends to find insights for business alignment. This blog post will act as a report for a scenario given to me by my professor. To give some insight to you and other readers, Google Trends is an important tool for anyone interested in marketing, advertising, digital, and social media creation and analytical data work. Google Trends is one of many search engine analytical tools, which specifically uses percentages to analyze trend results. For example, if someone searches for the term, Football in the United States in November of 2019, Google Trends analyzes and will display the percentage of all searches for the keyword, Football in November of 2019 in the United States.
To better understand the content of this post, you’ll have to know what keywords are and how they play a significant role in business alignment, especially when using Google Trends. Keywords are vital and relevant words or phrases embedded in a website that search engine robots can identify and evaluate that website as being most suitable site for the word being searched. In this case, I will be using one to three terms or keywords to help prove my point and elevate the discussion at hand. Enjoy!
The Scenario
I am the social media manager of a coffee manufacturing company in the US. My company is considering getting into the end-user market by opening ten drive-thru coffee shops somewhere in the country in the next 12 months and then another 25 by the following year. The first group of shops’ success is critical for the future of this investment. Upper management wants to limit the location of the first ten shops to a specific area in the country, for logistics reasons. They want to select two or three neighboring states (neighboring with each other) and start with the first ten shops from there. However, they want these two-three neighboring states somewhat close to where the company is located. As the head of social media, I am tasked with creating a report showcasing my research using Google Trends and prepare a report to upper management. Our coffee manufacturing company will be located in Boise, Idaho.
The Report
This report is based off of the following key search words; coffee and drive-through. These two terms aid greatly in understanding where our company will be most vital in entering the end-user market. Given our line of work, being in the coffee manufacturing company and our interest in expanding our business into shops which offer drive-through capabilities; this would only help justify and mobilize our plans for success within the first year of operations.
Google Trends indicates interest of a keyword broken down by percentages. This displays the trend of topic or keyword being used over the span of a certain time. You will see the following trends for coffee and coffee+drive-through in the United states over the past 5 years below:
These trend lines are important to now, as we can see both terms have been experiencing a steading increase within the last five years, with a few downward plunges every now and then. However, a steady line of increase is evident here. Additionally, what will help draw our conclusion on locations, is the geographic or subregion component provided by Google Trends. You will notice the following screen shots to be broken down by state, and interest by subregion broken down in ranks of what locations see more trends over the course of five years when using the word coffee and the combination of coffee+drive-through.
By analyzing the data shown above, I was able to determine that our focus of opening up our shops should be in Oregon. If you notice the screenshot with coffee as the search term, Oregon ranks at number 2 with a value of 97. Hawaii is ranked number one, but given our scope, it would not meet the logistics needed to achieve the success within the first year of operations. Though Hawaii is a great producers of coffee and could someday present to be an ideal place for our company to expand, it is an isolated island, far from our headquarters and not a region we should be focusing on at this time.
The coffee manufacturing company is in a strategic location. While we are based out of Boise, Idaho; ranked number one of interest broken down by metro in the Idaho region (see screen shot below), my recommendations for the first ten drive-thru coffee shops should be in the following neighboring states; Oregon, Washington and Montana.
I recommend we launch majority of the shops in Oregon. However, I came to the consensus of focusing on Washington and Montana by comparing the images above. You’ll see in the coffee+drive-through subregion and coffee subregion screen shots that Oregon, Washington and Montana all rank within the top 5 subregions. With Oregon ranked at number 1, Washington at 3, and Montana at 4, when searching the terms, coffee+drive-through. This shows that launching our shops will be most advantageous if we focus in the north-west corner of the United States.
Idaho, unfortunately does not fall under a high rank, but as stated above, we find ourselves surrounded by three states that present as great starting points. Thanks to Google Trends, we are able to find which metro areas would be most ideal to host one of the ten shops in Oregon.
Referencing this image above, we can gather that the following metro areas of Bend OR, Portland OR, and Eugene OR would be most ideal for the company to consider. Interestingly enough, we can gather that people are indeed looking for drive-through service. See image below.
This screenshot shows us what people in these metro areas are searching (queries) and the topics surrounding our search terms, coffee+drive-through. What you can see here, located under the Related Queries table, ranked at number 3, is search terms for drive thru coffee near me. This is a perfect indicator that our potential customer base is actively looking for convenience to get their coffees within the metro areas mentioned above. We could go a step further and zero in on exactly what cities or towns within those metro areas would be ranked highest, and thus could help our company decide on which cities within the metro areas could actually host our shops.
As we can see above, the first 5 ranked towns are Warrenton, Portland, White City, Bend and Lincoln City. My recommendations here is that upper management strongly consider establishing shops in these five locations. Washington and Montana rank at number 3 and 4 according to Google Trends, when using the search terms, coffee+drive-through. To be clear, even when searching just the term, coffee, Washington and Montana are still ranked within the top 5.
Concluding Statements
As the Social Media Manager of this coffee manufacturing company, I strongly recommend that we consider building the first ten shops in Oregon, Washington, and Montana. These three states rank highest in search terms related to coffee and coffee + drive-through. These are key indicators to help us ensure that this investment is well worth it for the success of this company. I also would recommend that we place a shop in cities with a value of 85 or more (reference the screenshots, labeled Interest by Metro, City break down). I strongly urge upper management to take key notice in Oregon. Oregon is ranked the number one state when coffee+drive-through terms are used according to Google Trends, and offers 5 cities that rank 85+ of people searching our terms or topics related to it. Washington also holds 5 cities that meet a rank higher thank 85+, while Montana holds only 2 cities with a rank higher than 85+. Majority of our shops should be in Oregon given the trend lines specified in this report, with at least 3-4 shops in Washington and 2-3 shops in Montana. While it is recommend that Idaho does not have a coffee shop within the first year of operations, I do believe our location can play a key role! It will connect the three states outlined in this report and could allow us to research more trends within Idaho related to coffee which could establish at least one of the 25 new shops to come here in our home state after said research and pending the success of the first 10 coffee shops as well. The specific cities should be determined by upper management with hopes that the examples listed and my explanation of tends will prove as to which cities in each metro area would be most ideal for our shops within the first year of operations.
Thanks for reading!
-Austin
The Media Relations Nomad 