Today’s consumers have the whole world in their pockets – with search engines. Finding and comparing value propositions takes only a few seconds – a decision-making process that Google has named the zero moment of truth.
As a brand, you need to be aware of everything consumers are searching – when they’re not searching for your brand.
Unbranded search equals prospects
An unbranded search is a query that doesn’t contain any specific brand or company name.
These local category searches are becoming more common for frequent purchases like food, consumer goods, and household items. For these types of purchases, consumers typically won’t travel very far, they will go to the closest destination. While a consumer may ultimately choose a brand they know, they won’t go out of their way if there is a more convenient option nearby.
Unbranded searches are very useful to detect emerging needs that your brand should consider as a source of innovation. When they search for a generic term, consumers have still no idea of existing brands they could buy from. Sometimes they’re just checking if there are brands selling something for the need they’re experiencing.
Unbranded searches are also a sign of undecided consumers you should address with targeted ads. For example, if my washing machine breaks down unexpectedly, I may want to do some research before deciding what brand to buy and ultimately what retailer to purchase from. In this case, quality, price, proximity, and availability may factor into my decision. In this situation, people are open-minded and curious, you have to be present when they are looking for you.
The evolution of non-branded search is linked to the change in customer behavior with mobile search. Local, mobile searches focus on instant gratification. Searches for keywords like “open,” “now,” and “nearby” attached to non-branded categories have grown by 200%!
When your brand name appears within a search query, it’s a positive sign that your marketing efforts use to work on people’s consciousness. It shows your company has strong brand awareness. However, these people who are typing your brand from the search bar are consumers that are already aware of your brand and who are looking for a specific product or service. These customers are already deep down into your marketing funnel.
Your major challenge is definitely about nurturing consumers searching for unbranded queries. With proper search engine marketing, you can get these prospects to consider your brand among others, and expand your influence & your customer base.
How to position your website on unbranded queries
How to appear at the top of search engine results?The key to success with non-branded local search is to ensure your brand is visible locally when these consumers conduct relevant searches.
Optimize your marketing efforts by apprehending precisely what customers are looking for. To stand out from the crowd, your business shall take advantage of unbranded searches by addressing educational content and answering questions behind search queries.
When I’m searching for ‘aloe vera face cream’, sure I want to find alternatives – but I also want to read content recommending me a specific product, adapted to my skin.
Why segmenting queries is key for insights detection
Segmentation refers to the process of grouping similar queries together. Segmenting all queries searched by consumers is key to getting the big picture of what is interesting for your prospects.
With segmentation, you get more reliable results on market trends, as you make sure to consider everything consumers are searching around a specific topic.
In all queries, each word has its intent and can be labelled under a category revealing the intention behind it. Your query can be composed of a brand, a product, or a moment of life, such as the following example.
You need the right tool to map, segment, and track unbranded queries. Our platform is very useful in markets that evolve very quickly.
It is not easy to detect non-unbranded queries, as their variety is very wide. Unlike a brand that has only one name, a product can be called in different ways.
You need a tool to help detect what connects different queries looking similar – making it easy to segment these queries based on common attributes or adjectives.
When you have hundreds or thousands of unbranded queries to analyze, you have to run a lot of different manual operations, like exporting a lot of data into Google Trends and Google Keyword Planner. Not to mention the difficult and laborious work of merging this data with other sources of data like Amazon or the Search console.
This is where Trajaan comes into play with statistical analysis algorithms that identify top-growing segments, reveal trending brands, products & services, and also spot emerging needs.
