Retail is set to open again in April in the UK, after months of further lockdown, but what have customers been searching for over lockdown and how has their consumer behaviour changed or adapted. Crucially, how can your business harness these findings and boost sales.
There are even differences between lockdowns, with lockdown 1 (all that time ago!) and lockdown 3 having different search terms. For example, quizzes, games and baking dominated lockdown 1 but have tailed off a year later and exercise trends boomed in lockdown 1 as people adapted to a lack of gyms etc, however January 2021 didn’t see the usual post-Christmas increase in sales.
The unpredictability means it’s really important that online businesses that pivoted or changed in response to the trends of lockdown 1, keep on top of trends and optimise data for a successful online offering while we’re still in lockdown and when it starts to gradually ease.
One top takeaway is to ensure that if you have a physical showroom, ensure that content regarding opening times etc is up to date. When lockdown easing is announced and gets closer, people are searching for opening times and when they can visit shops.
Check Data
Collect your brand’s keyword research by looking at an overview of data points and do it consistently to notice trends and patterns. Look at search volume for terms to decide what to create content around and whether it’ll be positively receiving because enough people are searching for it.
Check this against Google/other search engines data for these keywords and build up an idea about consumer intent to develop an understanding of the type of content users are looking for i.e how-to guides, product pages. It’s important to find the areas of maximum search opportunity for your brand.
Revisit your data time and time again, especially during the pandemic, to look for new search opportunities, rising trends and themes that you can keep on revisiting. This will help you to prioritise your content creation.
Create Content
During a keyword and search audit, you will be able to find some areas of interest and trending topics that you might have already covered before. If this is the case then you don’t necessarily have to create new content from scratch every time, you can take existing content and update it and refine it so it is more relevant for current search terms and SEO.
Make sure that you don’t hijack and push out other well-performing keywords that are relevant to your brand’s long-term goals, in favour of impulse trends that might not last very long. You might unwittingly cancel out keywords that give your brand good long-term traffic.
If you create good evergreen content then you can actually have pieces of content that can stay relevant and keep up with the peaks and troughs, especially through the different lockdowns. Sometimes, not being too reactive or specific can pay-off and you’ll have content that will keep on delivering results over time.
For more advice on your marketing, get in touch with our team at DOWO today.