Stats Don’t Lie – What’s Hot in Marketing

Google Trends has quickly become my new favorite tool for seeing what’s hot and what’s not. It gives you access to see what people are thinking about and as well as a quick way to gauge their sentiment. I wanted to see what marketing buzzwords were growing and which ones were dying. The numbers don’t lie.

All of this data comes from Google Trends for global web searches from January, 2010 until January, 2015.

Declining

Blogging

It appears that the searches that used to go to “blogging” are now going to the all encompassing content marketing.

Search Engine Optimization

Every few weeks or so I read an article that SEO is dead or is dying. While I don’t believe that to be true, it cannot be disputed that searches for search engine optimization has been declining. It should be noted that a search for the abbreviated SEO returns a flat result since 2010 which may suggest that more users are just using SEO insead of the full term.

Email Marketing

Much like it appears that blogging is losing searches to content marketing, it appears that people are more interested in marketing automation than just basic email marketing.

Social Commerce

I find this chart fascinating. I remember when social commerce was the next “big thing”. Perhaps it still is but people aren’t thinking of it in those exact terms.

Pay Per Click

Searches for pay per click have been declining since 2010 (with the exception of the bump in 2013).  During this time there has been a substantial increase in alternative online marketing such as Facebook ads and remarketing.

Growing

Marketing Automation

As noted above, more people seem to be searching for marketing automation. It seems that many of these stand alone channels are now being grouped into bigger platforms.

Content Marketing

Much like in the example above, content marketing sees to be gaining popularity beyond just blogging. Video, social, blogging and images are now being bundled under content marketing. Thank you Hubspot.

Mobile Search

Mobile search was fairly stagnant until 2013 when it finally took off. With Google recently announcing that would display mobile friendly in search results for web pages, it appears it will be interesting to see if this changes.

Remarketing

Remarketing seems to be more than just a flavor of the month, with steady growth since 2010. It makes sense as remarketing gives advertisers a way to reach back out to people who have already visited their site and thus more likely familiar with their brand.

Marketing Analytics

The focus on using analytics throughout marketing is obvious with this chart. Being able to understand your customers and determine ROI is crucial.

Mobile App

This is an interesting one as it may have peaked in 2013. There is still some overall growth in the past two years but not as much as it was seeing before.