Build Your Customer Intuition with Google Adwords

An intelligent use and analysis of the Google Adwords program can provide valuable customer intuition. Brian Teasley over at Click Z has some suggestions.

Knowing What Words Appeal to Customers
By creating a series of keyword ads aimed at specific landing pages on your site it is then possible to track what visitors do once they are on your site.

In addition to the number of searches on your words and the CTR[click through rate], you can tie data from a Web-related event on your site to the ad data to get an even better measurement on what keywords work best for you.

For example, you can measure how many people who viewed your ad ended up on the "Thank you for ordering" page. This, of course, is a measure of what percentage of people from each keyword (or group of keywords) purchased from your site.

Reading the Minds of Customers

AdWords can provide more than a simple analysis of your keywords. It offers a tool that suggests other words Google searchers have entered in combination with the keywords you already thought of.

At a minimum, this information is like focus group members telling you what phrases are on their minds when they thinking about your product or service. In the best possible scenario, this is your focus group telling you about other possible applications of your product or service -- ones you might not have even thought of yet!

Testing Customer Appeal
Again, by tracking the effectiveness of different keywords and ad formats you can test the effectiveness of different offers.

If you were a large telecommunications company, this provides an opportunity to quickly test whether a "Free Camera Phone" offer might outperform a "Free Blackberry Device" offer. If you're a consultant or professional service provider, you might test a "Free Analysis of Your Business" offer against a "Free White Paper Report" offer. The possibilities are endless and will vary depending on your business. [read]

Google Adwords joins other tools for developing your customer intuition.