Validation with Google Keywords

One of the quickest methods to gain confidence in your product is the Google Aords Keyword Planner Tool You can leverage it to get real data that shows how often people are searching the problem you hope to solve.

Example:

You want to deliver emoji-cupcakes because you felt that there was a lack of bakeries that offered them. After some research, you've learned that this is true in your region. You've talked to 10 people who also feel the same way, and would love an emoji-cupcake delivery service. During your conversations with them, you also uncovered a new problem. Of those who ordered emoji-cupcakes in the past, the ordering process is complex and the variety limiting.

You're feeling pretty good about this, and you want some more validation. This is where the Google Adwords Keyword Planner tool comes in. Let's run an experiment.

Setting up the experiment

With this experiment, we use the Google Adwords Keyword Planner Tool to identify:

To get started, define the keywords that you think are important to this search. Some suggestions: emoji-cupcake, emoji-cookie, emoji-cupcake delivery, cupcake delivery. Once you have those, check out how they fair using the Google Adwords Keyword Planner Tool.

Analyzing the results

After you run the query, you will get results that contain your keywords and related search phrases. You can use this to draw some high-level conclusions.

Search Volume

Search volume will give you an idea of the level of interest for each search phrase. If nobody is using your search phrases or similar search phrases, then there probably isn't much demand for the idea.

Like most of these early-stage experiments, you have to determine the success threshold. Do 10k searches per month make you feel like there is a market for what you are selling? 100k? 1 million?

Suggested Bid

We can hypothesize that if a suggested bid is high, then a person is willing to pay for that solution/product. The idea is that advertisers are willing to pay for these ads at this high price, so they must be worth to warrant the expense.

Combine this with the search volume for more insight. A high volume and high suggested bid could mean that there is a lot of people searching for a solution, and a lot of people willing to pay for it.

Specificity

The number of words in the search phrase can also be insightful. Let's say you tested "chores". You will probably see a lot of search volume, but we don’t really know what the user was looking for. The user could have been looking for a list, perhaps a snack called "chores". We can't be too sure. However, if we make the search phrase more specific like “how to share chores with roommates”, we have a much better idea of what problem the user is trying to solve.


Additional Resources

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41qtT9o--kQ