Keyword research and analysis
Keyword research is the process of finding and analyzing search terms your potential customers use in search engines.
It is the basis for systematic, data-driven marketing operations.
A keyword research project or process will help you plan effective content marketing and digital advertising.
It can also help company leaders understand their ideal customers, and their evolving needs.
Ideally, keyword research is an ongoing process. But most organizations can get 80% of the benefits from a one-time keyword research project. The project can be repeated quarterly or yearly, depending on your industry and state of content marketing operations.
At Balanced Growth Boutique (BGB), we advise all our clients start with a keyword research project.
We offer keyword research project packages for companies of all sizes.
Why start with a keyword research project?
Most companies need more sales, more leads, or more website traffic. When you hit these goals, you want to understand which channels, touchpoints, and marketing content helped you get there, so you can focus on what works.
If you take demand generation and lead generation processes seriously, where iterative data-driven decisions drive your marketing operations, you should investigate a thorough keyword research project with Balanced Growth Boutique (BGB).
From there you will be able to build a data-driven content marketing plan and structure your lead and sales-generating Google Ads campaigns.
BGB may not be the right partner for companies who just want to bloat their B2B or e-commerce website with generic content, or for those who are simply satisfied that someone is “working” on their Google Ads.
Why are we so serious about this? For over ten years, we have worked with in-house marketers and business owners. We know that digital data-driven marketing is more than just placing some keywords in your content with the help of a free plugin.
Applied correctly, a keyword research project is the stepping stone that can significantly improve your brand’s performance in sales, brand awareness and customer confidence.
Join brands like Novitek, who increased their monthly organic traffic by 426% with analyzed high-value keywords.
What are the benefits?
Properly implemented, keyword research often affects overall marketing strategy and go-to-market plans.
Keyword research offers valuable insights and guidance to different levels of your organization.
If you want to approach growth in digital channels seriously, you need to include proper keyword research in your marketing operations.
Here’s how properly documented and structured keyword research can provide value to some of the main stakeholders in a marketing-led organization:
Benefits for Business Owners and CEOs
Thorough keyword research and the executive summary that comes with it helps business owners and CEOs in multiple ways. Keyword research results are often combined with other reports like the company’s current search engine performance, search traffic trends reports, and competitor performance comparison.
This offers strategic action points to help your organizations’ development of products, goods, and services to best serve customers.
Benefits for CMOs and Marketing Directors
Keyword research gives marketing leaders an up-to-date understanding of the current search demand.
This actionable data helps you prioritize content and performance marketing projects that should deliver results.
Benefits for Content Marketers
Content marketers come from a variety of backgrounds. Some technical, others not so much. SEO is a vital part of a content marketers job, yet keyword research is not on any university marketing curriculum in Finland.
A keyword research project will not just give content marketers a learning boost. It also helps you focus on day-to-day work, creating amazing content and prioritizing tasks using expert insights from the project.
Benefits for Performance Marketers
Performance marketers often juggle a lot of projects. In a typical team, they could be in charge of Google Ads, paid advertising on social media, and retargeting campaigns — sometimes across multiple languages.
Bringing in outside expertise with a keyword research project helps performance marketers focus on creating powerful campaigns based around the subjects your customers care about most.
In addition to the actual keyword-related information you usually also get an external opinion regarding any campaigns you may be running on Google or Bing.
Customers
Some of the customers we are currently working with.
Unpacking the Keyword Research Project
What is your role when working with BGB?
How many work hours do you need to spend to get optimal results and actionable insights from the keyword research project?
At BGB, we have built the process so that your actual time investment can be minimal. Of course, your own level of engagement normally varies according to how hands-on your role is in your organization.
And we get that.
We are able to adapt our process and way of working according to your needs. However, some steps always require your input. Here’s a typical breakdown of how the keyword research project goes:
(1) Project Kick-off
Time Commitment Required: 1 Hour
This is the first meeting we arrange with you after we have agreed on the cooperation. In the kick-off we will:
1. Make sure everyone is aligned on the keyword research project scope. This is the time to nail down where we’ll focus, whether it’s some business area, geographical area, or language.
2. Confirm access to relevant tools used by your organization. These tools typically provide us with company-specific data so we can provide more actionable suggestions in the final report. Examples include Google Analytics, Google Ads and Google Search Console.
(2) Explore Search Query Data
No Time Commitment Required
We work our magic to get as many keyword ideas as possible. Here we’ll ideate as much as we can to get a broad selection of ideas that might benefit your organization.
This is a crucial part of the process. We’re looking for opportunities that might have been overlooked before, and for new opportunities from changing behaviors over time.
(3) Categorize Keyword Data
No Time Commitment Required
We filter and organize the keyword ideas into more specific ideas that should help increase your audience reach. This is a robust process, tested by our experience doing this for many different organizations, and uses our applied knowledge of your business and business environment.
Keywords are usually grouped into the following categories:
- Business unit
- Product
- Brand
Normally there is at least one category or group specific to your business or industry.
(4) Prioritize Keyword Data
Optional Time Commitment: 1 Hour
Keyword prioritization is a vital part of this project. Here we identify concrete recommendations for your business and marketing operations. Keywords are prioritized within each of the main categories: business unit, product, and industry.
Your attention may be required:
In some keyword research projects, knowledge of industry-specific terms and subject matter expertise is required, particularly in some niche industry use cases. When this is the case, we involve you and/or some of your product experts to clarify terminology for us.
Even when industry-specific terminology is not an issue, we still like to involve you in an hour-long virtual meeting to remove any potential “bottlenecks”. Documentation will be sent to you in advance of the meeting.
(5) Build Recommendations Documentation
No Time Commitment Required
While content and performance marketers will get a lot of value out of the prioritized raw data in spreadsheet format, those in leadership will benefit from a skimmable summary report of the keyword research project.
This helps your organization act quickly on key findings from the research. In the report, we will include:
- 5-10 key insights/findings/issues backed up with search data
- Actionable recommendations and suggestions for improving content/ads based on the 5-10 key findings
Please Note: Actionable recommendations tailored for your business normally require that you have granted access to some of your marketing analytics tools (see Project Kick-Off).
(6) Project Wrap-Up and Next Steps
Time Commitment Required: 1 hour
In this meeting, we’ll go through the work files and recommendations documentation and answer any questions you and your team may have about the key findings and opportunities covered. The materials will be sent beforehand so you have had some time to take a look at them.
We might also offer suggestions on how we could help you and your organization further with additional services like:
1. Helping you and your web development partner implement some quick fixes on your website.
2. Improving or launching your search ads with the highest potential keywords.
3. Building data-driven content marketing operations (content plan and content creation support).
4. Expanding the keyword research project to other business areas and/or geographical areas.
Simple Pricing
Pricing is based on the size of your business.
Why is our pricing structured this way? Our keyword research project creates different levels of value for companies of various sizes and that is reflected here. Additionally, we like to encourage smaller companies to invest in data-driven marketing early on, because we know that excellent marketing processes are the foundation of long-term success.
Plan 1
Startup
For companies with
a turnover between 0-1M€
Includes one keyword
research language
Additional services:
Competitor Analysis from 490€
Additional languages -20% off
2790€
Plan 2
GROWTH
For companies with
a turnover between 1-10M€
Includes one keyword
research language
Additional services:
Competitor Analysis from 990€
Additional languages -20% off
3790€
Plan 3
Enterprise
For companies with
a turnover +10M€
Includes one keyword
research language
Additional services:
Competitor Analysis from 1990€
Additional languages -20% off
5790€
All prices without value-added tax (VAT).