Well, even though it wasn’t created for marketers, there seem to be rather interesting and innovative ways that even marketers can utilize Google Trends (which I thought was a great PR tool). I found an interesting article on MarketingProf today on 5 ways every marketer could put Google Trends to better use. Check out the article at this link. Also, please note that this article is free for probably a few weeks after which the site usually charges a nominal fee for download of articles. So hurry on…

If you don’t have time for a thorough review, here are the salient points on how every marketer could utilize Google Trends:

1. As a keyword optimization tool
2. As an event/product release planning and scheduling tool
3. As a webpage design tool
4. As a competitor analysis tool
5. As a firm/vendor selection tool

More descriptive analysis can be found at MarketingProfs in in the article written by Wil Reynolds that I referred to earlier. I am sure you can come up with your own unique usage of Google Trends yourself. If you do, feel free to post a comment or email me about it.

Also, let me add that for all you marketers out there, here are two reliable resources that you should probably bookmark:

(1) MarketingProf – Marketing Concepts and Strategies: Expert commentaries and articles by professionals and professors
(2) Marketing Sherpa – Practical News and case studies on Internet Advertising, Marketing & PR

Both the above marketing portals have a lot of in-depth coverage on marketing best practices and thought leadership. I also realized that MarketingProfs has a blog called the DailyFix (RSS feeds) that I just added to my RSS reader. Awesome!