Marketing 101 tells us that keeping existing customers is more often better than trying to acquire new ones. And in the current economic conditions, making sure you retain what you’ve got seems not just sensible but essential.
In which case, you might think that people would be searching for information about how to keep customers. However, according to Google, the search term “how to retain customers” was searched for a paltry 36 times in the UK in October. And over the last 12 months, the average was around 58 – so the trend is declining.
So does this mean that there is a universal lack of interest in customer retention? No. It simply bears out what we’ve said before – the majority of search terms consist of only 2 or 3 words. And that people tend not to use Google in great numbers to ask specific questions.
Having said that, what about the phrase “customer retention“? According to Google, a mere 3,600 searches occurred on the term last month in the UK.
Conversely, the term “new business” came up 74,000 times – although the historical average has been 135,000.
Without getting carried away, Google’s Keyword tool (and similiar SEO tools) can provide a useful picture of what people are really interested in. And what kind of PR and marketing content they might best respond to.
Filed under: Web/Tech, digital pr, marketing, online pr , customer retention, new business
