How do you find out what really motivates your market and your customers?  Do you commission market research? Do you pay for costly marketing consultants?

Well maybe, but that wouldn’t be my first approach. Instead, I would first try Google Adwords.

Not the answer you were expecting?

In case you are not familiar with Google Adwords, this is the system you would use to run sponsored text adverts so they appeared at the top and down the right hand side of a Google results page.

OK, but what has Google Adwords got to do with understanding what motivates my market?

In simple terms, if you ran a Google Adwords campaign, your text adverts would appear if people typed in a search term that matched one of the search terms you had pre-defined. For example, an architect firm (we’ll call them ABC Architects) could set up their Adwords campaign so that their adverts appeared when someone searched for the term ‘architect’.

The beauty of the Adwords system, is that it will then tell ABC Architects what search terms people actually type into Google that include the search term ‘architect’. This provides an extremely valuable window into the thinking of prospective customers. Adwords will give ABC Architects an insight into what their customers really want.

So, for instance, ABC Architects might perhaps think their market is motivated to work with highly qualified architects as a priority.  But, looking at Adwords, the results could perhaps show that people are more interested in searching for the ‘best architect’ or a ‘London architect’ or perhaps an ‘award winning architect’. It might become apparent that people may almost never search for a ‘qualified architect’.  That’s not to say they don’t want a qualified architect, it just suggests that the market isn’t motivated by an architect’s qualifications as a first priority.

If the above hypothetical Adwords findings were true, ABC Architects could then focus their marketing and website efforts on demonstrating that they are one of the best in their field and that they are local to their clients in London and that they have independent awards to prove their expertise. These messages might then take priority over promoting ABC Architects’ qualifications.

Whilst Adwords is not the only method for gaining an insight into what motivates a market, it does provide real intelligence. I say ‘real’ because, the intelligence is not based on what customers say or think they will do, it is based on what they are actually seeking.