Continuing with 1 Minute Marketing with NAVIC, how to use AnswerThePublic for keyword mapping

Twice a month, PRmoment will showcase tools across the PR & marketing eco-system reviewed by Jai Bahal, founder NAVIC Learn. This 1 Minute Marketing column, hopefully, will help make the communicators' job just a little bit easier. This week's column takes a look at contextual research and keyword mapping tool, AnswerThePublic. 

This week’s tool: AnswerThePublic

Subject: Contextual research and keyword mapping

It happens often.

“Yaar, I need some research for a pitch. It’s for a Chyawanprash brand and besides my mother forcing it down my gullet every morning, I have no understanding of the subject. How do I find out what people think about it? What their perception about it is?”

The beautiful part about the internet, or well, search engines is that data can be collated well. Information can be bound together in clumps which allows a high amount of research potential from comfort of your desktop.

Another thing that Search Engines do?

They tell us how people think.

About objects, concepts, ideas and people. Anything and everything all of the time. The tool we’re discussing today talks about how people think about anything.

AnswerThePublic

Based on the Autocomplete feature from search engines like Google and, well, the other ones (I still love you, DuckDuckGo), this app gives you a visual representation of the way users like you and I, search for things online.

The thing is though, people don’t just look up keywords on search engines.

PEOPLE ASK QUESTIONS

AnswerThePublic creates an aggregate of curiosity around a subject. ANY subject.

Exhibit A

The goal of good research is good insight. Although, my example talks about a product, the same principle can be used for a brand too. If you look closely, each segment looks at 3 broad focal points: Where to buy? how to consume it? And Is it banned? (strangely)

But that’s the point. An aggregation of what the internet asks about a thing will give us context to how to approach the populous, what should and shouldn’t be said and how to use their questions/keywords in our messaging strategy.

Another thing that this tool does is that creates a list of the things most compared to your subject.

Exhibit B:

So how do you use it?
Couldn’t be simpler.

1 minute process

1. Visit AnswerThePublic

2. Put in your search query

3. Align the geography you’d like to search for. (The default I believe is the UK or the USA)

4. Press ‘Search’

5. Scroll the results. There is much more than I’ve mentioned here (And it’s free)

Pro-Tip: Although the Pro version gives you some amazing benchmarks and detailed statistics about the subject at hand, the free version only allows 1 or 2 searches at a time (tracks your IP and such). If you want to experiment a little before you make up your mind to buy it, use a VPN or the TOR browser.

Stay curious. Stay Secure.

See you next week.

Jai Bahal, is founder of NAVICLearn and aims to educate, inform and train students, professionals and entrepreneurs about the future of marketing & communications.