132. How can search listening help your brand? (f. Sophie Coley)
Ever wish you could read the minds of your target audience? 🔮 With search listening, you can! In this informative Brand Therapy episode, hosts Phil and Lauren excitedly chat with Sophie Coley, a thought leader and speaker with exceptional consumer insights. She teaches you how to think like your audience and (with the help of tools like Answer the Public) get discovered. A must listen for anyone wanting to increase their digital footprint!
Episode transcription
Phil
Well, hello, welcome to Brand Therapy. I'm Phil.
Lauren
And I'm Lauren.
Phil
And this is the podcast where we help you position, build, and promote your brand's. We're so happy you're here. I am so thrilled that this moment, this episode, this conversation is happening. It is one, without any exaggeration, that I've concocted in my brain potentially as a dream. I thought if I could have a handful of let's say my three most desired, smart, brilliant marketer branding experts out there that have taught me a lot, if I could have those people on our podcast, who would they be? And one day I was feeling especially brave, I decided to reach out to one of those people on her website. And I said, Sophie, Sophie, I've learned so much from you. I'm a super fan. You've taught me so much. I'm a big fan. You don't even know me. And she replied, and she said I'd love to be on the podcast. And so we'd love to give Sophie Coley all the way from England, a very warm welcome to Brand Therapy. Welcome, Sophie, I'm so excited you're here.
Sophie
Thank you so much. That was quite the introduction., I better deliver.
Phil
I love a dramatic intro. So let me just quickly tell people who you are and how I've discovered you. You have introduced me to the topic of what we're going to talk about today is search listening. And you have single handedly introduced me to this concept. I've worked in branding and marketing for a decade. I had not encountered this topic until I decided to attend a webinar from Answer the Public, a tool we've talked a lot about on our podcast. In fact, one of my top YouTube videos talks about Answer the Public and the ways in which personal brands can use this tool. You often appear in the webinars that Answer the Public is conducting or promoting. You previously trained as a journalist, which is super cool. So did I. You're now the director of strategy at Propellernet and you focus on search listening. You've got the URL, you've got the social media handle, you know a lot about this topic. And the last piece of this intro is my favorite quote from you is this, ‘we can learn a lot about people from how they search’. So let's start there. What does that quote mean? What can we learn Sophie?
Sophie
Well, a lot, which is a good thing. So I guess when I start talking to people about search listening, one of the first certainly if I'm doing it in a training environment, one of the first tasks that I often get people to do is to look at their own Google search history, which is quite enlightening. And I think really lands the point that we can learn a lot about people from how they search. Because I think without realizing it, most of us, certainly who are in the sort of connected online world will just, you know, whip out our phones or speak to our smart speaker in our home or jump on our laptop and search something and it could be for anything that's happening in your life, right? Something happens and you will turn to Google and try and find the answer. But actually, there's always a reason that you're doing that you want to find information, you want to find reassurance, you want to find people who've got a similar opinion to you, you're scared. That's a big driver of searches.
And so there's, I guess, I mean, I've come from a search marketing background, and one of the biggest things that struck me from working in search marketing is that people get obsessed with keywords and traffic and all of this. And I think you referenced it. But having trained as a journalist, I became so aware thinking that there's a person behind every single search that happens and they have a need and that they're searching for a specific reason. So the other quotes that I love in this space, and I have to pay homage to Seth Stephens Davidowitz, who is definitely kind of the leader. He wrote a book called Everybody Lies, which I always get into everything I do, because I really think people should read that book if they are interested in search listening, but he talks about the fact that Google data is the greatest data set ever collected on the human psyche. It's a digital truth serum. And this idea that we all tell Google things that we don't tell our partners or our best friends or doctors, we certainly wouldn't put on a survey if a marketing firm reached out to us and said, Hey, I want to get your opinion on this, but will tell Google because it's anonymous and safe, and we can be truthful.
Lauren
Okay, so before we get into the tactical stuff for our listeners we’d be really interested to know how you personally got into search listening, was there a kind of lightbulb moment where you thought, oh, this is fascinating, or did you just kind of stumble into it throughout your career?
Sophie
So on the journey I've been on I think I probably did stumble into it. But like you said, I trained as a journalist at university. I spent my entire time training as a journalist with lecturers telling me that I could have a career that was much more sociable in terms of hours and earn a lot more if I went into PR rather than journalism. And then I left university and was offered the chance to intern at Propellernet where I am now. I've been there coming up 12 years. I joined the PR team there, and it was very much an SEO sort of search focused agency at the time, which we still are to some extent. So I joined the PR team, this is back in the days of, you know, lots of guest placements for links and the shadier side of SEO, shall we say, that existed sort of 10 years ago, and my role was causing me to find journalists and try and sell and stuff I just didn't believe in. You know, it made me cringe. I didn't believe in the work I was doing.
So I took a sort of sideways step in the agency and was given the chance to take our creative work in a slightly different direction. And I think in doing that I realized that the best marketing work is born out of real human truths, and you really need to understand people. Actually a few years into that we sort of proper if you like, creative director joined us. And at that point, I realized it wasn't creative that I was into, it wasn't the art direction side of things, it was the ‘why are we doing this, why does it work, what's the logic and the strategy behind it?’ So more and more of my time was then spent doing projects that helped our clients understand audiences and understand people. And I think because I was operating in that search world, I realized that Google data was a great source of that.
Interestingly, Answer the Public, which you guys, obviously have mentioned several times, is another product that fell out of propellant at the agency. So we have always, Answer the Public, for people who aren't familiar with it, is a tool that just automates and scrapes Google suggestions. So you can put a theme term in and it automates or pretends effectively that you've searched, she's a she's, and she's see and why she is and what she does, and that kind of thing. We used to do that manually, which is why Answer the Public was created because I worked with some really smart people who saw a way to automate it. But we used to do it manually. And it was to try and understand people.
So it's a long winded answer to your question, but I've kind of always done it. And then I would say a couple of years ago, just more and more conversations that I was having with clients, realized people aren't doing this as a thing, like people will do social listening and be really confident in that. And sure, like I do social listening as well. But I think to really understand people, you need to do both. So I guess tactically, it's something I've probably always done because I was an insights driven person in a search marketing agency. But it's only been the past couple of years that I've started calling it search listening and quite deliberately doing that, because I think social listening is so well established that it helps land the concept really well, and just kind of piggybacking on that and calling it search listening. So the last couple of years have been pushing it and trying to get more people to do it and to get it but I've probably been doing it throughout my career.
Lauren
Great. Okay, now for the tactical questions. As you know, from listening to Brand Therapy episodes, thank you very much, Sophie, our listeners are entrepreneurs. So they have either an entrepreneurial spirit and are freelancing outside of their day job, or they do own their own small business. I would love to know, let's imagine someone left their job and they decided to be a consultant, and they're about a year into consulting on their own. They've got enough to pay the bills, but they're really ready to sort of formalize their services and get their name out there. With search listening, what do they do? What's the first step?
Sophie
I guess the first step is thinking about what types of Google data are available for you. And I should say, I say Google, because I'm in the UK, you guys are in the US, right? It's the dominant search engine. But I think when we talk about search listening, any search engine that you use will surface data back to you. So there will always be data that's available to you. The kind of key data sources that I use, as I said, the main one that I love and Phil I heard you say this on a previous podcast, but I am not a numbers person. Spreadsheets freak me out a little bit. I like words. So Answer the Public is kind of great in that sense for me. And again, the fact that it comes from the Google suggestions, right? It's, it's not and it's a question that I get asked all the time is, what about search volumes? And where does that tie in? The thing I kind of push back on with that is to say, think of this as like the biggest focus group you could ever do. Right? You wouldn't disregard something that was insightful and interesting that came out of a focus group, because there was just a small handful of people who agreed with that sentiment, I think it's about collating all the insights, and then deciding which ones he wants to act on.
And again, I think the fact that search data is the territory of search marketing people, there's a real tendency to be like, oh, volumes, I need to know exactly how many people are searching for this thing. I try to push people to be as interested in the what as the how much effectively. So Google suggestions is the best place to start because it's free and immediate, right? You can jump on your laptop or on your phone right now and start typing something into Google. The suggestions that are coming back are effectively what Google has observed in your location. We don't know specifically how they define that, but I have run experiments with people in different parts of the UK, and we see slightly different results.
So we know that it is specific to your location. I would add that make sure you do it in incognito mode, because otherwise you will be swayed by your own searches in the past. Just start playing around and Google's suggestions because everything that Google is serving back to you, you can kind of think of as trending searches if you like. And I've done some quite interesting work. So over the last couple of years last year when the lock down started in the UK, I started just tracking the term ‘should I’ as a search term or like just the seed query? And at the start of it, it was things like, ‘should I go to the dentist’ because lockdown hadn't actually kicked in at that point and people were starting to think all that's, you know, ‘should I be doing that’? And then, ‘should I go to work today’? And then as mask wearing became a thing, ‘should I wear a mask’, through to when the housing market crashed over here, ‘should I sell my house’? I think the oil market crashed at one point and we saw top ‘should I’ suggestions become things like ‘should I buy oil, should I invest in oil’, that kind of thing.
So you will see these changes play out as stuff goes on in the world. So start playing around with Google's suggestions. If you are getting your head around that and want to start doing it at scale, then that's where Answer the Public becomes incredibly useful, because it's shortcutting a lot of that work for you. And I think you can get like two or three searches a day for free from Answer the Public. So again, there's a free version, there's a pro version, which becomes more sophisticated, and obviously you pay for it. But then you can do ongoing tracking around things, which is really, really useful. So that's a great place to start, I would say.
The other tool that I massively advocate is Google Trends, which is one that I think people probably know a little bit better and use a bit more. The thing I would say with Google Trends is almost don't get too distracted on that graph you get at the top, I think that's always the first thing you see in Google Trends. And it's like, okay, cool, that's interesting, here's the time based trend. If you scroll down a little bit on the page, it gives you rising topics and rising queries that are specific to whatever it is you've put in. And it's again, the information there can be really, really rich in terms of real kind of revealing human traits, again, that people are searching around the topic that you've put in.
So start playing with those tools. They're two of the best tools. And in terms of why or the methodology, I would suggest people think about what you want to understand about people. And also, you know, if you are doing any other audience research projects, if you're doing any social listening, what is it that you're not getting out of those processes that search might not be able to reveal. I often give examples of if you were working on something that you were trying to understand, new parents, for example, if you were to try and jump into Instagram, and try and understand new parents and look at the #newbaby, you would see really cute pictures of new parents with with their newborn babies all looking very happy. And it's lovely. And that is one side to being a new parent. If you look at a new baby or newborn baby in Google suggestions, you will see things like, ‘why won't my newborn stop crying, is it normal that my newborn is hiccuping all the time’, a lot more kind of medical based, fear driven queries, really.
And I guess my point is, that's the same person, probably. It's not that some parents are super proud and will jump on Instagram and others are super fearful and will only be on Google, it's the same person, but they are displaying different behaviors in different places online. And if you want to get a really round, full understanding of that person, you should be looking at both.
Phil
I love those examples. Sophie, I think it was from you on one of your past webinars that I learned this really savvy, but simple strategy. And using the example you gave a second ago, ‘should I’ at the beginning of lockdown. I think this was from something that you taught. The idea is that you type then the letter A, then delete, then the letter B, then the letter C and you can go through the alphabet. And you can get literally an entire list of suggestions from the alphabet on what people are searching for and what some of those related searches are. And all of this is free. And I think we fall into consumer mode so quickly when we're on Instagram, or we're on Google. And we forget, as marketers, which solopreneurs and personal brands are having to wear a lot of hats. We forget these tools are actually giving us so much data right in front of us that sometimes it takes listening to this podcast to be reminded, actually, you could take a keyword from your business, ours would be personal branding, I could go to Google right now and type personal branding. And I could A, take a screenshot, delete, B, and then literally have a whole range of queries and questions that people are actively searching for and that costs you nothing.
That was one little tip that I remember learning from you on a webinar, and I use it all the time when I'm coming up with content ideas. I love your tip a second ago about Google Trends, because I suggested Google Trends because it's free, but I've never really gotten into it as a tool. And it's for the reason you said I get hung up on the graph at the top that's not actually that useful. You have to go all the way down to the bottom and start to look at those phrases.
I love Answer the Public, it is my favorite. I've also used AlsoAsked, sparktoro is a new one. There's all kinds of them out there. But the Answer the Public is my love, that is my number one. I'm so excited for stories from you and anecdotes. I think it's really cool to hear examples of how people have used search listening because it's one thing for an agency to go, okay, we've got a team of people working on this and doing research, but our people and I'll see them, you know, we're two people plus business, it's kind of like how we take these big ideas and start to adapt them for ourselves. Do you have any fun stories off the top of your head about how search listening has, you know, really driven a campaign or driven business results in creative ways?
Sophie
Yeah. And I think you almost touched on something quite interesting there a second ago, which is that content is the obvious place to go with this stuff, right? It is a kind of version of keyword research, which is a great thing to inform any content we're doing online. But I do encourage people to go bigger than that. Because if you are getting really interesting human trait stuff, this data, it shouldn't be limited to content, although it is a great place to start. So things we've done, I often give this example, but I just really like it. We use, I guess, the insights and the traits that we find in search data to inform creative campaigns, because, again, great creative campaigns come out of human traits, and you will get great human traits from search data.
So one was that we were working with a ski holidays brand over here. And they gave us a specific brief that was to promote a new range of holidays they were selling, which was where you've got a guide to go out on a mountain with you, but it wasn't targeted at beginners. So it wasn't like beginner ski lessons. It was, you're quite confident, you want to go off pace, but you want someone there to kind of show you the cool, like hidden tracks that you might not know about that kind of thing. So we wanted to find some interesting stuff about people who weren't beginners skiing, but had a bit of experience and were in that world. So I started playing around with search data. Sorry, it was skiing and snowboarding, I should say. I started off just looking at the terms skiing and snowboarding, I think in Answer the Public or in Google suggests, and I wasn't getting much. I was getting things like ‘is skiing dangerous, do you go fast snowboarding’? And you could tell these are very much beginner queries just by what was coming out of it.
And this is one of my biggest tips as well that I would give to people, if you're looking to sort of dip your toe into the search listening water, play around with the language that you use, because it will get you different results. So I switched from skiing and snowboarding to skiers and snowboarders to see what people were telling people about themselves. Because I guess the logic behind that was that if you were calling yourself a skier or snowboarder, you probably weren't a beginner, right? You were confident and able to do it. And the queries that we were getting back were things like ‘snowboarders are douchebags, why are skiers such idiots’, and there was this real tension that we suddenly found that was playing out in search data, which was bizarre, like I wouldn't have expected it to be there. I mean, it wasn't out and out aggression. It was kind of banter, I would say between the two. But you know, people are looking for jokes about skiers and snowboarders. And you could see that there were two camps who were kind of battling it out.
So we ran with that. And we actually got a Team GB skier and a Team GB Olympic snowboarder. And we actually, because the brand was selling to both camps, we needed to kind of play it safe. So we started up the debate a little bit. And we actually hosted a skiers versus snowboarders debate and got each sort of rep, arguing why their sport was superior, that kind of thing.
It turned into a big creative campaign. And it did really, really well. And I genuinely believe that it was because we sort of found that human truth that we were able to play with. And we found it in search data, which was pretty cool.
I can give you another example as well, which is just more recent. So I work with one of the biggest gym chains in the UK over here. And obviously, about this time last year, gyms had to close which was quite stressful for them for us. And it became a really interesting time. Like I said, I started tracking the ‘should I’ searches around the lockdown for them. We actually started tracking searches around the gym. And it meant that at any given moment when consumer concerns change. So we saw things like, you know, ‘can I catch Coronavirus from the showers in the gym’? You know, really specific concerns? Again, if I think if we'd gone out with a survey and said to their audience, I mean, A, we probably wouldn't have wanted to heighten their concerns, so if we'd gone out with a survey, we might have done that, but B, I don't know that people would have been that truthful. You generally need to incentivize people to give you data in a survey anyway. But we were able to pinpoint all these specific concerns that people had in that moment in time, way ahead of the competition. We were spotting these concerns as it was kind of real time live audience insight generating that we were doing. And it meant we were able to stick those queries on the website and have a really authoritative answer and reassure people about every single specific concern that they had. And without that data, they would have just had to have a very generic, we're confident you won't catch Coronavirus and our gyms like here's what we're doing to keep you safe, that kind of thing. But actually with search listening, we're able to drill down into the really, really specific concerns that people had that we probably wouldn't have got from any other kind of research. I think certainly again, people wouldn't have been showing you about that on social media.
Lauren
It was so interesting in that skiing and snowboarding example, how you decided to switch from basically a verb to a thing. And obviously, that type of verbal switch is something that's very natural to you as a journalist. I'm curious to know if we can learn anything from search or the tone of voice of a brand to better connect with their customers. Have there been any examples that you can think of where maybe a brand learned that they should be less formal with their tone of voice or maybe they should use certain words to connect with their audience, how can we even learn how to do that?
Sophie
It's a really good point. And yes, you can use search for that. I don't have any examples of using it for tone of voice specifically. But certainly the words people use to describe things. I think as marketers or business people, when you live and breathe the world that you work in, you do get hung up on jargon sometimes and the certain words that you use that people just might not use to talk about what it is that you talk about. And even down to spelling's, so I've worked with a beauty brand in the past who had some ranges or some content that was talking about smokey eyes, you know, dark make up getting a smokey eye look. And I can't remember which way around it was, but they were either spelling it, s m o, k, e, y, or ie at the end. And actually, we found that through search listening, the more common spelling in the market they were operating in was the one that they weren't using. And it's such a minor thing, but actually to have, like you say, to have the language and reflect how the people you're trying to communicate with are speaking is really, really important. So search can definitely help you do that. Yeah.
Lauren
Cool. Very cool.
Phil
It's fascinating.
Lauren
I have another question. Sorry, Phil.
Phil
Let me just make a quick comment. We type things into Google every day. And we do it as if it's anonymous, but it's not anonymous. So there's so much we can learn by that, like the artificial sense of intimacy that we have, when we type words secretly into Google. It's just blows my mind. That's all I wanted to say.
Sophie
So I would stress that I guess it is anonymous, which I think gives people the confidence to be really honest and candid and truthful. But to your point, it's not identifiable right?
Phil
Exactly. Anonymous, but not identifiable.
Sophie
Yes, which is a slight distinction. But I think it's important because I think the anonymous nature of it is why we are so truthful with it. And I always joke that unless you've done something awful, and the police are knocking on your door, your search history is pretty safe. No one's going to see it you would hope it is just you which is why you can be incredibly truthful.
But yeah, it's not identifiable, which in some ways is a strength and in some ways is a weakness because at least with with social, when you can tie it to different people you can start to segment by demographics and those sorts of things, which is definitely one of the weaknesses and flaws with search listening that at the moment, you can't do that. You could previously when Hitwise were in business with the demise of jump shot and everything that happened around that a couple of years ago now, you can't segment anymore, which you used to be able to do, which was incredibly interesting.
Actually another story that I can tell you about that, that's a really interesting use case. But yeah, sorry, off on a tangent.
Lauren
Could we hear this story?
Sophie
Yes. So I worked with a retailer who sold fashion to tall women specifically. And it was coming at it from a search marketing point of view, but everything they had geared their business up around was communicating to tall women. And to them, tall women describe themselves as tall women. And what we were able to do with Hitwise, which, as I say, I'm heartbroken that I can't do this anymore, we could create two segments, and I analyze the search behavior of those two segments. So we identified all women, so just women full stop. And then we specifically said segmented women who were considered tall, so I think it was five foot seven and above just going around like average height stats, and we compared how each segment searched for fashion. And what and I guess the hypothesis that the client had would be that the tall women are searching things like jeans for tall women and dresses for tall women and seats for tall women. And actually they weren't the data that was able to help us prove that, you know, they weren't this alien species that behaved in a crazily different way. They were just women. Right? And actually, I think it was the fact that there were certain brands that resonated with them really well and that they understood catered well to tall women, and they would perform their search like ordinary women.
And I do say that, I guess they went on to say on the podcast, but deliberately because they weren't any sort of special type of women, they would search for jeans, and they would click on the result from a brand that they knew had a good range of jeans for tall women. But they weren't searching, you know, they didn't have to qualify every single search they performed as being tall, which was what the client had really guessed was going on. And it was really nice to have the data to prove it. I think we then we then sort of exploded that we did a really cool campaign with them, which was that we created the world's first 3d printed mannequin like model based on a real customer so we got one of their tall women who didn't feel like she was well represented and sent her off to some amazing studio in London where she was scanned and then she became the model in the flagship store so that tall women were better represented.
Lauren
So cool. Oh my gosh, you have so many stories I'm so it's like enthralling. Okay, so someone's started to be comfortable with search listening. They're starting to create content or potentially create campaigns related to their area of work. How do they know they're on the right track? And a follow up question, how often should they be looking for new terms?
Sophie
So I'll actually answer your second question first. And that is it. You need to be looking at this stuff all the time. And it's one of my biggest bugbears with the way that people use to answer the public. In particular, I think there's a real tendency to go in running reports, pull your data and take your box and be like a job done. I've got all my search data. I think the story I told you earlier, just tracking, should I and we've also done tracking this year around queries around vaccines, which has been really interesting because again, as different news stories have broken around vaccines, search behavior on the vaccines has changed. Search behavior will change on a potentially hourly basis. If it's something which is very changeable out there in the world, I always give a really morbid example here, but if a celebrity died tomorrow, you would expect to see search suggestions around that celebrity change from I mean, the most common celebrity ones, awfully are things like weight, height and appearance, type driven stuff. Or maybe stuff around their career that you would instantly see those suggestions change, the data is updated minute by minute.
So I guess depending on what you're doing, you should at least be looking at it on a monthly basis, I would say at the minimum. If it's to understand an audience in a particularly changeable topic, I would be looking at a minimum of weekly. There's some really interesting kind of brand reputation type uses for this. And again, I'd probably be looking at that weekly, certainly no more than no less than monthly, because you want to know the minute your brand is being suggested in a potentially controversial way if you need to deal with a crisis.
So yeah, I guess it depends what you're doing. But definitely, definitely be checking in on this data regularly. It's not the sort of thing that you just look at once. And again, like thinking about social listening, right, you wouldn't look at your social data and be like a job done, I've understood the audience, I think we can always look to understand them more. I'm really sorry, I forgot your first question.
Lauren
Oh, how do you know you're on the right track?
Sophie
I guess that whatever you're doing is really resonating and connecting with people. And it will depend on how you're using the data. So if you're using it for online content, then you will see greater traffic coming through. And if you're getting really great insights and creating content off the back of that, then it will be qualified traffic and the right traffic, right, not just any old traffic that's coming through to your website. So you can look in the Search Console and start to see what terms are actually driving people through to your website. And if it's the sort of stuff that you've been identifying and your search listening and creating content for then that's great.
But as I said earlier, I would encourage people to go further with it. I guess the results with the PR campaign around scheme that I mentioned earlier, it landed so well with the media, because I guess it was fun. But like I say, the journalists, we were pitching the stories to know that it would resonate with their audience, because we kind of created it from those human truths. So the campaign was successful and that was a great indication that we're on the right track.
The other use that I've not touched on is around, I guess, like product and service development. And it's a really interesting use case there. Right. So if you spot in search data, in fact, I know of a grocery retailer over here in the UK, who are good at this stuff, and someone and I'm going to blur the story a little bit and tell you a different example, but someone in their team noticed that there weren't any pirate themed birthday cakes. And actually, there was a really high search volume for pirate themed birthday cakes so he went off to the product team and said, I really think that we should stock a pirate birthday cake, I think it would sell really well. And they did it and it sold really well.
So you know, just, it couldn't be more basic, really, I guess. You're tapping into stuff that people are telling you what they want. And therefore, you know, if you're on the right track, you would help hope that sales would work. But people can apply this, it doesn't have to be some kind of ecommerce or real world retailer based, you can apply it to your own services.
So one of the things that I the best words that you can look for in search data, I think is FOR. So if it was consulting that you are looking at how do I promote my business better, if you put up ‘consulting for’ in, you would expect to get back a load of suggestions that tell you different audiences who are looking for some sort of consulting that is bespoke to them. And it means you can really, really tailor your service. And then I would hope if you're on the right track that you'd be getting leads through from those sorts of people.
But ’for’ is such a great one across so many different use cases, because it is literally people telling Google that they want this thing and they want it for them. And this is the label they give themselves so you can really tailor your approach to your product, whatever it is to exactly how they describe themselves. And there'll be some really interesting ways in that I always find stuff that surprises me.
Lauren
So fascinating. I just typed in consulting for into Google to see what's auto populated: consulting for small businesses, consulting for dummies, consulting for startups, consulting for nonprofits, consulting for a US company from Canada,(guess where I am) consulting for the government, consulting for good, consulting for equity. And then if we take it a step further and do ‘consulting for a’ cause to access Amazon artists as we do as beginners, biotech companies, it's like the possibilities are limitless.
Sophie
And it yeah, it helps you find the audience, right, because you might have set up like, right, I'm a consultant, full stop. That's what I do, I consult but how does your audience find you and if you can understand how they dictate what they're looking for, that's the best way you're going to connect with them. And like you say the possibilities and the data you'll get back is endless, really. And like I said, it's going to change all the time. So I bet if you, I mean, that one might not be so changeable, but certainly if you looked at that again, in a couple of months, you'd probably see different results as well.
Phil
Yeah, I love this topic. And literally, it's all thanks to you. I caught that webinar that you were in months and months ago, probably closer to a year now, and every time I learned from you, I learned new things. This conversation was everything I had hoped and literally dreamed about. And more. Thank you, Sophie, for giving us such specific examples. In this particular instance, I think hearing examples you've given us so many, it lets people imagine for themselves how they could even begin to approach this world that is a little bit overwhelming. And you do just such a beautiful job of breaking it down into simple terms that are actionable. How can people learn more about search listings and get more from you, you're such a wealth of knowledge.
Sophie
So searchlistening.com exists. There's some hopefully useful sort of training resources on there for people, a mixture of free stuff that they can download, and different kinds of worksheets and activities around things like mapping customer journeys to different search behaviors, which are quite interesting. There's also some paid for courses, sort of self guided learning that people can do via searchlistening.com, me and a few of my colleagues do sort of bigger scale consulting around this. So we've worked with some really exciting brands over the past year, which is exciting for me, because it means more of the world are waking up to the potential of this data, to upskill their teams to be able to do search listening. So yeah, my contact details are on the website if people want to get in touch around that. And then I'm on LinkedIn, Sophie Coley. And I'm on Twitter, @ColeyBird as well, if people want to connect and follow me and see me chatting about things that are search listening related.
Phil
I love it. It's been such a pleasure to have you on Brand Therapy. What a fun conversation. What a useful conversation for people to listen to. Thank you again so much for giving us your valuable time.
Sophie
No worries. I've really enjoyed it. Thank you for having me.
