After visiting a large, top of the line beauty spa in New Jersey, I got curious about the growing line of beauty services being offered. How well do changes to a spa’s product line reflect changes in consumer interest? It turns out we can use a tool called “Google Trends” to see how searches for a specific term or several terms in a topic have changed over the years.

I adjusted the time period to look at two ranges – 2004 – present, and last 12 months. I adjusted the geographic region to New Jersey. Then it was time to select the topics or terms. To do this, I browsed a few spa websites and took note of how most of their services were worded. I assumed that if several spas call the same service by the same name, most people will also search by that name.  Further refining would give us even better results, but here’s what I set up for my first try:

• Eyelash extensions
• Swedish massage
• Body wraps
• Facials
• Bikini waxes

I learned a few interesting things:

Over the last ten years, Google searches for facials have been slowly declining, but they still outnumber searches for other types of spa services.

Over the last four years (and especially in the last year), Google searches for eyelash extensions have been sharply increasing until they stand at second place just under facials.

Searches for body wraps peaked in May 2013 and March 2014 and are now stabilized at a pretty low level compared to the other terms I looked at.

There hasn’t been much growth in searches around the term bikini wax in many years.

If you’re interested in working with this report or starting your own, visit the Google Trends tool.

Next steps

This information can be used to create and tune up marketing initiatives that match up well with growth areas in a specific industry. Here are a few ideas:

• In a paid search campaign, include these “rising stars” in the keyword list.
• Decide how much budget a specific service line is allocated.
• Rewrite the copy on a specific web page you know is important to your potential customers.
• Revise or create new ad designs to support the growth opportunities.
• Add the popular topics to your content marketing calendar so that you are sharing ideas regularly on your blog and in social media.