Regularly, our newsletter introduces you to the best software that facilitates the work of marketing and communication teams. Here, we present Trajaan, a French Search Listening solution that enables brands and retailers to map all searches performed on different engines such as Google or Amazon, thus providing previously inaccessible information and insights. The uses are multiple: identifying critical topics, detecting new trends, launching product innovations, optimizing catalog and merchandising...
Matthieu Danielou, Co-Founder & CEO, answers our questions.
Hello Matthieu, can you describe Trajaan's positioning?
Trajaan is the European leader in search listening. We help consumer brands measure the potential for revenue growth and market share via the search channel, and prioritize actions that generate results. Our technology allows us to analyze large markets in real-time and continuously provide recommendations on both a global and local scale.
What problems do you solve?
The universe of possibilities in search is too vast to be analyzed/envisioned from simple Google trends analyses and some Excel calculations. Moreover, search goes beyond Google – with the growing importance of being well-ranked on marketplaces like Amazon. CMOs, lacking access to proper market insights, are hesitant to invest further in this powerful channel – as it closely aligns with consumer intentions. Trajaan allows global consumer brands to access this knowledge and implement high-ROI actions.
What are the main features of your tool?
The Trajaan platform alerts users to all variations in consumer expectations in a market and provides appropriate recommendations to create a comparative advantage linked to these variations.
How does it work?
- Semantic mapping of all searches performed by consumers – with continuous discovery of new search terms
- Continuous data collection on various search engines (volumes and search results): Google, Amazon, Bing, Baidu…
- Continuous trend detection/alerting through statistical analyses
- 1st-party data collection in brand performance marketing
- Automatic recommendations in content marketing, media buying, and (e)merchandising
Your "Killer Feature"?
Semantic segmentation/automatic keyword labeling. A market can be characterized by thousands, if not millions, of keywords – and this in every considered country/language. This granularity is far too fine to be properly exploited. Our semantic technology allows us to track and discover clusters of similar keywords that truly make sense for the brand:
- Mentions of competitors
- Mentions of product categories
- Mentions of specific features
- Associations with reputation risks (scandal, child labor, fake…)
Integrations of Trajaan with other tools?
Trajaan connects to all tools that provide metrics related to search performance: Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, Amazon Ads, Semrush…
Trajaan also has connectors that allow our analytics & alerts to be displayed in other business intelligence tools: Looker Studio, Qlik, Cumul…
What is your client onboarding process?
- Alignment meeting on the device's objectives
- Retrieval of access to all internal tools related to search and potential competitor listings to set up our recommendations
- Onboarding on our platforms (one per country)
- Delivery of a first report (after 2 months) highlighting the main findings & recommendations, for easy distribution within the organization
- Monthly check-in to ensure the objectives are being followed
- Optional report writing
- Optional onboarding of different operational agencies
And on the support side?
We have a dedicated CSM team based in Paris that manages the relationship and operational and advisory support for European clients.
What are your goals for 2023?
Beyond our revenue growth goals, we have laid out a tech roadmap aiming to automate the execution of our own recommendations in content marketing and media buying. Indeed, we face a new bottleneck: being overly informed about opportunities through search, technical teams do not have time to execute all operations.
How do you see the evolution of your market?
The growth of e-commerce is steady and unlikely to slow down. Encouraged by the Covid-19 crises, consumers have learned to do their own online research to find products best suited to their needs. Google is a crucial gateway to consumption – but marketplaces are also gaining increasing importance in brand results. Some brands choose to bypass this system and sell directly on the DNVB model, but the continuous rise in paid acquisition budgets via Meta or TikTok underscores the critical importance of content marketing and the ability to generate traffic and brand awareness through quality content, well-positioned on trending topics. All these signals give us confidence in the future of search listening – as a blend of technology and service to help brands generate more revenue through search-related channels, thereby driving the renewal of this market historically dominated by small, technologically ill-equipped agencies incapable of supporting brands on a global scale.
Thank you, Matthieu, for your time and detailed answers.
About Trajaan:
- Founded: 2021 in Paris
- Number of Offices (and locations): France & Italy
- Number of Employees: 10
- Team Distribution (Sales, Developers, Support, Marketing…):
- Product / Tech: 45%
- Sales & Operation: 45%
- Corporate: 10%
- Number and Type of Clients: 45 international clients
- Enterprise: Heineken, Royal Canin, Orange, Campari, Crédit Agricole…
- Agencies / Consultants: Publicis Sapient, Bain&co, Havas Market…
- We work both directly with advertisers and with their marketing consultants and agencies – to manage their search engine marketing budgets and roadmaps.
- Fundraising: 1M euros
- Main Competitors? Conductor, NWO.ai, and the agencies themselves
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The Saas Advisor Team
