Highlights from Google Marketing Next 2017

Google Marketing Next highlighted the future of digital marketing this week with Google innovations, news about what is coming next, and what is needed now based on consumer demand and expectations.

Consumer experiences are becoming more tailored as data and machine learning work together and people expect better experiences across all devices for everything they need. Both data and machine learning are at the heart of the innovations that are required to keep customers satisfied and marketers need to be smart about using data in every step of what the user’s journey.

One second or one step

Being helpful has a positive impact on purchase and recommendation, yet many brands are not yet viewed as helpful by consumers. Brands need to stay ahead of consumer needs and honor the one step or one second principle.

Once you have the attention of someone, you need to demonstrate you can solve their problem within one step or one second. Google’s data shows that an increase from one second to seven seconds when searching doubles the probability of bouncing on mobile devices. And for every one second delay in page load time, conversions fall up to 20% so speed and simplicity are the key to revenue. AMP was launched to help with this by making the mobile web faster and the two billion pages published to date load in less than one second in Google search.

The full journey

There are now more signals about the consumer journey than ever before and Google has the technology to make sense of all these data points. Advertisers need to use insights available about prospects and where they are in their personal journey since there are multiple micro-moments on the digital path to purchase.

With Google’s technologies, it knows the most appropriate ad to show based on where searchers are in that journey since it is not a linear path. Someone searching for “best rates” is looking to save money. A search for “cheapest hotel” is for someone who wants to save and compare prices. These two people are searching for the same thing but with different intent, context, and identity and Google ensures they see the correct ads. PPC experts can determine which keywords are the most profitable within the context of the customer journey and better personalise the messages at the right time for their consumers.

Non-Line Assistance

Another concept discussed during the keynote was of non-line assistance implying that people no longer distinguish online and offline experiences. The customer is now the channel and moves into different contexts of searching. In fact, 70% of people who buy something in a store first looked for information about it on their device.

People who click a search ad before visiting a store are 25% more likely to make a purchase while they are at the store and spend 10% more. New tools from Google will allow PPC experts to import transaction data from the store at the device and campaign level for Search and Shopping campaigns. They will also enable people to get store sales data through third party resources with no extra implementation and match transactions back to Google ads in a secure way.

New Audiences

There are also new ways to reach people who already have an interest in a brand, such as indicated by watching a YouTube channel and Google offers options for finding these new audiences in the right moment. They have offered targeting options for a while now with audiences, such as in-market, and will now offer consumer patterns and life events on YouTube to help PPC experts understand where people shop and the milestones in life that often result in a purchase, such as a high school graduation gift. These audiences are based on intent signals from searchers.

Consumer patterns and life events will also be added to Gmail ads later this year.

Updates to Attribution

There are so many problems with measurement with the activity that happens across devices and it is difficult to find clear data to take action on in marketing. Out of frustration, some PPC experts resort to last click attribution models to measure their campaign performance. Google Attribution is intended to solve this problem for PPC experts.

This free tool will use available data in AdWords, Analytics and DoubleClick to measure across multiple touchpoints, devices and channels. Google Attribution will unify the existing attribution feature in these tools and be available to all advertisers at no cost with a 360 version for enterprise clients.

The goal is to help PPC experts understand how each of those moments matter in the consumer’s journey. It combines data from these Google tools in only a few clicks and once the data is joined, advertisers can create a smart attribution model that does not base everything on the last click. It uses conversion data from these different Google products as well as machine learning to see how much credit each touchpoint deserves. Viewing the available models shows how conversions change for each channel and applies credit appropriately.

Google Attribution is intended to provide a more accurate view of the business and not just about new reports. It view the entire funnel and combined with automated bidding, will bring better results as PPC experts can easily update bids and move budgets between channels while looking across the entire funnel. This will roll out in the coming months and the data will be available in AdWords and DoubleClick Search.

Reach and Frequency

The increase in the number of devices people search on has made reach and frequency measurement more fragmented. With unique reach reporting in AdWords and DoubleClick, PPC experts can track unique users and the average impression per user with the data de-duplicated across campaigns, devices, and formats. Advertisers can then find wasted budget that can be used elsewhere. This capability is available now in AdWords now and will roll out to DoubleClick soon.

DoubleClick

A new workflow in DoubleClick Bid Manager to help with planning is in Beta today and will roll out to everyone in the coming months. It guides advertisers through set-up based on their goals whether that is influence, driving action or repeat business and uses machine learning to analyse past campaigns to help create an optimised media plan with the appropriate strategies.

Survey 360

Wonder what impact your marketing is really having? With Google Survey 360, you can discover that by surveying just the people who saw your ads. Learn what resonated with them and why they purchased or did not purchase. In only a few days, you can generate results from people who saw those ads and use this data with remarketing lists from within the Survey 360 account.

Advertisers can get a pulse on purchase intent or messaging and how it’s perceived by customers. Learn if it was the shipping offer or coupon code that influenced the decision to purchase. By gathering data in a short period of time, advertisers can quickly revise their message once they understand what people care about. This feature is available now in the United States and Canada.

Interested in learning more? Join the conversation on social media at #GoogleMarketingNext and view the full keynote online.