Want to do better at marketing? What does Google think is important and recommends to marketers now?
There is no question that Google is a master in the marketing arena. They spend a lot on figuring it out, hire the best teams, and may have access to more data than anyone else. If you are going to market any business or product or service today you are going to be using Google. Typically, there is a lot hype and confusion about what Google likes, and what works and doesn’t in Google marketing channels. That causes by entrepreneurs, startups, and real estate investors to blow a lot of money on the wrong things and with the wrong teams, or even to stay paralyzed and forgo the best marketing options because they just don’t get it. The good news is that the marketing giant just hosted the Google Marketing Next event, spilling the secrets of what it thinks is important and smart for marketers now. Here are some key takeaways that you may want to apply in your own marketing efforts to get better results…
AI
The big theme behind Google’s new marketing event was intelligent learning. We know that ‘eLearning’, or online learning is becoming a big thing. Billions of individuals around the world are now being connected to knowledge via the web. You may even wonder why we have physical schools and colleges any more. We’ve also heard a lot about ‘AI’ and how it is disrupting jobs. Google itself reveals that the bulk of its new tools, and the capabilities it is providing to marketers and agencies are all coming from machine learning, and the ability of computers to interpret data. By leveraging the best tech available, we can all learn more and do more, faster. In business and life that can be a critical edge you’ve got to have.
Put Consumers First
Say what you like about giant corporations like Google, but this recent event authentically appeared to be all about Google putting its customers first. It focused on announcing and educating customers and making the best tools available to clients of all sizes. All with the purpose of enabling marketers to put their customers first, and serve them with timely information and solutions, without spamming and annoying them. If you put them first it will show up in how you market and operate your business, and they’ll reward you with their loyalty, referrals, and revenues.
Speed
To Google, putting your customers first is about pre-empting their requests and needs, focusing on quality, and that often transfers into speed. Google wants marketers to be able to operate efficiently, but to also serve up quality information, products, and service. This means relevant offerings to the right customers, and good content on your site. It also means rapid responsiveness. It believes businesses should be seamlessly responding in just 1 second. It notes that chances of losing a customer grow dramatically if it takes even 7 seconds to get the information they want. So look to make your website faster, your ads load faster, and to allow customers to find you in 1 second, and move from your ad or website to speaking to a rep as fast as possible.
Analytics
One of the biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs, investors, and business owners are making is ignoring their analytics. They are flat out ignoring the data that Google provides which shows them exactly what is and isn’t working in their marketing. If you don’t know this then you are just throwing away money. You may be throwing it all away, along with your time, because you don’t know where you should be investing it. Google is striving to make it easier to understand the metrics and whether your blog is actually feeding your social and improving your ad conversion rates, etc. But for now, don’t ignore what you’ve got. If you don’t have the time or patience for it, hire someone to make sense of it and make recommendations for you. It’s too important to ignore.
Types of Advertising to Use
Throughout the event consistent marketing themes revolved around Adwords, Search, and YouTube. Make sure you are tapping into these opportunities, and are reaching targeted customers at the right moments, in order to make the most of your time and marketing budget.
