At this year's Google Marketing Next Keynote 2017, Sridhar Ramaswamy, Bhanu Narasimhan, Bill Kee, Karen Yao, Roshan Khan and Jennifer Liu announced a range of new and exciting Google updates which will be provided to the public before the end of the year. Many of these updates strive to make many everyday marketing tasks quicker and more accessible to everyone, alongside working to improve every businesses conversion rates.
If you happened to miss this year's Google Marketing Next Keynote, we've put together the top 10 useful features and insights we took note of while watching the presentation.
1. The Introduction of Google Lens
Google lens will now allow you to view the world through Google. Whether it is a restaurant you want to see the reviews for, a flower you don’t know the species of or the password on a wifi router, simply direct your Google lens at it and all the information you need to know will become available.
2. New Beta AMP Landing Pages
With each second your page needs to load, the bounce rate increases by 20%. Google is introducing the option to have new AMP landing pages wich will speed up your ads vastly, leading to an increased conversion rate. 70% of people search for something before they buy it, so it is in your best interest to ensure your ads are the first thing they see.
3. Introduction of Location Extensions and Store Visits
Google will soon be introducing location extensions to the general public, which means that when your video advert is displayed, your businesses location, opening times and distance away from the nearest store will appear beneath the video. This will hopefully improve the rate of consumers visiting businesses in person, which can then be tracked through the store visits data Google introduced 2 years ago.
4. New Tools to Measure Store Sales Will Link Google Ads to Offline Sales
91% of people decide to buy a product after seeing a relevant ad, which is why Google are introducing two new tools which will allow you to see how your ads directly related to offline sales. The first will allow you to import transaction data into AdWords to see store sales and revenue at the campaign level you use for search and shopping campaigns.
The second new tool will allow you to take advantage of Googles 3rd party partnerships to get store sales data. Their partnerships cover 70% of credit and debit card transactions in the US, and paired with the previous store visits Google map data, this new feature will be able to link offline purchases to online ads.
5. Customer Patterns and Life Events To Link to Google Ad Targeting
New Customer Pattern and Life Event data will help businesses understand where people shop and when life's biggest events take place such as graduation, moving and getting married. This key information will allow businesses to make their ads even more targeted to their key consumers.
6. Follow Your Customers Buying Path with Google Attribution
Instead of all your data being based on last click attribution, Google Analytics will soon let you see precisely what adverts lead the consumer towards buying your product. Therefore, instead of the analytics stating your consumer came through organic traffic, you will now be able to see if they saw an advert for your product 1 week ago, watched a youtube video for your product, had a retargeted ad and then finally searched for your product directly.
Through unique reach information, you will be able to see exactly how well your adverts performed which will contribute to making more precise marketing decisions in the future.
7. Google 360 Will Manage All Campaigns in One Place
It has been found that there is a shocking 40% higher bounce rate from mobile landing pages when compared to desktop. Google is working to improve this figure with new landing page features on Google 360. A new landing page tab will include reports about each of your current campaigns, so you can keep an eye on it at all times and pay attention to the pages that are not performing as well as they should be.
8. Google Adwords and Google Optimize Will Soon Integrate
Adwords will also be integrating with Google Optimize, meaning different variants of your landing pages can be tested on different members of your audience. This A/B split testing is available for use on web pages at the moment, but bringing it to landing pages is sure to provide the most insightful analytics for business.
9. DoubleClick to Introduce DoubleClick Bid Manager
This feature will use machine learning to analyse past campaigns and recommend the right inventory, audiences and budget based on your goals. It will also provide an estimated impression volume and reach, which will be a useful insight for many campaign managers. This is currently available in beta and will be provided to all customers in the coming months.
10. Google Home To Develop Local Inventory Knowledge
The Google Assitant is getting smarter and can now tell you precisely where you can find a shop selling the product you are searching for. If a company would like their business information to be available to Google assistant, they must submit their local inventory data to Google. Google Assistant will then be able to provide your consumers with directions, opening times and price of the product consumers search for. With 20% of all searches now being made by voice, this update will be widely useful for many businesses across the globe.
If you'd like to use some of these new features for your business but need some guidance, then you've come to the right place, our development teams and SEO team are already working with these features and can help your business take advantage of them too. Contact us today to request a website optimisation quote.
