Like many large tech companies, Google has a yearly conference, called Next. This year’s conference took place in recently in San Francisco, and there is a lot to be learned about the future of marketing from it.
Of course Google rules the world when it comes to search. They are the #1 search engine (by a large, large margin) and the #2 search engine (YouTube) belongs to them as well.
For us as marketers, there were good lessons to be learned about the future of how we can help our businesses to score higher and come up more frequently in searches.
Google’s goal is to achieve “relevant, frictionless, and useful experiences whenever, wherever they ask for them and sometimes even before they ask,” said Sridhar Ramaswamy, senior vice president.
Here are some highlights:
87% of smartphone owners turn to search first in their moment of need and 20% of searches are now done by voice. Sadly, less than 1/3rd of brand experiences are described as “helpful” by consumers. Additionally, for every one second delay, conversions can fall up to 20%? Speed = revenue. Pages published using Google AMP have the speed advantage in this arena.
For us as businesses, it’s our job to be as useful as possible to our consumers; to anticipate and answer their questions maybe even before they have them.
One of our biggest challenges as marketers is figuring out where our ROI is coming from. If we have sales, that’s great, but are they coming from FB? Our website? PPC ads? I love Google Analytics and use is daily, but Google is soon rolling out Google Attribution, an analytics report that goes deeper. The best part is, it’s free. You’ll be able to measure the impact of each marketing touch point, across multiple channels and devices, and easily take action according to the data.
Google is also rolling a cool new feature called Google Assistant. For use with the app and their hardware AI assistant, the idea is that it will help you to organize your life. It’s like your own personal Google. But additionally, for business owners, this can have a profound effect. People will be searching, we ideally can be the ones they find.
Google rules the world for us as marketers! It’s important to pay attention to what they are rolling out next, and take advantage of that knowledge so that we can connect with our clientele.