You know you are working in digital marketing when you are actually excited about visiting the Google office. Well, that was me this morning, especially as they have just moved their London office to a brand new building near High Holborn. It’s so new I can even forgive Google for not having it on Google Maps – I’m just bitter because Google maps led me to a small theatre near Covent Garden…
Once you are close, you can’t miss the building; covered as it is with multi coloured panels. Google occupies 5 floors of this huge Lego like structure. Inside it was as you’d come to expect a Google office to look like, a very modern and eccentric feel, everything from the hexagon ping pong table to the inflatable lights was very Google. I was even impressed by the meeting room’s industrial feel – which I discovered later is just temporary while decoration is under way, embarrassing.
‘Search Insights’ by Sarah
Throughout this presentation Sarah used a very good example on how we can use tools such as Google Insight and Keyword Tool to look into market trends, compared to 5 years ago where the only options might be consumer focus groups or market surveys.
- Google Insight gives you an overview of live data, raising market trends and top searches
- Keyword Tool can be used for size of market, keyword research
- Global Market Finder for comparing data between countries and continents
- Ad planner for planning campaigns and online activities of consumers
- She also went through a few other features such as the new Google Art Project, Google.org and Google Products.
Niamh Mohan on ‘Precise Targeting’
This session focused on the use of different types of targeting within the Google Display Network, splitting into content targeting and audience targeting. Some interesting facts in the introduction were:
- 80% of queries have no exact-matched keywords
- Nearly 4 in 10 search queries are over 3 words long
- 20% of searches done on Google each day are ones not seen in the last 3 months.
Other highlights of the session include:
- Content targeting
- Keyword contextual targeting – targeting ads to display on websites with specific keywords
- Topic and placement targeting – targeting websites to display ads based on categories
- Audience targeting
- Interest categories – targeting audiences based on interests compiled by Google search profiles
- Demographics – targeting based on demographics using Google search profiles
- Remarketing – display ads to someone who have been to your website or performed an action but did not convert.
Below is an example on how you can use targeting to enhance your campaigns:
You purchase a large chocolate heart from an online luxury chocolate store for your girlfriend on Valentine’s Day, his cookie is placed in a remarketing list, you are remarketed to buy roses for Valentine’s Day, during Easter you are remarketed with ads to buy Easter eggs from he same chocolate store.
Lunch break
We were treated with cup cakes and sushi by Google during the lunch break, the sugar high from the cup cakes really helped with concentration during the second half – don’t know if this was part of Google plan for the day.
‘It’s all about ROI’ by Ben Hawksworth
Next up is one of my personal favourites of the day. This presentation focuses on outcomes and key metrics, with measurability using Google solutions. Some key points to take away are listed below:
- Focusing on outcomes – this is when a user clicks on your ad and lead to actions deemed valuable on your site.
- Macro conversions – when you make a direct conversion through sales
- Micro conversions – other aspects that could lead to a conversion, such as customer service, branding, content and navigation, etc…
Using the factors above you can split your conversions into micro and macro, this can help you to focus on how to separate channels drive different types of site actions, and ultimately lead to purchase.
Use the following to help create a measurement framework for your conversions:
- Business objective
- Goals
- Key performance indicators
- Target
- Segments
To help improve your conversions you can use some of the Google tools such as enhanced CPC bidding and Display Campaign Optimizer.
Google Analytics with Daniel Gilbert
In this session Daniel outlined some features of analytics that will help you to get most from your data to enhance your campaign performance, highlights are listed below:
Setting goals
The four different types of goals are: URL destination goal, time on site goal, pages/visit goal and event goal.
Advanced segments
Use this to isolate your most valuable visitor segments, such as: why are they converting? What was their visit like? And where did you come from? Or if they did not convert, what were they trying to do and why did they not convert?
Multi Channel Funnels
Multi channel funnels reports enhance the ability to optimise cross channel media spend via conversion attribution. It also shows how media channels (paid / organic search, referral, email, social, display) work together so you can make more efficient budgeting decisions.
Check out Anna’s post on Multi Channel Funnels for more details and a presentation!
What do you think?