Google Marketing Live 2019: 14 Of The Best Bits That YOU NEED TO KNOW! #GoogleMarketingLive

Google marketing live #GoogleMarketingLive

We understand being a busy digital marketing manager or owner of a successful business that time is short!

Knowing this we have condensed the Google Marketing Live event (that ended last week with two weeks of jam-packed announcements showcasing many of the new Google Ads features and planned glossy new bits) down to just the following 14 points!

If you, unfortunately, missed the Google marketing live roundup don’t worry, we have some of the standout elements that we think you need to know about for Q3 & Q4 of 2019 and beyond.

Unsurprisingly it was Mobile First again with insights on how we humans are interacting with Google. There are trillions of searches done with over half done on mobile devices - are you reading this on your mobile?!

>>> If you are running Google Ads then we highly recommend you book in for our 100% >>> free Google Ads Audit <<<- it will show you how to get more sales for less spend and start you on your way to creating a market-beating digital marketing strategy! <<<

Our Top 14 Takeaways from this year's Google Marketing Live

1.     Voice Search

Voice search will continue to build in popularity through home devices and Google assist. We as marketers need to strategize this into our plans with new assets such as ‘Voice in – augmented reality’ (what strategy do you have?)

2.     Customer journeys

We have all heard of the funnel, with many PPC practitioners focusing on the end of the funnel only. Customer journeys now contain large numbers of touchpoints spread over long periods. 28 to 68 days is the norm – according to the examples Google used! You as a marketer need to anticipate what your prospective customers will need and connect with them earlier in the buying decision. How are you connecting with prospects earlier in the buying process?

3.     Discovery ads:

Google is welcoming the new Discovery Ads, these will show on YouTube, Gmail and the search homepage. With rich and engaging ad formats including images and more. BETAs results so far have shown these to be some of the fastest growing channels with CPAs around 25% lower than traditional search ads.

You will need great creatives and an advanced understanding of the data to optimise them but present an early adopter advantage for those brave enough to try them. How will you roll these out for your company?

4.     Gallery ads:

Say hello to Gallery Ads, these will be multiple scrollable images linking to the pages you want to take traffic to. These will have 4-8 images each ad will be able to have 3 headlines, each image will have its own tag line, reported 70 character tagline limit. BETA results so far show up to 25% more interactions. These are coming later this year! How will you incorporate these into your search campaigns and how badly will your campaigns suffer if you are going up against these and not using them?

5.     App Deep Linking

App deep linking is now available so you can send people straight to the page in your app and not just onto your site – this is great news for all who want to increase and keep connected with their audiences who use their apps.

6.     Smart bidding:

Take advantage of New Smart Bidding controls that allow machine learning to deliver the most relevant ad to someone right at the time they are looking – helping drive better performance, lower CPAs and increase ROAS.

Maximize conversion value (for search campaigns) more flexibility to optimise what matters most for your business

• 3 new ways to guide smart bidding
• You will be able to set at the campaign level
• Optimise for store visits from search campaigns
• Soon you will be able to set conversion value to rules
• Seasonality adjustments

7.     Bumper machine (YouTube)

YouTube has over 2 billion monthly signed in users, so you need to know how to connect with your audience on here. To help with this Google has introduced the all-new Bumper Machine that will create 6-second bumper ads for free from your current content on YouTube. This is fully machine learning based but you will have some control over and make edits in the UI.

1.     Bumper Machine – what is it? It will shorten any of your videos down to 6 seconds

2.     Simply link the Bumper Machine to any of your YouTube videos that are under 90 seconds

3.     Bumper Machine will make 3 to 4 different 6 seconds videos (so you can choose the one you want)

4.     You will be able to make edits through the UI

8.     Custom Audiences for YouTube:

Describe the type of people you are trying to reach. Build your custom audience (composition and reach) can be used across Gmail, discovery and YouTube campaigns. Tip: once built these audiences can be used through Gmail, discovery and YouTube!

9.     Audience Expansion Tool:

The all-new Audience expansion tool will allow advertisers to expand their reach. The UI will use a simple slider to the left or right to expand or decrease your reach. Reported early results have been very promising with up to 50% more conversion for the same investment. Coming later this year!

10. Connected TV Campaigns:

Tradition and new media are converging. Display and video 360 will show ads on TV and national channels, you will be able to buy TV ads in autumn! How much new budget do you have to try this? If it's not in your forecasting, we recommend early adoption so request the extra budget sooner rather than later!

11.  Google Shopping:

We were lucky enough to get a bunch of new Google shopping announcements this year, with some of the highlights being:

1.     Help shoppers decide where and how to buy, shoppers will be able to purchase directly from retailers directly on Google = move over Amazon!

• Google is introducing its ‘Google guarantee’ for product purchases when paid for through Google shopping (already live in France – coming soon to the US)
• Shoppers will be able to ‘buy’ using voice with Google assistant
• Shoppers will be able to ‘purchase’ through image search and through YouTube – coming later this year

2.     Showcase shopping ads – over 80% of the traffic from shopping ads are new customers – expanding out the reach to launch on Google images, YouTube and discover

3.     Shopping campaigns with partners – BETA opens today

12. Local campaigns

Search, YouTube, maps and display. Recent studies show local campaigns 5x incremental increase in their in-store sales. Are you tracking your instore sale attribution? How well are your stores doing thanks to your online PPC activity?

• Soon you will be able to display specific lines locally
• You will be able to show promotions locally depending on the user’s recent search history
• Promoted pins will show on maps for destinations on the way to where they are going
• Local campaigns are live for all now

13.  Trips (Google Travel shopping) (Google Trips)

Google has designed a user first platform that perfectly aligns with the users wants. Google Trips keep all of the relevant information the end user wants such as showing summaries of destinations, weather reports, costs, flights, the amazing Google flight price tracker, hotel ratings, availability, prices and much more. Areas will auto-populate with confirmations through Gmail helping you make sure your next holiday (or vacation) is perfect.

14. User Trust:

A big point of this year’s Google Marketing Live was focused on privacy. There has been a big move to make sure people privacy is looked after. Their own static showed an increase in user privacy interest with 1000%+ increase in people searching for the ‘my activity’ page where users can see what info Google holds on them.

Google has recommended three steps for all marketers:

• Inform people what you track and why (many of the features are useful to users)
• Build more direct relationships with users
• Understand and respect people’s privacy when deciding what ads to show to people

If this has whetted your appetite and you still want more please follow this link to the Google Marketing Live keynote speech: Google Marketing Live

If you are running Google Ads then we recommend you get our 100% free Google Ads Audit - it will show you how to get more sales for less spend and start you on your way to creating a market-beating digital marketing strategy!