August 21, 2018

The Google Perthformance Workshop

August 21, 2018

The Google Perthformance Workshop

The Google Perthformance Workshop

As a Google Premier Partner, Bang Digital were fortunate enough to be invited to the Google Perthformance Workshop last month at Fraser Suites Perth. This was a great opportunity to expand our team's knowledge of the tools and strategies available through the Google Suite and brainstorm opportunities to further develop our clients' campaigns and strategies. So what did we learn?Build an audience first

1. Identify

The most important step in developing an Ads strategy is to first understand the audience. Who is the target audience? What are their interests, what are their demographics and how can we use this information to target them online?Most businesses think they know who their target market is, but who they want to target and who is actually converting might be a different story. Through Google Ads, we can utilise tools to identify a business's actual customers versus their idea customers. Using this information, we can form more strategic recommendations for our clients through Google Ads, specifically looking at re-engagement & expansion strategies.

2. Re-engage

Re-engagement is very similar to remarketing. They are essentially the same process, however Google has introduced new tools to allow a more strategic approach to re-engage with a customer. So what's the big difference? Remarketing is the process of serving website visitors with messages reminding them of your brand, or to encourage them to come back to the website. A user will get the same message no matter where they sit in the purchase funnel.To re-engage is to serve your existing audience relevant and powerful messages that will apply to the individual, rather than serving all users the same remarketing adverts. Advertisers can control the different messages depending on where the customer sits in a purchase funnel. Are they an existing customer or have they just visited the website for the first time? These two users sit at different stages of the customer journey and therefore require different messages.

3. Expand

Expansion strategies are used to target potential customers who may have never previously engaged with your business. Using Audience Insights, we can get a very clear picture of the target audience, identifying their demographics, interests and geographical location. This key information lets us refine our audiences and ensure adverts are only being shown to your target audience. There are many ad formats & targeting options that we can utilise within an expansion strategy and it’s very important that these align to your target audience. ‘Similar Audiences’ are very popular within expansion strategies and allow us to target users who have few similar interests, browsing behaviour and demographics as your existing visitors. Similar audiences are typically 5 times the size of a standard remarketing list. By using an expansion strategy in conjunction with a remarketing audience, businesses typically see a 41% increase in conversions from their Google campaigns. Even with the advanced targeting options, we typically find that conversion rates are lower than a remarketing list and it is important to set specific targets & KPIs for different audiences. This is where understanding your audience comes into play. By gaining a better understanding of your audience we can create expansion strategies around their demographics, interests and who has converted.4. Attribution Did you know that 71% of marketers list measurement and attribution as their #1 challenge? In many cases, advertisers will only measure success from the final touch points from a user, but the steps to get them to that final click are often just as important. Ignoring these touch points will give you a very limited view on the performance of your campaigns, resulting in wasted ad spend and poor recommendations. Most users do not make a purchase decision in one sitting. In fact, 75% of adults start an activity on one device, but continue or finish the activity on another. Let's look at holidays for example. A user might be on the search for a tropical getaway and searches “best tropical holiday locations” after a browse they decide that Hawaii is their preferred destination. A few days later they search for “accommodation in Hawaii” and after some more browsing, Google “holiday Inn in Hawaii”. Understanding a users fragmented journey through the internet can be very challenging. The first click initiated the process, however the final click was the last interaction before the purchase was made. The middle click connected the two together. Each of these touchpoints lead the user to the booking the holiday and should get credit for the conversion. That’s where the attribution model comes in. An attribution model is the rule, or set of rules, that determines how credit is assigned to touchpoints along the conversion path. It helps connect the dots from that first Google search to booking the Hawaii accommodation.

By using advanced attribution models, we are able to see how Google Ads is impacting the full customer journey. This lets us make more informed decisions and improving results for our clients. We would advise everyone who is using Google Ads to check their attribution model and ensure they are not using last click. If you’re unsure, our team of specialists are more than happy to advise.Thanks to Google for inviting us to attend this great event. If you want us to put these methods to practice on your Google campaign, get in touch with our team to find out how!