Attribution, reporting and the customer journey – Highlights for Icon Digit’ers from recent Google Masterclass

Last month, Icon had the pleasure of again attending Google Partner Masterclass, Sydney 2017. Hosted at the massive Carriageworks in Eveleigh, Sydney. The conference has certainly grown since Icon started attending in 2011 and the number of local Google agencies could fit in into two smallish meeting rooms at Dockside.

Google Masterclass is held annually and gives the team an opportunity to come together to learn about the latest offerings from google in the digital marketing space. Icon Visual Marketing have been attending Google Masterclass for over six years and each time we find it rewarding and come away with our heads buzzing.

The theme for 2017 was artificial intelligence and machine learning, and how the rise of these technologies will impact the agencies of the future.

The keynote delivered by Dave Booth from Cardinal Path, set the excitement for the day, showing how Google agencies could use new technologies in our day-to-day activities, to deliver better strategic results for our clients. Every year, Dave sets a new benchmark in presenting and this year was no different. With his engaging attitude and deep knowledge, he easily kept us enthralled throughout his keynote.

This year, we have asked some of the attendees what were their greatest learnings from the 2017 Google Masterclass, Sydney.

Data, attribution, and reporting was a major focus for the day which was awesome, obviously.

From my perspective my four key learnings were:

The consumer journey is more complex than ever. 10+ sources are consulted before making a purchase, 90% of consumers who own multiple devices switch between screens to complete a task.
Technology has changed everything. People now have a huge selection of devices, channels, and content to choose from, across multiple platforms. This creates a lot of fragmented data which can be hard to track and action for advertisers

We all need to be vigilant in capturing consumers along the ever-expanding funnel. How? Relevant messages, relevant times, on relevant devices at the right moment.

15% of all search queries are brand spanking new – it’s impossible to target everything manually, to plan and optimise for things that haven’t actually happened yet. So we need to further embrace AI and machine learning.

How we can use this to help our clients? We already do this in a sense –by using keyword insertion into our ads which update ad headers based on the users search query and the closest linking keyword. However, we can, and are, going further – testing just this week dynamic search ads which “help you reach people who are searching for your products and services—without the need for you to actively manage keywords or ads” – opening more strategic and optimisation time (like I said – still early testing days!)

Thanks Icon digital team for getting excited for the 5,000 different ways to use data and in taking all the analytical information and making sense and meaning of it. The Icon Digital Marketing team work closely with Google to ensure our campaign get cut-through and deliver against the marketing objectives. Our custom Icon Insights is a monthly report where Icon deliver the data of each campaign but most importantly attach analysis and recommendations for our clients. Contact us today if you are interested in what the data in your website means and how it can be improved.