In an era marked by economic uncertainty, changing consumer behaviours, and complex customer journeys, it’s never been more critical for marketers to uncover new opportunities for growth.
That’s why Google experts and industry leaders recently hosted Uncover, an online event focused on helping businesses find new ways of driving profitable growth through performance marketing, creatives, and AI-powered tools.
The full event is now available to watch on demand – and to give you a headstart, event speakers share three key actions marketers can take right now to start optimising towards profitable growth.
1. Let AI power your profitable growth engine
AI is positively impacting our daily lives by simplifying tasks that would previously require extensive manual work, such as calculating the most energy-efficient way to drive home or erasing unwanted objects from our photos.
The same goes for many of Google’s advertising solutions. These AI-powered tools, from Performance Max to Broad Match, are already widely available, but there are a couple of simple steps you can follow to get the best out of them.
- First, set proper marketing goals. If your business aims and marketing KPIs don’t align, you’re not set up for success. AI algorithms are very good at optimising towards one specific goal, so you need to choose your strategy wisely.
- Secondly, capture, value, and activate the right data. AI algorithms are designed to learn from and make predictions based on data inputs, but the quality and accuracy of these predictions depend on the quality and relevance of the data fed into the algorithms. Your first-party data provides the best competitive advantage.
- Lastly, invest in core capabilities within your marketing team. You’ll need to rely on people with great skills in marketing strategies, data management, and creative development more than ever before. In turn, they will have to embrace constant measurement and testing, which will generate the high-quality data inputs to improve results using AI.
Discover more ways to harness the power of AI within Search by watching Google’s virtual Uncover episode with Kate Adams on demand.
2. Drive performance with creative
When it comes to performance marketing, a lot of energy is spent on audience and bidding strategies. The creative element is often underestimated. But new research from Kantar and WARC revealed high-quality creative drives more than four times as much profit as low-quality creative.
It’s all about balance. And there are many things advertisers can do to ensure their campaigns spark both inspiration and action at the same time.
First of all, it’s important to keep your messaging focused, simple, and centred on one key point. Instead of stuffing all of your great features and values into a single advertisement, spread them out over several ads to favour frequency over feature-rich content. At Google, we’ve seen this approach help advertisers cut 40% of their cost per acquisitions (CPA), with 42% higher conversions.1
It’s also key to consider which creatives work best for different stages of the consumer journey. Having multiple assets that speak to your viewers’ interest and context can drive much better results, with relevant ads leading to three times more impact.
Ads Creative Studio can help you identify which creatives work best for different stages of the consumer journey. In addition, it uses machine learning to help you build different versions of video and display ads based on rules you create. And the more the machine has to play with, the better it can evaluate what drives results.
Get more tips on driving profitable growth with your creatives by watching Google’s virtual Uncover episode with Søren Nielsen on demand.
3. Make mobile (apps) a priority
People love apps. In 2022 alone, a total of 255 billion apps were downloaded worldwide – an 11% increase from the year before.
This means it’s more important than ever to optimise the user experience of your mobile app by taking away the most common pain points.
From users struggling to find the right products to barriers at the checkout page, Web to App Connect can help you find areas for improvement by showing how consumers like to browse and buy. You can use it to drive users to your app by deep linking your web and app URLs, track conversions in the app, and bid towards those conversions in your Google Ads campaign setup.
Another thing to keep in mind is that interest in apps can dwindle. In fact, a love affair with an app only burns bright for a short period, with a recent study revealing that an average app’s retention rate falls to 21% after only 24 hours. By day 10, that’s just 7.5%.
If your users have committed to not only selecting your brand above others, but also installed your app, those initial commitments need to be recognised.
App Campaigns for engagement can do just that, enabling you to re-engage users that have been inactive, have yet to commit to making a purchase, or downloaded your app but never opened it. Now is the time to build your own strategy and test app campaigns segment by segment.
Learn more about driving profitable growth with apps by watching Google’s online Uncover episode with Juho Juhantalo on demand.
Want to learn more about driving profitable growth?
Google’s recent virtual event, Uncover, is now available to watch on demand. Register below to hear from global marketing executive Bozoma Saint John, Danish jewellery brand Pandora, and many Google experts to start unlocking your own profitable growth today.
