A.I. And AdWords
The Challenge of Adaptive Learning
Small and medium business owners are facing more and more challenges in online advertising because their larger counterparts have larger SEO and SEM teams to keep them on the edge of the advertising landscape. Google has been integrating new artificial intelligence technologies into their online platform that have begun to equalize the playing field. However, the complexity of AI is that you need to be one step ahead of it in order to effectively use it. Let me help you get that first step!
Analytics Smart Goals
One of the first examples of AI that Google has been integrating is Smart Goals. In it's most basic form, Google has used hundreds of websites that have Analytics installed
and machine learning to figure out what customers do that leads to a conversion. This is implemented through Google Analytics and can feed into your AdWords account. Here is what the GA team said about Smart Goals:
The Google Analytics team is committed to helping our users use their data to drive better marketing and advertising performance. So, for businesses that don’t measure conversions in AdWords today, we’ve created an easy-to-use solution: Smart Goals. Smart Goals help you identify the highest-quality visits to your website and optimize for those visits in AdWords.
Business owners can start to take advantage of this by implementing Google
Analytics on their site, linking their Analytics account to their AdWords account, and then importing those goals. This can make it so that they can start to advertise to the right customer, at the right time, for the right price. The playing field just got a bit more level for all players.
AdWords Smart Bidding
Once you have Smart Goals setup it only makes sense to take advantage of Smart Bidding in AdWords which will allow your account to bid automatically based on signals from the customers themselves.
AdWords Smart Bidding tailors bids to each and every auction across Google properties - this is what we call “auction-time” bidding. It allows you to register the wide range of signals that make up a user’s context in a particular auction, and includes signals like device and location, which are available as manual bid adjustments, plus additional signals and signal combinations unique to AdWords such as browser and language.
Using this, a SMB can make it so that every penny of their ad spend is allocated to customers that can actually buy from them, get to their storefront, give them a call, or take whatever action the business owner deems valuable. Whereas large business owners have deeper pockets and can afford to "brand" a customer over time with actions that don't lead to returns, the SMB sector needs to make every dollar count so that they can compete in this vastly crowded market. Smart bidding is a smart decision to make that happen.
Ads & Analytics Innovations
Finally, business owners now have a redesigned advertising platform that helps reach the mobile customer. Mobile marketing is not the wave of the future, it's the now and present. Google has been redesigning their AdWords platform to reach a Mobile-First World. Google said this about mobile-first:
As consumers live their lives online and blur the lines between online and offline, it’s more important than ever to build your business for mobile. Google’s building for this mobile-first world as well and we’re excited to go on this journey with you.
While most of the aforementioned innovations focused on integrating machine learning (AI), the redesign of the user experience is focused on integrating user intelligence. A business owner has the responsibility of making sure that their content and user experience matches what their customers are needing to do business with them.
Artificial intelligence can be intimidating to anyone. A SMB might not think that they have the time or money to integrate machine learning solutions into their advertising strategy but Google has helped to make just that happen. The goal it seems is to make it so that everyone can compete and the user experience and be maximized. When you consider that the time and money needed to analyze thousands of signals and take action upon those would be enormous for a business owner, the only intelligent thing to do is to use the AI features that have been provided for AdWords. So, my message to all of you out there is to become smart about these type of resources, integrate them into your business plan, and always focus on the customer.