Eric Siu says, “Google’s local inventory ads offer retailers the potential to direct search-traffic back to their local bricks-and-mortar stores. When internet searchers query the popular search engine for specific products, local inventory ads appear alongside online shopping ads. Searchers then have the choice to shop online or be directed to local retailers featuring the desired products. What could be more useful than that? Though local inventory ads as a form of promotion are new, retailers are already reporting positive results. Sears stores, for instance, reported a 16 percent higher... [...]

Nick Iyengar says, “By now, you’ve probably heard a bit about Google’s new Analytics 360 Suite of products, designed to give enterprises a truly integrated package of marketing analytics and optimization tools. While some of the 360 Suite is composed of products that have been around for a while — such as Analytics 360 (formerly known as “Premium”) and Tag Manager 360 — several of the Suite’s products are brand-new. These include Audience Center 360, Data Studio 360 and the tool I’m most excited about: Optimize 360. Optimize 360 allows you to run A/B or multivariate tests,... [...]

Ben Davis says, “The search story of the week is that of ‘Ben’s Nan’. Ben’s Nan became a Twitter sensation when Ben found that she had written ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ in her Google search, figuring she’d get a better answer that way. Like all hack, newsjacking bloggers, it got me thinking about what this could tell us about interaction design”. Does Ben’s Nan, the polite Googler, show us that bots are the future? Econsultancy  [...]

Many local businesses have not optimized their website for Google to send traffic to them. To do that, they need to: 1. Claim their business name on Google (Google says 40% of local businesses haven’t done this.) 2. Put their store on Google Maps By setting up and optimizing their Google My Business page for them, you can solve both of these problems. But most of them don’t know how to do either. But with Jack Hopman‘s Maps PhD training, you will know how and be able to accomplish in minutes, what they may think is nearly impossible. By offering this valuable service for $200... [...]

David Chapman says, “Google’s Shopping Insights tool has proven most useful for retailers. It helps them understand where customers are who are looking for their products and what devices (laptops, mobile phones) those customers are using. If a retailer has a store in that area, it can use those insights to plan marketing campaigns and promotions. More than 87% of shoppers look for information before entering a store, 79% while visiting a store, and 35% after visiting a store, according to Google. So today’s consumers are definitely smarter than ever. The key is to be one step... [...]

Patricio Robles says, “In an effort to reach consumers via social channels, in recent years a growing number of brands large and small have embraced influencer marketing. But as evidenced by Essena O’Neill, a popular 18-year-old influencer from Australia, influencer marketing has a dark side. That dark side was on display for all to see recently when Scott Disick, a television personality best known for his relationship with reality TV star and socialite Kourtney Kardashian, was caught posting an ostensibly paid promotion for Bootea protein shakes”. Influencer marketing is becoming... [...]

Paul Chaney says, “Earlier this year, Google announced the launch of a new premium, enterprise-class data visualization and reporting platform — Data Studio 360 — as part of the larger announcement regarding its Google Analytics 360 Suite. More recently, at the Google Performance Summit, Google announced a free version, Data Studio, designed for “individuals and smaller teams,” Google said in a blog entry. Both Data Studio 360 and its younger free sibling let users connect their marketing data and turn it into charts, graphs and other visualizations that, the company says, are easy... [...]

Andreas Reiffen says, “We are often asked by our clients if we can use Google Shopping or paid search to push particular products or product groups. There are a number of reasons why they might want to do this. They might have high stock levels of a particular product; some ranges might be out of date, and they wish to sell off remaining stock; or perhaps a product is not selling as well as they had hoped, and they wish to boost the sales. On the face of it, Google Shopping seems like a good platform for this task. Advertisers can pay more to increase the exposure of a particular product,... [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “Google launched a new small business-friendly tool at testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com that will show how mobile-friendly and fast a site is. The new tool combines the mobile-friendly testing tool and the page speed testing tool into one and gives the small business owner a clean and understandable report they can forward to their website developer. Google’s goal with this tool is to help drive more mobile-friendly and fast websites. The tool gives you three scores: – Mobile-friendliness; – mobile speed; and – desktop speed. In fact, this is the first... [...]

Khaled Saleh says, “For marketers, there are few skills more important than a deep understanding of Google Analytics and its conversion measurement capabilities. After all, this is the tool that tells you whether your efforts are actually translating into results. Unfortunately, mastering Google Analytics can be challenging, even for experienced marketers. There is far too much data and too few easy-to-follow dashboards to sort it out. To help you out, I’ve put together a list of seven custom and standard reports you can use right away to get better insight into your marketing performance”. 7... [...]