At Google, one of our core goals is to help marketers win the moments that matter by providing users the right information at the right time. However, our teams decided long ago even that wasn’t enough. We go beyond helping marketers win to actually making their job easier, through tools that articulate the increasingly complex digital landscape at a high level and inform future strategies.
You’re already using products like Google Analytics and AdWords to better understand your customers and gain access to actionable data for marketing. While everyone knows about AdWords and Analytics, there are other tools you may not know about.
Let’s go through 3 of these tools today; I hope you’ll start to explore and put them to good use!
1. Google Databoard: Use Google Research in Your Next Presentation
Across groups at Google, we publish many studies each year on a variety of subjects: from online marketing and search to mobile and digital economic trends. That’s a lot of research! Our teams thought about how to make sense of it all and put it to use, which is where the idea for the Google Databoard came from.
The above graphic was created with the Google Databoard from the New Multi-Screen World study.
What you’ll find data for:
- Need some quick stats for a presentation? Want to quickly make a point to your manager or at an industry conference? You shouldn’t have to go data mining. This interactive tool helps you find what you need from vast archives of industry-leading research. It’ll even help you tell a story from the stats, turning selected charts and data points into simple, sharable infographics.
- Bonus: need stats but not a visual tool? Bookmark this page on the Think with Google site, which lets you explore the most interesting bits from vast troves of research and should help spark ideas quickly.
2. Customer Journey Tool: Understand How Users Convert Across Vertical & Channel
As I’ve shared in previous posts on measurement, you have to think beyond the last click to understand digital conversions. Yet, some marketers still continue to obsess over a last-click world. As I love using visuals to prove your point, this tool is perfect to help bring even the most old school marketer forward.
This draws on e-commerce and Multi-Channel Funnels data from more than 36,000 Google Analytics clients that authorized sharing, including millions of purchases across 11 industries in 7 countries. Purchase paths in this tool are based on interactions with a single ecommerce advertiser.
What you’ll find data for:
- How different marketing channels (such as display, search, email, and your site) move users towards purchases. For example, some marketing channels play an “assist” role during the earlier stages of the marketing funnel, whereas some play a “last interaction” role just before a sale.
- How long it takes for customers to make a purchase online, (from the first time they interact with your marketing to the moment they actually buy something) and how the length of this journey affects average order values.
3. Google Trends: Explore Trending Search Topics
Google Trends isn’t a new tool (the two above are from this year) but I think it’s still one of the most interesting tools on the web for exploring hot and trending topics globally.
What you’ll find data for:
There are so many possible uses here for marketers: understanding how your customers think about your category, which competitors are doing a good job building brand awareness and even macro trends in our culture. That news and location data are included is a bonus and will help add important context to trends. As a marketer and blogger, I can (and have) spend hours exploring here to find trends to persuade my team’s stakeholders and spark inspiration for new ideas.
It’s never been a better time to be a marketer; we’ve never had so much data and insights at our fingertips. I hope you’ll start using some of these tools today. Google is certainly not the only company sharing these types of tools, so I highly suggest as a marketer or entrepreneur you explore what’s out there to better understand macro trends. Your competitors are.