Core were delighted to be invited to Google’s Partners Accelerate event earlier this month. It was with great pride and a little bit of surprise that we found out that we were with the Top 3% of Google’s Premier Partner Agencies in EMEA.

There was an excellent line of speakers like Google’s Fionnuala Sheehan, Matt Burke, Agency Strategy Lead and Pablo Slough, Google’s head of Global Education to name but a few. It gave us a great opportunity to chat with Industry colleagues and peers and talk through some of the challenges and opportunities we all see as Agencies today.

I wanted to share with you the top 4 takeaways that we had from the event that we feel all agencies should be looking at for their clients.

Site Speed

OK so we all know that speed issues on a website are a conversion killer but what can we do and how do we do it to ensure we are achieving and exceeding that magic 3 second number. Why 3 seconds, well after 3 seconds you will have lost 53% of your customers if your site has not loaded. Check your site speed with https://testmysite.withgoogle.com/intl/en-gb or https://www.webpagetest.org  You will get a full report and if you site speed is slower than 3 seconds keep reading, this should help.

• Speed Index has the largest impact on bounce rate which simply put means how fast it is for the content above the fold to load.

• Structure your html to load the critical elements above the fold first – This will allow the user to begin interacting with the page as soon as possible. https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/PrioritizeVisibleContent
• Consider your use of Image Sequencers. Sliders have a negative impact on conversion rate and when removed have shown a notable increase in conversion rate. So start thinking about why you are putting up that additional image. Is it going to help sales and increase incremental revenue or is it going to reduce page load and impact on your conversion.
• Accelerated Mobile Page or AMP – With almost 60% of traffic coming through mobile now and Ireland alone having 86% smart phone penetration consider using Accelerated mobile pages to give your customer a better mobile experience – AMP was designed to allow pages to load quicker on mobile devices.  The Average Load for AMP is 0.7 seconds and has shown to have a 31% DECREASE in Bounce Rate and a 29% INCREASE in Click through Rate.

Attribution

Truly having an insight into how many devices and channels represented value for us as customers and how far that euro, pound or dollar has gone has been a challenge for google, agencies and customers alike for some time. THANKFULLY and not before it’s time there has been great strives of progress in this area with by the sounds of it much more to come in 2018. So what does last click, first click, data driven, linear and position based actually mean and which should you or your agency be using.

The message that was very clear and consistent throughout was that Last Click is OUT!!! By Using Last Click you are more or less discounting mobile user attribution and while consumers may not convert as well on mobile we know it hugely influences their decision to purchase. If we purely looked at Last Click Attribution our budgets on mobile would be smaller and therefore so would our reach.

On the face of it, it would appear data driven is best BUT not everyone can use this model of attribution as it comes with a threshold of 600 conversions and 15,000 clicks in a 30 day period.

What can you use if can’t use Data Driven.

Linear will give equal weight to each of the touch points, which is a good sounding board. However, google have confirmed that they would consider linear or Position Based to be the best of the attribution models to use after Data Driven. Position based basically gives 40% to First Lick, 40% to Last Click and the remaining 20% is distributed equally to all other touch points.

In adwords today you can compare the different models to see what it means for your business and we would always recommend doing this to see what is YOUR best fit. Whatever you choose to be the right fit for your business the resounding message is:

DO NOT USE LAST OR FIRST CLICK ATTRIBUTION!

Cost per Acquisition or CPA

This is a model of acquiring business where you associate a max cost or a max % cost depending on your margins products or services. We have seen some really great results from using this model. It just doesn’t make sense to turn off a budget if you have opportunity to convert, you are only allowing your competitor to win that customer over if you are limited by fixed budgets.

While google offer an automated CPA model we have seen mixed results with this. It is important not to confuse automation with human precision and automation tools used in isolation will not deliver the greatest results.

Core Optimisation started working with a small hotel group on their Paid Search and below were the results seen immediately when working with a CPA% model.  This significant improvement in the Paid Search campaign allowed for increased budgets and further overall growth in their campaigns.

Video

Whether it is You Tube or Facebook, Video content is now the most digestible form of content on the web today.  By the end of the year online Video will account for 74% of all online traffic.

Some Video Facts

1. You tube are reporting 95% Viewability and 95% Audibility
2. There are 1 BILLION monthly users on You Tube, almost one-third of all people on the internet
3. 85% of Facebook 30 second Video are watched without sound – Have a voice and use subtitles
4. 60% of people research online before purchasing in a store
5. 500 Million People watch video on face EVERY SINGLE DAY

Knorr #Love at first Taste

Chevy Commercial #Maddie

Allegro #English for Beginners