For the modern marketer, staying on top of emerging technology and related services is key to consistently outperforming the competition and providing value to your customers.
By today’s standards, emerging technology weaves its way into all aspects of marketing, from data collection and analysis, to campaign creation and customer engagement. If you’ve been following PostFunnel for a while, you know there are a number of tools available
that can help you supercharge your various marketing initiatives.
Today, we’re going to focus on how a specific set of tools, collectively known as Google Cloud Platform, allows you to do just that.
Google Cloud Platform is a software suite comprised of over 100 individual tools offering a range of features and functions.
Let’s take a look at some of the key ways you can use Google Cloud Platform to get the most out of your marketing efforts.
Efficient Data Management and Analysis
We’ve talked before about the importance of being data-driven. It just makes sense: if your marketing team consistently operates based on solid evidence, chances are pretty good that every move they make will be the right one.
Of course, today’s marketers have access to more data than ever before—with stockpiles of data continuing to pile up on a daily basis.
Luckily, Google offers a tool that streamlines the process of collecting, organizing, and analyzing this data as it comes in. This, in turn, allows marketers to confidently take immediate action on their data without becoming overwhelmed.
The tool: BigQuery.
Essentially, BigQuery is a data warehouse in which your company’s data is collected, cleansed, organized, and stored for easy retrieval.
You can use BigQuery to collect this data from a variety of sources, such as:
- Google Analytics 360
- Google’s advertising network
- Third-party channels, like your social media and email marketing platforms
Once the data is in hand, BigQuery’s machine learning technology will generate automated predictions regarding both individual customer engagements and segment-wide initiatives. Again, this makes it easier to act with confidence, knowing with high probability that your efforts will lead to the intended outcome.
Check out this presentation from 20th Century Fox’s senior VP of analytics as he explains how his team implemented BigQuery into their data analysis processes:
Incredibly, Fox has figured out how to use BigQuery to not only promote their movies, but to actually produce movies their audience members will devour. In more general terms, BigQuery can be used by marketers in any industry to optimize their marketing campaigns and assist their development team in making improvements to their products.
It’s also worth mentioning that BigQuery gets you the data you need right when you need it. In fact, Google promises “zero operational overhead” while analyzing “gigabytes to petabytes” of data at blazing speeds.
This is advantageous for two reasons:
For one thing, it means less downtime and less energy expended collecting and analyzing data in the first place. This means your marketing team will have more time and energy to focus on acting on the data they’ve collected.
Secondly, having instant access to up-to-the-minute data—along with automatically generated insights—can allow your team to take immediate action whenever necessary. In a world where agile marketing is the key to success, being able to respond quickly to shifts in your industry can help you stand out from competitors who may a bit more slow on the uptake.
Simply put:
If your marketing team is looking to become more data-driven across the board, BigQuery is a vital addition to your marketing stack.
Collaborative Development and Efficient Delivery of Content
You probably don’t need us to tell you how important it is to deliver high-quality content and an overall high-quality experience to your online customers.
And you also probably don’t need to be told that the modern consumer typically doesn’t want to wait all that long to be provided this experience.
Google Cloud Platform can help with that, offering two tools allowing you to create and deliver your brand’s digital experience to your audience effectively and efficiently.
First, we have Google Drive Enterprise.
Drive Enterprise acts as a centralized hub for your team’s documents and files, allowing for easy storage and retrieval at all times. Naturally, Drive Enterprise supports files created with all G Suite tools (Google Docs, Sheets, etc.), as well as hundreds of other file types.
Within these documents, team members can easily communicate with one another through a number of functions, such as:
- Suggesting, tracking, and approving changes
- Tagging specific team members
- Leaving comments within certain documents types
Those with access to the documents in question can also edit and add to them as needed from any connected device. This can be done on multiple devices in real-time, making it easy for remote teams to make collaborative changes on a group-wide level.
Additionally, Drive Enterprise’s machine learning capabilities actively optimize the tool for individual teams based on how they use the software. As you use the tool’s features to access your various documents, the software will learn which features and documents you utilize and access most—and adjust your team’s dashboard accordingly.
For a more in-depth look at how marketing teams can benefit by using Drive Enterprise, check out this case study discussing how Salesforce used the tool to:
- Reduce their longform content creation timespan from weeks to as little as 24 hours
- Improve real-time communication and collaboration with strategic partners and stakeholders
- In multiple instances, reduce hundreds of file versions into a single document
Google Cloud Platform also provides tools that enhance your ability to deliver content to your audience quickly and efficiently.
Google Cloud CDN, or Content Delivery Network, “accelerates content delivery for websites and applications served out of… Cloud Storage” and other tools within GCP. Supporting up to 5TB of data, Cloud CDN works to ensure high loading speeds and fewer downtimes for your website.
While more concerned with the technical side of content delivery, Cloud CDN can have a major impact on your marketing team’s efforts moving forward. For one thing, improving your site’s loading speed can lead to a boost in search engine rankings, as your site will appear more technically reputable to Google’s algorithms. Moreover, in increasing your capacity to deliver content to your audience, you enable your team to go all in with creating both more and higher-quality content for your customers to devour.
Whether internally developing content or delivering it to your audience, Google Cloud Platform offers the tools and services needed to make it happen with as little friction as possible. With these logistical aspects taken care of, your team is free to stay laser-focused on providing value to your target audience.
Automated and Personalized Customer Engagements
A number of Google Cloud Platform’s tools can be used by marketers to create both automated and personalized experiences for their customers.
Hearst Newspapers’s experiences with GCP provide a prime example of how this can all play out.
First, the team used Cloud Natural Language API to analyze its deep library of content, optimizing the team’s content classification system in the process. From there, the team employed BigQuery to analyze the newly organized content, leading to a variety of insights into Hearst’s audience’s expectations. This allowed the team to create highly targeted content for its audience—and categorize it in an intuitive manner.
Going one step further, Hearst also pushed the customer data collected via Cloud Natural Language and BigQuery into a proprietary Customer Data Platform, where the team used it to improve its individual customer profiles. This allowed the team to further segment its customers, in turn allowing for more personalized content delivery to all.
Dialogflow is another machine learning tool within Google Cloud Platform based around Natural Language Processing. With Dialogflow, teams can create voice- or text-based interfaces, allowing customers to engage with the brand via smart device or chatbot.
Domino’s, for example, uses Dialogflow to allow customers to place orders via a chatbot on the brand’s website:
This enables a more personable, human experience for the customer (as opposed to simply checking boxes on a form), and also allows returning customers to place repeat orders with ease.
Google’s AI and machine learning tools can also aid in providing personalized recommendations to your eCommerce customers. Using data processed by BigQuery, Recommendations AI delivers recommendations to potential customers based on your audience’s needs and your business goals.
By automating the more simple and surface-level engagements your customers have with your brand, your marketing and customer-facing teams will be more free to focus on the bigger picture tasks at hand—and will always be able to put a human touch on things when needed.
Integrated Omnichannel Operations
The importance of “going omnichannel” for brands in 2020 and beyond simply cannot be overstated.
Though we’ve alluded to it a bit throughout this article, it’s worth making clear that using Google Cloud Platform’s various tools will aid your omnichannel efforts in a number of ways.
BigQuery, for example, integrates with a number of third-party platforms, enabling the collection and analysis of data from multiple channels and sources. This ensures you’re never leaving any data or channels to slip through the cracks—and allows you to provide proper attention to all channels you operate on.
It also lets you view your data from a holistic perspective, rather than a fragmented, channel-by-channel viewpoint. In turn, you’ll have a clearer understanding of your customer’s journey with your brand—and can work to further streamline it moving forward.
As for customer-facing operations, there’s no limit to how GCP can help brands dive into the omnichannel realm. Google created an eBook to show how a number of big-name companies have used GCP to further their omnichannel initiatives.
A few examples:
- Walgreens used Google’s Apigee API platform to allow for in-app prescription ordering and refilling
- Burberry used GCP to further personalize the customer’s mobile experience, and to bridge the gap between physical and digital retail
- Ticketmaster uses Apigee to seamlessly integrate its UI into various third-party platforms such as Facebook and Fox Sports, allowing customers to purchase tickets directly on these third-party channels
As technology continues to evolve, the worlds of physical and digital retail will continue to intertwine. As such, the modern marketer should constantly be looking for ways to evolve their omnichannel customer experience.
With Google Cloud Platform’s various tools at your disposal, you’ll already be a step in the right direction.