How Your Business Can Take Advantage Of Google Marketing Platform (GMP)

We all would agree that one of the primary goals of a business is to maximise revenue, minimise cost and ultimately generate profit. As such, in today’s world that most businesses have an online presence, it is vital for organisations to know their customers well and offer them products that match their preferences and this demands business owners to ask questions like who are my customers? What do they like? How do they find their ways to my website? What pages on my website do they visit the most? What products or services they purchase the most? What kind of content on my website do they like to read or watch?

Only when you ask such questions will you be able to provide a personalised experience to your customers based on their past visits to your website and thus make them keep coming back for your products or service.

Well, to answer the above questions and to turn them into actions and generate results, you would need a set of tools to help you embark on your digital personalisation journey and this is where GMP comes in. GMP is a set of analytics and advertising tools that enables you to take cover of different digital marketing aspects all in one platform.

Both small businesses and enterprises can take advantage of GMP. The only difference is that if you are a large enterprise and your websites and mobile apps receive millions of hits in a month, you need to go for GMP 360 that comes with a quite hefty fee of USD 150,000 a year. If you are a small business and your budget is limited, you can still go for the free GMP version. 

GMP 360 consists of seven tools namely: Analytics 360, Display and Video 360, Tag Manager 360, Optimize 360, Data Studio, Survey 360 and Search Ads 360. The free version does not include Display and Video 360 and Search Ads 360. Now you may ask yourself, what does each of these tools do and what makes them so great? I am going to introduce each of the GMP tools to you briefly in a second. 

First, let’s start with Google Analytics 360. Analytics 360 is a web and app analytics tool that helps you to have a deep understanding of your customer, generate actionable insights, turn insights into action, create audience segments and more. I have written an article about Google Analytics that you can read here. You should definitely check it out if you want to know more about how Google Analytics could help your business grow.

Next in the list, Display and Video 360, which is an end to end advertising campaign management tool that enables you to use first party, third party or combined audience data to serve ads. Through Display and Video 360 you can also design creatives and run data-driven creatives campaigns to uplift conversions. The reporting interface is very user-friendly which allows you to monitor your campaign performances and plan for optimisation. 

Tag Manager 360 is another sophisticated and useful tool in GMP 360. As the name suggests, Tag Manager 360 is a tag management platform that allows you to add, update or remove tags on your website or mobile app without having to modify the source code. The great thing about Tag Manager is efficiency and its easy integration with all Google and third party tags.

If you are looking for a tool that you can conduct website A/B testing and easily deploy your changes to the live environment, Optimize 360 is the tool that you should be looking at. Optimize 360 allows you to Test different variations of your website and then tailor it to deliver a personalised experience that works for each customer and for your business. With Optimize 360, you can customise your experiment to your Analytics audiences. Connect with high-value customers, users with a particular interest, or visitors who have converted recently.

You have generated different reports and insights from a few analytics and ad serving platforms, you will then need to visualise those reports so that you and your team members can easily interpret and explore the figures. Data Studio is a visualisation tool in the GMP that helps you build interactive dashboards and create engaging reports that tell stories. The great thing about Data Studio is the ability to connect hundreds of data sources from both Google and third party platforms.

Understanding your customer should not be a guessing game. Google Surveys 360 helps you gain valuable consumer insights to make smarter, faster business decisions. By using Survey 360, you can run custom surveys and get results from real audiences much faster than traditional market research and as a result, making more informed business decisions.

Lastly, there is Search Ads 360 that enables you to manage your search campaigns across multiple engines and media channels for faster, valuable insights that lead to better business decisions. With Search Ads 360, you will have access to many useful features including unified insights and reporting, real-time insights, mobile optimisation and easy automation.

As you might have noticed by now, each of the tools in GMP has different functions but what makes them unique and powerful is that they are all designed to work together in a synchronised manner in order to help businesses successfully execute their digital marketing personalisation plans for both website and ad serving. However, once you explore further, you will find out that you can do much more than personalisation with GMP tools. 

Whether you are a small business or an enterprise, it is crucial for you in today’s highly competitive market to invest in a platform that covers every aspect of your digital marketing from business intelligence and website personalisation to ad serving and website tagging. Because as a business owner you have to be at least one step ahead of your competitors, and what better way to ensure this than knowing your customers well and offering them personalised experiences.

Now, if your curiosity is piqued, go and explore how GMP capabilities can benefit your business.