Google has unveiled a new platform called Google Marketing Platform, unifying its several popular tools and services under a single platform.
With the constantly changing technology landscape, Google wants to make it easier for digital marketers to keep up with the changes with its array of updated tools and services.
There’s been significant growth in marketing channels, formats and data in the last few decades, and such changes have constantly impacted how digital marketing is done.
Besides, in the wake of recent privacy issues such as Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, technology companies are trying really hard to restore the trust of consumers.
Considering such changes and recent privacy issues, Google believes marketers need a new platform to drive better results with a privacy-first approach that values meet consumers’ high expectations for privacy, transparency and control.
What is Google Marketing Platform?
Google Marketing Platform unifies its several popular tools and services under a single platform.
Announcing the platform, Google mentioned that the goal of the marketing platform is to help marketers deliver more relevant and effective marketing while keeping customers’ privacy in mind.
With a range of new products and a central marketing platform, Google wants to provide marketers with a more straightforward experience and better results and enable stronger collaboration.
Watch the introductory video for the Google Marketing Platform below.
Google Marketing Platform combines products and services DoubleClick Digital Marketing and the Google Analytics 360 Suite.
In addition to the Google Marketing Platform, Google has integrated other offerings to form two other brands – Google Ads and Google Ad Manager.
Google has simplified their portfolio of analytics and advertising products into three primary brands;
- Google Marketing Platform – previously DoubleClick advertiser products and Google Analytics 360 Suite
- Google Ads – previously, Google AdWords
- Google Ad Manager – previously DoubleClick for Publishers and DoubleClick Ad Exchange
Let’s look at some of the tools and services integrated into a single Google Marketing platform.
You might have used these Google services separately, but the added integrations between these tools bring them into a single platform.
Although most of the Google Marketing Platform tools are free for small and medium businesses, they also have paid enterprise versions with advanced and powerful features.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is probably the best free tool available for small and medium businesses under the marketing platform suite. Useful for measuring and analyzing the performance of websites and apps, Google Analytics is a must-use tool for all businesses with a digital presence.
Google Analytics also integrates with Google Ads to provide you with additional insights into users acquired through the paid channel engaging with your site. This can help you keep optimizing your Google Ads campaigns to achieve your important business goals.
Analytics has an enterprise solution called Analytics 360 which provides large enterprises with advanced tools and deeper insights.
Google Tag Manager
These days you need to add tags for almost every marketing service that you want to implement on your website, and adding tags is usually a complex process.
Tag Manager can simplify adding tags to your business websites without the need for a developer. Built with marketers in mind, the Tag Manager is a single hub to manage several tags required for modern marketing needs, including conversion, tracking and more.
Google Tag Manager is a versatile tool that supports and integrates with several Google and third-party tags.
- Simplifies and streamlines the tag implementation process
- Works with popular Google services such as Analytics (which most businesses use) and several third-party tools.
- Debugging, error checking and security features to find out if your tags have been implemented properly.
- Collaborative features to make it easier for marketing and IT to work together.
Google Optimize
Google Optimize makes it really simple to test variations of your website or app. You can run tests for free using the platform so that you can keep optimizing your products to achieve your goal.
Few ways Google Optimize can be helpful for small businesses;
- Integration with Google Analytics can provide you with data to help you make improvements.
- Carrying out several tests on your website, including A/B tests, multivariate, and redirect tests, to see what resonates with your users.
- Combining with Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords) to create higher-converting custom landing pages
Besides native integration with Google Ads and Google Analytics, Optimize can be integrated with other solutions such as Firebase and BigQuery.
Google Surveys
For businesses launching a new product or looking for customer insights, Google Surveys is one of the most cost-effective ways to reach out to the targeted audience.
Google Surveys can help you make better business decisions by enabling you to carry out market research in a fraction of time and money it used to cost traditionally.
Ways in which this market research platform can be useful for small businesses include;
- Makes it easier to design and implement surveys
- Results for the surveys start rolling in within a fraction of the time
Google Data Studio
In the digital age, data is the most important property of your business, but even more important is what you do with the data.
Google Data Studio lets you bring in raw data from several sources and help businesses gain insights from the data.
Google Data Studio can be useful for small businesses in several ways, including;
- Bring data from several sources, including spreadsheets, Analytics, Google Ads, Google BigQuery and more, into one platform.
- Generate reports and dashboards from the raw data without having to write any code
- Create and share engaging reports to tell the story of a brand or business
Which solutions from the Google Marketing platform do you use the most? Are you glad to see them in a single unified Google Marketing platform?
Let me know what you think in the comments below.
