It’s tough finding a Google tech partner that understands your business needs. Here are some key considerations to help you in your quest.
You’ve got your Google Marketing Platform, Google Ads, and Google Ad Manager all up and running, but how can you be sure you're making the most of your campaigns? Are your marketing activities – beyond PPC – integrated and working hard for you?
Brands often build out their tech stack to include Google platform partners for data management (DMP), dynamic creative optimisation (DCO) of ads, and performance measurement. Once these are in place, the possibilities to reach new audiences and build incremental sales are tantalising. But how do you make all these elements work harmoniously and get great results?
If you’re struggling to do this in-house, a Google tech partner will help you optimise all your opportunities.
Here at Epsilon, we talk to brand managers with a treasure trove of technology at their fingertips. Often, they’re unsure how to use it holistically, and to its full capacity.
With our managed service solution, we can help brands maximise the ROI of their Google tech stack.
As a tech-solution vendor and consultancy, we have all the functionality and expertise associated with a range of agencies: data onboarding, DMP, DSP, DCO and measurement. We offer all these solutions, so the insights we provide are joined-up. That makes them a lot more powerful
We can elevate your digital marketing ecosystem by making sure all your marketing and data applications gel seamlessly, delivering the results you're looking for.
But first, let's look at the main problems brands routinely face with their Google tech stacks.
Lack of talent is probably the biggest issue. Brands don’t always have the team resources to get the best out of the data onboarding, optimisation and analytics elements of their tech stack.
Marketing team members may not have the right skills, training, and expertise to deliver what’s needed. Or there may not be enough people available to get the necessary systems set up and running.
Not knowing how to get different aspects of the stack talking to each other is another recurring problem.
For instance, how can your demand-side platform (DSP) and search data integrate with Google Analytics? What's the best way to measure attribution when running ad campaigns?
If you want more than ‘last click’ attribution analytics, can your product handle alternative systems, such as linear attribution and time decay attribution? How effectively are your business intelligence tools talking to each other?
There is also increased reliance place on so-called ‘black box’ solutions, such as Google’s Performance Max, which enable you to feed in assets, audience signals, and conversion data in order to measure conversion results on the campaign level
Six different solution providers might be held in the stack independently. That’s six different strategies that aren’t joined up.
Many brands fail to use their Google tech stack to plan and build a long-term strategy for growth.
You can map out a robust digital marketing strategy if you get help integrating all your media propositions. This provides a framework for building future sales growth.
Improvements can be made over time once you can holistically manage your loyalty programme data, your email database, and ad creative functionality using an integrated approach.
Long-term performance planning and optimisation become business-as-usual.
More and more brands are turning to third parties for help. What services are available to optimise the Google stack?
While digital marketing agencies can assist to some degree, they tend not to have the tools to optimise across the entire Google tech stack. They may be experts in PPC but have limited expertise in other key digital marketing activities and technologies.
Self-serve software solutions are another option. These still require you to go it alone at some point, which means building your campaigns and carrying out analytics yourself.
The downside is that important questions can remain unanswered. There can also be gaps in integration across the tech framework. You will miss sales opportunities.
In contrast, managed service solutions offer a one-stop shop for everything. For instance, Epsilon can help brands manage their entire stack and optimise all strands of their performance marketing ecosystem according to specific goals.
We take control and run that technology stack, and its different media activities, for clients who are too stretched to do it on their own. We operate what is called a full media solution.
In practice, this means we can manage audience-targeting activities. We then build responsive, personalised, creative ad campaigns. And then we measure the performance and outcomes.
Measurement is highly-tailored and dynamic, so we can report on incremental differences over an agreed time. Revenue goals are factored in, and achievement metrics are plotted out.
Here are three questions Epsilon suggests you ask a Google tech partner to be sure they’re offering an effective service:
A full media service is an investment in knowledge, not just a product. The software solutions should be complemented by great people.
The consultancy team will have real-world expertise. The team might include highly-trained campaign managers, a creative team for designing ads, data analysts, engineers, and marketing strategy advisers. That’s a huge talent pool for brands to benefit from – providing a fully integrated approach.
A full media solutions provider can offer economies of scale, which is hugely valuable. They will be looking at data optimisation all the time, not now and then.
In-house teams with low resources might only have time to carry out ad performance analytics quarterly or every six months. The optimisation opportunities slip away when this is the case.
At Epsilon, we operate as an extension of our client's in-house performance marketing teams. Our people might work alongside theirs for part of the working week, either on-site or remotely. We’re constantly active on their behalf, bridging the skills and resourcing gaps.
With media activity, always ask: what difference is this making to my business? A campaign you ran drove 500 clicks. All is well and good. But did those clicks turn into sales? How many? Which clicks led to conversions?
You want to be sure your technology stack allows you to understand the real impact on your business.
Your chosen Google tech stack partner should focus on your unique business objectives. They should commit to solving problems that are affecting company growth.
Together you will ask: What is the top business goal at the moment? Which tools can help me meet that objective faster and more effectively? Are these optimised in line with long-term goals?
PPC and the Google Ad proposition are just one element of your digital marketing ecosystem. It will help enormously to work with a partner who can also help with your email marketing, building a loyalty programme, and managing your data platform.
There are countless different tasks and tools that a marketing team needs to achieve a broad range of commercial objectives.
At Epsilon, our full media solution makes this possible by taking a fully-integrated approach.
At Epsilon, we only work with brands committed to a joined-up view of their digital marketing. We are all about pursuing measureable opportunities, and we like to become part of the family to achieve this.
We aim to take brands beyond short-term quick fixes and quick wins. We want to build enduring strategic relationships with brands, achieving the best results possible.
If you’re looking for a Google tech stack partner, Epsilon can help.