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Mudd Advertising Attends the 2015 Google All Star Summit

As a certified Google Partner, Mudd Advertising was invited to attend the Google All Star Summit at the end of August. I was lucky enough to be one of the two employees able to attend! While I was super hyped to be visiting the Googleplex in Mountain View, California to begin with, I was even more excited when I realized that we were going to be mingling with attendees from all over the world. What an amazing opportunity to meet other like-minded individuals and share ideas! I have always been in awe of Google and knew the campus would be incredible, but dang, that place is like its own city. After cruising around the campus on Google bikes and hitting up all of the main attractions from the movie The Internship, we switched into business mode and set out to absorb all of the information that we could from the great speakers and panels that Google had arranged for us. IMG_6054 One of the questions posed at the Summit was, “How do you plan to be data-driven to improve your digital marketing efforts?” and that struck a chord with me because this particular subject is constantly discussed here at Mudd. One of the huge perks of digital advertising is its trackable results. We are able to take our marketing strategies to a whole new level and fine-tune our efforts for each of our individual clients’ needs and target markets. I mean, we know exactly when people are online and we even follow them around throughout the rest of their online journey. While data is great, sometimes it comes in excess and, for lack of a better term, can be hard to weed through. When this question was posed, two additional questions came to mind. First, how are you going to use the data you've collected to evaluate what you are currently doing? Based on the data you have collected, you should be able to come up with some expectations for key performance indicators. Are your current efforts meeting those benchmarks? If not, then figure out why and how you can change that. If it is working, figure out how you can implement the same strategy for others. If it is not working, stop doing it. For the love of God, don’t do something just for the sake of doing it. Stop, regroup and either fix it so you can improve your results or adjust your expectations for what that service is providing for the business. When you say it’s not working, ask yourself why it is not working. Perhaps it’s not providing what you considered to be a success metric -- but does that mean it is not “successful”? Second, how is this data specific to your clients' needs and expectations and how can we use data to show them success? Like I said earlier, sometimes we bite off more than we can chew when it comes to data. We need to process it in little bite-sized pieces. Make sure that your KPIs match your clients' goals, as it might not make sense to use the same KPIs for every single client or for every single service. The idea of Macro Conversions versus Micro Conversions was also brought up at the Google All Star Summit, and I thought that was genius! This is something that we already do for many of our clients but splitting them up in this way makes so much sense. A Macro Conversion is most definitely a sale but not every client, especially an automotive dealership, has the ability to be eCommerce. In that case, I would consider a form fill or phone call to be a Macro Conversion since they are a lead to a dealership and an opportunity for the dealership to turn that into a sale. Some examples of Micro Conversions would be subscribing to a newsletter or blog, viewing of inventory pages or visiting an hours and directions page. These are people showing an interest and conducting research that will likely lead them into the purchasing stage, but they have yet to reach out to the business. Both Macro and Micro Conversions are important to track and it is easy to do so using Google Analytics Goals. IMG_6042 Overall, the Google All Star Summit was phenomenal and I am very grateful to Google for being such great hosts and putting on such a well-organized event. I also want to thank Mudd Advertising for giving me this great opportunity to continue my education and meet some amazing professionals in my field. Be smart with the data you’re collecting. Don’t just show data for the sake of showing data. Showcase the data that reflects a client’s goals and give them what they really want to know. Do them a favor and get rid of the excess.