It was a great pleasure and honour that we were invited to go to the Google #Masterclass2017. So off we came, here is me.
It was packed with some of the biggest advertising and technology companies participating.
The importance of Google now was clearly on display, in the meeting it was brought up that the only company with a comparable reach to Google at present is AMAZON. Although AMAZON would be a distance second.
Google is much bigger in data collection with over 80% of the smartphone market worldwide and just under 80% in the searches. Much of this information is available in some form to Australian retailers. AMAZON has a clear advantage in that their data is more complete. What I mean by complete is that Google will tell you a man of 30 years old in the Brisbane area click your advertisement. AMAZON has the person's name and his purchase history. That is a big plus. AMAZON are also masters at analysising the data. AMAZON is going to be a game changer and its not on price but technology.
So to me the most interesting part of the discussions was about the future in retail, in particular, for SMB. Currently Google local searches are growing at 45%. I believe it as people are now using Google to find local goods and services like florist, pet shops, newsagents, chemist, etc., For example, people now driving to a hospital, will Google "Florist near me."
There was much discussion on how to use information to drive sales.
One point that was made absolutely clear is something that I have been talking about for years. The long tail marketing in modern marketing.
They were talking primarily in terms of keywords in google searches, but the same principle applies in bricks and mortar shops. You need of modern retailing to have more range of products and services that drive traffic to it. Say, for example, you offer a service like ABC, can be anything like bill pay, dry cleaning dropping off and pick up, etc. Somebody wants it and so will come to your shop. That is one customer you would not have. This is even how the big guys at the conference were thinking.
I will talk more about it on a later post, when I have digested the wealth of information I got. Sufficient to say it was a great learning experience.
