The Confusing Digital Landscape

This months see the final death throws of Google+.

Google has given up on it's very own in-house social media platform called Google+. Now, if Google can't get it right what hope is there for the rest of us? Most of us will have noticed that the most profitable companies in the world are often basing their income streams on buying and selling data. Part of that income stream is advertising. On one hand, the media is outraged at the intrusiveness of social media platforms: as we give them our personal data in exchange for free services such as Facebook and Gmail. On the other, businesses are delighted to pay Google and Facebook for access to this data. The data is used to target advertising in a very precise way.

Over the life time of our business, we have used Google for advertising.  But, we are finding the challenges of keeping up quite a struggle. In the early days digital marketers would concentrate on helping Google's search engines by SEO, search engine optimisation, and competent digital marketers found the return on time investment excellent. Top of the search engine page rankings all round. A search in Google and our business would spring to the top of the page. However, the big digital companies such as Google are constantly mashing their data. Amazon will see that a product is selling well via a small online sellers and then start selling the same through it's own warehouses. Google worked out it was under selling it's own advertising offering and so has put it's prices up thousands of percent over the years. Then it noticed consumers were working on their mobile phones and changed the two column format. To help fit search results onto a mobile phone screen. Now there was only one column of search results, and all the top results are adverts. Paid for by big advertisers. Another nail in the coffin for small businesses.

On the positive side Google Ads is getting easier to use and small businesses can get telephone and online help with their Google accounts. Google is using it's investment in artificial intelligence to make adverts automatic; helping the advertiser with the generation of adverts that sell more. So, for example, I will create a set of adverts advertising the same product or service. This is standard practice amongst the professionals. The professional will watch the effectiveness of the adverts they have created; delete adverts that aren't performing well and generate new adverts to see if they will out perform the current best adverts. Now, Google's system will help with the creation of adverts and automatically prioritise the most successful. The main issue I find is that supposedly artificial intelligence isn't that smart. At my last look a Christmas card advert was doing particularly well. In April? That doesn't make any sense to me.

At the same time the system is constantly changing as Google improves and tries new things. This makes it hard work just keeping up. The Google staff seem to struggle because I get conflicting advice that changes from one Google expert to the other.

At the same time every other social media platform is getting in on the act. Whilst one upon a time Facebook lost money, it has joined the ranks of massively profitable companies as every trendy business prioritises social media profiles. On a regular basis Facebook sends me a reminder to post advertorial stuff, for this I will be charged and having tried this route and found it wasn't particularly successful in our 'business to business' model; I am declining their offer.

At the end of the day a small business only has a limited amount of time to spend on marketing; one could prioritise Facebook, or may be Google Ads, or what about Instagram, or perhaps Twitter?

One positive note for printers, as the digital advertising market overwhelms us with data there is an upward trend toward more printed materials. Certainly I prefer the printed copy over the digital version. I contacted my bank who had decided to stop sending statements, asking them to revert to a printed copy. Thankfully, they obliged.