Tearing Up Your 2020 Plan – Part IV: What Google Knows vs What the Marketer Shows

This is a strategy from Tearing Up Your 2020 Plan:

• Part I: Opportunities to Change with the Times
• Part II: How to Find Out What’s Changing, for Whom, and How
• Part III: Estimating Demand for Your Business During COVID-19
• Part IV: What Google Knows vs What the Marketer Shows
• Part V: How is Your Customers' Language Changing?
• Part VI: Using Search to Improve Customer Experiences

Watch the Video:

Read the Transcript:

Marketing in the Automotive Industry

As Rand talked about those directly harmed, I want to kind of start there in those businesses and I thought of, you know, automobile purchases. It’s pretty difficult right now to go to your local Mercedes dealer or whomever and decide to purchase a vehicle right now. Difficult.

If you're on the bench (so to speak) now's your chance to use the time that you have gotten back to build your data flywheel. It's taken me three and a half years to build ours, and it's paying dividends right now. You'll see why.

Ex. BMW

You see how BMW, if you search for BMW SUV, Google already knows the names of all the BMW SUVs. They've got it all broken now and they are absolutely correct.

This is what Google knows:

Look at what the marketer shows:

How is it possible that we can spend millions of dollars on ads and not just look up to pixels and see that Google is telling us what the right answers look like? There is not a mention of an SUV or an SUV model anywhere here.

These kinds of ads result in clicks, back buttons, more clicks on your paid ads, back buttons, more clicks on your paid ads.

Ex. Cadillac

But then if I search for Cadillac, an SUV again.

Google completely knows:

Well, look at what the marketer shows:

XT4, XT5, Escalade, XT6 Suv, Cadillac SUV

These my friends, are marketers paying attention to the signals that Google's already giving us based on what they understand about customers.

Making the Experience

I will tell you, if you get a chance to go to Cadillac live. Do it not all at once, but do it.

I saw their CMO at a conference a while back, and she made a bet that more and more people kind of don't have time to come into showrooms.

So therefore, Cadillac launched a virtual showroom:

She armed seven, eight people with headsets, iPhones and these little handheld camera holders, and they walked around a studio talking to you in real time. Now they can't see you, they can only hear your voice, but you can literally ask this guy to put two strollers in the trunk of one type of car so you can see how much space is left. You can ask them to get their co-workers to sit inside the car based on their height.

“Oh, you know, I'm kind of tall, can you get somebody that's over six feet tall to sit inside of the vehicle for me?”

Then I'll just walk around from SUV to SUV, moving strollers and golf golf clubs and getting people to sit in and out of these different seats so you can get a feel. They'll show you exactly how to change the temperatures. You can get a feel for how the infant, the informatics work.

This thing is amazing. This was all done the end of last year for Cadillac. That was a bet that paid off.

Key Takeaways

• Knowing what Google shows for certain queries is crucial for marketers who wish to give searchers the best possible experience with their brand or company. Not to mention it can spark ideas (like in our Cadillac example) for how to create products and solutions that speak to their audiences' concerns.
  • 💡 Hint: You can start by gathering data on Featured Snippets and other Google SERP features from tools like SEMRush.

Up Next: Part V: How is Your Customers’ Language Changing?

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