Google SEAL Mastery Series – We Are Prepared, Are You?
Step aside ‘teach me how to dougie,’ there is a new dance in town. Well, it is not really a dance but more so moves to associate some of the leadership strategies; that’s right, Google let us in on their secret.
On December 7, 2017, Google hosted a leadership training at their headquarters in Toronto. Along with access to the super cool building and delicious food, it was an engaging session, where key personnel from the global HQ in Mountain View, the Canadian HQ in Toronto and our Google Account Manager, Valentina, provided the attendees with some insightful information regarding the latest product updates, how we can help our customers and let us in on their secret on how they hire and manage employees. That’s right, one of the world’s most successful company shared their secret with us – partner benefits!
The idea of this short blog is not to brag about the cool events we get invited to because of our status as a Premier Google Partner, but rather to put your mind at ease with the knowledge that you’re trusting your online advertising to individuals who are properly trained and educated on the products by industry-leading experts, and who continue to update their knowledge and know-how with ongoing internal and external training.
A Day in Review:
Opening:
The session was opened by Jesse Hochhalter, Global Programs Lead, keeping the mood light and giving us an insight into what to come during the training. Her charming personality was much needed along with some coffee to get us ready for that day’s 8-hour session. Jesse gave us an insight as to what to expect, as well as what Sales Enablement Acceleration Leadership (SEAL) training was all about and how it’ll help us prepare our own employees and clients get to reach new heights in 2018.
Welcome Focus
Ryan D’Mello, Partner Enablement Manager, led his session with an activity designed to address the day to day struggle (and correlation) between a customer and their experience with mobile website speed. The given example had us compare two equal companies’ website and the speed and usability of their mobile pages, in terms of customer experience. In this day and age, when mobile phones are akin to an extended limb for many of us, performance on the mobile platform is very important for the success of any business. With the millennials spending over 80 per-cent of their time on them and over 50 per-cent of people using them as a primary device, the percentage of users will only increase in the upcoming years. 40 per-cent of individuals will abandon your website if it takes over three seconds to load, with 47 per-cent of users expecting it to load under 2 seconds; patience is not a virtue when it comes to mobile speed and user expectations. With mobile as a primary device for customers it is important to recognize the value in constantly updating your website for increased speed; otherwise it’s easy to lose ground to your competition.
Reaching the Right Customers I & II
This session was headlined by our Google Account Manager, Valentina Lacuitto, who is one of the many talented account managers working for Google. This was the product knowledge portion of the leadership training, focusing on audience in general and the latest updates regarding customer match. With Google’s various products, over one billion users are connected on a day to day basis – that’s one billion potential customers! Okay, the number maybe a little high for Canada, especially when your customers are from a specific region, but it gives you an idea of how easy it is to connect to different people of various backgrounds and lifestyles.
Using AdWords, we can take the guess work (and as general stereotypes) out of the scenario, helping you reach potential customers at exactly the right time. The remarketing tool was an amazing way to reach customers who were already aware of your services and products, but with updates to the customer match feature, we can now target specific customers who’ve interacted with a business in the past, and who are likely to engage again.
Remarketing is a great tool to reach customers who know about your business. But what about customers who don’t know about you? There’s a solution for that! With ‘Similar Audience’ we can find potential customers (similar to those on your remarketing list) that are likely to be interested in your services and products, and are who likely to convert based on similar habits to that of your current customers. With the use of “In-Market” audience we can find customers who are interested in your products and services based on their browsing habits and topics of interest. Providing these customers with compelling ads will increase the possibility of conversion, while increasing brand awareness.
How Google Hires and Manages Developing Leaders Within
Since we made a pinky promise to Google as a premier partner, there’s a limit to what I information I can provide here. In summary, during this session, Jesse Hochhalter gave us an inside look into how one of the most successful companies in the world find talent, interview them and train them to be successful. Every company has their own version of hiring procedures and training manual; however, it was refreshing to see things through a different perspective, especially regarding the onboarding of individuals into the company and retaining them for the long term.
Coaching Forward
It is one thing to sit at a training event and jot down notes, but another to be able to transfer the knowledge to your team. Luckily, Google was prepared to help us with this; remember those cool moves I mentioned at the beginning? Here’s where they were introduced. Ryan gave us a blueprint for how to effectively communicate to our team as to how best to transfer the skills we’d learned to create an widespread ripple effect utilizing this knowledge to help customers and future employees, alike.
Networking
After the leadership and product segments, we were given an opportunity to connect with other industry leaders in the online marketing world. I was truly humbled by this experience and was able to represent Strathcom Media alongside some of the best agencies, having opportunity to connect with these organizations and learn about the systems and processes they implement to be successful; of course, no strategies were shared to maintain competitive advantage.
What It Means to Our Clients:
Simply stated, when businesses entrust their online marketing to Strathcom Media, they can expect service that goes above and beyond to deliver results. From daily engagement with clients, to our attendance at multiple training and product-update events (at the invitation of Google and our other partners), Strathcom works hard to uphold its customer-driven approach to doing business. We have employees based in BC and Ontario, as well, to ensure that we’re only an arm’s length (or a quick drive) away when you need us. At Strathcom Media, it’s our goal to ensure each client gets the VIP treatment, working to the best of our ability to deliver amazing results.
