3 Tips to Help You Navigate Challenges from Google SGE
by Matt Mesenger
SEO tool Brightedge recently released a report showing how often Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) appears across nine different industries. The findings: While SGE appeared for finance searches at a modest rate of 17 percent, healthcare searches generated SGE results 76 percent of the time.
One key takeaway – regardless of the industry you serve – is that SGE will help people find information directly on the Google search results pages. They won’t have to click into different websites to seek information. And that means your SEO traffic has already or will likely decline once SGE rolls out for good.
While Google has not yet given a date for when this will happen, we have three recommendations that will help you get ready for a world in which SGE is a permanent factor.
Source: BrightEdge
Holistic Marketing is the Way to Go
Several years ago, Google released a study that found people used more than 10 sources of information before making a purchase decision.
The key takeaway: You don’t have to rely solely on Google for your business to be a success!
Yes, SEO, local search ads, and pay-per-click advertising are still great channels for lead generation, but you can also invest in other digital channels, such as email marketing and social media, both of which largely operate outside of Google mandates.
You can and should also invest time and dollars into offline marketing efforts. For example, put yard signs up. Leave door hangers behind. Send direct mail pieces. Make sure your brand and phone number are obnoxiously visible on work trucks!
When you buy into the concept of holistic marketing, you mitigate your risk because you’re not fully at the mercy of changes implemented by Google. You also strengthen your business because you’re showing up in multiple places people might look before making a purchase decision!
Don’t Get Hung Up on Lead Attribution
Discussion about which marketing channel should be given credit for leads is an exercise in futility. Here’s an example to support this claim.
Let’s say you want to remodel your master bathroom. You might do a search in Google for “handyman near me” and then click on a local search ad. Not convinced you’ve found the right business, you click out of the ad without calling or filling out a form.
Later that night, while you doom-scroll through Instagram, you see a sponsored video from a local handyman company that touts their services, which happens to include bathroom remodeling.
The next day, you text your neighbor, who recently had work done on their house, for handyman recommendations. After giving you the name of the company they worked with, you go to Google, type in the company name, and then read through the reviews that appear on the knowledge panel.
You then click on the website, read the bathroom remodeling content, and decide to call and book an appointment.
Which action should get credit for this conversion? You engaged with a local service ad first and an SEO listing last. How could you even measure the text message exchange between neighbors?
The bottom line: First, accept that it’s impossible to accurately track the entire customer decision journey. Second, you should still try to assign lead and sales sources to your marketing efforts, but when you analyze that data, treat it as directional, not as gospel.
Lean More Heavily Into Your First Party Data
This one might seem counterintuitive, considering I just told you that lead and sales attribution is a frivolous exercise. To unpack why this recommendation exists, let’s first revisit the previous paragraph in which we told you to treat marketing source reporting as directional.
Let’s say you notice a spike in SEO orders during the second week of each month. When you think about your other marketing efforts, you realize you have been sending Valpak coupons in the first week of each month.
What could be happening is that your coupons are increasing brand awareness, and people are going to Google, searching for your brand name, and then converting.
The key takeaway: Looking at first-party data can reveal directional clues about the impossible-to-track consumer journey that help you make better-informed business decisions! In this example, keep investing in Valpak, even if it’s not showing up in your attribution reports!
A second reason you should lean more heavily into your first-party data is that it gives you proper focus. The only reason you invest in any marketing is to grow your bottom line. When you look at your first party data, you can put emphasis on metrics like: sales, revenue, net income, and return on investment (ROI). Emphasizing these bottom-line metrics helps you make better-informed marketing decisions, even if you can’t directly track it.
For example, if you’re not hitting your revenue targets, try adding a different marketing channel to the marketing mix. If you see a lift in revenue, it implies that the new channel is a good one for your business. If the opposite happens, stop investing in that channel.
Keep iterating until your bottom-line metrics are at or better than where you want them to be. It might be slightly uncomfortable not knowing to what degree individual channels are driving value, but that should be mitigated when you consider what you’re trying to accomplish at the bottom-line level.
You can only see this information when you lean heavily into your first-party data!
The One Constant in Marketing is Change
Google’s Search Generative Experience is just one change in a sea of changes that happens in marketing every single day. If you need help making order out of the marketing chaos, ChoiceLocal can help. Follow us on LinkedIn to get marketing advice like you just read here, or click on the button on the bottom-right of the screen to get in touch with a real, live person today.
About ChoiceLocal
ChoiceLocal is a franchise marketing agency dedicated to leading a purpose-driven business as the first and only franchise marketing agency with a money-back guarantee. This has led to successful partnerships with over 50 franchise brands and a spot on the Inc. 5000 fastest-growing companies. Our core values are driven not only by the digital marketing work that is done but reflected by each person who becomes a teammate; we volunteer in our local communities every quarter and make a difference to those around us. Named a top workplace for four years straight, ChoiceLocal is dedicated to making the lives of everyone we are involved with better.
