Today, people are shopping in ways never before imagined as they piece together the online and in-store shopping experience to best meet their needs. It’s more important than ever to meet your customers where they prefer to shop and put them at the center of your marketing and customer experience.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to better connect with customers on these new shopping journeys and drive more sales. We’ve collected the most useful tools, product recommendations, and consumer insights to help you achieve your business and marketing objectives. Whether you’re looking to optimize your existing marketing mix or make a game plan for the end-of-year shopping season, this guide has you covered.

Customers turn to Google every day to browse, research, and buy

Every day, hundreds of millions of people turn to Google to discover and shop for what they care about. Find out how you can meet your customers across all moments in the shopping journey.

Build your brand and acquire new customers

As a brand, it’s important to appear across places where potential customers may be browsing. Learn how you can build brand awareness and differentiate your brand with shoppers who are in the market for products like yours.

People search online to explore new ideas and keep up with the things that matter to them. As shoppers browse across Google and YouTube, they discover new brands and products that are relevant to them.

To discover new brands and products that are relevant to them, shoppers:

• Find inspiration from watching YouTube videos. Eighty-four percent of people surveyed in the UAE say that sponsored video content on YouTube makes them more aware of new brands. We see similar trends in Saudi Arabia and Egypt.²

• Browse Google Images. There are hundreds of millions of shopping searches on Google Images every single month.³
• Scroll through Discover to catch up on interesting topics. Forty-one percent of consumers in the UAE and Saudi Arabia say they first became aware of a product they purchased via online channels.⁴

Grow your online and in-app sales

Customers are shopping online and in apps more than ever before. Here’s how you can create seamless shopping experiences and reach new customers across the web to grow your sales.

Across surveyed countries, 41% of shoppers go to Google when discovering a new brand.

As a brand, it’s important to not only appear across places where potential customers may be browsing but also to create real value that is meaningful and distinct. Immersive and rich creativity across video, Search, and feeds on Google can help build awareness and differentiate your brand with shoppers who are in the market for products like yours.

Drive foot traffic and in-store sales

Businesses with physical locations need to provide customers with a seamless, locally optimized experience online. To capture sales, understand how to make your business stand out on Google and drive more traffic to your store.

Shoppers often use Google to check product and business information online before going into the store. Claim your Business Profile at no cost to make sure you’re providing important information to customers when they’re deciding where to buy — like your address, pickup and delivery options, and store hours.

For traditional retailers and small businesses, bringing customers to your stores can be critical to generating revenue. Google has solutions to help you achieve this goal — whether that’s driving foot traffic to particular stores, highlighting in-store sales, or promoting specific products that are available for curbside or store pickup.

Use insights to inform your strategy and boost performance

Brands using insights and first-party data to fuel their decision-making achieve stronger performance. Learn about the insights, tools, and solutions we’ve developed to help you shape your marketing and merchandising strategy.

Today’s customer journey doesn’t follow a standard path — it’s diverse, nonlinear, and always evolving. People conduct research about products across a variety of devices, and marketers are looking for ways to deliver experiences that meet shoppers’ rising expectations. For many marketers, the solution lies in gaining a deeper insight into how they can best tailor their ads and products to meet these needs.

If you’re running ad campaigns, you have access to numerous solutions directly within Google Ads that can help you drive better results — from optimizing existing campaigns based on best practices to uncovering valuable insights about your audience that are tailored to your business and segment.

This article is summarised from a blog post by thinkwithgoogle.com and can be accessed here.