The Bounteous Guide to Google’s AI Checklist for Marketing

It’s the year of AI, with mentions of AI peppering all the earnings reports from tech companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and more. To help businesses prepare for an AI-filled future, Google launched an AI Essentials checklist for its suite of marketing products. Google AI aims to enhance outcomes using advanced intelligence to help create better performing advertisements, build and edit quality creative, track and better predict user behavior through data models, and react more quickly to changing customer signals. Let’s dive in and understand what’s on the checklist, why it’s important, and how to take action. 
 
First, let’s talk about what AI even means. Artificial intelligence is a branch of science where intelligence is demonstrated by machines instead of a living being (like a human or animal). There’s debate about the exact branches within AI, but some of the more common elements are Machine Learning, Language Processing, Speech Recognition, Vision, and Robotics. 
 
AI has been a part of our lives for more than half a century, but in recent years has progressed into deeper models that help a machine to actually perceive, reason, problem solve, and more. Some examples of AI are speech-to-text, chatbots or phone prompts, and facial recognition. Now that we know what AI is, let’s review the checklist. 

Lay the Foundation 

Every project needs to have a solid foundation. With AI, you need to make sure that the inputs being fed to the artificial intelligence are correct and detailed. To put this in human terms, imagine that you were taking a class and the teacher provided the wrong information or not enough details. You wouldn’t have the knowledge needed to solve a problem or take a test.

Enable The Google Tag

The Google tag (gtag.js) is the new version of a global site tag, which allows you to use a variety of Google products and services, such as Google Ads and Google Analytics 4. The tag helps provide accurate measurement for your ads and website. 
 
Our Recommendation: This tag is essential if you’re running any Google advertising.

Set Up Enhanced Conversions

Enhanced conversions help better track the accuracy of conversions in a post-cookie environment. It matches Google data with input data in a privacy safe manner and then can better attribute conversions. This is especially helpful on Safari and Firefox browsers where cookies are limited. 
 
Our Recommendation: Try it out. It’s easy to enable and helps you from losing out on conversions your channel earned.

Assign Values To Your Conversions

Not all conversions are equal; some customers are worth more than others. For better understanding of return on ad spend (ROAS) and improved bidding, assigning values provides additional clarity. It can be something simple such as the dollar total in a retail shopping cart, but can also include things like number of nights booked for a hotel, the value of a lead vs. a signup, or the amount in a funded financial account. 
 
Our Recommendation: Understanding the quality of your leads or customers is incredibly valuable. If this task seems daunting, start by assigning at least one value and work up from there.

Upgrade to Google Analytics 4

With Universal Analytics sunsetting July 1, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) will be the only choice for gaining insights about your website available on Google. Available in a free version or 360 enterprise version, GA4 collects both website and app data while using event-based data instead of session-based, making it ideal for future measurement. 
 
Our Recommendation: If you want to use Google Analytics, you need to upgrade. It’s a robust free product and budget-friendly enterprise product. GA4 has seen a lot of improvements even over the past few months and is a valuable tool to understand your site traffic and customer paths.

Activate AI-Powered Campaigns

Activate Broad Match AI-powered search campaigns with Performance Max (Pmax) campaigns. Determine the conversion goals that matter for your business and let AI help maximize performance and deliver results. Pmax runs campaigns across Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps, while broad match ensures you find more customers likely to convert. 
 
Our Recommendation: We have seen a lot of success with Pmax campaigns, however, start slow, especially when activating broad match. 

Add Strong Creative Inputs

Creative is critical for the performance of any marketing campaign but is often overlooked in digital. Google announced several generative AI enhancements, making it easier to build strong creative quickly. Google Ads AI will analyze landing pages to help find images, keywords, headlines and more to create ads. Product Studio will roll out later this year, allowing retailers to easily create stunning backgrounds for products shots. 
 
Our Recommendation: We’re excited to play around with these tools. It’s good to have an option that gives choices, but you don’t have to use them. With its free status and the ability to do something as simple as changing your video from horizontal to vertical, most advertisers will likely use this enhancement. 

Upgrade to The New Search Ads 360

Search Ads 360 recently got a face lift, with an updated look and feel that’s designed to make it easier to navigate. New enterprise tools to improve reporting, billing and optimization have also launched, as well as new campaign types, like Performance Max. 
 
Our Recommendation: Upgrade now to start to get a feel for the new UI. You’ll still have access to the old one, so it’s the best of both worlds right now. 

Shift Your Mindset

Directly align marketing KPIs with business goals and partner with your CFO to quantify marketing’s impact on key financial metrics.

Reframe marketing as a profitable growth driver instead of cost center by having a clear KPI, learn how to apply attribution and create test-learn-improve cycles. The KPI should be based on a business goal (e.g. improve overall sales by 5% within 3 months) as opposed to metric based (e.g. cost per acquisition, completion rates). This helps to better balance short- and long-term strategies while pushing customers through the decision journey. 
 
Our Recommendation: This one will take some time to change mindsets, but start framing the conversation now. Understand the business objectives and how your marketing metrics align and see if they’re aligned. If they are, great. If not, provide evidence how new metrics better align to business goals.

Create a Culture of Experimentation

Include tests with clearly defined goals, learn from the results, and then scale. Many advertisers test for the sake of testing, but instead, be clear what a successful test looks like, and then take action based on the learnings. Share the learnings with other lines of business for them to test and scale if successful. 
 
Our Recommendation: Testing is essential to improve performance. Make every test count by making it measurable, actionable and accurate.

Stay Agile & Break Down Silos

Some common silos are related to data, budget, and channel. It’s alright to specialize, but don’t sacrifice collaboration. Aligning incentives for the long term further drives this collaboration and allows channels to assist each other. Agile budgets can also help to drive business goals, with the theme of testing and learning consistently across teams.  
 
Our Recommendation: Collaboration is always key to driving better business results. With agile budgets, just make sure that no changes are knee-jerk decisions—and don’t forget your testing framework. 
 
If the checklist seems overwhelming, don’t worry—it will become more digestible with practice. Start at the top, build your foundation, and then take action. You also don’t have to do this on your own. Make sure your partners are aligned and embrace the potential of AI. The future of AI is here and as Google stated: “You’re not competing against AI. You’re competing against marketers who are already using AI.”