Question

"You're the PM for Google AdWords. One of the core initiatives you own is to increase spend, account engagement, and number of accounts in the SMB (small-to-medium) business space. What does your 1-year roadmap look like?"

Answer 1

 Goal Make search better. Adwords aligns very well with the overall company goal by stitching the internet together and surfacing products/ services that are relevant to the user.  

Clarifying questions By increasing spend do we want to increase the revenue or the profit ? I will assume it’s the revenue since the question doesn’t talk about reducing operation costs. Are there existing issues with engagement? How does these accounts engage with google ads today? How much % of SMB have we penetrated today? Is the market specific to a region?

User SMB's are 1.  mom and pop shops 2. High growth potential, not an overnight success, has less than 100 employees but contribute in a lot of industries

We need to identify what motivates SMBs to use google as a platform to display the ads ?

Pain Points

1.I want my ad to be on the top of the page because that’s where the user clicks - Discoverable

2.Cash flow is a real problem with SMBs so I don’t want to pay so much money upfront - Finances

3.Build Brand awareness to drive - Sales New customers Customer retention

Metrics 

Engagement - Increase in account activity on the AdWords portal

Sessions/CTR/Money - Number of new accounts signed up.

 

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RoadMap	Features	Metrics Impacted	Resources Involved	Effort - Time
Quarter 1	Revamp pricing strategy - Installment Plan	Number of new accounts signed up	Pricing, marketing , Sales	Medium -  MVP
Quarter 2	Implement new pricing strategy - Installment Plan for Web	Number of new accounts signed up	Engineering / UX	Medium -  MVP
Quarter 3	Implement new pricing strategy - Installment Plan for Mobile	Number of new accounts signed up	Engineering / UX	Medium
Quarter 1 & 2	Discovery Tailored Insights -  Surface new opportunities	Increased engagement leads to More spend	Market Insights/ Engineering/ Data Science  / Data Warehouse	Large - MVP
Quarter 3	Implement Tailored Insights -  Surface new opportunities	Increased engagement leads to More spend	Engineering/ Data Science / Data Warehouse	Large
Quarter 4	Actionable Insights -  Integrate with Platform	CTR on improved worflow leads to More spend	Engineering/ Data Science / Data Warehouse	Large

 This is my first time giving a stab at such a complex question. Feedback much appreciated.  

Comments

Can you please elaborate on why do we need separate installment plans for mobile and web? (Looking at Quater 1 and Quater 2 strategy)

Answer 2

Clarification questions: 1. Increase Spend - assume revenue increase with AdWords. 2. Account Engagement - assume means finding and interacting with Accounts in a relationship fashion to eventually bring in as customers and 3. increase the number of accounts in the SMB space. I also assume that SMB is quite broad with small 1 to 2 person mom & pop stores selling cookies to larger 50-100 person operations such as hardware outlets. There will have to be targeted offering for each. For now I will assume the smaller of this up to 10 person business.  Including Bakeries, Auto parts, etc.

 

Who are the customers:   As mentioned will go after small business up to 10 persons. The typical persona would be a Baby Boomer or a Gen X person. They are familiar but may not be too tech savvy. They may be engaged in the day to day operations and not into the Adwords type engagements.

Customer needs: Want to play in the Search segment and get my store in front of the Gen X-Y-Z to increase sales. Want to invest appropriately but not able to take on too much technical challenges and Cloud type of activity.

Prioritize: Get Website up or Get AdWords based on Store Name, Location and Items sold or services offered. Assume year over year growth.

Solutions: The solution will require identification of SMB and engagement to build awareness. This would actually mean in person visits to these stores. It wll require word of mouth and other local community campaigns.

Roadmap:  1Q. Select Geo domain. part of city or suburb with a density of SMB. Do market research on SMBs and if they have Web presence, etc... identify SMBs that are potential for engagement. Establish contact and meet and bring awareness. Host local church or community gathering including raffle. Identify targets. 2Q - Start deployments if not already started in 1Q. Evaluate results and share with the target SMBs. Fine tune strategy. 3Q - Assume metrics on target, finetune as needed and scale up to larger Geo ranges. 4Q - go nationwide and then International for larger impact.

Tradeoffs: there is cost involved to physically engage with SMBs including staff costs. This could eventually be contracted out.

Summary: a very thourough engagement model needs to be build with SMBs to pull into AdWords revenue models. Including direct interaction and trials per selected regions.