Googles Marketing Efforts - Essay Example

Google’s Marketing Efforts Marketing a product or services requires analysis of the market and the competitors in order to come out with a sound marketing strategy. In the globalised economy marketing efforts have acquired a prominent place towards promotion of the brand and the sales. In general companies tend to devote huge amount of their budgets towards promotional campaigns. Establishing brand equity and being known amongst the existing as well as potential markets is considered an important aspect of the promotional campaigns. Renowned and well established companies like Dell, Intel, Microsoft etc. are always there on the front pages of newspapers, on our television screens and magazine supplements. That’s considered a prerequisite for their survival in these competitive times. But it is quite intriguing that a company like Google prefers to remain low key in the marketing efforts. It is not there on the electronic or print media as often as it should be in order to establish its brand equity. Brand identity forms a key strength in today’s context, where visibility in media and easy identification features help in propagating the business prospects of the company. It is indeed quite surprising that Google, basically a service providing company, has yet again overtaken many well established product identity companies like, Microsoft, GE, Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, IBM etc. According to Millward Brown’s 2008 ranking of brands1, Google is the topmost brand with a brand value of $m 86,057. Google has worked on its brand quite consistently is apparent from the fact that the brand value has undergone a change of about 30% from the previous years. interestingly this change was about 77% last year. On the other hand Yahoo ranks a distant 62nd with a brand value of $m11, 465 registering a decline of 13 percent. It is equally interesting that last year Yahoo figured at 42nd position with a brand value of $m13, 201 and at that time as well Yahoo registered a decline of 6% in its brand value. These statistics raise quite a few questions about the marketing efforts of Google and the manner in which the company is not only able to retain its position year after year, without an apparent change in strategy. Though Google is known mainly for it search engine, but there are a number of other services like, Google mail, Google Earth, Google News, Google Finance etc. being offered to the net-community. The concept came up in mid nineties when Stanford university graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page stuck upon the idea of providing a search engine which could return relevant information without wasting much time (Datamonitor, 2007). Though there are a number of players in the fray giving competition to Google, but the key competitors of Google include Yahoo and MSN. Yahoo is mainly devoted on the search engines besides having stake in other services as well. But for MSN, the primary focus area is the software development and of course the hotmail. It is worthwhile here to mention that Gmail too has started gaining popularity as well amongst the net-community. While interviewing David Lawee, the then vice-president of marketing for Google (GOOG), BusinessWeek's Silicon Valley bureau Chief Robert Hof, was able to extract quite a few interesting responses regarding the marketing efforts of Google (Hof, 2007). Some of the salient features of Google’s marketing efforts can be pointed out as; i. The company is always thinking about the user’s requirements and company’s products, instead of devoting much time on establishing ‘brand equity’. ii. The company believes in being innovative not only in the manner products and services are created, but also in the manner things are organized in the company. iii. Company considers it an opportunity when other brands like YouTube appear on the horizon, and is always on the lookout to find ways to collaborate with such companies, in order to reach out to a wider market. iv. Company has been doing co-marketing with reputed brands like Dell, Palm etc. v. Google is the biggest user of its own products. For example, the company runs advertisements on all of its properties. This serves twin purpose for the company. Besides making use of the products and services, the company becomes more knowledgeable about such products and services and accordingly tries to come out with better solutions on the first available opportunity. vi. Trust, humility, responsibility, innovation and user focus are the thrust areas for the company. Company’s philosophy is ‘the more successful you are, the more humble you have to become’. vii. Google believes in being unconventional in its approach. It is worthwhile here to mention that in order to make an impact, the company must be able to understand market dynamics. Therefore, realizing the fact that the unconventional approach is not only helping the company in broadening the customer base, but it is also helping the company in strengthening its market position, company has continued with this approach. viii. Google considers the biggest challenge for itself is ‘to outdo itself’. Benchmarking is considered an important strategy my marketing people. Therefore, having the full knowhow about the benchmarking helps Google to make better bargains in the forthcoming programs and products. ix. Google has kept a simple, clean, clear, minimalistic user interface2. This no-frills user interface makes searching all the more fast and easier to load. It is therefore amply clear that the marketing efforts of Google as a product as well as a company have been quite at variance from the one’s taught in management schools. Perhaps that’s the reason that Google has created a niche for itself in such a short span. Though the company has a pool of talented people analyzing and advising the company on strategic matters, but it will certainly help the company if; a. The company also starts focusing on the social domain networking as well. It is no secret that such networking sites are now becoming hugely popular as a means of sharing thoughts and ideas; as a discussion forum and often as a way to ease oneself by expressing all the anger and hatred on the net. Such a network, with the patronage of Google is bound to become powerful enough for times to come. b. Building upon product integration is another key area where Google can prove itself. In fact, globalization calls for modular development, with inputs from all around the world. Therefore, product integration field can be developed on these very lines. References: 1. Datamonitor (2007). Google-Company Profile. Datamonitor Americas, NY 2. Hof, Robert (2007). Q&A with Google's VP of Marketing. BusinessWeek. Available online at http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_32/b4045417.htm (April 15, 2009) 3. Miillward Brown (2008). 2008 Brandz-The 100 Most Powerful Brands. Available online at http://www.millwardbrown.com/Sites/optimor/Media/Pdfs/en/BrandZ/BrandZ-2008-Report.pdf (April 15, 2009) 4. VERTYGO TEAM (n.d.). Google Marketing Strategy-Analysis. Available online at http://www.vertygoteam.com/google_marketing_strategy.php (April 15, 2009) Read More