Ch. 7 - Business Marketing

Marketing at Google starts with technology and ends with the user, bringing both together in unconventional ways. Google works to demonstrate how its products solve the world's problems--from the everyday to the epic, from the mundane to the monumental. Google is looking to become the premier partner to small businesses globally. Google wants to help small businesses owners become even more successful with their business - from getting online, to running their business, to getting more customers as a Product Marketing Manager for the SMB Marketing team. Keeping your business growing has radically changed in recent years, especially as the economy has been hit so hard. Today, if your business can’t be found on the Internet, you are missing a lot of potential customers, profitable customers. Google introduced a smart, innovative and quite risky business model - Adwords - and the pay per click concept. The risk proved winning, and the innovative business model worked. Still today Adwords is the main source of revenues of Google Inc. Google became a powerhouse with an impressive pipeline of new great products - Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Video, and Gmail. And slim revenues.

Ch. 8 - Segmenting and Targeting Markets

Google is closing in on holding all power over the Internet, Computers, and personal data. They set their eye on several potential markets and have essentially dominated them all. Of course, the Google search engine is their most prized possession, but their efforts in other markets are not going unnoticed. Microsoft and Yahoo have made numerous attempts to impact Google’s power in search engine dominance, but they have fallen short time and time again. Bing and Yahoo are still very mildly used when compared to Google. Its simplicity and ease of use have made it the go-to solution. After years of people getting comfortable with Google, it’s almost impossible for another competitor to take over. Search engines are the most powerful thing on the Internet and Google basically owns the market and will for the foreseeable future. By owning the world’s most commonly used search engine, Google controls all aspects of online marketing. Customers search for products and services through Google every single day. Some keyword phrases receive millions of monthly searches. For Google, that means prime advertising for businesses that want to showcase their services at the top of Google. Everything you find through Google isn’t a paid advertisement though, that would just be cruel. There are two sections when you search on Google. There are paid ads along the top and right side, and there are organic rankings in the middle. For website owners, everything you do for your website will be to impress Google and enhance your organic rankings. If that’s not quick enough for you, those paid advertisements are your next option.

Ch. 11 - Developing and Managing Products

Google is toiling to create some blockbuster successes beyond its Internet search engine. Carl Sjogreen, who led the development of Google Calendar, provided a deep look into how Google develops products during a presentation at The Future of Web Apps Summit.  What follows is a play-by-play of his presentation, which is self-explanatory. Search-engine giant Google has a secret product lab called Google X feverishly developing blue-sky projects such as space elevators, driverless cars and internet-enabled household devices, The New York Times reports. The labs are reportedly run "as mysteriously as the CIA," according to unnamed sources familiar with the project, and housed in two facilities - one in California at the company's headquarters and one in an undisclosed location elsewhere in the country. "They're pretty far out in front right now," Rodney Brooks, a professor emeritus at MIT's computer science and artificial intelligence lab and founder of Heartland Robotics, told the Times. "But Google's not an ordinary company, so almost nothing applies." The lab is reported to be filled with robotics engineers, in spite of the software engineers more commonly employed by the company. But don't get your hopes up: The types of projects cited aren't the sort of thing the company will be releasing anytime soon. Space elevators, for example, are a concept common in science fiction stories and movies. The idea is simple: Ditch the expensive, dangerous rockets for a giant platform that tows anything and everything up a tremendous cable to a platform orbiting at a fixed location around the planet.

Ch. 16 -Integrated Marketing Communications

At the IABC luncheon in Regina, Adam Green, Agency Lead for Google Canada, spoke to us about online marketing. When Google speaks, it’s worth listening. Adam covered a lot of ground in an hour, but the highlights were — think mobile, social and local. Adam pointed out how fast the web has grown and is continuing to grow, “When Google was founded in 1998 about 2% of the world’s population had Internet access. Today, 1 in 4 have access. That’s the same amount that own TVs. And that’s a huge shift.” If you’re building your marketing strategy, the future is a mobile web. And social media should not be ancillary to your online marketing strategy. Adam explained Google’s concept of the Zero Moment of Truth . You may have heard of “the first moment of truth”, a Procter & Gamble term to describe the moment when we stand at the store shelf and choose between all the brands before us. The moment is so important, Procter & Gamble invests millions researching displays and packaging. Google’s Zero Moment of Truth, suggests an equally (perhaps even more) important moment, before we go to the store – when we search for deals or product information online. The importance of that moment is substantiated with a study showing 83% of us have made up our mind before we even enter the store. So as Adam said “if you’re not online, you’ve already lost the battle. This leads to the importance of social media and mobile marketing. Social Media, not only helps your search results, but it also affects the moment of truth. Following a purchase, social media gives us the opportunity to share our opinions, and because of social integration like the Facebook Like button, and Google’s +1, one person’s online review becomes another person’s Zero Moment of Truth. Google, like Facebook, has moved into opening the social graph, so that recommendations to your social media network move outside of your Facebook wall or Google circle. Social is going to appear in everything we do online. The Google +1 and the Facebook Like button put your social recommendations in search, in ads, and on shopping websites. And these recommendations don’t just happen once, They stay there. They are persistent. Google, because of its size, innovation, and market position, has a number of competitive advantages. Google’s competitive advantage go into three main categories consisting of infrastructure, innovative services, and market share. First, Google has an incredibly powerful infrastructure is not easily replicated. Just like Wal-Mart is known for having highly efficient supply chain infrastructure with a massive investment in plant assets and equipment including transport vehicles, enormous warehouse facilities, and high tech inventory systems, Google has a vast technology infrastructure.

 

 

Ch. 10 - Product Concepts

The product concept proposes that consumers will prefer products that have better quality, performance and features as opposed to a normal product. The concept is truly applicable in some niches such as electronics and mobile handsets. Two companies which stand apart from the crowd when we talk about the product concept are Apple and Google. Both of these companies have striven hard on their products and deliver us feature rich, innovative and diverse application products and people just love these brands. For the first time in Google history, nearly all of its applications were redesigned to be more focused, elastic, and effortless. Created in partnership with Jesse Kaczmarek, this redesign establishes a unified and modern visual direction for Google suite of products and became the foundation for the brand’s refresh. About a month ago, shortly after Google surpassed the 40 million user mark and completed its hundredth product feature release, the company finalized its initial feature set and opened its social media platform to the public. Google has released a concept video of a new product it is working on called Project Glass. Apparently the progress is far enough along that the company felt it was safe to share the product in a concept video and gather user feedback on what people would like to see in the hypothetical product.

Chapter 18. Sales Promotion and Personal Selling

It is surprising that Google has become the world’s largest search engine when the promotion strategy of the company relies heavily on viral, or referral, marketing. Google has gained consumer loyalty and in turn Google customers recommend Google to their friends. Its minimal homepage and knack for gaining consumer trust through a “morally superior” advertisement policy. Google promotes its services and products by purchasing its own AdWords internet ads and through its own Google channel on YouTube. An example of Google’s minimal internet advertising strategy was when they released Google Chrome. When it comes to Google Apps, the company has gone a little further in their advertising campaign through the use of television ads, the most notable being those for the Android mobile phone platform, sales promotions, and other public installations. It is safe to assume that Google relies heavily on internet advertising and viral marketing. Google’s reputation and brand has gained clout because of their dedication to simplicity. While Google customers generally do not have to purchase Google products, the company still manages to give the public incentives for their loyalty and promote how superior the Google brand truly is. Google’s massive “Going Google” campaign included a “use promotion” that awarded customers with premiums for their product testimonials. Google also sponsored “a $30 million competition for an unmanned lunar landing. It is easy to say that sales promotions are a little more difficult to pull off for a predominantly internet based company due to the sheer fact that Google offers majority of its products for free. While there Is a very short list of Google’s sales promotions activities, the company has used these seemingly small opportunities to increase brand awareness among consumers.

Ch. 17 - Advertising and Public Relations

As we all may know Google makes most of its revenue from online ads. Google’s ad revenue climbed 16 percent year-over-year, and 5 percent from the previous quarter. That’s because the number of ads it showed went up – 21.6 percent in the case of AdWords and 29.1 percent for its display ads. Google is now making $3 billion a month in advertising — the majority of which comes from little text ads next to search results. In 2000, Google launched a keyword-targeted advertising program called AdWords, revolutionizing the online advertising industry. AdWords made search engine marketing (SEM) effective. AdWords showed ads on Google.com that were related to a person’s specific search. Google disallowed pop-up and pop-under ads of any kind. The success of AdWords allows Google to provide many free services (including its top-ranked search service). In the 20th century, advertisers diversified their advertising across many mediums – such as TV, radio, print, and billboards – to promote their products or services. This diversification is referred to as a marketing mix. As people began spending more time online, the Internet became another channel via which advertisers can market their goods. Advertisers design AdWords ads to target the user’s search (or wants or needs), matching ads to the user’s query. Advertisers fi rst choose keywords that relate to their website or product offerings. Then, when a user enters the same or similar keywords into Google, the advertiser’s ads are shown. Price and other factors also play a part in ad display.A team within the Google[x] group started Project Glass to build this kind of technology, one that helps you explore and share your world, putting you back in the moment.Project Glass is a research and development program by Google to develop an augmented reality head-mounted display (HMD). Project Glass products would display information in smartphone-like format hands-free and could interact with the Internet via natural language voice commands. The prototype's functionality and minimalist appearance (aluminum strip with 2 nose pads) has been compared to Steve Mann's EyeTap.

Ch. 15 - Retailing

Google is a search engine, not a store, but it is increasingly inching into e-commerce with products like its comparison-shopping service, Google Shopping. Shoppers are savvier than ever. They use social recommendations, web searches and smartphone apps to make informed purchase decisions. So how can a retailer stand out and get a shopper’s attention? Retailers can now add promotions to their product listings on Google Shopping to make them stand out. In addition, they can distribute their promotions on other Google properties such as Google Maps for Android and the Google Offers app, and attract shoppers to their store. In a few simple steps retailers can create a promotions list, map it to the right products in Google Shopping and upload to Google Merchant Center.  Our system supports user specific redemption codes and associated reporting, enabling retailers to measure the performance of each promotion. Google has recently changed Google Shopping to require e-commerce companies to pay to be included in shopping results, so product listings are now ads. Inclusion used to be free. Although some retailers agree, and say the move could even help their sales, others are panicking. Some say they will not pay for listings or will include fewer products, which could shrink the selection shoppers see on Google. The move is a way for Google to make more money from retailers, some of its most lucrative advertisers, but it also needs to improve product listings to keep valuable customers from going to Amazon. “Google and Amazon both have the same end goal, to be the destination that people go to to do their product searches, and Amazon’s winning that battle,” said Michael Griffin, founder and chief technology officer of Adlucent, which does search marketing for online retailers and formerly managed Amazon’s paid search.

Ch. 6 - Consumer Decision Making

Consumer behavior is an important consideration when constructing a marketing plan. Businesses that cannot understand how a consumer's mind works will have a more challenging time trying to figure out how to target a campaign that will attract or catch attention. Can the internet search giant distribute market and support hardware? The search giant will sell a phone subsidized by a wireless carrier, probably T-Mobile. The Google-branded Nexus One smartphone is set to launch early January. It's a radical departure for an internet advertising company built on search terms and text ads to enter the low-margin, cut-throat hardware business. Of course this increases the rivalry with apple, as they already compete on browsers and desktop and mobile operating systems. Google’s product will have a long way to go before it can reach the iphone, and of course Google has none of Apple's chops in marketing, retail and customer support, but, analysts and partners say, don't put it past Google to draw on its rich arsenal of brand power and sheer will to disrupt and experiment. Analysts say if Google was serious about selling phones in mass quantities to consumers directly, it would have to quickly ramp up its consumer-marketing efforts.

Ch. 5 - Developing a Global Vision

Google's chief executive stated in Berlin that the company plans to extend its Web television service, Google TV, 1from US viewers to global consumers starting in 2011. Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s largest television manufacturer, said that it will make sets run by Google’s TV android software to compete with Sony and Apple in the market for televisions that can access the internet, movies, shows, and games online. In May 2000, Google launched the first foreign language versions starting with 10 European languages. By September of the same year, it expanded to include Chinese, Korean and Japanese.
It opened its first international office in Tokyo in August 2001, and in October 2004, it opened an office in Dublin, Ireland, It's workers were multilingual Googlers that serviced its customers across multiple time zones and languages. Google bought android in 2005, even though they didn't announce that they were going to join the mobile device market. The advantage for Google of developing an operating system, rather than a Google phone, was that many manufacturers could adopt the platform. Motorola, Samsung and LG were among the first brands to use the Android platform. As of Sept 2012 Google owns 81.8% of the search engine market share. Followed by bing with 8.37%.

Ch. 4 - The Marketing Environment

There are three key elements to the marketing environment which are the micro-environment, the macro-environment, and internal environment.These key elements are important because, marketers build internal and external relationships. Marketers need to assess and evaluate the internal business/corporate environment and external environment, which is subdivided in to micro and macro.Google is a Geocentric company. Google managers are recruited from all over the world and that power is centralized in the United States. It has been designed to serve Google customers across multiple time zones and languages spanning Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Google's target markets are established business advertisers. They designed a searchable database and matrix to favor big business and established merchants with brand recognition. They've developed viral marketing and have attracted the attention of all sources of media for promotions both paid and free. This has provided them with a top dollar, revenue earning advertising medium yet disguised as an Internet search engine to the web surfer. They continue to develop more Internet advertising opportunities and technology to increase revenues from advertisers.

Ch. 3 - Ethics & Social Responsibility

Running a socially responsible and ethical company is often the best thing for a business. By having a company that stands for ethical values, you show people integrity and empathy. More and more people are choosing to buy products from companies that are socially responsible rather than buying products from a company that damages the environment. More and more smart consumers are switching to socially responsible products. Majority of people would rather work for a company that stands for something benefiting humanity as a whole. Employees in ethical business are sometimes willing to work harder, and with more passion for the same pay or even less. Businesses that are ethical and socially responsible often find that other businesses come to partner with them before they come to partner with other less socially responsible companies.

The Google founders have a desire to promote the welfare of others, so they gave $1 billion in seed money with the objective of tackling poverty, global warming, and diseases. The Google company makes the world a better place: It is environmentally friendly, it has significant minority and women representation at all levels, and it is doing very well financially. Google donated $1,000,000 to Haiti. They also offer free advertising to nonprofits through their Google Grants Program. They also have an extensive list of free or low-cost services for nonprofits and universities through their “Technology-Driven Philanthropy” campaigns. An ethical violation that Google does is that they not only gather vast amounts of personal data, they aspires to global domination - and that's creepy, writes John Naughton. .

Ch. 1 - Overview of Marketing (Brief History and Mission Statement)

Google began in 1996 as a project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. While studying in Stanford University California, Larry and Sergey came up with a plan to make a search engine that ranked websites according to the number of websites that linked to that site, and ultimately came up with the Google we have today. The domain Google.com was registered in September 14 1997 and Google corporation was a formed a year later in September 1998. Google is a billion dollar organization that exists not only to satisfy it's searchers but it has changed the world allowing us to process several hundred million search queries a day, from every country around the world. I am committed to follow the Google company for the next fifteen weeks, and i am also committed to providing an informal yet professional statement each week after reading and applying the elements from chapters of the book.

Ch. 2 - Strategic Planning for Competitive Advantage

Effective Strategic planning is one of the most important steps a company needs to take in order to have a competitive advantage in today's marketplace. Google has been and continues to be the most dominant search tool on the web. Google serves three primary market segments: end users, advertisers and partner websites. Google does not charge users for searches, Google collects a fee on an advertiser when ever a user clicks on an advertisement. The Google search engine has continued to grow at a fast rate since its initial launch in 1998. Out of all the Google products, Google's search engine is the dominant business of the company. Google's long-term objectives are to deliver new advertising technology, enable users to search a larger base of information, and to develop tracking mechanisms.The employees at Google work 70% of their time on the core business, 10% for creativity and innovation freedom, and 20% on adjacent areas like Gmail and Google search desktop.

Creating a well thought strategic plan starts with a vision, since the day that Google started Larry Page and Sergey Brin have surely turned their vision into a cause. Think Google has reached their destination.