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.