Googles Marketing Efforts Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Googles Marketing Efforts - Essay Example 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 in 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 the 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, the key competitors of Google include Yahoo and MSN. Yahoo is mainly devoted to the search engines besides having a 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 me ntion 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 to 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. The 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. The company has been doing co-marketing with reputed brands like Dell, Palm etc.