The creation of Google has led to restructuring of all businesses globally. It is a spectacle of web brilliance for everyone and is undisputedly the most efficient platform for marketers and a paragon to most businesses.
Not only serving as the most competent and most efficient search engine, it is also one of the most systematic and well-planned businesses running worldwide. Thus, it serves as a perfect example for companies who want to be prosperous at such great levels. To be aware of what makes it so successful, one needs to understand how Google works as a business unit, not as a search engine or a marketing manifesto.
GOOGLE AS A BUSINESS:
In their book ‘How Google Works’, executive chairman and ex-CEO Eric Schmidt and former SVP of Products Jonathan Rosenberg share how behind this beautifully put-together machine there are the smart, creative employees and superior products which help their company to triumph through the ever-changing corporate and technological environment. They talk about Google’s leadership in the software driven industry and how it got to the position it enjoys today. In this article we will go through the secrets behind such a successful company which were presented in this book.
The concepts Eric and Jonathan write about in their book are valuable lessons and can be applicable to almost every business out there. You may find these concepts to be familiar from successful business journals you might have read at some point, but rarely are they so explicitly and clearly summarized as they are in the book. In this article we’ll go through the pointers mentioned in the book with regards to how Google works.
What has changed?
Today, thanks to the advent of technology, everything is fast paced and moving at the speed of light. This makes it hard for businesses to stay caught up. Technology has not only affected online businesses but also has transformed essentially every business sector because of it. With anything and everything available with only a few clicks of a mouse or a few presses on a keyboard over the internet, it is possible for anyone to get information.
Not only is the entire world’s information available online, but the popular use of smart phones all over the world means that anyone can reach anyone else from anywhere in the planet. This change gives companies an excellent opportunity to promote and market their brands and be successful. However, this same change allows their competitors to benefit in the same way. We live in an information age – what information is available to one person is also accessible by another person. Thus, in order to make one’s business stand out, it is imperative that one has a certain edge over their competitor. Every new firm in the industry is likely to both benefit from and suffer the consequences of the accelerating transformation of technology. ‘How Google Works’ explains how a company can get an edge over another and how it can face those melting barriers which stood strong before. These answer to these problems range from unique products to smart, creative, and innovative ideas.
Unique products:
Google tends to follow the rule ‘the user is in charge.’ We have witnessed a power shift from the producers to the consumers, which has made it impossible for companies to market and sell a mediocre product. Consumers, when presented with a wide range of products, tend to become selective and choose the product of the highest quality. The online blogs and information available post reviews of products, which means that a couple of bad reviews will likely eclipse any benefits of the clever marketing. Therefore, it is hugely important that companies make sure that their product is of high quality and is unbeatable by the competition. That’s what Google does; they make sure that their user experiences the best of their services and are wholly satisfied with it.
Smart creatives:
In their book, Eric and Jonathan emphasize the fact that ‘leaders do not delegate hiring.’ Hiring the best and most creative of employees is one of the biggest factors for businesses to be successful. Having a team of smart and perceptive employees is a key to moving forward and growing as a business. The CEOs of the companies should invest time in hiring and providing employees with an excellent working environment, giving them the opportunity to thrive and be productive.
Innovative ideas:
Innovation is central to any kind of business. It should be encouraged and promoted by the leaders. Google tends to introduce new technologies every now and then. The engineers working for Google are given free rein to experiment and test new features without the pressure of failing. CEOs of other companies should also encourage innovation and not be so afraid of failing once or twice that they hold back their employees from experimenting a new product or service and potentially discovering your next ground-breaking innovation.
Focus on strengths:
Companies often tend to diversify – this in and of itself is not a bad idea, but it can lead to losing focus and attention. Their energy becomes divided among a million products and a million different marketing tactics for those products. This does not favor the business in anyway, including in terms of increasing revenue or growth. It is better to focus on what they do best and to do it well, exploring it to the next level. Google is constantly on a quest for increasing speed on their search engine. Four years ago, the average search took approximately 3 seconds. Now it’s down to about 0.2 seconds. This shows that successful companies never stop exploring and exploiting what they do the best with ongoing research and development, thereby serving their customers (or users) with a next-level product or service. The confidence of the consumers for any company should be unbreakable and sacred to them, because once you break it or give your customer reason to distrust your product, you’ve opened yourself to risk of lost business.
GOOGLE AS A MARKETING PLATFORM:
Google+ Hangout:
Google+ Hangouts allows for video conferencing among up to ten people at the same time. It generates a sort of a social media platform where people interact through updating their statuses or through video chats.
Companies have figured out the importance of Google Hangouts in terms of marketing their product to consumers. It dictates a new trend in marketing where marketers can reach out to countless audience members and invite them to participate in things like a Q&A session, or simply to interact and humanize their company and brand.
Gmail:
Gmail, as in Google Mail, is one of the oldest form of marketing via email. Email campaigns led by marketers to promote their product never get old. Most of the internet users are much more active on email than on any other social media website. It is still a primary form of communication.
The added features of additional tabs on the Gmail inbox has led marketers to worry about their email campaigns, however. The new Gmail inbox now includes tabs that read “Primary,” “Social,” “Promotions,” “Updates,” and “Forums.” This has allowed the users to divide emails and send promotional emails to the “Promotional” inbox instead of the “Primary” inbox. The introduction of the new tabbed layout has caused a stir among email marketers, as users spend less time in reading emails from the promotional tab when compared to the time they spend reading from the primary tab. However the upside to this is that if marketers have a high cluster of highly captivated recipients, then this tactic of segmenting emails is more of a benefit to marketers, since now the users will be spending more time reading those emails and not being distracted by other promotional campaigns. Also, if you convince your recipients to move your email to the primary tab, then in the future any email from you will continue to be delivered to the primary tab.
In recent years Google has added Gmail Sponsored Promotional (GSP) ads, which are like the usual emails except with promotional ads added. It is a very cost-effective way of marketing. You simply need to be extremely careful with your targeting and segmenting of the audience accordingly – also, make sure that your message is very persuading so that the user will click it and eventually visit your website. Moreover, GSP can be used by any advertiser as long as they have a Google rep to activate their account.
YouTube:
YouTube is the second most used search engine, after Google. It is a huge part of online marketing and if a company is not using it, then they are missing out on one of the most effective marketing tools online. This is because customers are much more likely to watch a video on your product rather then read some boring description about it.
One could use YouTube to create and upload videos to connect with people or one’s customers. The video could be about anything, whether it be showcasing your product, customer endorsements, interviews of the CEOs or customers, or an informative video on how to use the product. YouTube videos create a lot of traffic in the search engine, so if used effectively, YouTube could allow marketers greater opportunities to reach a wide range of customers and build more market reach.
Because all of the above media are a product of Google, using them is likely to gain companies the best search engine visibility and promote their brands to a much more extensive audience.
GOOGLE AND ITS FEATURES:
On average, every single person who uses the internet is likely to use Google search engine at least once every day; nonetheless, not everyone is aware of all the features offered by Google. It has acquired more than 150 companies since it launched and up to eight companies so far in 2015. Google is continuing to introduce fresh features. Google now processes over 40,000 search queries every second on average (visualize them here), which translates to over 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide.
How it is so effective, one may ask? The answer to this question is that Google holds a dominant power over its copyrights. They have bought up the domains of any of the misspellings one may type when searching for Google. For instance, if you search for gooogle.com, goggle.com, or anything relatively close to the correct spelling, it will automatically take you to the home page of Google. You can also reach Google by typing 466453.com, which is the old phone spelling of Google. Their homepage loads faster than any other website, which shows their commitment to their brand and their users.
When we talk about Google as being international, we mean international in the most literal sense of the word. They have hired a large network of translators from all over the world to make their search engine more user friendly and accessible to people all over the world.
Thus Google’s dedication to grow, regardless of boundaries, has led to its success. Instead of setting a primary goal of generating revenue, they believe the most beneficial route is to spread and develop their services, which in return guarantees a nice profit. Their motto of ‘Don’t be evil’ is the driving force of their triumph on all fronts. The book ‘How Google Works’ contains several strategies that you can utilize in your own business in order to emulate Google’s success as an online business.
About The Author
