Can You Use Google's Marketing Approach To Transform Your Business?

Can You Use Google's Marketing Approach To Transform Your Business?

When we think of Google, we think of either brilliant products (e.g., Search, Maps, Analytics) or brilliant people (e.g., Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin). The cross-pollination of brilliant people and brilliant products naturally lead to brilliant processes, which ultimately form the basis for Google's sustainable competitive advantage.

So what is Google’s real contribution to processes (whether best-practices or next-practices)? Let’s take "marketing" function as an example. Google recently published its prescriptive marketing guide to help companies improve their business outcomes by focusing on the best customers and the critical moments in their journey. The attached presentation highlights key takeaways from Google' marketing guide, "Measure What Matters Most."

McKinsey Quarterly recently featured an article, “How Google breaks through” in which, Lorraine Twohill, Google’s SVP of Global Marketing describes Google’s approach to marketing. According to Lorraine, the core assets that were so important in the first golden age are as important today: a great central thought, great writing and great creativity. McKinsey recently coined Science, Substance, Story, Speed and Simplicity as five core elements of marketing’s new golden age. The essence of Google’s marketing approach is storytelling with substance and authenticity. Marketing to Google is all about having a real sense of purpose and building products and features that have substance and make a meaningful difference in people’s lives.

"How Google breaks through" article has wealth of insights and I strongly recommend reading in its entirety. Here are my favorite concepts:

  • Marketing is “knowing the user, knowing the magic, and connecting the two.” I love this notion. It is so simple, powerful and actionable. Knowing the user means understanding who your consumers are and who your customers are. Not just knowing who they are, but what they need, what are their deep insights and understanding how you can help them. Knowing the magic means knowing what’s in the hearts and minds of your engineers and your product managers and what they’re building. Connecting the two means bringing the magic built by engineers to the world in a way that is relevant, meaningful and compelling to the everyday consumer.
  • Think about the consumer as a human being. What matters in his or her life. If you are going to interrupt her with something that you think is important to her, you have to find a way to tell her about it so that it resonates with her. There has to be a real benefit to her. There has to be real substance.
  • Focus on stories with substance. Google focuses on real-life stories. They emotionally connect with users, “Listen, your life will change because our product will do this.” Or “Your life just got better because now you can have this.” They don’t do the storytelling without substance. Before getting into storytelling, Google team challenge each other with, “Okay, why does the world need this? What is going to change in a person’s life if they have this? What’s unique about this? What’s truly great about it?”
  • Marketing’s role in the company is to really be the champion of the consumer. Marketing is the face of the user internally and the guardian of the user’s best interests and their needs.
  • Impact matters, results matter, tracking matters. The beauty of marketing today is that you can really show the return. The data allows Google to demonstrate impact in a much more transparent way than in the past. It’s measurable and they focus a lot on that. They are very rigorous about the modeling they put in place and the tracking of their campaigns.

The important concepts here can be applied to any company in any industry context. They can transform your thinking as well as transform your business. Do you agree, why or why not?

Sanjiv, missed you at the Managenent Conference. You would have liked Richard Thaler's presentation on behavioral economics.

Sanjiv Karani

Digital Platforms & Ecosystems Evangelist | Value Creation through Innovation & Simplification

9y

Some really interesting insights from Google's latest research on the changing face of B2B marketing. Google partnered with Millward Brown Digital and surveyed 3,000 B2B marketers on their research, purchase habits and use of digital (specifically, search, mobile, and video). In addition, Google analyzed 13 months of clickstream data from Millward Brown Digital's desktop panel. Here is the entire report. https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/the-changing-face-b2b-marketing.html

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Lynda Calhoun

Digital & Product Catalyst | Ignites Brands, Drives Success in Products, Marketing & MarTech

9y

Really enjoyed the read. It seems so simple but difficult for companies to achieve. Thanks for summarizing and sharing!

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Tim Woods

Building Product at TryHackMe

9y

Thanks Sanjiv, good summary.

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Sanjiv Karani

Digital Platforms & Ecosystems Evangelist | Value Creation through Innovation & Simplification

9y

The post originally focused on Google's Customer Journey tool and now has expanded coverage of What, Why and How of Google's marketing approach.

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