What is Google telling your customers about you?

When someone wants to know more about a product or service, especially high consideration products, they often go straight to Google to see what the web has to say about it. That’s because, while your website may have a lot of great things to say, people expect marketing speak on a corporate site and therefore don’t really value it as a trusted source of information.  They do however trust Google to give a more broad, somewhat unbiased, view of whatever they are searching for.

As a marketer and understanding how people turn to Google, I am often amazed at how few companies take the time to Google the name of their own company and see what pops up on the first page of results.

CashforGold made this mistake a few months ago when they ran their high priced Super Bowl ads.  They have since started cleaning up their online reputation, but at the time, the first page Google results had some pretty negative things to say about the company.  That’s a lot of money to spend on an ad, only to have it shot down on the Google results page.

With the huge growth of social media, people will have access to even more information and opinions about a products and company then ever before.  And Google never forgets.  Its important more than ever that companies are aware of what is being said about them and their products on the internet.  It takes a proactive approach to keep up.

Companies should also understand that marketing programs, both online and offline, need to work together.  They need to function as a whole to accomplish the overall objectives.  Work to find a balance, because focusing one and forgetting others, may prove disastrous.

And if you haven’t Google your company lately, do it now.

One of our favorite types of clients is B2B technology for a few of reasons.

1. There is always a differentiator of some type.  Delivering certain functionality means trade-offs were made in development.
2. The focus is often on lead generation which is quite measurable.
3. The decision process is made by a natural community where numerous points of interaction exist.

Our approach is to understand who would be most interested in your product’s advantage and then surround that conversation network with the appropriate proof points.

Technology is not omnipotent, there are always weaknesses to be found in the category leader.   For instance databases may optimize for transaction processing or ecommerce platforms may focus on branded sites.  These decisions allow new entrants to damn them with faint praise while they focus on analytics or supporting multiple channels.

The ultimate marketing objective with any company is to clearly understand the value proposition, positioning, and personality of the brand.  These three elements define the sweet spot and can be defined as follows.

• Value Proposition: states in financial terms what the buyer is getting from a product.
• Positioning: defines the market and offers the proof points as to why the product is the right choice
• Personality: outlines the manner in which the company and product portray itself.

These are not engineering issues or ‘build it and they will come’ but rather branding concepts that underpin the most succesful companies.  They answer: “Why is this product important to me?”