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We had a chat this morning about how much crap marketing is compared to cold hard development and someone said "Well, look at Google, they didn't do any marketing?"
Didn't they?
What about showing it to their academic friends?
What about getting feedback?
What about doing the Yahoo deal?
What about Omid Kordestani?
What was the Yahoo deal? I've read 'The Search' , but I that chapter in Google's life isn't familiar to me.
What about showing it to their academic friends?
I didn't think you can count unconscious marketing as real marketing. Showing your mates a cool new search project isn't marketing in my mind. You can't design a new search engine unconsciously, so therefor you can't market unconsciously.
Therefore Google didn't doing any marketing in their early days.
Google was popular with academics and some geeks but not massive. When Google replaced Alta Vista as the Yahoo back fill (i.e. when you don't find a search in Yahoo human category listings, it feeds you other things in a hope to make you happy) it got exposure to millions of people. Yahoo eventually ditched it when people were leaving Yahoo and just using Google, but it was too late.
I started using google I think in late 98 early 99??? I really do think it self marketed..... no other crap... Just the search... it loaded in seconds, and the engine worked way better then anything else out there.
I told everyone I knew about it ....... not just the 5-7 textbook 'good experience' yardstick.. everyone. and I think a lot of other people did the same.
The "Yahoo! deal" was when Yahoo! didn't actually run it's own search technology, and instead licensed a search engine from other suppliers. It was AltaVista for a while, then Google. A lot of commentators (and I) believe that Yahoo! created its biggest competitor by doing that deal with Google, and to think Yahoo! *paid* Google for the searches...
...sorry, just to complete that answer: so the "Yahoo! deal" wasn't thought of as 'marketing' at Google. For them it was their biggest single deal in revenue and traffic terms. Having a little "powered by Google" logo on the Yahoo! search result page turned out to be more important than the... umm... i think it was about US$5M
p.a. revenue from the deal though!
Like success, it all comes down to how you define it. Marketing to me is creating products and delivering them in a way that lets customers buy them easily by giving them lots of value. To others, Marketing is promotions and advertising.
Promotions and advertising are tools to present value. I don't think they define marketing.
OK, sorry to make this a marketing defition topic, but how does media go with Pinko marketing. Press releases suck, but media "relationships" are good.
My old friend Kellie Larabee says that media and PR are at the same level as marketing, not below it.
Pinko marketing does not include anything "push"...if that's what you mean. It's all INreach.
So no awareness at all? No pushing what you are to the media?
Awareness is 'created' by the people who you are delighting so much that they spread the word for you.
The media will find you...believe me. Zero PR at Riya.com and we made it into Newsweek, Business Week, WSJ, Wired, Business 2.0, etc.
But Riya went to Demo. What is DEMO, it's certainly not inreach?
Demo has lots of PR. It's the main reason you go. So I don't think you can say it had zero PR.
I just got an email from LinkedIn. It said someone wanted to connect with me. The only option I was given was 'Accept Invitation'. This is not pushing for a sale, but it's pushing for futher LI lock in.
I consider that being pushy. And I don't like it.
We had lots of articles written about us prior to DEMO...
but, yes, Walt Mossberg heard about us at DEMO
Seriously, though...it was hardly a blip on the radar when we appeared in the WSJ. Our article in Wired generated far more traffic...and that was very early on (no PR)
Google does marketing, for sure
Look at the last Australian Day... They said "we gonna take HD pictures of Sydney during the AD, would you like to do something special for our camera??", then it was on the SMH and everybody talked about it.
the cost of this marketing op was probably quite small. And the generated buzz quite high. I remember that it was on the news in France. And the marketing director of Google France was thinking of doing the same for the french national day.
If one looks carefully ayt goog's history, you will see that they have began cross promoting their own products within thier various propities.. like when using google.com landing page, you will see a small promo on gmal.. once into gmail you have auto links to calendar, d&S and other stuff..
They give out a lot of freebies as are part of their converstaion strategy... remember the Google Pen at ASK.com running out ? or Kirb's misery with checkout and he got a lot of google goodies ??
More important- they tlisten to everything on the web that is said about them... and take action when required.
To answer the Question, yes they market in a very sutble and meaningfull manner !!
more info beting cut here...
me? I think they just make dead simple products the best on the market and for free - look how gmail beta took off. do something well enough and people will talk
Isn't seeding an idea amongst pioneers and key consumers considered evangelist marketing? And the idea of giving things away for free (google's printing) to generate buzz is pretty common. As is gmail's initial 'invite your friends'.
Re-visit that idea of Media Partnerships going along with Pinko Marketing... There is a local performance artist in my city and I have a videoblog - he has neither the time nor resources to do much pre-publicity for his event, and the traditional media seem to only give him coverage on the day of and day after, so he turns to the bloggers. We have a partnership with him. He keeps us in the loop, and we post his stuff, and our audience overlaps with his audience - the passionate minority who are looking for it, not just friends and neighbors.
