NATURE OF BUSINESS OF GOOGLE
MARKETING STRATEGY
The Google’s business has been successful globally, this is due to its effective and unbeatable marketing mix. Google’s marketing mix has been strategically designed so carefully that it can support the growth of an original pure online business. The uniqueness of Google’s marketing mix has its own distinct approaches because of the company’s diversification. Google has transformed from being purely web-based business, and now it has developed and expanded to provide goods such as Nexus smartphones and Chromecast media players. Its marketing mix strength comes from its huge variety of product lines, a reasonable pricing strategy and abundant product distribution, along with cost-effective promotions.
GOOGLE’S PRODUCTS
Google’s marketing mix includes a variety array of products. The company has developed so much and diversified. Google’s products are basically grouped into the following lines:
1. Web-based products
2. Operating systems
3. Desktop apps
4. Mobile apps
5. Hardware products
6. Services
The varieties of Google’s products is an indication of the firm’s strategy of growth and expansion. Using product development as a significant intensive growth strategy for the company to keep on creating and upgrading new products to expand its business, at the same time boosting its market share for the already existing products such as Google AdWords, Nexus and others.
PLACE/DISTRIBUTION IN GOOGLE’S MARKETING MIX
Since Google is known for its search engine, it is known that the place or distribution factor of Google’s is the generally the mostly-online business. The distribution of the mostly-online firms would use the Internet to allocate their products. The company’s products are highly acquirable around the world via the Internet. Every user or customer can just download the Google apps anywhere as long as there is Internet connection. On that account, the company uses the Internet as its distribution mechanism to connect with the target user/customers. As for the goods like Nexus smartphones, the company uses retailers as the core outlets. Big retailers mostly include Nexus models as a share of their consumer electronics offerings.
The success of the marketing mix also comes from the Google’s place/distribution strategy’s contribution. The universality of the Internet heighten the firm’s efficiency of distributing its digital products. The decision of core retailers as outlets for goods like Nexus also raises Google’s ability to connect with large populations of target consumers.
GOOGLE’S PROMOTIONS
Google’s global popularity influence the company a lot in terms of the promotions of the brands. There’s not much Google can do for its promotion, as the company are already popular that they don’t need to do extensive promotions campaigns, and a minimal promotions is sufficient enough. Google’s market is dominant compare to others, even though the company are at the top, but it sometimes promotes its products like online advertisements for Gmail for Work are used.
Google’s popularity causes minimal promotion, that the company only spends so little for promotion. For that reason, the company have more funds available for other areas of the business such as for research and development or product development.
GOOGLE’S PRICES AND PRICING STRRATEGIES
This factor in the Google’s marketing mix includes a different pricing strategies. The diverse kinds of products available needs a different pricing strategies to satisfy the needs of the consumers. The most prominent pricing strategies in Google’s business are:
1. Freemium pricing
2. Market-oriented pricing
3. Penetration pricing
4. Value-based pricing
The first pricing strategy which is the freemium, this includes giving free products, but selling premium or add-on features of the product. For products like Gmail, the company uses freemium strategy which it is because Gmail has a premium version for business. The market-oriented pricing strategy decides prices according to market conditions. This strategy were used for products like Chromecast.
On the contrary, the penetration pricing strategy includes low prices that let the company to gain market share regardless of big competitors. This pricing strategy is used for products like the Google Fiber Internet and cable television service that are competing with the Comcast. Lastly, the value-based pricing strategy decides the prices according to the customer’s perceived value of the product. This pricing strategy is used for AdWords online advertising service, in which the advertisers could place bids according to their perceptions of the significance of the advertisements.
GOOGLE’S PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
There are more than 140 Google products and services that they produced. Below are some of the products and services of Google and its description:
Products & Services
Description
Admob
Advertising platform for mobile phones
Adsense
Serves ads on your website
Adwords
Advertising tool to increase website traffic
Alerts
Sends email notifications when there are new results (web pages, newspaper articles, blogs, images, etc) for your chosen search term
Analytics
Tool to analyse website statistics
Android
Google's mobile operating system
Blogger
Tool for creating and publishing blogs
Bookmarks
Tool that allows you to access your browser bookmarks from any computer/browser.
Books
Search engine for full-text books
Calendar
Online personal calender
Code
Developer tools, APIs and resources
Cardboard
Virtual reality (VR) platform which includes apps and cardboard headmounted viewers
Chrome
Google's web browser
Chromebook
Google’s laptop
Classroom
Platform for teachers and students
Cloud
Google’s cloud computing service
Crisis Map
Maps for crisis situations showing emergency information relating to weather, evacuation routes, shelter locations, power outages etc (mainly U.S.)
Docs
Platform for collaboratively creating and editing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, all in the browser.
Drawings
Tool for creating diagrams and flow charts
Drive
Online platform for storing and sharing documents
Earth
Tool showing 3D views of the earth
Expeditions
Virtual reality education tool
Finance
Business information website
Forms
Tool for creating forms and surveys
Gmail
Google's email service
Google+ (Google Plus)
Google’s social network
Groups.
Group conversations through a web interface or e-mail
Hangouts
Chat messaging service with video and telephone capabilities
Image search
Google's image search engine
Keep
Note-taking application for mobile
Maps
Map tool for directions and finding locations
News
News aggregator provided and operated by Google
Nexus
Google’s mobile phone
Person Finder
Tool to help people find each other after a natural or humanitarian disaster
Photos
Cloud storage for photos, with automatic organization tool built in
Play
Google’s online app store
Public Alerts
Alert system for natural disasters
Scholar
Search engine for academic papers
Search
Google’s search engine
Sheets
Tool to create spreadsheets
Sites
Tool to create websites and group wikis
Slides
Tool to create presentations
Spaces
Content-sharing app for small groups
Translate
Tool that translates text, web pages, and files
Trends.
Shows how often a particular search term is entered relative to total search volume, across the world
Vault
Archiving tool
Video Search
Search engine for videos
Wallet
For paying for Google’s online products and services
Youtube
Online video platform
Source: https://myshadows.org
TYPE OF INFORMATION SYSTEM USED BY GOOGLE
Google is a very dynamic and innovative country which uses not just one but more than a dozen information systems to run the organization. Some of the common ones we know are the gmail.com which stores data and we can share data to others. Google drive where you store heavy files and so on. Also, Google helps the users in getting the most relevant information. The search engine giant has not confined it; instead it came up with innovative projects like Google maps, Google images, Google earth etc.
Google doesn’t charge users for using these technologies. To generate revenue Google developed two flagship programs by name AdWords and AdSense. Ad Words makes it possible for the businesses to place their ads on Google and its associates at a nominal price of 25 cents per thousand impressions; whereas Ad Sense is for the advertising to particular users and also to share the revenue with associates
In addition, Google has given its employees the flexibility to choose from a variety of computers and operating systems to work on and it also made sure that employees can gain access to information regarding the projects undertaken by the company at different locations via the intranet; this move helped employees to coordinate with their colleagues who are on the same project or to connect with those people who share the same vision and ideas.
Furthermore, Google also encourages open source software’s by using them. It also encourages students to develop new software’s by providing with internship programs. This way the company can get new ideas which can be useful. Google develops common applications like Google Apps Which can be used for both internal and external purposes also. The search engine algorithm is updated continuously so that information retrieval could become more accurate.
Everything we make is protected with powerful built-in security technologies that help detect and block threats like spam, malware, and viruses from ever reaching you. And we share these security technologies with partners and competitors alike, raising industry standards that help keep everyone safer online.
The cloud infrastructure protects data 24/7 is very unique .From custom-designed data centers to undersea fiber cables that transfer data between continents, we operate one of the world’s most secure and reliable cloud infrastructures and it is continuously monitored to protect your data and make it available when you need it. In fact, we distribute data across multiple data centers, so that in the event of a fire or natural disaster, it can be automatically and seamlessly shifted to stable and secure locations.
G-mail offers other protections, like sending alerts when a potentially risky email comes through, letting you manually “Report spam” for suspicious emails, and confidential mode, which makes your messages expire after a set period of time and removes the option for recipients to forward, copy, download, or print your message. Google builds build special features – like smart filters, site blockers, and content ratings – into many of our products to make them more enjoyable for your family.
Google created YouTube Kids to be a safer environment for kids around the world to explore their interests through online videos. We make it easier for you to curate fun family experiences through a suite of parental controls; set a timer to put limits on how long your kids can spend watching videos. Allow your kids to watch only collections of channels selected by trusted third parties or the YouTube Kids team. The SafeSearch setting is designed to block explicit images, videos, and websites from Google Search results to avoid pornography and graphic violence. However, it is not a perfect tool and you may still find explicit results. In those cases, you can report it – that kind of feedback helps us make the SafeSearch setting better for everyone.
Also, Google Wi-Fi helps you make sure your kids are seeing appropriate content. To help avoid the bad stuff, Google Wi-Fi offers advanced site blocking to automatically block millions of explicit websites, like sites with pornography or graphic violence, from your kids’ devices. You can also schedule a Wi-Fi pause during an important moment like homework time, outdoor time, or bedtime. By using the labels feature that comes with Google Wi-Fi, you can even apply different filters and pauses for each device on your network.