Morettini on Management

General Management and Marketing Advice for Software and Tech Companies

Tag: online advertising

Is Google Actually Good or Evil?

I know this has been a topic that’s been discussed at length by many other folks. But a recent personal experience caused me to explore it further.

I recently transitioned my Blog from Google’s Blogger platform to WordPress.

Like most software transitions, it was a bit of work, and somewhat painful. Thankfully being from the software industry I have a bit more technical savvy than the average Blogger. I’m sure there are more than a few non-techie Bloggers who were pulling their hair out as a result of the very same transition that I went through – Because Google has made us do it.

By the way, I couldn’t have gotten through this painful transition to Wordpress without great support from my Hosting Provider, ITX Design. If you are looking for a new webhost, I recommend them highly. Good prices and GREAT technical support. Special thanks to Melissa and Paul in ITX Design tech support; I’d have been up a river without a paddle without their expert assistance. Now back to the discussion of Google’s true colors.

Is software really ever free?

I’d been Blogging using the Google Blogger platform since February 2005. If I’m not mistaken, Google had just acquired Blogger, or did so shortly thereafter. At the time, you could already host your Blog on Google’s Blogspot hosting service for free, but Google seemed happy to allow you to also host it on your own website if you wished. For anyone using a Blog to help build a long-term presence on the web, including increasing SEO on your website, there really was no choice in the matter. You have to host it yourself.

I always wondered why Google was doing stuff like this–providing software for free, with no apparent major return on investment. As a software executive, I always found “free” software from a commercial enterprise to be an oxymoron. I understood how Google would benefit if my site was hosted on Blogspot; Google serves ads on your Blog in return for hosting it for free, and I presume they are also gaining additional market intelligence by tracking visitor activity and behavior on Blogspot Blogs. But what did they gain from allowing their software to be used by people who were hosting their own Blogs?

Apparently, not enough.

Google’s weak excuse

Google announced that they would no longer support FTP (and therefore self-hosted Blogger Blogs), the venerable protocol used for modifying content since nearly the beginning of Internet time. I really shouldn’t be surprised, since about three years ago all the new features for Blogger have been available only to Blogspot-hosted installations. I found their stated rationale for their decision was really curious. Google’s statement indicated that FTP was soaking up an outsized percentage of their resources. HUH?

Sorry Google, but it’s a bunch of HOOEY. Let’s face it; FTP couldn’t possibly be that big of a strain on their systems. It’s ridiculous. First of all, only a small number of Blogger Blogs are self-hosted; the great majority of them are hosted on blogspot. And there aren’t more well-tested or understood protocols around than FTP.

I guess from Google’s perspective they could justify their actions by saying that they are eliminating a “free ride” for people who aren’t providing enough in return for their use of Blogger. But I have a big problem with that–no one forced them to offer Blogger as a self-hosted platform to begin with. They never said it was “introductory” in nature, or gave any indication that they abandon users in the future. Besides, what about all that “Do No Evil” nonsense, which is supposedly the company motto?

Was this evil?

So was this “evil”? That is in the eye of the beholder, of course. Evil may be too strong a word in this case–but this certainly wasn’t what I could call “good”. Google left a bunch of people high and dry, and the only possible reason they did it is to force people onto the Blogspot hosting platform so they can sell more advertising. That doesn’t fit my definition of supporting a free, open, non-proprietary Internet–which Google purports to be all about in most of their PR-oriented public initiatives.

If they were going to abandon people for their ridiculous, stated reason that FTP support was overwhelming them–then don’t let me use your software on my own website in the first place. I would have used WordPress or one of many other options in the first place, and would have saved myself a great deal of trouble. One reason I actually chose Blogger initially was because I believed that they would be around, and continue to support the platform. How wrong I was. I find this situation the definition of bait and switch, and one which has caused a bunch of people  a whole lot of grief.

It’s not Larry and Sergey in the Menlo Park apartment anymore…

I really don’t question the sincerity of Larry Page and Sergey Brin with respect to their “Do No Evil” credo. But Google is a very BIG company now, and “corporate” decisions usually aren’t based on morality. The bigger a company gets, the less likely any one person’s individual morality will effect any given decision taken within the company. There’s lot’s of pressure to make money in individual business units, especially in tough economic times, and as a company’s original differential advantage fades.

Everything at Google must support advertising, in some way shape or form. Otherwise, I’m sure it very hard to justify the expense. There are a whole bunch of managers beyond original two founders are making big decisions now, and I’m pretty sure that the decision to eliminate FTP support from Blogger didn’t even make it very high up Google’s management totem pole.

So does Google really “Do No Evil” at this point? Did they ever, or was it just bluster or marketing? In my mind, this is a question that’s very much still open to debate. My personal feeling is that they are just a big company like many others, run by people with a variety of agendas–and a lot of presure to maximize profits. That doesn’t always lead to what everyone considers “good”.

So that’s my personal experience with Google–what’s yours? Many of you have your own experience with or thoughts on this industry giant; post a comment or a question to activate a discussion.

Follow Phil Morettini and Morettini on Management via Twitter, Facebook, RSS, or the PJM Consulting Quarterly Newsletter. Contact Phil directly at info@pjmconsult.com

No Comments by admin on April 17, 2010
filed in Online Marketing, Social media
tagged , , , ,

Will Microsoft’s BING Finally Bring Success in the Search Engine Market?

Microsoft’s new search service is called BING, and takes a contrarian approach to the simple Google Interface. The BING interface is kind of a cross between Google and the Yahoo Directory, with a bit of Expedia, MapQuest, Shopping.com, UTube and Flicker thrown in for good measure. Never accuse Microsoft of being modest in their ambitions–this site takes on directly just about every major category in the online world.

I’ve given BING a quick look. It’s polished and appears pretty comprehensive. The search results don’t seem to be that much different from previous Microsoft efforts, although the interface’s major categories may allow the finding of information more quickly than an elegantly simple one like Google’s–if you know upfront the category of information that you’re looking for.

HOW LIKELY IS SUCCESS?

Will they succeed? They have many times before in similar situations. They’ve been laughed at and written off in quite a number of markets over the years. MS has a bad corporate habit of releasing poor products in their first one, two, and even three incarnations. Any other company would give up after so many failures in a particular segment-but not Microsoft. Don’t forget that as a software company, Microsoft has always seemed to believe that it is their god-given right to sell every line of software code written in the world.

There are many examples of Microsoft rising from the dead in software market segments. In spreadsheets, Excel was at one point in time a speck on the wall compared to Lotus 123. WordPerfect had a commanding lead over MS Word in word processing back in the DOS days. And a large number of MS Network Operating System Server software offerings (beginning with LAN Manager) were considered a joke relative to Novell Netware, for the longest time back in the 90s.

In all of these situations, Microsoft had the last laugh, soundly beating their seemingly entrenched and unbeatable rivals in large market segments. As a result of this corporate history, they believe that can beat anyone and rarely give up. Occasionally, I have seen them back off, notably after several tries competing with Intuit in personal financial software. But if it’s considered a strategic, core segment by MS, they will throw a huge amount of resources at the segment, take large losses, and not give up until they’ve broken through.

I call them the Terminator of High Tech.

TERRIBLE TRACK RECORD IN ONLINE SERVICES

Of course, this isn’t a pure software market, its online services. The problem for Microsoft with Bing and the search engine market in general is that they’ve been floundering almost completely, for a long period of time, in online services. In fact, they’ve not had much success in their history online at all. This is especially noteworthy in contrast to their domination of the desktop software business, and the competitive advantage their desktop monopoly should provide them in online services. Yet they’ve done poorly in almost everything online, and are a distant third in search engine marketing–not even all that close to a fading Yahoo.

So as most pundits will confirm, Microsoft has been terrible in the online world. This does not bode well for the possible success of Bing. But as I alluded to earlier, there is another side to this equation.

MICROSOFT CONSIDERS ONLINE SERVICES IN GENERAL AND SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING SPECIFICALLY, TO BE ABSOLUTELY AT THE CORE OF THEIR FUTURE SUCCESS–AND EVEN THEIR SURVIVAL.

Yes, this hugely successful company has always been a bit paranoid–which may be a bit on the humorous side given their overall success. But it has worked well for them over the years. It has given the company a sense of urgency which is very hard to generate in corporations of their size and stature. So anyone with a sense of history would be foolish to rule them out.

HOW CAN MS OUTFLANK GOOGLE?

But how are they going to defeat their competitors, mostly notably Google, this time in the online world? In my quick evaluation, I didn’t see anything technically revolutionary, such as demonstrably more-relevant search results. Some people may prefer the Bing category-oriented interface better than Google’s, but it will be a matter of taste–I can’t see an overwhelming advantage here. In past cases MS may have overwhelmed a segment with marketing, or simply given away a product, to ensure defeat of a rival they feared could grow into a broad line Software competitor (Novell, Netscape, etc.). It’s unclear to me what strategy they will be able to take to defeat Google, which is a dominant, embedded brand with wild profitability in Search Engine Advertising. But I believe they fear the Google franchise and know they need to crack to code to online success if they are going to retain their position in the long run. So don’t expect any throwing in the towel any time soon.

Maybe Microsoft will hit upon some innovative strategy that will enable them to win the day in this crucial market. But the one thing I can think of right now, that may work in their favor, is deep pockets, longevity and sheer persistence. Google has also been unable to achieve success outside of their domination in their core Search Engine Marketing segment. This is very analogous to Microsoft’s struggles outside of desktop software. The Search Engine advertising segment will eventually mature, and there are already some early signs of slowing. Plus Google risks killing the goose that laid their golden egg by raising their “Auction” bid rates to levels that will make it hard for their customers to make money–don’t get me started on that. Advertisers may eventually take their advertising budgets elsewhere. So for MS in this crucial platform it may be a matter of hanging around, making incremental improvement to their Search Engine offerings, until Google shoots itself in the foot.

Doesn’t sound like much of a strategy, I know. But stranger things have happened. Let me know what you thing of Microsoft’s launch of Bing. Post a message or drop me an email.

Phil Morettini
PJM Consulting
http://www.pjmconsult.com/

No Comments by admin on June 5, 2009
filed in Corporate Strategy, General Management, Online Marketing, Uncategorized
tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Pay Per Click (PPC) Online Advertising

It’s known by several names: PPC or Pay Per Click advertising, CPC or Cost Per Click advertising, or sometimes by the best known PPC advertising engine, Google Adwords.

Pay Per Click advertising is no longer new; as a result, much of the “easy” money has already been made. But I’m struck by how many companies I run across that are still NOT using this method to attract prospects or make sales on the web. While it is now a competitive channel unlike in the early days of this medium, it can still be very effective and cost-effective in many markets.

PPC should be a staple of the promotion budget of nearly every company (although not a major portion of the overall budget, in most cases). It should also be one of the first promotional methods utilized on behalf of a new product, service or company. Here’s why:

Complex to Optimize–But Simple to Start
PPC advertising campaigns can be very complex and extensive, and will be once you get them optimized. Many companies are spending tens of thousands of dollars/month on PPC. At that point they should be making a lot of money for you–so it’s worth the investment and the trouble!

But getting started is quite easy–anyone can do it. You simply open an account with one of the major advertising engines, which will take you all of five minutes or so. You can put together a basic test campaign in less than an hour’s time. I always recommend starting with Google Adwords first. Once you are successful and understand what you are doing on Adwords, it is pretty easy to move your functioning campaigns to the other major system (Microsoft Adcenter) and the tertiary players. There are differences, but they are fundamentally the same.

Adwords is the most powerful and has by far the greatest reach, yet it is still very easy to set up your initial trial campaigns. There is an excellent set of online Help and tutorials to walk you through the basics. When you set up your initial campaigns, you WILL make mistakes. But don’t worry. Just set your budget limits to a low number that you can easily afford, and you will quickly climb the learning curve. Once you’ve learned the basics of what you are doing, you can then seek assistance to do the final optimizations to your campaigns, which will lead to the greatest success. You may decide to “do it yourself”; if so, there are a lot of different experts out there with modestly priced guides and services to bring you to the top of your PPC game. Or at this point, you may wish to outsource your PPC advertising activity. I always recommend opening an account on your own first, even if you plan to outsource. The knowledge that you gain will help you in hiring a third party who will best optimize your PPC activity, if you decide a third party PPC firm is the way to go for you.

Easy on the Budget
If you are a thinly capitalized startup company, or have a tight budget for a new product or market segment, you can start a PPC campaign that brings you results that you can continually improve, for just a few dollars/month. As usually is the case, the more money available the better. The more money you have to spend, the faster you can receive statistically significant results–which can then be used to tweak your campaigns for improvement, over and over again. But if you can only spare $50, $100 or $500 per month at first–don’t let that deter you. In most cases you can get started and move your campaign forward, at even these low budget levels. The beauty of PPC is that you really don’t need to commit to a large budget until you’re sure that you’ve got a profitable campaign. At that point, you’ll want to pour as much money into your campaign that you can muster. Once a campaign is proven profitable, pouring more money into it is like turning up a profit meter!

Precise Measurements
One of the major advantages of PPC advertising, compared to traditional offline adverting and other promotional methods, is the ability to precisely measure nearly every important aspect of your campaign. The ability to precisely track your results is much greater than any other form of promotion I’ve utilized in my career. This measurement precision turns PPC advertising into the most scientific form of marketing available. After some initial hypotheses with respect to Ad copy, keyword selection and landing page design, it is possible to systematically improve your results by tweaking these elements of your campaign  almost forever–increasing your profitability as you go.

Fast Results
The other important aspect of PPC advertising, in conjunction with measurement precision which makes this medium so systematic and scientific, is the ability to get this precise feedback in near real time. As an example, in traditional, offline advertising campaign, you need to invest tens of thousands of dollars upfront. After this large investment, you won’t even know if your campaign was successful for months. With PPC advertising, you quickly get feedback in the form of precise, quantifiable results, sometimes only minutes after you started it. As a result, you can have a fully optimized, profitable PPC campaign working, before you would even get your initial measurements with other methods.

The Ideal Platform to Test Messaging, Campaigns and Offers
The expediency and precision of PPC advertising make it a great platform to kick off any new product, market segment or company. It is very efficient way of testing messages, offers and websites. Once you’ve discovered and proven the things that work best, you can transfer this knowledge to your rollout of other promotional vehicles. This greatly reduces the risk inherent in starting up new marketing campaigns of any type, and should increase your profitability across platforms and promotional vehicles from day one.

Summary
As you can tell, I am a big proponent of PPC advertising as a staple of every marketing budget. Unless your market is so small that it consists of only a few hundred prospects, I recommend it to nearly every software and high tech company on the planet. Consumer, Enterprise or SMB–it’s very effective across many markets. In fact, the more of a niche your market is, the more cost-effective PPC becomes, due to reduced competition and lower resulting bid prices. There are a few highly competitive markets these days which are so competitive, that it’s hard to run a profitable PPC campaign. But these are still the minority. So if you aren’t active in PPC advertising today–get started! Give it a try, and let me know your questions or comments.

Follow Phil Morettini and Morettini on Management via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, RSS, or the PJM Consulting Quarterly Newsletter. Contact Phil directly at info@pjmconsult.com

1 Comment by admin on February 26, 2007
filed in B2C, Marcom, Online Marketing, Promotion, sales
tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,