Seth Godin’s On Why Google A Success

Posted in Advertising & Marketing, Google Adsense by cd on February 4, 2007

I first knew about Seth Godin through a viral link hopping from blogs to blogs. I don’t remember what I read at the time except for the mention of his “Purple Cow” book. The central idea in Purple Cow is to create something which stands out of the pack. Think about it. Who will stop to look at a regular cow? But for sure, they will jump at the first sight of a purple one.

But this video is not about the Purple Cow effect, instead it’s about Google’s explosive growth and their ability to roll out buzzing products. (By the way, if you want to know how Czech takes care of their Milka Cow, check out this funny video .)

WHY GOOGLE A SUCCESS?

Create a product that changed how people do thing online

Easy to use – Look at Google’s, Yahoo’s and MSN’s homepage. You know what to do upon landing on Google’s site. On the other two, you have to spend some time figuring out. This is the reason which gave Google the edge over Yahoo on the search engine competition.
Mega phone or viral marketing – Ever wonder why Gmail was only available by invitation only? Why didn’t Google just let everyone who wanted a gmail account to have it? I suspect that by restricting the numbers of signups, they created a hype which wouldn’t have existed if gmail was “Like it? Here it is.” A bunch of my friends exchanged emails asking for and giving out Gmail invitations. They posted Gmail invitations on forums because first, they wanted to be nice and share with others and second, they wanted to look cool for being the early adopters. Did people really need another fat email account? Some might have but I doubt all did. Many of them did not ask for a Gmail invitation because they needed another email account, they did because they were caught up in the hype and wanted a share. You have Gmail? I want one too. Before you know it, Gmail became a big hit with little marketing effort from Google.

Google Adsense & Adwords

Google has been dominating this online marketing scheme for years without a major competitor. I noticed Google Adsense ads while using Gmail for a while but didn’t pay too much attention to it until I got hooked with publising blogs and experimenting online money making methods that I discovered the secret of Adsense. The more I studied about Adsense, the lower my jaws dropped, and I couldn’t help thinking to myself “Oh my gosh, the google pack is a smart bunch.”
It cost dimes and nickels, literally, to advertising online with Google’s Adwords program compared to traditional marketing campaigns which cost millions of dollars and include tons of sales people.
Unlike the traditional interrupt advertising in the forms of TV’s commercial ads and browsers’ popup, Adsense (contextual ads) fit where and when people want see it, with their permissions, therefore the term permission marketing.

Charts comparing TV Industrial and Fashion Permission Marketing