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May 05, 2009
The uncomfortable world of Google economics
It seems only fair that newspapers shouldn't be the only ones threatened by Google and its reinvention of advertising, although the mass media, and particularly newspapers, are at this stage suffering most. As we write this, the Boston Globe has only just lurched away from the precipice, leaving its employees scarred and shaken.
The print media, and for that matter TV and radio, are going to find it increasingly hard to gain revenue when they cannot match the ability of Google Adwords to address the buyer at precisely the moment he is looking to purchase, and the Web is increasingly a medium for stealth advertising. But businesses who relied on them to get their message across, and the PR companies that, according to Jim Macnamara, have influenced or helped manufacture up to 80 per cent of the content of mass media - no wonder they're less relevant - and anyone who survives by selling to, or addressing others, are also going to have to adjust smartly to the new competitive world wrought by Google.
Today, having a bigger advertising and marketing budget than your competitor isn't the competitive advantage it used to be. If you understand the way search engines and Google AdWords work, you can get better results for considerably less than businesses which don't have that intelligence.
Small businesses can do particularly well in that environment, but it is by no means easy. About a week ago we took over the responsibility for Psychology Melbourne/Victoria Avenue Psychology, and the tiny amount of spare time we had has evaporated.
Suddenly we're grappling with the complexities of keywords and trying to write effective ads with a minimum of characters, to say nothing of constantly fine-tuning the Web site, which uses Joomla!, so that it's a part of the advertising dynamic and dabbling in the dark alchemical arts of converting some of those clicks to sessions ... to say nothing of getting a CRM package together to monitor everything.
We've only dipped a toe into the water so far, but already we can appreciate just how clever you have to be in this new age of online advertising. Fortunately, we've had some invaluable advice from Philip Shaw, at search engine marketing experts, CleverClicks, so the learning curve hasn't been quite as steep as it might have been, but even so, it's going to be months before we're at all competent.
It's a far cry from the days when you could write, or pay someone to write, an ad and shove it in the newspaper or have it read on air, and wait for customers to roll in. Today people don't read newspapers. They're more likely to be listening to podcasts or Tweeting or texting or whatever than listing to commercial radio or watching TV.
The small business owner has to devote a lot more time to understanding how to sell on the Internet - not at all the same as selling elsewhere - and mastering the dynamics of Web sites and online advertising and marketing and customer relations management. And if they don't, or they can't afford to pay someone to do it all for them, they're going to be visiting the precipice too.
Posted by cw at May 5, 2009 08:52 PM
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