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UnitVIScholarlyActivityMarketingPlan.docxRunning head: MARKETING PLAN 1
MARKETING PLAN 8
Unit VI Scholarly Activity
Marketing plan
Ostia Seymour
Columbia Southern University
02-01-2021
Marketing plan
A marketing plan is usually regarded as an operational document that outlines an organization's advertising strategy that will be implemented to generate leads as well as reach its target market. Therefore, a marketing plan in any business provides outreach details that will be taken over some time, including how to measure the progress of these initiatives. A good marketing plan usually considers the value proposition of a business (Hollensen, 2019). There are seven elements of a marketing plan: product, promotion, packaging, people, price, place, and positioning. In a marketing plan, an organization needs to know its targeted customers. The purpose of this paper is to look at the marketing methodology used by a publicly traded company. A publicly traded company is considered any corporation where shareholders have a claim to part of an organization's profit and assets. This paper will be based on Google Company, which is a publicly traded company.
Google Company
Google is regarded as a technology company that has a mission of organizing the world's information as well as make information universally useful and accessible. Google Company was founded in 1998, and its headquarters are in Mountain View, Calif. The roots of Google Company started with two students Sergey Brin and Larry Page (Kim and Choi 2019). Over the years, Google Company has grown in a way that it is now considered to be among the most innovative companies in the modern technological age.
Therefore, Google is a multinational organization built on most popular search engine. The other enterprises of Google include internet analytics, advertising technologies, cloud computing, Web app browser, as well as operating system development. Recently, Google Company moved to mobile hardware, and it created its first phone known as a pixel. Later on, Google Company planned to reorganize its various interests into Alphabet. This resulted in Larry Page being Alphabet Chief Executive Officer while Sundar Pichai became Google Chief Executive Officer.
Google Company Competitive Analysis
Even though Google Company has many competitors, it has continued to flourish. Google offers services such as Gmail, Google Maps, Chrome, YouTube, Google Play, as well as Search. Earlier, the main competitor of Google Company was Yahoo. Yahoo was considered to be the second-largest search engine (Arora, Srivastava, and Bansal 2020). Apart from Yahoo, Google Company has other competitors such as Bing, Baidu, DuckDuckGo, Facebook, and Amazon.
However, it is important to note that in China, Google is banned, leaving Baidu to be the most popular search engine there, and it controls 76.05% of the market share. Yahoo, Bing, as well as Google together account for 96% of the entire search engine market share in the whole world. Google Company has 92.96% of the global search engine market share. Therefore, it clearly controls this field. Google competitors are as differentiated below.
Bing
It is ethical to say that not all companies can battle with Google Company. Bing has a 2.34% search engine market share in the whole globe. Bing was helped by an existing user base as well as aggressive marketing to rapidly raise its market share. Additionally, Bing joined forces with Yahoo in order to defeat Google Company by raising its market share.
Yahoo
Currently, Yahoo is not the second largest search engine but the third in market share. Yahoo makes up 1.6% search engine market share in the whole world. In 1990s to 2000s, Yahoo was leading in the search engine market share. As Yahoo fell, Google Company kept on succeeding as well as innovating, and it reached its dominant position today.
DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo was first started in 2008, and it considers itself as an anti-google of search engines. DuckDuckGo search engine has a market share of 0.3% in the whole world. However, DuckDuckGo Company cannot boost its market share since it reached 0.3% after a decade. This search engine is able to maintain its relevance by considering itself as an anti-Google. DuckDuckGo is able to differentiate itself from Google by being a search engine that does not track users.
In the field of advertisement as well as video-sharing, Facebook is the main competitor of Google Company. The two companies are widely recognized because of their digital duopoly, dominating advertising platform. Both Google Company and Facebook have a market share of 61%. Facebook has 22.1% while Google has 37.2% digital ad market share.
Google Company strengths compared to Bing and Yahoo.
Each and every company cannot prosper without strengths that its competitors don't have. One of Google Company’s strength is that it has been able to remain unbeatable. Google’s competitors have never been able to challenge its position or reaching its market share. The second strength is that Google Company has high adaptability (Noguerol et al., 2019). This is because; Google has efficiently adapted mobile as well as android technologies. Therefore, this has given Google Company the ability to compete frankly with Apple's iPhone.
On the other hand, one of Bing and Yahoo's strengths is that they have been able to tie-up, thus having a strong bond for driving online search business. Bing has the strength of being owned by the most trusted brands, Microsoft. Yahoo has the strength of having a simple as well as easy to use interface. Even though Bing and Yahoo have strengths, they have not been able to ahead of Google.
Google Company weaknesses compared to Bing and Yahoo.
Even though Google Company has various strengths, it has weaknesses as well. The first weakness is concerned with privacy policies. For a while now, Google has been criticized by various professionals because of its extreme dependence on privacy. However, Google Company has taken various methods to deal the allegations. The second weakness is that Google has experienced employee’s protest. This harmed Google since consumers usually don't like companies support suppression in society and evils. Therefore, Google Company employees in 2020 requested the company to quit providing G-suite services to police departments during the Black Lives Matter protest.
On the other hand, Bing has a competition weakness, meaning its market share growth is limited, and it has performance issues. Yahoo has a weakness of losing ground to its competitors. Therefore, Google has been trying to address its weaknesses, but Yahoo and Bing have not been able to address the issue of competition.
Google Company Marketing Strategies
Google is not only leading in the search engine but its marketing tools, as well as advertising, allow it to reach its potential customers. In marketing, there are various elements essential used to position a particular business strategically. Therefore, elements of marketing are considered as variables controlled by business managers as well as owners to satisfy customers in their target market (Miklosik, 2019). The analysis of Google's marketing strategy will use the four Ps, including product, place, price, and promotion.
Product
A product is usually regarded as anything sold by a particular company in order to make money. Therefore, in any business, a product can be goods or services that individuals want to purchase for various purposes. The marketing mix of Google Company has a diverse array of products. These products are responsible for ensuring Google is able to grow and diversify. The various products provided by Google are grouped into web-based products, hardware products, services, operating systems, mobile apps, as well as desktop app.
Therefore, Google Company product diversity is regarded as a reflection of its strategy of expansion and growth. This will enable Google Company to still hold its position in the market share. It is important to understand that Google Company uses product development as a key intensive growth strategy. This strategy has enabled Google to keep on developing new products in order to expand its business. Therefore, Google Company has been able to grow its market share for Nexus and Google AdWords, among other existing products.
Place
A place can be referred to as where a company's product or services are sold, seen, distributed, and made. Decisions regarding place in a company are generally associated with distribution channels and ways of getting certain products to targeted customers. Google’s place, as well as distribution components, are mostly on online businesses. Therefore, Google Company uses the internet to distribute its products. For instance, an individual can download a Google application anywhere with internet connectivity. On the other hand, Google Company uses retailers as outlets for goods like Nexus Smartphones.
Price
Price referrer to a company’s pricing strategy for a particular product or service and how customers are affected by the prices. Decisions regarding pricing are not just based on selling price but also discounts, credit terms, and payment arrangements. Google Company uses various pricing strategies so as to satisfy various kinds of products available. Its pricing strategies include Freemium pricing, penetration pricing, market-oriented pricing, and value-based pricing.
Promotion
Promotions are various activities that ensure a company is known to consumers. Promotion includes advertising, sponsorships, or public relations activities. Google Company uses both digital and traditional methods of marketing promotions. The traditional method used by Google includes direct marketing, personal selling, and publicity. Direct marketing campaigns usually involve getting a direct response from individuals based on what they like. Personal selling involves salespeople contacting prospects. Publicity enables Google to gain exposure through owned media that is spread on social media.
On the other hand, digital methods used by Google include social media, content marketing, email marketing. Social media is used to distribute paid ads as well as sponsored content. Content marketing involves answering questions from Google’s users. Email marketing involves sending users customized newsletters on brand engagement.
Google Company Competitive Advantage
Google Company has a competitive advantage when it comes to its products. This is because it has a diverse array of products which are able to meet customer’s demand. These products ensure that Google is able to grow than its competitors. Google does not have a competitive advantage in terms of place since it uses the internet to distribute its product and other competitors use the same channel to distribute their products. In terms of pricing, Google does not have a competitive advantage. This is because it has a high pricing rate compared to its competitors. And customers may prefer less cost. Finally, Google has a competitive advantage when it comes to promotion since it uses two methods of promotion that are digital and traditional methods.
Reference
Arora, A., Srivastava, A., & Bansal, S. (2020). Business competitive analysis using promoted post detection on social media. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 54, 101941.
Hollensen, S. (2019). Marketing management: A relationship approach. Pearson Education.
Kim, D. I., & Choi, S. I. (2019). The Analysis of the Relationship between the Review Scale and Posting Information of Company and Purchasing Patterns-Focusing on Amazon and Google Users. Journal of the Korea Convergence Society, 10(10), 153-160.
Miklosik, A. (2019). Search engine marketing strategies: Google answer box-related search visibility factors. In Handbook of Research on Entrepreneurship and Marketing for Global Reach in the Digital Economy (pp. 463-485). IGI Global.
Noguerol, T. M., Paulano-Godino, F., Martín-Valdivia, M. T., Menias, C. O., & Luna, A. (2019). Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats analysis of artificial intelligence and machine learning applications in radiology. Journal of the American College of Radiology, 16(9), 1239-1247.
