SEO Marketing Mix (Four Ps)

Part of a Digital or SEO marketing plan is the combination of the 4 Ps of marketing into a well planned strategy to bring their products to market. Each one of them, product, price, promotion and place of distribution has been carefully thought out and leveraged to achieve maximum advantage over their competitors.

Products:

Google puts each of their products into three basic classes: Advertising solutions, Business Solutions, and the Google Store. For their Advertising solutions, they offer Google Adwords. Text-based ads are matched to whatever the user type into the search on the Google’s Web site. The customers pay Google every time internet search users click on their site. Google then helps the customers set up their site as the number of visitors to the customer site’s increases. Lastly, The Google Store sells real, tangible items. Any item where they can affix their brand, items such as shirts, notebooks, bags, caps, lava lamps to almost anything is offered for sale.

Price:

Successful companies such as Google consider each aspect of pricing when setting prices. Special consideration is given to list price, discounts, allowances, payment periods and credit terms since these items work together to set the price of its merchandise.
List price is one of the fundamental components of setting a price. It is defined as, “Price normally quoted to potential buyers” (Boone, Louis E. and David L. Kurtz 718) and is the basic price offered to prospective consumers, yet in many instances the price listed could increase or decrease as costumers select options. Google’s price for AdWords is set on the amount of daily advertising it provides its consumers. In Google’s case, the list price is at five cents per day, however it can go as high as $50.00 per day. The difference in price will depend on the amount of daily advertising consumers are willing to pay and the amount of times individuals click to see the ads and how high these ads rank in a search.

Place:

An important decision when trying to determine the overall competitive marketing strategy is place. This decision includes company activities that make the product available to the various target consumers. Google’s place is the internet. When it comes to Google and trying to target their consumers, the people on the Internet, Google does a good job. “The rate of the adoption of the Internet in all its forms is increasing, not decreasing,” says Eric Schmidt, Google’s C.E.O. “The fact that many [Internet companies] are in a terrible state does not correlate with users not using their products.” (Riedman, 2003)

Promotions:

For years, Google was committed to focus on searching and to avoid fancy graphics. The idea of ads affecting search results did not sat well with Co-founders Larry Page and Sergey. As a result, Google did not do a whole lot to get their name out to the public. Surprisingly, the company has grown, not by advertising but by word of mouth. Google relies heavily on word of mouth to develop and expand their brand. The more credible a brand is, the better its reputation is and the more it will spread. Google, has become so dominant in the market that the brand name has become a verb (I googled you) in the English dictionary. Google’s convenient service and accurate search results have made it one of the world’s best-known brands and search engines.

In recent years, Google’s promotions have gone outside the internet realm by advertising their company on television (chromecast), radio, and print. Just to increase public brand awareness, in 2009, the company promoted their brand on billboards, especially even more after the launch of their android mobile phones and their app market place, Google Play. (Abail, Slideshare).

I think that Google relies heavily on Place (the Internet). The fact that most of their services are available on the internet, makes Google depend on the ability of utilizing the internet in the most efficient way. The World Wide Web (Internet) allows Google to provide its users with the ability to reach information and communicate fast, and it gives businesses the opportunity to use Google’s cloud computing technologies ( e.g. Google Drive) for free or at a very affordable price.

Google has risen to outdo all of its competitors, quickly becoming what is today the most popular Internet search engine.