Marketing Strategies of Google: SWOT Analysis and Recommendations

This report analyses the marketing strategies of Google with the help of SWOT analysis and provides recommendations to improve the current marketing mix. It covers the description of the company, micro and macro-environment analysis, and marketing mix strategies.

Running Head: Marketing
Google
Marketing

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Description of Company..................................................................................................................2
Google’s marketing environment....................................................................................................4
Micro-environment Analysis (Porter’s five forces).....................................................................4
Macro-environment Analysis (PESTLE).....................................................................................4
Recommendations for improving Marketing Mix...........................................................................5
SWOT Analysis...........................................................................................................................5
Marketing mix..............................................................................................................................6
Product......................................................................................................................................6
Price..........................................................................................................................................6
Place.........................................................................................................................................6
Promotion.................................................................................................................................6
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
References........................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
Google LLC is a multinational corporation mainly engaged in rendering internet-based services
across the globe. Company will soon complete its 20 years as rendering these types of services.
Its primary activities are linked with the business to business sector and in this sector; Google
provides number of services to businesses and to the consumers also. Google Maps, Google
mobile services, Google Pay, Google cloud services, dashboard, finance, Gmail, etc. All these
services are availed by number of business entities and consumers which ease the operations of
the organization. Google is rendering various services to the business enterprises so that they
could easily attain their set goals and objectives. Collection of data and sampling them as per the
requirements of various business enterprises, Google is helping its clients. Company renders its
services to all types of companies irrespective of their nature (Britannica, 2018).
This report will cover organizational products and services which are rendered in the market and
on the basis of this; appropriate marketing activities adopted by organization will be discussed to
overcome with the challenges faced by the organization. Further, the report will discuss the
marketing activities through which they could easily differentiate their services with the business
to consumer sector. Second phase of the report will discuss organization’s marketing
environment with the help of Porter’s five forces and PESTLE framework to analyse internal and
external marketing conditions. The last phase of the report will include recommendations to
improve the current marketing mix to enhance the effectiveness of organizational services along
with identification of organizational strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats so that
appropriate recommendations could be provided to support organizational marketing strategy.
Description of Company
Google LLC is an American multinational technology company that is specialised in internet-
related services and products and it also includes online advertising technologies, software,
hardware, search engine and cloud computing. The company was founded in 1998 and since
then, it has established its effective presence in the global market. When Google entered into
internet-based services such as search engine, few companies such as Yahoo and MSN were
ruling the whole industry. Google took it as a challenge and with its huge product and service

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offering, it has made its effective position in the global market along with gaining leading
position later on in the global market. Company’s growth triggered with chain of products like
Google Search engine, Google Docs, Sheets, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, etc. An
initial public offering took place in 2014 and then Google moved towards new headquarter in
Mountain View, California and it is known as Googleplex. In 2015, Google’s services was
reorganised as conglomerate known as Alphabet Inc. Google is the leading subsidiary of
Alphabet and it continues to be the umbrella company for Alphabet for rendering internet related
services and Sundar Pichai was appointed as the new CEO of Google replacing Larry Page who
became the CEO of Alphabet (Britannica, 2018).
Organizational primary B2B services are web-based services such as search tools, advertising
services, communication and publishing tools, development tools which includes security tools,
map-related tools, operating system, mobile applications, etc. (B2B Marketing, 2018). Amongst
these services, search engine is the core product of Google which receives over 3 billion search
queries per day and along with this, Google provides regional search option. Google has
numerous services and products for directly customers as well as for the business organizations.
With regards to this, organization has adopted various marketing activities for the purpose of
enhancing organizational performance in the market along with promoting their products and
services in the target market. Following are the options available for Google in terms of
marketing choices which could be used for promotion and advertisement:
 Social media
 Direct marketing
 Sales promotion
 Television
 Radio
 Bill boards
 Email marketing
 Sponsorship of events
These marketing channels are available in the market for the purpose of promoting products and
services in both B2C as well as B2B market. Although, both markets are different from each

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other in terms of size, scope as well as on the basis of challenges which arises in both these
sectors. With regards to this, it is necessary for the organization to choose appropriate marketing
options wisely so that desired outcomes could be attained (Business News Daily, 2018). Thus,
for B2B market, following marketing channels is being used by Google in order to approach the
business enterprises so that competitive advantage could be attained along with eliminating the
challenges which arise in the market:
 Direct marketing
 Sales promotion
 Third party advertisement platform
 Email marketing
 Sponsorship of business events
Apart from these platforms, there are numerous other options are also available in the target
market through which organization could enhance its performance while dealing with the
challenges in an appropriate manner (Kumar, 2015). Following are marketing challenges of B2B
market which are quite different from the B2C market:
 Technology Integration: Role of technology is immense in terms of accomplishing
organizational functionalities and it could enhance organizational performance and it
could also become the major factor of organizational failure. Every organization has its
own requirements, thus, Google is required to develop appropriate services as per their
client’s requirements whereas services of B2C market is similar for every consumer (de
Jong & van der Meer, 2017).
 Marketing and sales alignment: Choosing marketing channels is very difficult in B2B
market because business entities’ interest have also been shifted towards internet based
platforms but their platforms are quite different from the platforms used by consumers.
 Globalisation and content marketing: Globalisation is increasing rapidly in the
international market and Google is one of the behemoth enterprises across the globe
which renders its services to every type of Business Corporation in the world. In relation
with this, Google requires to put huge efforts for the purpose of analysing market
conditions so that its clients’ requirements could be fulfilled (Wilden & Gudergan, 2017).

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These are some of the challenges faced by Google while rendering its services to the business
enterprises and these challenges create difference between B2B and B2C markets.
Google’s marketing environment
Micro-environment Analysis (Porter’s five forces)
Bargaining
power of
suppliers
Bargaining
power of buyers
Threats of new
entrants
Threats of
substitutes
Industry rivalry
Google is not a
global dominant
player
Over 3 billion
searches are
regulated on
Google and there
are not big
competitors are
available thus,
buyer’s power is
bit low (Qureshi,
Aziz & Mian,
2017).
More than 77%
searches are
being conducted
through Google
across the globe,
thus, scope for
new entrants is
bit hard.
Lack of
substitutes, thus,
impact of this
factor is also
low.
Before Google,
Yahoo and MSN
were the
favourite search
engines but
currently, Google
is a dominant
leader across the
globe except in
China
(Beauchamp, et.
al., 2015).

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Macro-environment Analysis (PESTLE)
Political Economic Social Technological Legal Environmental
Google
promotes
those
companies
who avails
their services
and this
results in
diluting the
competition,
thus,
European
Union is
imposing
heavy
penalties so
that Google
could not
function in an
appropriate
manner.
Another
crucial
political
barrier for
Google is in
Chinese
Economic
stability in
major
markets and
rapid growth
in developing
countries
(Baalbaki &
Malhotra,
2015).
Use of social
media,
search
engines and
other Google
products
such as
Gmail has
been
increased
rapidly.
Rising internet
access in
developing
countries.
Regulations
on
intellectual
property and
online
privacy.
In order to
fulfil the
responsibilities
and duties
towards society
and
environment, it
is necessary to
implement CSR
policies and
strategies (Oh,
2018).

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market
because
Baidu is
ruling
Chinese
market and
there are
huge
restrictions
for Google to
enter there.
Recommendations for improving Marketing Mix
SWOT Analysis
Strengths
 Strong market position
 Strong brand image
 Huge product and service offering
 Strong infrastructure cost
Weaknesses
 Much dependent on advertisement
revenues
 Lack of product integration in
comparison to the competitor’s
products
 Weak global reputation (Huang &
Sarigöllü, 2014).
Opportunities
 Rise in internet usage
 Increasing demand of digital marketing
and online sales promotion
Threats
 Fluctuations in exchange rate
 Huge expenses on lawsuit
 Privacy issues
 Intense competition

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On the basis of organizational internal capabilities, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
available in the market, it could be analysed that there is huge scope of improvement in
organizational current marketing mix. Thus, following are recommendations for Google in order
to improve their current marketing mix strategies:
Marketing mix
Product
Google has a huge product offering and amongst them, one of the trending and most effective
services is Google Analytics which is a freemium web analytics services which tracks and
reports website traffic. This service is rendered in B2B sector and through this service; business
companies could attain positive outcomes as it provides refined data to the business entities
through which the desired goals could be attained easily. In relation with this, it has been
recommended to Google to enhance features of Google Analytics in order to uplift their
performance (Fan, Lau & Zhao, 2015).
Price
It has been recommended to the Google to adopt fair pricing strategy to reach out to every
business entities irrelevance to their nature, scope and size. If Google Analytics services will be
available at low cost, then number of companies will be able to avail the analytics services.
Place
These services mainly featured with AdWords and these are rendered through internet and in
order to enhance the reachability of these services, it is required for the organization to render
these services through third party websites also.
Promotion
In relevance with promotion of these services, organization could adopt the available channels of
B2B sector. These channels will help the organization to promote its products and services in the
target market through which the demand will be increased which ultimately will boost up the
company’s revenues, profits and its goodwill in the international market.

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Conclusion
From the aforesaid information, it can be concluded that Google is a vast internet based platform
and with behemoth product and service offerings, company has acquired a huge market share in
the global market in terms of search engine, mailing services, etc. However, there is intense
competition in the internet industry; Google has developed its unique as well as distinctive
position in the target market. With regards to this, organization has developed its effective
presence in the global and in order to uplift their performance, appropriate recommendations
have been given to the company in order to support marketing strategies of organization.

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References
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Beauchamp, A., Buchbinder, R., Dodson, S., Batterham, R.W., Elsworth, G.R., McPhee, C.,
Sparkes, L., Hawkins, M. and Osborne, R.H., 2015. Distribution of health literacy strengths and
weaknesses across socio-demographic groups: a cross-sectional survey using the Health Literacy
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Inc. [25/07/2018].
Business News Daily. 2018. Google for Business: A Small Business Guide [online]. Available
at: https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6344-google-business-guide.html. [25/07/2018].
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Huang, R. and Sarigöllü, E., 2014. How brand awareness relates to market outcome, brand
equity, and the marketing mix. In Fashion Branding and Consumer Behaviors (pp. 113-132).
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