Digital Marketing At Google Merchandise Store

Digital Marketing at Google Merchandise Store

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Digital Marketing at Google Merchandise Store 2

Table of Contents

Executive Summary ................................................................................................................... 3

Situation Analysis: Where are we now? .................................................................................... 5

Business Objectives ................................................................................................................... 5

Google Merchandise Store’s overall business objective ........................................................ 6

Google Merchandise Store’s digital marketing objective ...................................................... 6

Target Audience ......................................................................................................................... 6

Customer profile ........................................................................................................................ 6

Geographic dimension............................................................................................................ 6

Demographic dimension ........................................................................................................ 7

Psychographic dimension ....................................................................................................... 7

Organizational Customers ...................................................................................................... 9

Competitor Analysis ................................................................................................................ 12

Online Partner Analysis ........................................................................................................... 14

Digital Marketing Audit ........................................................................................................... 14

Google Merchandise Store’s Digital Marketing SWOT .......................................................... 15

Key Summary .......................................................................................................................... 16

Recommendations .................................................................................................................... 17

References ................................................................................................................................ 19

Digital Marketing at Google Merchandise Store 3

Executive Summary

If there is anything Google Merchandise Store is good at, then it is digital marketing

strategy. In as much as it would be rare to come across ads marketing the merchandise store,

the marketing strategies employed by this online shopping website are apparently some of the

most fantastically impressive strategies in digital marketing. This Grandmaster of subtle

marketing employs marketing strategies worth emulating (Goldfarb, 2014). As such, this

report seeks to establish how effectively Google Merchandise Store currently uses its digital

channel and how to build more visitor attraction to their website. With regards to this, the

report will focus on areas to be prioritized by the Google Merchandise Store in the course of

digital marketing so as to reap the maximum returns.

Below are screenshots of signing into the Google analytics

Gender percentages

Digital Marketing at Google Merchandise Store 4

Age levels

Interest category

Digital Marketing at Google Merchandise Store 5

Situation Analysis: Where are we now?

The Google Merchandise Store deals with a variety of items ranging from apparels

(clothing) to bags to drinkware to accessories and many others. Google is a publicly-traded

global company known for its immensely popular search engine. The company’s other

investments include cloud computing, internet analytics, advertising technologies as well as

the development of operating system, browser and Webb app. And today, the company has

also invested in online merchandise store that offers various kinds of retail products just like

Amazon.com. Google company itself dates back to 1996 when Larry Page and Sergey Brin,

two graduate students at Stanford University teamed up on a research project called BackRub

that would later become the Google search engine (Ghemawat, Gobioff, and Leung, 2003).

However, the then major portal vendors did not give any serious offers to the project as they

thought users did not have much concern for search abilities. The two founders would later in

September 1998 garner enough funds to commence operations in California. Come December

of the same year, Google was listed by PC Magazine among the top 100 websites and search

engines; and that’s how the company started thriving.

Business Objectives

Google Merchandise Store’s overall business objective

The overall business objective of Google merchandise store is to organize retail

products from across the world and make it collectively available and useful just at a click of

a button (Google Inc., 2014). Google merchandise store has always set its goal as providing

goods and services for significant improvement of lives of as many individuals as possible.

Digital Marketing at Google Merchandise Store 6

Google Merchandise Store’s digital marketing objective

Google’s Media Lab media technologies manager Meg Biron says that the company’s

key digital marketing objectives are to grow awareness and drive sales (Google Inc., 2015).

Biron heads the Google Media Lab which is tasked with managing all Google’s media

strategy for all of the company’s digital campaigns.

Target Audience

With today’s technological development and advancements, almost every country of

the world has access to internet. Out of the 100% internet searches done across the world,

60% belong to Google. When asked about their target audience, the Google marketing

director, Spanier, asserted that the entire earth’s population is their (Google) target audience

(Bastick, 2015). It is this same market that is also targeted for the online merchandise store.

As such, the digital marketing strategy of Google merchandise store is neither specific to any

particular location nor group of people. It therefore, becomes very difficult identifying the

exact person the online retail store focuses on to get a competitive advantage and profitable

returns. The report therefore, analyzes the online retail store’s target audience in terms of

customer profile consisting of demographic dimension, geographic dimension, psychographic

dimension as well as organizational customers.

Customer profile

Geographic dimension

Google merchandise store gets audience from this customer profile in the sense that:

 The internet is a vast tool of information thus attracts diverse users from across the

globe.

Digital Marketing at Google Merchandise Store 7

 Close to or more than half of the search results from Google are delivered to markets

outside the U.S thus making it easier for the merchandise store to market its products

outside the U.S (Softline Solutions, 2009).

 Google merchandise store has made it easy to order and make purchases in at least 80

different languages.

Demographic dimension

The merchandise store has accessed nearly all the online retail markets of the world

with diverse users except for a few countries like Iran, Syria, Sudan, Crimea, China, North

Korea, and Cuba where it has restricted its access (Google Inc., 2018).

Apart from the nations with restricted access, a reported survey of all other Google

users who translate to its online retail customers across the world showed that:

 The most frequent users of Google are below 35 years of age.

 Of all the users, 55% are of the male gender (Purcell, Brenner, and Rainee, 2012).

 Most of the users belong to the upper middle class economy.

 Users are basically computer literate individuals with technological competence.

 Majority of the users are business-oriented individuals.

Psychographic dimension

From this dimension, it has been established that the educated and the intellectually

smart individuals rush to Google merchandise store when in need of quick clarification of the

features or general prices of any given product. Such individuals tend to have an occupied

lifestyle in varying aspects such as belonging to student groups, residential family or military

personnel (Softline Solutions, 2009). Moreover, this dimension also established that of all

those who have visited the retail website, 20% operate Mac PCs which are often associated

Digital Marketing at Google Merchandise Store 8

with those of the middle or upper income class. The report also noted that 80% of the users of

this retail store use smartphone (Purcell, Brenner, and Rainee, 2012). From this

psychographic dimension, it can be concluded that the users of the online merchandise store

have a preference for customizable and more innovative privacy-oriented internet

experiences.

Persona

names?

Characteristics /

segment?

Motivations, Goals

and Needs (Brand,

experience)?

What we want to

deliver?

1. Ellena

Kristian, a

receptionist

 Active social media

user; Facebook,

Twitter, Instagram

 Facebook is her

favourite

 Looks for good

deals and coupons

on new experiences

 The persona’s

motivation is to

get a fitting width

pair of shoes from

online shopping as

retail shops do not

offer her taste

 Her goal is to

purchase as many

pairs as possible to

fit style, color, and

occasion

 To allow filtering

of available shoe

sizes by width

 To avail fewer

options when the

width filter is

applied

 Ensuring no other

shoe

recommendations

when searching for

a pair she

particularly likes

Phil Jones, a

business

professional

 Very sensitive

to trends in

fields of his

interest

 Highly

familiarized

with both

mobile and

online internet

 Has an

experience of

checking a

product offline

before making

online

purchases

 His goal is to

make

purchases after

considering a

product’s level

of satisfaction

but not

necessity

 To offer

specificity

options where

clients can

adequately

search for their

preferred

products

 Offer products

that give value

for money in

terms of

satisfaction and

uniqueness

Kyle Fisher, a

potential SUV

buyer

 Upper middle

class

 Laptop and

smartphone user

 Dependent on

online reviews

Uses much time to read

social media researches

 His goal is to

get a vehicle

with smart

features,

outstanding

fuel economy,

and spacious

enough for him

 To provide as

many online

reviews as

possible on

high-end

vehicles just at

a click of a

button

Digital Marketing at Google Merchandise Store 9

and his family

4. Clarence

Thomas, a

technical

decision maker

in an IT firm

 A sceptical

business savvy

 To follow new

technological

trends

 To seek clarity

of how new

technologies

have been

applied

 To make the

firm

recognized

 Offer a strategic

use of website

and SEO to

make his

business

recognized

Ariane Fisher, a

record store

manager

 Internet and tech

savvy

 An extrovert

 To grow a

strong

reputation for

the industry

 Keep track of

every record

 Build an

audio-pro

portfolio

 To deliver real

time ways of

sharing projects

and collaborate

with others

Competitor Analysis

Google Merchandise Store’s biggest online marketing competitor is the Amazon.com,

which is yet another giant online retailer (Schwartz 2014). In a speech delivered in Berlin in

2014, Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive disputed the narrative that the giants of the tech

industry – namely Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple – have dwarfed tech competition

through creation of monopolies. In his speech, Schmidt claimed that he was less certain of

any monopoly created by any of the aforementioned tech giants. He termed Amazon as their

biggest competitor in both online retail store and search engine activities (Dave, 2018). He

justified Amazon as their biggest online retail competitor by stating that most online buyers

make purchases via Amazon than any other online seller site. As such, in the course of

customer searches for online products, Amazon answers the questions and searches raised by

the buyers, just as Google does.

Digital Marketing at Google Merchandise Store 10

In terms of comparison, in the recent times more product searches have been started at

Amazon online store than Google merchandise store. Moreover, Amazon’s customers are so

much loyal such that they entirely bypass all the other online retailers for Amazon. According

to the ‘Global Consumer Insights Survey’ of 2018 conducted by the PricewaterhouseCooper

which used a sample size of 22000 individuals from across the world, it was identified that

14% of the sample size shop exclusively on Amazon. As the online retail business of Amazon

keeps growing, there are an increasing number of marketers and suppliers willing to work

with Amazon in marketing their retail products. When Catalyst and ClickZ decided to team

up, the Amazon report showed that sponsored products are bought by 82% of users of

Amazon’s online marketing services, while product display ads and headline search ads are

paid for by 65% of the users (O’Brien, 2018). The former, just like Google shopping ads,

earns the company the highest sale-per-click while representing the fastest growing retail ad

product of Amazon. Not only is Amazon an aggressive seller in space of online shopping but

also a significant buyer. Below is a Digital Marketing Depot’s graph showing the extent to

which the paid online retail marketing landscape is dominated by Amazon in the category of

consumer electronics:

Digital Marketing at Google Merchandise Store 11

(Source: O’Brien, 2018)

In key performance indicators, the Google merchandise store has done better the

Amazon.com. The store earns higher ad revenue than Amazon. The merchandise store is alos

at the advantage of the newly introduced AdWord feature in March this year by the parent

Google Company, known as Shopping Actions. This feature enables making of direct

purchases from shopping ads with the help of Google Assistant, which powers instant

checkout while saving payment information (O’Brien, 2018). With the voice search feature

gaining momentum, the shopping action is able to work across various devices. One of the

retailers participating in this program is Ulta, implying that customers have the option to sync

their Ultamate Rewards and Google accounts. This will enable the merchandise store to make

more personalized and better product recommendations just like Amazon.

Below is a tabular summary of the comparison of Google and Amazon’s key

performance indicators;

Criteria

Client

Competitor 1

Business Name

Google

Amazon

URL

https://your.googlemerchandisestore.co

m/index

https://www.amazon.c

om/

Reach KPIs

 Site visitors

(sessions)

 Organic search

traffic

 Social audience /

reach

 Search engine

visibility

 Inbound links

(Backlink profile)

 Use inbound marketing to drive

site visits and increase awareness

of its retail products

 Grow a

detailed

approach to

AdWords and

SEO with

millions of

target

keywords for

its specific

retail products

Act KPIs

 Time on site

 Content

interaction (e.g.

video views)

 Landing Pages

 Connect visitors of the website

with relevant content by defining

customer journeys to generate

leads to the needed products

 Use testing

and learning to

create clearly

simple

experiences

and

Digital Marketing at Google Merchandise Store 12

 Website

effectiveness

understanding

of products

Convert KPIs

 Leads /

Acquisitions

 Subscription

 Download

 Goal Conversion

rates

 Orders

 Revenue

 AOV

 Use reminders and persuasion to

convert to sale, both offline and

online

 Make a clear

checkout

process as well

as relevant

recommendati

ons using

personalization

; something

that many

imitate today

Engage KPIs

 Recommendation

, satisfaction

scores,

community and

benchmarks

 Social shares /

Likes / comments

 Build advocacy and repeat sales

through customer

communication

 Evaluate

customer

satisfaction

through

Weblab which

is an internal

experimentatio

n platform

Online Partner Analysis

The Google merchandise store has partnered with other retailers for monetization of

product searches online. The retailers it has teamed up with include Ulta Beauty Inc., Costco

Wholesale Corp., Target Corp., Home Depot Inc., and Walmart Incorporation. These are

some of the retailers who furnish the merchandise store with supplies. The merchandise store

has a new shopping action program that enables listing of products by the aforementioned

retailers. The products can as well be listed on the mobile phones’ and voice devices Google

Assistant and on the Google Express shopping service (Sterling, 2008). With this program,

the retailers have a better chance of influencing buyers’ purchase decisions which gives them

a competitive edge against Amazon.com Inc., which also happens to be the retailers’ biggest

Digital Marketing at Google Merchandise Store 13

competitor. It is the hope of Google Inc. that this program will capture more desktop

purchases as well as voice-search-enabled smart home devices and cell phones.

The parent Google Company also recently announced a partnership with The New

York Times, The Washington Post, Financial Times, and Gannet through Google News

Initiative in a bid to help combat the spread of misinformation and fake news (Light on

Conspiracies, 2018). This is a move that will most likely also help in marketing the Google

merchandise store through the partner newspapers.

The grid below defines some of Google’s main partners;

Publishers/intermediaries/influencers

Example mainstream media, social networks or portals:

 The New York Times

 The Washington Post

 Financial Times

 Gannett

Niche media sites or social networks:

 YouTube

 Google+

 LinkedIn

 Facebook

 Twitter

 Pinterest

Blogs and individual influencers:

 AdWords Agency Blog

 AdWords Retail Tips

 AdSense Blog

Ratings and review sites:

 Yelp

 Facebook

Digital Marketing at Google Merchandise Store 14

Digital Marketing Audit

Google merchandise store uses Objectives and Key Results (OKR) strategy from its

parent company to analyze their website performance and objective. Rick Klau, a partner and

a former blogger at Google gave an eighty-minutes presentation in 2013 on how the company

uses OKR to evaluate its performance. He asserted that the company does quarterly and

annual OKR analysis. The OKRs are available at personal levels, team levels, managerial

levels, and at company level and that they collaborate to track the performance of the

company. Each individual has 4-6 OKR which they grade on a scale of 0-1 on a quarterly

basis with the target score being 0.6 to 0.7 out of 1. Any score below 0.4 is considered lack of

seriousness while scores nearing 1 are considered that the individuals must have set very easy

objectives (Jay, 2014). The company makes all the OKRs public right from that of Larry

Page downwards. One is therefore, able to catch a glimpse of what their colleagues’ OKRs

are as well as their scores thus being able to work for the better of marketing the

organization’s website.

With regards to Google analytics, the merchandise store has varying issues of

performance as sometimes their website inconveniences users for brief moments due to trivial

delays while some other time they may become completely unresponsive or inaccessible to

the users’ search input. With stiff competition from Amazon, Google merchandise store has

always maintained a high loading speed for their website so as to retain customers. Research

shows that sites which take very little time like 5 seconds to load can have as much as 70%

longer user sessions with 25% higher view ability and 35% lower rate of bouncing than those

which take like 20 seconds to load (Jeremy, 2018).

Digital Marketing at Google Merchandise Store 15

With regards to search engine optimization, Google merchandises store uses a

comparatively better search engine, though, it is among the world’s most complex

technologies.

Google Merchandise Store’s Digital Marketing SWOT

Below is Google merchandise store’s digital marketing SWOT analysis;

Strengths (internal to

company):

 Dominance of global

online retail market

 Mobile market growth

owing from the success

of Android seems fruitful

to the growth of the

merchandise store

Weaknesses (internal to

company):

 Largely depends on

advertising

 Its social networks have

limited success

Opportunities (Market

specific / external):

 Structural reorganization

to focus on core

operations

 Positive outlook for

markets with low internet

access

SO Strategies

 Being a subsidiary of

Alphabet will improve its

core activities

 Fill the projected gap of

the increasing demand for

online retail business

WO Strategies

 Find alternative sources

of revenue, not majorly

depending on

advertisements

Threats (external):

 Brand image could be

impacted by

administrative

proceedings

 In-app searches put the

firm’s web search

platform at a risk.

 Intense competition

ST Strategies

 Strengthen the brand

image through

maintaining market

dominance

WT Strategies

 Strive to remain at the

top of competitors

(Source: Marketing Teacher, 2018)

Digital Marketing at Google Merchandise Store 16

Key Summary

The digital SWOT analysis of Google merchandise store is a clear indication that the the

store has enough strength. For the purpose of addressing its weaknesses, it has to find ways of

improving its physical presence probably via renting more physical stores as well as

promotion. It is noteworthy that the firm started opening some of such stores in the UK

though at slow pace (Awais and Samin, 2012). From the above analysis, the firm must really

work hard to outdo threats of imitation and competition. Otherwise, the firm can do better

upon addressing the strategic factors this analysis has identified. The firm can also use the

RACE summary below;

Reach audience

 Do more advertisements

 Persuasion of customers

Increase interaction with audience (Act)

 Open physical stores

Conversion to customers (Convert)

 Be specific to customer needs

Engage with customers (long-term)

 Establish long-lasting advertisements with constant reminders

In terms of KPIs, Google can adopt the structure below;

Stage

Tracking metrics (useful metrics

to track)

KPIs

Reach Audience

 Unique visitors

 New visitors

 Conversation volume

 Social audience

 Search visibility

 Share of voice

 Visits (Sessions)

 Brand / direct visits

 Organic visits

 Inbound links

Act

 Page engagement rate

 Cost per lead

Digital Marketing at Google Merchandise Store 17

(bounce rate, duration)

 No. of pages viewed

 Content interaction e.g.

video

 Goal value per visit

Convert

 Online sales volume

 Offline sales volume

generated from online

 Average order value

 Cost per sale

 Cost per acquisition

 Subscription

 Download

 Goal Conversion rates

 Orders

Engage

customers to

retain and grow

 Email list quality

 Active social followers

 Lifetime value

 Customer advocacy

 Email engagement quality

(opening / click-through rate)

 Social shares / likes /

comments

 Return visitors

 Traffic from social sites

Recommendation

After conducting Google merchandise store’s digital marketing audit, the following

recommendations would be appropriate to further improve the store’s audience base despite

the fact the firm already has a wide international presence;

First and foremost, the store should reassess its current digital marketing to identify

opportunities and gaps that the firm might not be able to see. The firm might therefore need

to review its social media presence, performance of its key competitors, content, and search

engine rankings among others.

Secondly, the store’s digital strategic plan might need to be updated. This should be

driven by data, depending on what had the best performance. There are performance

measurement and accountability provided by the digital marketing channels which may not

be provided by the traditional media.

Digital Marketing at Google Merchandise Store 18

Finally, the store’s fundamentals might need to be rebalanced so as to draw as many

customers as possible to the firm’s website, online retail business, and social media.

Digital Marketing at Google Merchandise Store 19

References

Awais, M. and Samin, T., 2012. Advanced SWOT Analysis of E-commerce. International

Journal of Computer Science Issues, 9(2), pp.569-574.

Bastick, J. 2015, March 12. Everybody on the planet is our target audience. Retrieved from

‘http://www.bandt.com.au/marketing/everybody-on-the-planet-is-our-target-audience-

google-marketing-boss’

Choi, H. and Varian, H., 2012. Predicting the present with Google Trends. Economic Record,

88(s1), pp.2-9.

Dave C. 2018. Amazon.com Case study: Smart Insights. Retrieved from

https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/online-business-revenue-

models/amazon-case-study/

Ghemawat, S., Gobioff, H. and Leung, S.T., 2003. The Google file system (Vol. 37, No. 5,

pp. 29-43). ACM.

Goldfarb, A., 2014. What is different about online advertising?. Review of Industrial

Organization, 44(2), pp.115-129.

Google Inc. 2014. Google Inc. Form 10-K, 2014.

Google Inc. 2015. Company – Google.

Google Inc. 2018. Countries or regions with restricted access. Retrieved from

https://support.google.com/a/answer/2891389?hl=en

Jay Y. 2014. The Interanl Grading System Google uses for its Employees. Business Insider.

Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/googles-ranking-system-okr-2014-

1?IR=T

Digital Marketing at Google Merchandise Store 20

Jeremy W. 2018. Why Performance Matters. WebFundamentals. Retrieved from

https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/performance/why-performance-

matters/

Light on Conspiracies. 2018. Google Partners with Mainstream Media. Light on

Conspiracies. Retrieved from https://www.lightonconspiracies.com/google-just-

partnered-with-mainstream-media/

Marketing Teacher. 2018. Google SWOT Analysis. MarketingTecaher.com. Retrieved from

http://www.marketingteacher.com/google-swot-analysis/

Mike O’Brien. 2018. Google, Amazon and the relationship between paid Search and

Ecommerce: ClickZ Marketing Technology Transformation. Retrieved from

https://www.clickz.com/google-amazon-paid-search-ecommerce/213753/

Purcell, K. Brenner,J. Rainee,L .2012, March 9. Search Engine use 2012. A project of Pew

research center. Retrieved from ‘http://www.pewinternet.org/files/old-

media/Files/Reports/2012/PIP_Search_Engine_Use_2012.pdf’

Schumann, J.H., von Wangenheim, F. and Groene, N., 2014. Targeted online advertising:

Using reciprocity appeals to increase acceptance among users of free web services.

Journal of Marketing, 78(1), pp.59-75.

Schwartz, E. 2014, October 24. Who’s really winning the search war. Search Engine land.

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Softline Solutions. 2009, March 13. Search engine demographics-why it matters to your

business. Retrieved from ‘http://www.softlinesolutions.com/search-engine-

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Digital Marketing at Google Merchandise Store 21

Sterling, G. 2008. February 18. Hitwise: Google users older bigger spenders than yahoo’s.

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users-older-bigger-spenders-than-yahoos-13394’

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