How Google’s hands-off marketing approach resulted in their rise to excellence

Not many businesses can claim that they have had such an impact in today’s culture to warrant an entry in the dictionary. The founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, can boast that and so much more. The two Stanford graduates met in 1995 as students at Stanford. Both computer science majors, they shared an immediate interest in the internet and organizing large amounts of data. Thirteen years later, they have become stars in the fields of technology and business as they are two of the youngest billionaires in the world. Such immediate success is hard to fathom, especially when considering the great dot-bomb of the late nineties.

[...] have always believed that building a trusted, highly-recognized brand begins with providing high-quality products and services that make a notable difference in people’s lives. Our user base has grown primarily by word-of-mouth. Our early marketing efforts focused on feeding this word-of- mouth momentum and used public relations efforts to accelerate (Google, 2007) In 2001 and 2002 Google received back-to-back awards, the internet equivalent of an Oscar. Google received two in the prestigious “Best Practices” category; other nominees included Yahoo, Wikipedia, and Amazon. com. This is just the kind of media exposure that Brin and Page needed to get the word out. [...]

[...] Only advertisements that are pertinent to the search query are allowed to be shown on that particular search. (Galbraith, 2007) Given the outrageous amount of searches taking place on Google it seems like a no-brainer for businesses to get their company on Google’s AdWords. And as expected, the internet marketing community went crazy. Not only is the service simple, but users can track how effective their ads are in relation to how many times it is clicked. Arguably the best part about AdWords is that Google is paid on a per click basis of your advertisement. [...]