Google collaborates with marketing software maker Salesforce.com
Business News, Online Advertisement, Search Engine News, Software News June 6th, 2007
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Google collaborates with marketing software maker Salesforce.com
Search engine giant Google has announced that they are now collaborating with the marketing software maker Salesforce.com.
The two companies have now developed a new product that lets Google advertising be resold using Salesforce software.
The announcement of this collaboration helped the Google stock touch an all-time record closing price of $518.84 on Tuesday.
The company is currently facing questioning from the U.S. regulators related to their recently announced acquisition of advertising service DoubleClick.
Rival companies have argued that the deal gives Google way too much power in this industry.
Goldman Sachs analyst Anthony Noto is however very optimistic about Google stock. He said in a note: “In aggregate, we believe that these initiatives will further drive Google’s competitive advantage in search and eventually advertising more broadly.”
As part of the deal between Google and Salesforce.com, Salesforce will resell the Google AdWords platform… they would now be acting as an official distribution channel.
Salesforce Chief Executive Marc Benioff added about the possibilities of their collaboration: “We don’t have an advertising-supported offering. If there is a time when it is the right thing for our customers, we will do it, but we have nothing to announce at this stage.”
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About
Although this alliance reconfirms the importance of mashing up Salesforce and Google into a seamless integrated process, the product side of the announcement falls short of addressing the real pain points that marketers feel when trying to use AdWords to drive new business leads.
1) Landing pages are critical for driving conversions and improving ranking, but 3 out of 4 companies still send clicks to the home page. Google doesn’t care because they still get paid for each click, but the marketer ends up with fewer leads. It’s just too hard to get the right IT support to have enough targeted pages, and the Google-Salesforce alliance provides no solution to this problem.
2) Bidding well is hard for most marketers, and Google-Salesforce provides no help for bid optimization. Again, this suits Google just fine since it’s in their interest to have companies over-bid, but it leaves the marketer with suboptimal results.
3) A click is just the beginning of a business sales cycle. Only 25% of the people that click on an ad and fill out a form are ready to speak with a sales rep. Companies need to put in place a relevant and patient nurturing process that guides the prospect from the research stage to being truly “sales ready”. Once again, the Google-Salesforce alliance doesn’t address this gap in the marketer’s business process.