Google revenue model case study
Google case study : A summary of Google business strategy and background on Google technology for readers of my Digital Marketing and E-commerce books. End of case contains technical references on Google's approach to crawling, indexing and ranking results at the end of this case study page.
This Google strategy case study is updated for each new edition of my Digital marketing or E-business book.
Google mission
Google’s mission is encapsulated in the SEC filing statement:
“to organize the world’s information …. and make it universally accessible and useful”.
Google explains that it believes that the most effective, and ultimately the most profitable, way to accomplish our mission is to put the needs of our users first. Offering a high-quality user experience has led to strong word-of-mouth promotion and strong traffic growth.
Read further details on the culture and ethics of Google in their Ten Things Manifesto. Notable tenets of…
An eBay Business Strategy case study
A 2010 update on eBay
Increased use of mobile Ecommerce. The eBay mobile app for iPhone was downloaded seven million times by January 2010. Consumers are shopping more and more via their mobile phones with more than $600 million worth of sales transacted through mobile applications in 2009.
eBay's Growth strategy. According to the SEC filing "Our growth strategy is focused on reinvesting in our customers by improving the buyer experience and seller economics by enhancing our products and services, improving trust and safety and customer support,
extending our product offerings into new formats, categories and geographies, and implementing innovative pricing and buyer retention strategies. Over the course of 2009, we continued to make significant changes that were designed to improve the user experience on all of our sites, including changes to pricing and shipping policies. In 2009, we also made significant steps to create a faster and…
Just a short post to mention 3 conference sessions I'll be giving in Feb and an announcement about a new copywriting training course from my colleague Jonathan Gabay.
If you're attending either of the events it would be great to see you - do collar me and say 'Hi' if you get a chance - it's always good to meet people 'In Real World'.
If not, I'll be posting the presentations here and at my Slideshare at the end of Feb - see all Dave's Digital Marketing presentations on Slideshare.
The talks are:
Search Engine Strategies
Wed 17th Feb 2PM - Introduction to Paid Search Marketing
Technology for Marketing
Tues 23rd Feb - Keeping Your Audience Engaged integrating Email marketing and Social Media Marketing
Wed 24th Feb - Keynote: Optimising Your Digital Marketing Mix
Copywriting training course: March 2010
I'm also pleased to tell you about this new course on copywriting from Jonathan Gabay who…
I'm always surprised by the popularity of tactical predictions for digital marketing at the start of the year. But I shouldn't be, one of the most common questions I get asked through the year 'is Dave, what's the next big thing, what's new in digital, what should I be thinking about?'
As always, I've been keeping an eye on what the specialists are saying and I have written a roundup of most useful predictions on digital marketing tactics that are close to my heart like SEO, Social marketing, Email marketing and analytics.
My own predictions aren't the run-of-the-mill predictions of innovations, rather they're about what the most savvy digital marketers get already, but others maybe don't because they're stuck in trad media thinking or it's so difficult to change the way their marketing is managed and resourced.
So here are my recommendations for…
Well, it's near the end of January, so time for a predictions roundup. This time I'm separating the tactics from the strategy and I will post soon on my predictions and recommendations for approaches to digital marketing strategy. I've grouped the trends / predictions in these 4 tactics areas:
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
2. Web Analytics / Website design
3. Email marketing
4. Social media marketing
I know that many specialist agency and client-side digital marketers focus on the individual tactics that matter most to success for most companies in online marketing. These key tactics are SEO, Social, Email marketing and Analytics, so here's a round-up of the most popular posts in each of these categories.
In my commentary, I've also picked out what I think really matters most or is a significant new trend in 2010 limiting myself to two posts from the best known commentators in each area.
2010 Search Engine Optimization predictions
1.…
Just read an interesting post on Ecommerce strategy over on Econsultancy from Matt Curry who runs the Wiltshire Farm Foods website amongst other things.
He's discussing a new year review to prioritise the activities to improve performance and is using a useful 'divide and conquer' framework to think through the factors which drive performance of an Ecommerce site and how you measure them.
The diagram he uses reminds me of this diagram that I have in my Ebusiness and Ecommerce Management book taken (with permission) from Ashley Friedlein's 2003 but still relevant book (see end of post for reference). I think Ashley's diagram is stronger since it not only looks at referrers but splits out first time and repeat visitor types.
Here's the diagram:
Matt's diagram is a good way to look at all the factors, but Ashley's works back one…
Great to be at the sixth year of this Econsultancy event - I was there at the start. speaking at the first couple of events, but today speakers are exclusively client-side experiences which is fine by me, I can relax.
As always the talks are structured around the famous Econsultancy Wheel which is a good model for developing a digital strategy:
Customer acquisition session
ACQUIRE 1: Social media, viral marketing, creativity...
Andy Hobsbawm and James Alexander, Founders, Green Thing
Great description of developing business. From a digital perspective, my takeaway was developing a social media distribution strategy, i.e.
1. Post blog post or offer on site.
2. Syndicate to primary networks manually so personal, e.g. Facebook, Twitter
3. Automate distribution to less popular social networks and popular video sites where relevant via Tube Mogul
ACQUIRE 2 : Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Julian Sambles, Head of Audience Development, Telegraph Media Group
Julian's angle was…
Since digital marketing is so well established, integrated into the marketing activities of most companies today, it is inevitable that we will question. What's next? "What's the next big thing" is the question I'm asked most often.
You may have noticed the recent comment pieces on post-digital marketing in New Media Age such as that by Mark Cridge and Mark Walley which proclaim we are in a "post-digital" world since digital has become a mainstream activity of traditional agencies. I side with Michael Nutley of NMA who argues that the danger in a post-digital mindset is that digital is just treated as another channel and it's not placed at the core of thinking and it's unique attributes exploited. Many succesful campaigns show the need for specialists in social media, search and mobile marketing for instance.
Recommended post-digital world presentation
The excellent presentation/book I have embedded below on the post-digital concept by…
I announced the publication of the 4th edition of my Ebusiness and Ecommerce management book via Twitter recently and a couple of people asked me what was new. Fair question! So, here from the preface is a chapter-by-chapter summary list.
[amazon-product]0273719602[/amazon-product]
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If you're not familiar with the book, I have also included this figure which provides a framework for managing resources needed for sell-side E-commerce in a large organisation. It gives an idea of most the ebusiness management issues that I tackle in the book.
OK, so on to the changes. The chapter structure of previous editions has been retained, but many other changes have been incorporated based on lecturer and student feedback.
There are two main new features. First, new case studies in boxes "Real-world E-business experiences - The E-consultancy interview" are introduced at the start of most chapters. These are interviews with…
ThinkVisibility is a refreshing change from the corporate SEO conferences like Search Engine Strategies and SMX.
I have added a short summary for each talk I attended and have now embedded the presentations. The best ones to watch out for are:
2. Chris Garrett - AdAge Top 150 Blogger on Blogging for SEO
6. Tom Critchlow of Distilled on Reputation Management
7. Patrick Altoft of Blogstorm on Link-building
Joanna Butler on Advanced Analytics
Moving to Mobile: Simple Strategies for SMEs
Avoiding Common Accessibility Mistakes
Kudos to Dom Hodgson for putting this event on in Leeds to attract the active SEOs / digital marketers in the North of England. I went to Uni in Leeds, so it was nice to go back and nicely laid back since it was Saturday (although getting up was a struggle).
OK, here's the tips I picked up:
1. Tim Nash - Link-building / Info architecture specialist on understanding link equity
…
