At the same time, depending on the marketing strategy implemented by a business, the potential client list can be very small and specialized. Some of the more popular elements of the Internet try to reach both. Yahoo! and Google are two of the most recognizable names not only on the Internet, but on Wall Street as well. These two companies are the top two most visited sites in the United States.
How these companies reach their target markets can not be isolated to one particular strategy. Internet marketing for Yahoo! and Google must take on a multitude of forms: search engines, e-mail services, storage services, viral advertising and personalized web portals drive in potential customers daily, as the companies visitor lists show. As well, not all marketing is good marketing, dependent on the viewpoint of the consumer.
The most popular uses for online portals such as Yahoo! and Google is the respective companies search engines. It is relatively difficult to find alternative forms for searching the web, most often this is done elsewhere by users Internet Service Provider. With the basic service of a search engine, neither company has stopped there. Both Yahoo! and Google have bought out some of their competition to increase market share.
E-mail, file storage, news, sports and entertainment all come packaged with the use of each provider. Yahoo! has recently introduced a service called “Ask the Planet” which allows users to ask questions and receive answers on almost any topic. One question was posed by physicist Stephen Hawking, asking “How can humans survive the next 100 years?” This question raised many thousands of answers and a lot of debate. The response was large enough to reach out beyond the service Yahoo! had provided, which in turn pointed all discussion back to the company in a marketing blitz Yahoo! may not have predicted.
Within the last month, Google acquired a popular online video sharing site called YouTube. Google already had a similar service called Google Video. With both services, Google can further market itself or subsidiary companies through viral advertising. Viral videos are online movies that are located on services such as YouTube. As these videos are viewed, they are shared to more viewers who in turn share again, spreading like a virus, hence the name. This marketing tactic can be used with the introduction of business advertising into these viral videos. The more entertaining the video, it seems, the better chance it will have in succeeding.
Not every marketing ploy has positive overtones, though this depends on the viewpoint. Take for example Google’s recent venture into providing search services in China, a communist country that takes pride in censorship. In order for Google to offer services in China, Google would have to censor information to websites accessed from inside the country. After this was done, the United States Congress “ripped into Google with particular fire. They asked how a company with a slogan “Don’t Be Evil” could conspire with China’s censors. However, as far as the Chinese government was concerned, this was a step in the right direction.
Internet marketing takes on many forms, good and bad, large and small. The Internet has had a reputation at times for having untrustworthy data. The information can come from anywhere and anyone, and in cases such as with China, can be censored. However, marketing by companies like Yahoo! and Google have become so common, it is hard to tell what they are trying to sell and what they are using to entertain. The fine line with Internet marketing is to find the grey area in between sales and entertainment to keep customers coming back for more.
