By Danny Sullivan
This weekend, everyone’s favourite search engine turns 10. And what a decade it has been for Google – a rise to end all rises, “meteoric” doesn’t even do it justice.
One of the things that strikes me about Google is that its success is one of those increasingly rare occasions where the technology itself was the key. Those of us in technology marketing circles are only too aware that having the best technology by no means guarantees pride of place at today’s marketshare table.
I recall when Google first started to appear in the workplace – a colleague recommended I “give it a shot”, and from that day forward I never looked back. Up till then I had been a user of the “others” (Lycos, Alta Vista etc.) and, as I recall, there was nothing much to choose between them. But on that day, I was immediately staggered by the relevance of Google’s results and the speed with which they were delivered.
This was not part of some slick marketing campaign, designed to seduce me into believing that Google was the best new thing around. No, it simply blew everything else out of the water. Of course, Google has gone on to capitalize on its initial success, and marketing has been a huge part of its continued rise, but without that initial triumph at the technology level, none of this would have happened.
But those companies looking to emulate Google’s route to success should beware. Tech startup founders will often rail against marketing and PR – “We know our market, our technology is the best and will sell itself” they cry. Invariably, this is not the case, so unless you are supremely confident that your product has Google-like appeal, don’t forget to market the hell out of it.
By Francis Moran
One of the first of what I like to call “Francis’s favourite fictions,” or “Everything I know that’s wrong about PR I learned from technology company executives,” was a line from the CEO of one of the very first tech companies I pitched when I originally ventured out on my own in the early 1990s. “I want to be on the front page of the Ottawa Citizen tomorrow morning,” he said.
I was a lot younger, thinner and more intemperate in those days, so I replied, “Okay. Go home and shoot your wife tonight.”
Right answer, just not terribly delicately put. However, he got the point and I got the gig.
What I was trying to say, of course, is that media relations usually doesn’t work that way and, for some companies, it never works that way. In fact, at inmedia, our objective is never Page 1 tomorrow. Rather, we try from the very outset to build the kind of foundation for an ongoing media relations effort that will generate meaningful coverage over the long haul. In the technology B2B space, where virtually all our clients are new, small and/or completely unknown, this means we first must thoroughly educate target media about the client, its story and how it will be of interest to the journalists and their audiences now and into the future. If this process delivers immediate coverage, so much the better, but that’s not the primary intent.
This first company was also the first time I tried out what has come to be known around here as a ramp up and roll out, or the media and analyst launch of a company that builds the foundation I’m talking about. The company had recorded many newsworthy successes in its history and had a market-leading presence in its space. However, as we also like to say around here, they call it the “news” business, not the “olds” business. So most of those achievements were now just so much fishwrap as far as the media were concerned.
What I did was develop a comprehensive set of materials that told the company’s complete story, including a timeline of its growth and successes and a couple of case studies that showcased its leadership position. I then sent that package out to the media I had identified, through research, as being at the intersection of Writes-about-this-subject and Influences-my-client’s-market. I followed up with each of them, had great conversations about how my client might feauture in future coverage, and even generated some really good immediate hits. Over the long run, I generated a constant stream of coverage about the client, including, eventually, a Page 1 piece in the Ottawa Citizen.
If a client today tells me the same thing — “I wanna be on Page 1 tomorrow.” — I tell him or her much the same thing. I just use a slightly more subtle approach now.
