As I wrote the other day I was on a panel at GOPAC to discuss online advertising and I thought it was an excellent panel and not just because I presented. Each one of us had completely different subjects to speak about. I presented case studies on streaming commercials online, McCain's search campaign, and online advertising. David Kralik spoke about the marketing efforts behind Drill Here, Dill Now, Pay Less for American Solutions. And, Robert Willington from the Massachusetts GOP offered a ton of social networking tips for campaigns. Robert Willington's presentation really had a lasting impressions on me for how Google Dominates Online Politics.
As you flip through Rob's presentation, you see can seen how userful Google's FREE product offerings are for political campaigns and other marketers. Did I mention that this was ALL FREE!!!
- Blogger for having your own campaign blog. Personally I prefer Typepad and probably Wordpress, but so what? Blogger is a decent product and I even started there myself.
- Google Maps where you can track your users and supporters for free
- YouTube for commercials, video ads, and responses from your voters
- Google Analytics to track your marketing results
- Google Docs for sharing information
- And not in the presentation but I mentioned it - Google Alerts to track comments and posts as well as Gmail for email and Google Reader for feeds
Not once (other than myself) did David or Rob mention Yahoo, MSN, or any other online advertising luminaries. It was pretty much Google, Digg, MySpace, and a few other social networking tools and sites.
This is why Google dominates politics. They have great free products and then get you hooked with their brand and usability. When it actually comes time for you to spend money for advertising where do you think you are going to go first? A company like MSN where you have had little brand interaction or Google?
Google isn't buying political favors or leaning towards any side. They just have a simple marketing proposition. Get you marketers into their product line and then upsell you when you are ready. That's why they dominate Politics and other industries.
PardonMyFrench,
Eric
Bang on the money Eric. It's also pretty scary that one company should have such dominant control over the ebb and flow of information in our society...
Posted by: Gab Goldenberg | August 20, 2008 at 12:34 PM