28th July 2011

How Google+ will radicalise the way brands target their audiences

Since the announcement of Google’s new social network Google+, tech geeks and industry experts have been speculating a lot about its future and that of its biggest competitor, Facebook.

Google+ reached 20 million users in 24 days which is exactly 1011 fewer days than Facebook took to achieve the same volume of users. With the vast success of Facebook fan pages, it is definitely worth considering the potential of Google+ for brands.

While there is currently no option for official brand profiles on Google+, there is a big appetite for them within the industry. In fact, some brands initiated a presence on Google+ almost straight away, using a personal profile. Google however states that this goes against its regulations and is forcing brands to personalise profiles in order to maintain their followers or threatening to remove them completely. Among these early adopters was BBC Sport who gained a presence on Google+ in this way. Although it is uncertain whether this profile will remain for much longer, it is using the platform in much the same way as its Twitter presence by posting regular updates and news links.

Bearing in mind that broadcasters (and all brands) are evolving from being traditional advertisers towards being content providers, there is even more of an opportunity to use Google+ in this way.

Relevance

Google has always been about the discovery and sharing of content rather than having the conversational role Facebook has. This is why Google may have struck gold with Google+, since the sharing of content has a significant affect on SEO. Whereas Facebook has always been seen as a ‘nice-to-have’ tool by brands, Google+ brand pages (when they start to roll out) will be a necessity for brands who want to be found in searches.

Take the Sparks feature for example. This gives recommendations for users which could be suitable for them, based on the interests they enter. The results, such as blog posts, articles and videos, can then be shared. Sparks takes into consideration how many times a user has clicked Google’s +1 button, which is similar to a Facebook ‘like’ but with the added increased relevance to SEO.

It is not only the way the content can be delivered by brands that will be provided by Google+, but also the way that brands use the results. In the future, for example, this could be a great way of generating programme recommendations for broadcasters based on what might interest an individual.

Benefits of categorisation

This personalised way of targeting consumers could also make a huge impact on brands. Take Google+’s Circles feature for example. This has been at the root of the excitement surrounding the platform since its launch, as these are what really makes it stand apart from Facebook. The highly praised feature gives users the ability to share different things with different categories of people such as family, friends and work colleagues, providing a more relevant way of sharing with specific people.

This ability to divide audiences into groups will allow brands to use Circles for A/B testing. By sending out the same post at different times of the day to each Circle, brands could measure the success of each post with a view to learning about when their audience is most engaged. This practice could also be useful to multinational brands who want to post a time-specific message across different time zones, by splitting the audience accordingly.

Circles also have the potential to replace corporate newsletters. For example, if the staff of BBC Sport add people to a circle called ‘football’ who they know regularly share content to do with football, they can then update this group of people who they know have an interest in that subject, rather than those who are only interested in motorsports for example. Furthermore, if someone is interested in both motorsports and football, the same person can be placed in both circles and be updated on both sports. This can avoid irrelevant, spammy updates which often lead to people ‘unfollowing’ brands on Twitter.

This can be taken another step further and Circles could become a powerful social CRM tool. It could be used as a way of categorising demographics such as gender, age or region, depending on what is relevant to the brand delivering tailored content to these groups.

Although this sort of behaviour is already becoming more apparent through digital marketing, Google+ will give brands the opportunity to improve the way they target their audience in the future.

Success

The individual has always been at the heart of the social web. Google+ may be the wake-up call needed for the digital industry to realise this, while offering some essential tools to make the most of its opportunity.

Author: Caz Yetman, Nixon McInnes