Last week Google hosted a symposium on local markets and local advertising. About 120 people attended and for most it was their first visit to the famed Google Plex. All appeared to be wowed.
There were presentations on adwords and mobile advertising. But for me the 3 key take aways were:
1. Google continues to work very hard to better enable small business marketing. Quote from one of the Googlers:
"Our goal is to provide small businesses with the ability to out-market large corporations."
2. How quickly local and mobile advertising is advancing. If anything they are moving faster than we forecasted in our report on the Connected Entrepreneur last summer.
3. How few small businesses have the technical skills to fully take advantage of online marketing. Google sees this problem and is doing several things to address it. They are planning to release a simplified version of adwords in the near future. They are also developing relationships with 3rd parties to create marketing solutions for small businesses. The goal of these relationships is to eliminate or at least minimize the technical complexity of adwords and search engine marketing (and, of course, to sell more ads).
One thing we keep seeing in our research is a growing "digital divide" between tech savy and technically challenged small businesses. As online local and mobile advertising continue to advance we see this divide getting bigger.
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