Executive Summary
Google is a global technology leader and the developer behind the most successful internet project such as YouTube, the search engine with the same name, and Android. It operates in all parts of the world and has offices in all 6 continents. The company’s flagship service, Google Search, is the most visited website in the world. With the current trend of organizations turning toward cloud computing, and the individuals’ desire to access their files on-the-go without carrying storage medium. there is a demand for cloud storage solutions.
There are several products in the market, and Google Drive joins them in the competition. Google’s service offers 15 GB of storage for free, and an ability to extend the volume by purchasing subscription. The product is developed because of positive forecasts regarding the cloud storage market size and value. The service is targeted at individuals, students, and businesses. The prices are higher than the competition for corporate users. Individuals receive rates that are similar in products offered by competitors. Because there are already established products in this area, market readiness is at the high level.
Google Drive differentiates itself by offering integration with office applications, collaboration functionality, flexible pricing scheme for organizations, and unique user experience. The product will be promoted through targeted advertising using AdWords, pre-installing on Chromebooks and Android devices, and integrating it with Chrome web-browser. The company recognizes its responsibility for the privacy and confidentiality of user data because Google Drive stores personal information on Google’s servers.
Company Description
Google is one of the most reputable and influential companies in the world. Almost everybody in the world knows about its first product – Google Search. The company was reorganized to distinguish between its other projects. From 2015, Google is a child company of Alphabet and works in the area of internet and computing research, advertisement and marketing technologies, and cloud computing. Google’s portfolio is rich with applications that are offered globally and are used by billions of people around the globe. More than 100,000 people work at Google, and the company’s offices and R&D centers are located in all continents.
Google was founded by two Stanford graduates, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in 1998. The company’s headquarters is in Mountain View, California; Google moved to its present location in 2004 after the initial public offering. The company’s mission is to provide convenient solutions that contribute to the accessibility and organization of information. Therefore, Google attempts to market its products in all corners of the world, ensuring that their services are available in almost all languages. To provide equal access, the company has server farms in different locations worldwide.
Google processes enormous amounts of data daily with the help of millions of services the company owns and operates. These data centers are located in all continents to ensure people have seamless experience wherever they access Google’s services. Although the company is primarily associated with the search engine with the same name, Google has a number of other products not related to internet search. Geopositioning service Google Maps and a free email service Gmail are among the prominent examples. The company also has a web browser, Google Chrome, which is one of the most popular in the world, photo sync service Google Photos, and instant messaging platform Hangouts. In addition, Google is the primary developer of Android, the world’s leading mobile operating system, used on billions of smartphones, tablets, TVs, cars, and watches. The company is also working on Google Glass and a lightweight operating system for laptops Google Chrome OS. Google Search is the most visited website in the world – billions of people use the service to search for desired information. International versions, such as google.co.uk, are leaders in their domestic markets. Google is also the company behind YouTube, the world’s most popular video sharing service. The company also has an office suite – Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Google actively explores other ventures and invests a large volume of financial resources in research and innovation.
In May 2011, the number of unique visitors to Google sites per month exceeded 1 billion people for the first time. This capacity to store and process amounts of data gives Google a competitive advantage over other companies that cannot afford to maintain such a complex infrastructure. Therefore, it is easy for the company to roll out new web services and scale them for global use. Currently, Google has products that directly compete with services that are popular on the market. For instance, Android was bought and enhanced by Google to compete with Apple’s iOS.
The objective of this marketing plan is to provide data, methods, and strategy for promoting a cloud storage service analogous to Dropbox and Microsoft OneDrive, but with specific advantages. The goal is to propose a marketing strategy that will allow the service to obtain 40% of the market share among cloud storage providers. Subsequent sections of the paper provide a detailed analysis of the current situation in the market and a description of possible risks and threats. An overview of the proposed service, specific marketing strategies that will be used, how the product will be priced, and what market segments will be targeted are also included.
Situation Analysis
With the emergence of globalization and internationalization of businesses, there has been a sharp demand for products that allow storing data online and accessing it on-the-go instead of copying it to traditional mediums such as USB flash drives and CDs. It is also essential for contemporary companies to share large-size files with branch offices without traveling to the location. Furthermore, users look for solutions that allow them to synchronize their content on a number of devices. Today, consumer electronics are accessible, and one person may have a phone, a tablet, and a laptop and may wish to access the data from any of the devices. As one of the leading providers of internet-related services, Google should have an appropriate product that meets current user demands.
Competition
Dropbox is a file hosting service that includes personal cloud storage, file synchronization, and a client program.
It allows users to create a designated folder on their computers, which Dropbox synchronizes in such a way that it has the same content regardless of which device is used for viewing. Files located in this folder are also available through the Dropbox website and the mobile application. The product works according to the Freemium model, in which users have the opportunity to create an account with a given amount of free space, while a paid subscription is required to increase the storage volume. The service has been operating since 2008 and considered to be a pioneer in personal cloud storage services. Due to this fact, it has one of the largest user bases and is one of the primary competitors to Google’s similar product.
Microsoft also has a service for file hosting and sharing – OneDrive. It entered the market in 2007 and is one of the leading personal and business cloud storage solutions. There is Office Online support on the platform, which allows users to download, create, edit, and share Microsoft Office documents directly in a web browser. In 2017, OneDrive added Files On-Demand technology, which allows users to see files in the explorer without downloading their contents to the device. For all folders and files, it is possible to set the access level – from exclusively personal to public. It offers 5 gigabytes for free, and additional capacity should be purchased through a subscription.
Mega cloud storage is not as popular as other providers. However, it offers 50 gigabytes of volume for free immediately after registration. Mega has a convenient mobile application for downloading files, as well as desktop clients for synchronizing them. According to the company, all data is encrypted on the device before being sent to the servers. This feature makes Mega one of the very few services that offer encrypted storage. Users can transfer files to each other in encrypted form, while all data is stored in the cloud.
Box, based in Redwood City, California, is cloud-based content management and file sharing for businesses. The company uses the freemium business model to provide cloud storage and file hosting for personal accounts and enterprises. Official clients and applications are available for Windows, macOS, and several mobile platforms. Users can determine how their content can be shared with other users. Users can invite other users to view and edit the shared files of the account, upload documents and photos to the shared files folder (and thus exchange these documents outside of Box), as well as provide other users with the rights to view shared files. Box offers three types of accounts – Enterprise, Business, and Personal.
Despite intense competition, Google has several advantages over Dropbox, Mega. Dropbox has to primarily rely on Amazon’s S3 storage to provide its services, whereas Google has its own infrastructure. Also, there are no built-in tools for collaboration in Dropbox and Mega. Box and OneDrive, on the other hand, have many features of cooperation and integration with other services. For instance, OneDrive works well with Office Online, which is the world’s leading web-based document processing software. Box evolved into a workplace organization and workflow management solution. Furthermore, Microsoft owns and manages the required infrastructure to host its global cloud storage application.
Factors Affecting the Company
Because Google operates in a global market, the company is inevitably affected by both demographic and political factors. Demographic determinants include age, income level, education, occupation, and geography. Google creates products both for individual use and for enterprises. Therefore, age and occupation are critical when deciding how and which products and features to promote. Because most of the company’s products are internet-based, education and geography are also vital. Users should have a basic knowledge of using computers to be able to utilize Google’s services. For the same reason, internet access should be appropriate. Rural areas often have challenges with connecting to the internet. Some of the products are not offered for free, or charges are applied for additional features. Therefore, the income level is another crucial factor to consider – people with low income may not be tending to spend money on an online service.
Because of fluctuations in the political arena, Google may face challenges in foreign markets. A recent case between the United States and China that deteriorated the business partnership between Google and Huawei is a perfect example. China has the world’s largest population and major manufacturers of Android phones. Google has an opportunity to market its products by giving OEMs an ability to preinstall Google’s products on their equipment. However, if a political decision rules out a partnership and disallows foreign companies to use Google’s applications, the company may incur a high amount of opportunity costs. Also, continuously updating the terms of use and tailoring the products according to various political decisions leads to additional expenditure.
SWOT Analysis
Product Description
About Service
Google Drive is a cloud technology project designed to store user files on a virtual disk. This eliminates the need to carry flash drives, portable hard drives, and other compact storage media everywhere. The main advantage of the product is the ability to access the files from anywhere with Internet access. Its features include storing data on Google’s servers, sharing and access control, and collaborative editing. Google Drive integrates with Docs, Sheets, and Slides – a set of office applications for collaborating on text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, web forms, and other files. Search engines index public documents in Drive, thus it is possible to find files that are located in different accounts.
Google Drive provides 15 GB of free storage, and if the allocated volume is not sufficient, users can purchase additional capacity from 100 GB to 30 TB. Extra space can be acquired through several subscription plans – G Suite, Google Drive Enterprise, and Google Drive for Education. G Suite is a set of cloud services provided by Google for other enterprises and groups of people. G Suite allows other organizations to integrate their domain names with some Google products. The paid plan includes 30 GB of Drive volume and tools for administration and reporting.
The premium version of the service is called Google Drive for Enterprise, which provides unlimited storage space, advanced audit, and reporting functions, as well as data services for electronic investigations. Additional service settings allow administrators to better manage users’ work with Drive. For instance, administrators may direct individual employees to install a synchronization client for a PC. It is possible to upload files up to 5 TB in size to Disk. If the company has less than five users, each of them is provided with 1 TB. All customer data is encrypted when uploaded to Google’s servers, stored and downloaded. Users are provided with 24/7 support and guaranteed uninterrupted operation of services for 99.9% of the time.
The service supports many data formats, and the functionality can be enlarged via extensions. Google Drives allows users to view archives, audio files, text, images, code files, and video. The majority of Adobe and other formats are also supported – AutoCAD files, Illustrator, Photoshop, portable documents, vector drawings. Office documents can be created, viewed, and edited via a suite of free office applications developed by Google. Users can create and edit documents online and work on them together with other users in real-time. There are also Google Drive client applications for Android, iOS, and Chrome OS.
Incentives Behind Developing
The reasons why the company should actively promote this product are to use the infrastructure efficiently, generate additional revenue, and abide by the trends in the global IT market. A recent report shows that at least 80% of in-house data centers have more storage and processing power than the companies need (Peterson). The same is true for Google, where a significant part of the infrastructure stays idle. The company may improve efficiency and maximize usage by providing spare storage to individuals and enterprises. Reducing the time each machine waits for work leads to the maximization of output in terms of revenue.
In 2018, the cloud storage market was estimated to be worth 178 billion dollars (Peterson). There are forecasts that this number will grow in the coming years, which means that there is a financial possibility for Google (Peterson). Also, the public cloud industry is estimated to make more than 200 billion dollars in revenue in 2019 (“Gartner Forecasts Worldwide Public Cloud Revenue to Grow 17.5 Percent in 2019”). By analyzing the demanded features and functionality, the company is able to take a leading position in the market. However, the high number also means that there is intense competition among cloud storage providers. Competitive advantage Google has over other developers offers the company easy scalability potential and robustness of the service. People already trust Google for its other products; it is also an advantage in front of the company’s competitors.
There is a trend toward cloud computing and cloud storage. Currently, 85% of organizations keep their data in the cloud, and this percentage will grow (Peterson). The primary reason is that it is more expensive and time-consuming for organizations to manage their own infrastructure. The same reason slows down the development process of applications. As time requirements for software development get stricter, enterprises will look more toward outsourcing their infrastructure to external companies. Google, as the pioneer in internet services, should use this trend to develop related products to meet the demands of organizations. One of these products is the cloud storage platform that is targeted at both individual users, organizations, and educational institutions.
Marketing Strategies
Segmentation Strategy
Because Google is a large company and has enough resources for offering different versions of apps based on different types of subscriptions, differentiated market segmentation will be used instead of concentrated segmentation. Under this strategy, specific segments will be promoted by advertising different functionality. For instance, free office apps and an ability to share them with teachers and students may be interested for students. Business users, on the other hand, might be interested in access control to documents and unlimited storage capacity.
Positioning and Differentiation Strategy
For individuals that want to have online storage but do not want to pay unless their files exceed 15 GBs in size, Google Drive provides cloud storage that has the capability to host files of any format. It can be accessed from anywhere with a browser or a client application and has the functionality for users to manage access and permissions to each file or folder. For businesses that do not want to waste their resources on the space that they are not using, Google Drive offers a convenient payment scheme, under which corporate users only pay for the space they use.
The current portfolio of Google apps can be divided into several categories – search, communication, organization, work, and business promotion. Google Drive goes into the “Work” category, where there are Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets. It fits well in this section because these apps are built to increase the efficiency and productivity of collaboration. Office suite of Google is well-integrated into the cloud storage because users can create new documents from within their Drives. With Google Drive’s introduction, all storage for emails and photos will be unified under one volume. It provides more convenience for users because they will be able to control their use of space from one place instead of managing separate drives from different locations.
Pricing scheme, functionality, and usability will be used to differentiate Google Drive from its major competitors. For instance, OneDrive and Dropbox need users to buy a subscription that gets them a specific number of gigabytes. If the users do not use the storage, they will have wasted their money. One the other hand, Google Drive does not charge for space that has not been utilized. Dropbox is only suitable for storing files, but not editing or creating them. In contrast, Google Drive has a suite of word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications. Microsoft also offers online document editing functionality through Office Online. Their main disadvantage, however, is that to get additional OneDrive space, users have to obtain an Office 365 license, which may be too expensive if users only need cloud storage. On the other hand, Google Drive is much cheaper, and office apps are available free of charge both for online and offline use.
Product Strategies
The type of consumer product that appropriately describes Google Drive is different for individuals and businesses. For instance, for enterprises, Google Drive is a shopping product because, in the contemporary business environment, every company needs some sort of cloud storage. The management of these companies carefully considers prices, offered functionality, and volume of different cloud storage providers. Only then the decision is made to buy a subscription for the service. For individual users, however, Google Drive is an unsought product – there are few circumstances under which individual consumers might be required to buy online storage. In most situations, people either do not know about such service or do not want to pay because the product can easily be substituted from their perspective. For instance, a student that does not have much money may opt to use old flash drives for storing and sharing files instead of paying for an online service.
When naming its products, Google always pursues simplicity and recognition. When it comes to cloud storage, a list of easy-to-read and recognizable names is limited to Box and Drive. There is already a company and a service with the same name – Box. Therefore, the management decided to use the word Drive as the product’s name. Drive is preceded by the company’s name because Google is an established and popular brand. Google Drive’s name implicitly tells consumers about the quality of the product, the fact that it can be trusted, and that it will continuously be updated with new features and functionality.
Attributes customers might be interested in include the reliability of the software produced by Google, democratic pricing policies, quality, visual appeal of the website and client applications, the user experience when using the app. Intuitive design and ease of use are also important factors to consider. Because the product is an online service, it has no tangible attributes. For the same reason, no information can be provided on the packaging.
Pricing Strategy
Distribution Strategy
Google Drive is a service that is consumed through the internet. Therefore, the only way it can be distributed is online. The service should be available 99.9% of the time because customers should be able to access their data with no interruptions and delays. Users may switch to other providers if the service is not available 24/7. For this reason, distribution intensity is at the highest level.
Promotion Strategy
In terms of advertising, it depends on whether potential buyers are individuals or enterprises. Google Drive is not a product for massive consumption but is targeted to users with specific needs and requirements. Therefore, targeted marketing campaigns should be conducted using the AdWords platform, which Google owns. These ads can be based on search queries when individuals look for cloud storage options, collaboration tools, or a document sharing platform. Target marketing is proved to be one of the most effective advertising methods. Businesses can be reached through advertising at tech conferences, through email campaigns sent to current G Suite subscribers, and public relations campaigns tailored for partner organizations.
Google develops Chrome OS and there are several manufacturers that provide hardware for this operating system. Chromebook sales can be used as a way of promoting other Google products, including Drive. For instance, pre-installing Google Drive on every laptop that runs Chrome OS will allow the company to introduce the new service to all Chromebook users.
According to the Statista Research Department, the number of shipped Chromebooks has been increasing since 2014. The estimates show that this number will continue to grow every year (Statista Research Department). This forecast shows Chromebooks as a potential promotion channel for future Google products. Google Drive, for instance, could be put on the desktop so that users click and learn about the service. As part of the marketing strategy, new Chromebook users may be given additional free 10 GB of space to increase the interest of Chromebook users in utilizing the functionality provided by Google Drive.
Android phones can also be used for promoting Google applications. Currently, there are more than 2.5 billion active Android devices produced by over 180 manufacturers around the world. There is a possibility for Google to reach an enormous percentage of the population by pre-installing its products on every smartphone. While Google does not directly control what apps are pre-installed on devices, the majority of phones and tablets come with Google Play Services, which are necessary to have Google Play functionality to install apps from the marketplace. If Google includes Drive into Play Services, all phones with Play will also have Drive inside. Microsoft has also been practicing this strategy by selling Microsoft-certified Android phones with pre-installed OneDrive. Google has to take an active approach by ensuring that Android phones come with Drive out of the box.
Google Chrome is a sole leader among both desktop and mobile browsers in the world. Currently, Chrome occupies 68.91% of the market share, while the nearest pursuer, Mozilla Firefox, only has 9.25% (“Desktop Browser Market Share Worldwide”). A high number of potential customers can be reached by placing the Google Drive icon on the home page of the browser. Because Chrome provides offline access to Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, integrating Drive into the browser is a logical next step. This way, users will be able to access their workplace by simply logging in to Chrome. This functionality will not only increase the popularity of Google Drive but will provide customers with additional incentives to use the Chrome browser and the suite of Google’s applications. This strategy will allow Google to enhance its positions in the market of productivity apps.
Social Responsibility
Google Drive is a platform that works with personal data of users. Therefore, abiding by the common ethical principles and ensuring the privacy of customers is essential. Protecting user information and transparent business practices for customers is a matter of respect. When the users are fully aware of how their data is used and have control over their own experience online, their trust in the company is strengthened. Customer loyalty will be stronger in the long run if the user trusts the brand. Therefore, it is imperative for Google to adequately manage the personal data of the users. The company should provide detailed information on what data is collected, how it is used, and how it affects the user experience. Customers should have a convenient way of refusing to provide personal data. Also, the company’s policies regarding confidentiality and privacy of user data should be easily accessible whenever the customer needs to review the material.
Concluding Comments
Despite intense competition from major software development companies like Microsoft, Dropbox, and Box, Google Drive has the potential to become one of the most popular cloud storage platforms in the world. Google has several competitive advantages over other providers. It owns and operates one of the most advanced advertising solutions, namely, AdWords. The company can leverage its experience in targeted marketing to effectively promote the new product. Android operating system is the most popular mobile OS and is developed by Google. By pre-installing the client application of Google Drive, the company is able to introduce the service to billions of people. Chrome is the most popular web-browser in the world, which allows Google to promote its apps by integrating them into Chrome or publishing them to Chrome Web Store. These advantages give Google additional promotion channels not available to other companies. Furthermore, Google does not rely on third-party organizations to manage and maintain the hardware infrastructure. The company has several data centers around the globe which allows Google services to be available 99.9% percent of the time.
Works Cited
“Desktop Browser Market Share Worldwide.”StatCounter, 2019, Web.
“Gartner Forecasts Worldwide Public Cloud Revenue to Grow 17.5 Percent in 2019.”Gartner. 2019, Web.
Peterson, Becky. “Companies Waste $62 Billion on the Cloud by Paying for Capacity They Don’t Need, According to a Report.”Business Insider. 2017, Web.
Statista Research Department. “Chromebook unit shipments worldwide from 2014 to 2023.”Statista. 2018, Web.