Google’s got a big reputation to live up to. So what’s it really like to work there and what challenges does it present to its new industry head of B2B, Hanne Tuomisto-Inch? Victoria Clarke reports
A stone’s throw from the hubbub of London’s Oxford Street, lies Google’s swanky new office space. It’s a place of high-tech wizardry – balancing ‘in-with-the-kids’ décor with cutting-edge gadgetry.
Google bods float about its huge hub – open laptops poised on arms or else carrying a complimentary refreshment (and we’re not talking tap water or something that passes for instant coffee in a paper cup). There’s an awe-inspiring buzz about the place; little wonder, therefore, that Hanne Tuomisto-Inch, Google’s new industry head of B2B, is loving her job right now.
Tuomisto-Inch came on board the Google enterprise in August 2011, having been involved in B2B marketing throughout her entire career (both in the UK and her native Finland). While she’s worked at some pretty big brands before landing her current role, Google appears the ultimate prize in her career journey so far. But is working for the global giant really all it’s cracked up to be?
According to Tuomisto-Inch the answer’s a resolute “yes.”
“The people at Google are the greatest thing about my role. They’re so inspirational and smart, and they give you loads of energy. I feel very excited about coming to work everyday.”
She continues, “I was amazed when I first started at how ‘flat’ the organisation is. Even though there is hierarchy, the door is always open everywhere. No one really has their own office here. You don’t feel like there are any barriers.”
Tuomisto-Inch explains that when she first took up her new role, colleagues proactively approached her to invite her for coffee to discuss the area of the business they’re involved with. “Collaboration within Google is organic,” she says, which is undoubtedly one of the reasons for its ongoing success.
Reaching out to B2B
While Tuomisto-Inch was actively encouraged to ‘get under the skin’ of Google (its people, products and services) when she was first appointed, she was also expected to hit the ground running with regards to specific tasks.
One of these was putting together the B2B team’s business plan for 2012. The UK team has 20 clients – ranging from tech companies, those in the oil industry, trade clients (e.g. brands that sell direct online) and also business service organisations. Tuomisto-Inch explains this wide range of clients presents her and her team with a huge challenge.
“The team has to have expertise on very different business models. It needs to look at marketing solutions that make sense from a specific business perspective.”
She adds, “We also need to engage the B2B market more than we have historically, reaching out to the B2B market as a whole, covering both agencies and clients. While Google is targeted on a certain number of clients, we also need to educate the wider B2B market.”
Of course Google doesn’t struggle with brand awareness per se, but Tuomisto-Inch admits the display offering isn’t as well known for its B2B capabilities – and advertisers and agencies don’t see it as an obvious B2B partner.
Tech trends and challenges
Another set of challenges Tuomisto-Inch talks about, both from Google’s and a wider industry perspective, revolves around the use of social, video and mobile marketing. With regards to social, she reveals it’s a huge strategy for Google going forward. The search giant recently rolled out its brand pages in Google Plus, giving rival social networks a run for their money in the business arena and brands the chance to further engage with their online audience.
Unsurprisingly, Tuomisto-Inch is also a huge advocate of video marketing.
She describes how video has come a long way in recent years, in terms of the impact and levels of engagement it can create, and there is currently a massive drive at Google to help organisations recognise this.
Mobile is another area that Tuomisto-Inch thinks is currently being under-tapped in B2B. However, she points out that a business audience is much more savvy at using mobile than a consumer audience, and therefore mobile should be an obvious extension of a B2B brand’s online campaign. She says brands needn’t get bogged down with a complicated mobile strategy though – they can start small and don’t even need to have a complete mobile site to leverage mobile marketing. Click-to-call functionality on mobile is a killer app, according to Tuomisto-Inch, and calls through AdWords can now be counted as conversions.
Her challenge, of course, will be communicating these kinds of messages to the market and then helping to bring Google front-of-mind when brands, advertisers and agencies are planning their marketing campaigns. What she faces, along with every B2B marketer, is the fact that business professionals’ adoption of – and demand for – technology such as social, mobile and video, is moving at a faster rate than that of a brand’s digital marketing efforts.
Tuomisto-Inch’s top tips on boosting your search results using social, mobile and video:
1. Personal (business) recommendations have now come to search: Ensure you add +1 functionality to your site so that people can start endorsing your company. This will show up in search results, as well as display ads, when people in the person’s network have +1-ed the company.
2. Email is increasingly being replaced by social means of communication and companies need to ensure they are creating reasons for their customers to connect with them socially by creating good content. Ensure content is being distributed via social channels to give you a boost in organic search results.
3. Create video content that adds value to your customers and prospects in the purchase process and beyond. Have a strong distribution strategy in place that is YouTube driven: videos have the potential of giving you more organic real estate on the search results page.
4. Ten to 15 per cent of the traffic to B2B sites is coming from mobile devices. Ensure that your site is ‘mobile ready’ so that you have a positive user experience and maximise revenue potential.
5. Extend your desktop search campaigns to mobile search to capture the opportunity. Mobile search has a lower CPC and higher CTR than desktop and it makes sense to separate your mobile search campaigns to manage them mort effectively.
