Salesforce.com has joined forces with Google AdWords to offer a comprehensive on-demand business service to Salesforce's customers. This may be a further Salesforce strength with which the CRM industry will have to contend.
Is it really a "race", or have those companies that have chosen to add paid search optimization, or more specifically Google AdWords, to their business applications already won?
For Salesforce it is surely a case of victory and success. Having already integrated Google's GMail and Google Maps, seeing a 60% increase in stock in the last 12 months and a 64% increase in revenue in the last fiscal year it is a natural progression to accept Google AdWords as part of their available applications. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, reiterated these points earlier this week. The company and its customers will have to be content with their advancement to 6th place in the marketplace - an increase driven by revenue - from its previous 12th place spot.
The San Francisco California customer relationship management (CRM) company, Salesforce, provides on-demand business services, allowing its clients and users to manage and share information easily. Google AdWords further enhances these facilities for Salesforce's customers and its network.
The technology that was created and is referred to as 'Salesforce for Google AdWords', relying on Salesforce's AppExchange platform and discreetly developed and maintained by Kieden Corporation, is a technology and a service this reporter calls 'Googleforce', playing on Salesforce's taglines of 'salesforce' and 'successforce'. It is the epitome of a mash-up, integrating Salesforce's customer management programme with the Google AdWords service; or was the service integrated into the programme? Either way, the mutually advantageous relationship that has resulted in Googleforce allows clients to manage their advertising capabilities through the AppExchange on salesforce.com, or Salesforce for Google AdWords, placing ads alongside their keywords displayed in search results. This is otherwise controlled by the client and therefore means that the service is more streamlined. Benioff is happy to accept that having this control over one's own account will mean there is the prospect to do away with occurrences of click fraud. As a growing concern to pay-per-click customers it is an issue over which Salesforce will surely have to reassure its customers.
Additional benefits to the client surrounding this technology include allowing customers to create advertisements, place bids, supervise the functioning of their ads, and track the results of paid searches and otherwise. The user is effectively empowered to become more integrated with the marketing mix. In this respect, Googleforce users must be trained on how to utilize the system and benefit most from it. Customers will be given a 30-day free trial to start with, and afterwards are offered a promotional £174 ($300) charge per month for the use of this technology. There is also an undefined post-trial cost.
"Equipped with more information, businesses can make better decisions, create more value out of their marketing efforts, and ultimately reach more customers," stated a Google representative, highlighting the usefulness of the Googleforce offering.
Additionally, this opportunity opens up a market for Paid Search organizations which could benefit from those Salesforce customers who may be more willing to outsource or contract this responsibility. It provides more opportunity to SEO and new media marketing agencies like Bigmouthmedia, and creates greater scope for the expansion of the industry.
Now that Google AdWords has been implemented it is within Salesforce's range to incorporate Yahoo!'s emerging paid search technology. The former, maintaining 85% of search advertising was, rightly, a priority. Customers and the industry will be watching closely to see if Salesforce continues its current growth pattern.
