Yahoo! has recently announced a number of new projects and acquisitions. Click here to read the latest news:
In my view, Yahoo!’s so-called “new movements” do not add any advantage to its present standing. Instead, they just serve to play the game of making itself look busy, attempting to distract stakeholders' eye from Yahoo’s core problem: a lack of a clear business strategy.
Let’s take the acquisition of rocketmail.com and ymail.com as an example. I can't see how this helps in Yahoo!'s already dominating market share in email services. Other than the acquisition of some more public email domains, I don't see any competitive features offered by Yahoo! mail that can outpace its #1 competitor, Google’s Gmail.
Gmail was the first to offer the very generous feature of allowing users to forward emails to any email box, using POP3 and IMAP to access the new emails rather than the Gmail web interface. I remember my first response to this feature was that it could lure visitors away from using the web interface, effectively lowering the revenue of the advertising supported business model of the service.
However, after years of using Gmail, I realized that my thinking was too narrow-minded. In fact, the more user friendly and supportive the email service is, the more inclined you are to use it, actually increasing the market share of users. This has been my experience using Gmail. I now use the free Gmail service for most of my correspondence, rather than using multiple email services such as Yahoo! and Hotmail (or other Microsoft domains like live.com). I route the emails to the email client like MS Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird for viewing and processing. Even so, I do occasionally access the Google Gmail web interface to process my Gmail when I’m unable to access my own desktop computers, using computers in other locations to process urgent emails.
Yahoo! now offers unlimited mail box storage space after years of Gmail offering over one GB mail storage (now is more than six GB which for most users is equivalent to unlimited!). Recently, Yahoo! started offering the feature of forwarding email to other mail boxes or using POP3 to download the Yahoo!’s emails from its servers. These two features are mutually exclusive (quite surprisingly). It is ramping up to match Google’s service. But Yahoo! still fails to match the comprehensive features offered by Gmail even after years of lagging behind never mind talking about outperforming Gmail in the features offered.
When I am teaching the concept of strategy to my students, I always emphasize one important feature: focusing on doing a limited number of things and doing them better than your competitors. Focusing may mean you need to forgo other possible alternatives. You have to do something different than your competitors, either by doing it better or totally re-invent the wheel to do something in a new way.
Yahoo!’s problem is it fails to innovate. (Please check out my post “Google: Smart company that beats analysts’ expectations again” about the power of innovations that drives Google.) Yahoo! also fails to find a proper positioning of its Internet Strategy of Presence. I cannot clearly see how Yahoo is going to earn money in the long run. Is it going to be an advertising oriented company? Or is it going to provide services on a charge basis as its revenue source?
Google now moves one step ahead by providing advertisers with more informed choices for their advertisements. Though the details are still unknown, I’m guessing that it will make use of its websites’ statistical information collected by its free services -such as Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics, plus the traffic information from its Adsense and AdWords partners -to provide a comprehensive picture of the website traffic information of most of its affiliated advertising web sites.
You see, Google’s move is very strategic. They first started to provide a lot of webmasters with very powerful website traffic analysis tools (Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools) free of charge in exchange for sharing the traffic information collected from those webmasters. Now they make use of this information to help and secure their advertising customers. A clever and classic strategic move!
Strategy is all about trial and error in using different approaches to serving your customers better. As I have said in other posts, Google is doing this intelligently, using their long pipelines of products and services, as you can see from http://labs.google.com.
Upon successful manifestation of products/services to the market, they can all be turned into powerful selling tools to your customers, earning more money from their pockets because of your superior product and services. Google has been this all along.
I cannot see how Yahoo! has any strategic plan with these characteristics. A lot of information is provided online about their services and plans, but none of it reveals its committed strategy. It looks like a ship losing direction at sea. Where is Yahoo! heading?
Tags: Google Labs, Google AdSense, Google AdWords, Yahoo! is falling
Technorati Tags: Yahoo!, strategy, Yahoo! mail, Gmail, Microsoft, Google, Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics, Google Labs, Google AdSense, Google AdWords, Yahoo! is falling
Bad economic news continues to strike consumers' confidence in the US. The pessimistic mood will certainly spread to other parts of the world, leading us to perhaps a very long period of depression.
As a business owner, how can you not only face this challenge, but make it through to the other side? The answer is: keep on marketing your products/services and keep on building your business relationships.
I have watched many business owners cut their marketing budget without hesitation during a period of recession. They do this because it seems to be the most logical decision. They argue that during a recession it’s too difficult to find customers willing to buy, and it’s not economically feasible to continue spending money to solicit business opportunities. They go into “survival mode,” rather than working to build their business.
But the fact is that marketing is not a short-term job. It’s a long-term strategy for your company to acquire profitable customers. Turning a stranger into your loyal customer requires a lengthy selling process. You should not stop selling during the time of recession or you’ll fail to capture a large slice of business when the economy is back on track again.
Think about this: a recession is actually the best time to negotiate a joint-venture or enter into a partnership with potential business partners. This is because other marketers are also looking for more ways to keep their businesses momentum going during difficult times. Your business proposals will appear more compelling than in times when the economy is good. So use this opportunity to leverage others' strength to grow your business. After all, it’s a win-win situation for you and other joint-venturers.
So keep on marketing! Market your product/services to potential customers, and market your business to other potential business partners. When the tough times are over, you’ll be all the more ready to ride on another great growth trend again.
Best Selling and Marketing!
Damen
Note:
The purpose of this blog is to set up a discussion about techniques in Internet Marketing-one of the most important marketing tools you cannot ignore, no matter whether you are a big player or a small to medium business. This emerging marketing technique allows you flexibility in designing your marketing budget and gives you wider exposure to the whole world, in targeted areas where your product can arouse customer interest. There is no other medium that can compare with this one. This is especially crucial now, under the threat of economic recession, when you are especially concerned about your marketing budget. I encourage you to subscribe to this blog now to learn more. (Look to the right to find the subscription box.)
Tags: long-term marketing plan, marketing strategies during recession
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