Will Marlow

If you produce a brilliant 30 second TV commercial, and people love it, you can always pay for more 30 second spots to show your commercial again and again.  But if you produce an amazing social media marketing campaign with YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, like Old Spice did, you don't need to repeatedly buy airtime.  The Old Spice videos have been seen over 128 million times on Youtube.  

However, there is a much more important point here, which is this: Old Spice controls its Twitter feed, its YouTube channel, and its Facebook profile.  The campaign generated over 100,000 Twitter followers for Old Spice, and over 100,000 YouTube subscribers, and over 785,000 Facebook Fans for Old Spice.  These social media properties will pay dividends to Old Spice for years to come.

Even if you don't hit a viral homerun like Old spice did, you can still steadily grow your social media properties.  With social marketing, you don't buy from a media company.  You are a media company.

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Will Marlow is a digital strategist/online marketing consultant.  He's the co-creator of  AlumniFidelity, which is a Web 2.0 fundraising platform for colleges, nonprofits and secondary schools.   He’s working with clients such as UVA, the College of William & Mary, the University of Oklahoma, and Bowling Green State University and he loves nothing better than a thorny marketing challenge.  He would love to help you market your business on the Internet, boost the fundraising numbers for your school or nonprofit, or sellout your next big event.  Email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.

Until you've got a better answer, you copy. - David Ogilvy

For one thing, they have a policy of only showing advertising that is "relevant," and you can't think about relevancy until someone types in a search query.  For example, if I type in the search, "Dogwalker rates in Washington DC," Google may decide to show me an ad that links to a local dogwalking company.  But until I type something into the Google search bar, Google doesn't know enough about me.

But another reason is that Google's brand is heavily wrapped up in its clean, ad-free homepage, and it probably doesn't want its homepage to turn into something like the image above (which would make Google feel like all the other search engines).

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Will Marlow co-founded AlumniFidelity to help his clients reposition their fundraising to benefit from Web 2.0 technology and marketing techniques. He’s working with clients such as UVA, the College of William & Mary, the University of Oklahoma, Bowling Green State University, Randolph Macon College, and he loves nothing better than a thorny marketing challenge.  Email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.