From The Australian, Entrepreneur
JULIAN Persaud, the newly appointed online head at Google Australia, is a man with a big message for small and medium-sized companies.
He wants to wake them up to the opportunities online presents for growing their businesses.
“They are coming on board in increasing numbers,” he says. “About 40 per cent have a website and there’s about another 20 or 30 per cent who are currently building a website. There is a big opportunity.
“The reason I’ve taken this role is that there are green pastures out there. There are almost 1 million SMEs in Australia and a lot of them are now waking up to the advantage of being online. And specifically with Google Adwords it is a big opportunity for us.
“In coming years we are going to see increasing numbers migrate online and we’ll be there to help and assist them in that process.”
Previously as head of business development at Google, Persaud helped pull together deals that brought companies such as Sensis on board as partners. He says statistics point to the future opportunities being online. There are now 12 million people online in Australia and about half of them research online before buying anything.
People are spending 25 per cent of their media browsing time online yet only 10 per cent of advertising is going into this medium, meaning there is less advertising clutter than in traditional media.
“Our job here locally is to try to close that gap,” he says. “That gap as far as I understand it isn’t as big in other markets.”
Persaud says it is a good time to promote online advertising to smaller businesses because it can work harder for them. And there are fewer businesses selling online in Australia compared to other countries, partly because of the lack of catalogue shopping culture. This presents more opportunities.
“With the economic situation as it is, we feel that any sort of advertising that is very measurable and you can easily see the return on is going to be beneficial,” he says. “The fact is that because search — our business model — is so accountable, it is a benefit especially for smaller advertisers, where they have smaller budgets.
“What we want is people to experiment. The great thing about online is that you can change it on the fly. Five minutes later if you realise that the conversion is not happening for you. There is enormous flexibility and that is what we try to bring for our advertisers.”
A large part of his job is to promote Google Adwords and help small businesses get up and running with the product. To that end, Google has launched an online tool — www.10searchmarketingsteps.com.au — to help develop online marketing plans. But they also need to realise the global reach of what they can now achieve.
“If you are an Australian business and you sell product to France, you can target the French market within 10 or 20 minutes,” Persaud says.
“It’s a global platform and it allows commerce across borders. The internet is making the world a smaller place. And for small businesses, that offers a lot of trading opportunities.”
Google hasn’t promoted its service to small business in Australia in the past. But the message is getting out.
“The barriers to entry are very low. The value is that it is permission-based marketing,” Persaud says. “It’snot interruption. If you search for trekking in Vietnam you get an ad for treks in Vietnam. That’s more like commercial signposting rather than an in-your-face ad.”
He says Google has tools to help with the tricky step of knowing how to choose and how much to bid for a keyword that will attract a customer.
The cost varies depending on the value to the buyer. “The big advantage is that you can set a budget,” Persaud says. “You can say I’m only going to spend $20 a day or I’m only going to spend up to 15c a click, whatever it is, depending on your business.
“The beauty of what Google offers is that it offers a platform where the advertiser can decide what they want to pay. They can track down to the profit and the lifetime value ultimately that they get from our form of advertising.”