Abstract:

Marketing mix represents the main activities of marketing managers. After selecting a target market, marketing managers need to codify a systematic plan to sell to their customers and develop long-term relationships. Marketing plan consists of decisions about product, price, place (distribution), promotion, process, people and physical evidence which form a marketing mix. These are the most important parts that marketing managers allocate company's resources to achieve goals of sale and profitability.

Introduction
Google is a search engine. Search engines are used to search the Internet. However Google is much more than a search engine its a global company that specializes in innovation and technology. Googles search engine indexes the billions of pages and gives the search speedy results. Google was founded by two Stanford University students, at their dorm room, in 1998. Google has become the worlds most popular search engine since then and can attribute its success to an innovative marketing plan. The culture of Google is similar to many of the dotcoms of the 90s. Most employee workstations are surrounded by leisure activities such as rollerblading, coffee lounges and an array of toys, such as scooters and rubber balls, strewn throughout the building. The culture was built to suit the habits of a generation of computer nerds who were tired of sitting in cubicles. Google is unique in where the employees really had helped develop a tool that was needed by everyone who had an internet connection. It found a good market niche and followed the path of innovation to market itself as the strong company that everyone knows today. The reason that Google is such an innovative company is that there are more uses to Google.com than meets the eye. Unobtrusive text ads on the right hand border help to boost sites that are willing to pay for clicks to their websites. Google search can be used as a conversion calculator, among other things, to help a user find how many feet are in a kilometer (type: feet to 1 kilometer). Google has a department called Google Labs that is testing new, free, internet technology such as a searching product catalogs and a personal web search.

Literature Review
Marketing mix is a controllable part of marketing tools that affects the demand and increases it. By the compound, mix, or a combination, it is meant that the Seven 7Ps (product, price, place, promotion, process, people and physical evidence) should have an established and coordinated systematic approach in order to have effective influence on persuading the customers. In other words, the right product at affordable prices is accompanied by better distribution and use of appropriate communication techniques and they act together in costumers' views. If any of these components is

inconsistent with others, the result would be decreased effectiveness and efficiency of the complex, and that prevents the company from achieving its objectives. But by the tactics or tools, it is meant that the company has these tools and devices in order to fight more successfully than competitors in the market. Jerome McCarthy in the early 1960s categorized the marketing mix variables by four variables which are known as the Four Ps that includes product, price, place (distribution) and promotion and each of these marketing tools has its own subsets (Dragy, 1386: 246). Robert Luther Born believed that besides the four marketing mixes called the four Ps, there are four Cs from the customers' side that includes customer's solution, customer's cost, customer's convenience, and communication systems. The successful companies are those that can meet the customers' needs economically and easily, and also in the light of providing an effective communication system (Cutler, 1383: 20). Customers are trying to find their goods and services desired in reasonable ways. This sourcing process eventually causes the customer to go to a specific resource for preparing the products. In this process, 4 Ps act as a source for empowering the customers to select their desired goods and services in rational ways (Bennett, 1997: 154).

Googles Marketing Mix

Googles marketing mix can be broken down into the seven Ps of marketing; product, price, place, promotion, process, people and physical evidence. Google has taken into consideration each one of these areas of marketing and used them as an advantage over their competitors.

1. Product:
Product is one of the components of the 7Ps of service marketing. A company or an individual must have product to market and to offer to the people. A product is define as anything that can be offered to a market for attention, use, or consumption, and that might satisfy a want or need (Armstrong and Kotler 278).

Google offers services as a form of it product to its customers. There are various products that Google deals in. Some of these are:

2. Price:
Price is another component of the seven Ps of the service marketing mix. Price is defined as The amount of money charged for a product or service or the sum of the values that consumers exchange for the benefits of having or using the product or service (Armstrong, Gary and Philip Kotler 353). It is extremely important for marketers to remember that individuals in a market are highly receptive not only to the price of an item, but also to the value offered by the product. Successful companies such as Google take special consideration at the different parts involved in setting its prices. Item such as list price, discounts, allowances, payment periods and credit terms are items that work together to set the price of its merchandise. List price - is one of the fundamentals components of setting a price. It is the basic prices offered to prospective consumers, yet in many instances the price listed could

increase or decrease as costumers select options. Googles price for AdWords is set on the amount of advertisement per day it provides its consumers. In Googles case the list price is at five (5) cents per day, however it can go as high as $50.00 per day. Discounts - are another element of price setting. At the moment Google AdWords is not offering any discounts to its consumer. Allowances - Another necessary item to set price is Allowances. Allowances are very similar to discounts because it also offers to lower the list price, yet it includes extra items not covered by discounts. Google at the moment is not providing its customers with discounts nor allowances in its Google AdWords program. Payment Period - Marketers promoting a product need to take into consideration payment period offered to its customers. Google payment period is based on its relationship with its customers. New customers located in specific countries need to make their payments with a credit card or by direct debit payments. As soon as the finance department receives the financial information and it is approved, the ads begin to run, yet if a customer has a long and positive relationship with Google its financial department might be able to set a monthly account. This is based on the credit history of the customer. Credit Terms - Last but not least, the credit terms required by an organization to finalize the product price. Googles structure tightly relates payment periods with credit terms, yet each organizations credit terms vary depending on the type of industry. As mentioned earlier, Google provides a monthly credit limit for those customers with good financial record. The credit limit starts at $50.00 a month and it can increase to more than $500.00 a month.

In sum, price is also an important tool within the 7 Ps of the marketing mix, yet it is important to remember that consumers are also interested in the products value. In many instances if the product does not deliver value the product will be doomed for failure, regardless of its price. Thriving organizations, such as Google, take into consideration list price, discounts, allowance, payment period and credit terms as relevant elements to consider when setting the price.

3. Place:
An important decision when trying to determine the overall competitive marketing strategy is place. Place includes company activities that make the product available to target consumers.

Googles place is the internet. In the past three years, Google has gone from processing 100 million searches per day to over 200 million searches per day and only one-third comes from inside the U.S., the rest are in 88 other languages. "The rate of the adoption of the Internet in all its forms is increasing, not decreasing," says Eric Schmidt, Google's Executive Chairman. "The fact that many [Internet companies] are in a terrible state does not correlate with users not using their products." Google is easily top dog. They provide about 75 percent of the external referrals for most websites and if you count Google's partners as part of the mix (particularly Yahoo and AOL); this figure is closer to 85 percent. There is no point in putting up a website apart from Google. It's do or die with Google.

4. Promotions:
Promotions are activities such as advertising, personal selling, and sales promotion which communicate the merits of the product and persuade target customers to buy it (Armstrong and Kotler 63). Time and time again Google has refused to jumble its homepage with annoying advertisements, banners, or links to other websites, as reported by Ben Elgin in a recent issue of BusinessWeek (88). For years, Google has committed itself to focus on search and avoids fancy graphics. Cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin dislike the idea of ads affecting search results. Consequently, Google does not do a whole lot to get their name out to the public. Surprisingly, the company has grown by word of mouth, not by advertising. Google relies greatly on word of mouth (WOM) to develop and expand their innovative brand. The more credible a brand is, the more widely its reputation will spread. Googles convenient service and precise search results have made it one of the worlds best-known brands and search engines almost completely through word of mouth from satisfied users. With viral marketing, customers become the companys advertisers by telling their friends who in turn pass on the news to their friends until it gets out of hand and word of mouth results. Google is definitely a successful word of mouth and a word of mouth circulates based on the quality of the product. Google has also partnered with Amazon.com to make available Googles search technology and sponsored links on their site. In addition, Google features sponsored links on web design and development sites. Google offers the clearest separation between search results and ads, its brand will be tough to dethrone (Elgin 84). Page and Brin have faith that people will check out the site and email their friends, suggesting that they take a look at the Google site to see what it has to offer. Their best reference is a friend and with enough friends, they will create a buzz and significant exposure

by word of mouth, the ultimate branding technique. Word of mouth centered on quality, not publicizing, prevails in the new business environment.

5. Process:
Process is one of the extended elements of service marketing mix. Online services and their process of production are not as visible since much of the processes operate in systems unseen by the customer. The process of Google is simple. Google retains your search term. It collects data on searches to help to refine the search algorithm. So dont think that you search anonymously. Google keeps your search terms and can link them to the address of your computer, and then to you. Whilst Google may not wish to spy on you, government may take an interest in searching habits and this is a civil liberties issue. If you use Google mail (Gmail) or Google calendar then you are giving more information about yourself to Google.

6. People:
In services marketing, people, or staff, are considered a crucial element of the marketing mix. As more products add online services to enhance their offerings people become more and more important. Given that everyone represents the company, one can see the importance of having happy staff. Happy Staff = Happy Customers = Happy Shareholders At present Google is employing 30,000 people. Many of the original employees of Google came from Stanford and other elite US universities. It employs the top brain, and people like working together Googles innovative business culture. Employees are encouraged to take advantage of 20% time thats one day every week working on their personal pet project. They play sports at lunchtime, with Larry and Sergey enjoying roller hockey in the early days.

7. Physical Evidence:
When buying intangible services, customers look for physical evidence to reassure them. In the offline world this includes buildings, uniforms, logos and more. In the online world the evidence is digital primarily through web sites but also through e-mail. In the online world, customers look for other cues and clues to reassure themselves about the organization.

The name of Googol means a number followed by 100 zeros. However the founders mistakenly registered Google as their domain name. The Google Co. is Headquarters at Mountain View in California. There is also lots of information about Google in Wikipedia website.

Recommendations Our first recommendation to Google is to continue doing what they are doing so well and that is indexing and rating billions of web pages every day better than other search engine companies. They must keep updating their search engine so it finds relevant and helpful websites or they will just be one of the others. The thing that Google does so much better than the other search engines is they bring up the closest matching websites and are not biasing the search with any paid advertisements. They must continue to separate the paid search results with the organic search results. Lastly, Google should continue to be innovative and try new things. They are constantly using technology and bright minds to come up with useful tools for everyday use. They also have a wide variety of services available to businesses that most overlook. The new creative features Google will produce and offer to the public will prove to play an important role in their long lasting success. Many people say they cant remember what life was like without Google and with its continued innovation, there will be many more people added to that list.

Conclusion If Google is resilient as it has been in the past it should be able to overcome even the most volatile market; tech stocks. Google must have an ongoing plan for marketing now that they have filed to become a public corporation. All eyes will be on their every move now and they may have to modify their marketing plan in order to satisfy their new customers, the shareholders.

Bibliography Armstrong, Gary, and Philip Kotler: - Marketing: An Introduction. 6th Ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2003. Elgin, Ben. Google: Beyond the Hype. BusinessWeek 3 May 2004: 82-90. Louis E. Boone and David L. Kurtz. Contemporary Marketing Plus. 8th ed. Florida Websites such as Docstoc: www.docstoc.com and Castelarhost: www.casterarhost.com