“At Google, we believe very strongly in the power of the internet as a communication tool, in the broadest sense of the term, and in its power to increase efficiency and returns. You can use the internet to communicate extremely efficiently with external parties at scale, be they customers, partners or prospects, and you can do this very efficiently and cost-effectively. Looking at external communication, Google’s best known service is the AdWords search advertising service, where adverts are created and displayed in response to specific keywords typed in by people searching on Google. This means that your advert is only shown when someone is actually looking for what you offer. Prices are set via an auction model, and you only pay when someone actually clicks on your advert, it can be very cost-effective. If AdWords is used as part of a total package along with website optimisation, website analytics and e-commerce technologies, it really makes a fundamental difference to the bottom line, because more people visit your site, engage with your brand and eventually end up purchasing services from you. Search marketing is probably the most measurable form of advertising yet invented. With the right tools, you can calculate your ROI incredibly accurately. 

 “Looking at the internal communication aspect, Google provides a wide range of applications – Docs, Spreadsheets, Gmail, Sites, Agenda and Video – which are available via a subscription model offering exceptional value compared to traditional, in-house implementations of productivity software. Employees like Google Apps because they gain the web functionality they’re used to in their private lives but in a work context, while businesses like Google Apps because they are exceptionally cost-efficient, easy to deploy, and highly secure. 

 “Depending on the type of financial sector business you operate, you might want to use the internet in different ways to communicate. For example, retail banks might be looking to drive customer acquisition for services like mortgages or insurance. AdWords and related services are great for that. If you’re on the private banking side, you can use tools like Google Website Optimiser and Google Analytics to improve the effectiveness and ease-of-use of your website, perhaps making it easier for your clients to get to the information they need, quickly.  An analyst might want to look at tools like Google Insights for Search, which is based on aggregated, anonymised search data. That’s useful if you’re trying to get an idea of consumer interest in, for example, fixed rate mortgages versus variable rate ones.

“That’s a slightly difficult question to answer as everyone is different. It depends on how a campaign is set up, and what market you’re targeting. There is more competition for some AdWords, less for others, which is logical given that the price of AdWords is set via an open auction model, and not by Google itself. But with the right approach, and good use of tools to analyse performance, the ROI can be very big.”

 “The conference, entitled How to make the internet your best sales tool (by Google), will show what Google can do for businesses in Luxembourg from a practical perspective, as well as how we perceive the development of the internet until 2019 as well as the keen interest in mobile internet, and the impact we already see on business models in developed countries. Businesses in Luxembourg can benefit from google services in many ways, but they must be tried out. We aim to make our services really easy to use, and to stop using. We always recommend that people should get involved quickly, that they should test, adjust and implement an online marketing campaign to see how effective it can be. It might sound trite, but we think that fast is better than slow – try it out and see where you get to. Beyond that, there is lots of help that is offered via our various sites, and of course, there’s me and the Belux team, who are ready to answer questions!”