How Google+ changes (almost) everything for businesses (part 2)

Last week I wrote about how Google+, Google’s new social networking platform, has the strong potential to be a game-changer when it comes to how businesses do search engine optimization for their sites.

This week, I want to talk about how Google+ could change the landscape of the online advertising world.

Today, when you buy online advertising, you’re able to target your advertising to people based on ONE of the following criteria:

• What they’re searching for  (Google AdWords, Bing and other Pay-Per-Click search engine ad platforms)
• Where they work and what job they have (LinkedIn)
• What their interests are and who their friends are (Facebook)
• What they’re reading or watching (DoubleClick and other traditional banner ad platforms)

Missed opportunity

Individually, those are all pretty powerful targeting criteria (especially when you can hone in on people based on geography) and millions of businesses have generated billions of new customers with the tools as they stand today.

But with the success of Google+, Google is going to be able to offer businesses much, much more. If the potential that’s there comes to full fruition (and that isn’t to say there aren’t more than a few obstacles to that), businesses will be able to target advertising based on two or even three of those criteria together., and that’s going to open up some big opportunities for businesses.

As marketers — as communicators — our challenge is to reach the right person at the right time with the right message, and our success depends on how well we meet that challenge. So the ability to target messages more finely amplifies the power of our message.

Let’s use an imaginary case study to show what I mean.

If I run a boutique Intellectual Property law firm, my ideal client is probably someone who is in-house counsel for a large company. And right now I can use LinkedIn to target my advertising to anyone, say, in my city who works as in-house counsel for companies with more than 200 employees. Or, I can use Google AdWords to target my advertising to anyone, say, who is in my city who is searching for keywords related to IP law.

Better targeting

Both of those methods work, and they work pretty well, but they have limitations. In this case, I’m going to show my ad to a lot of people who are potentially my ideal client, but who may not be looking for services like mine at the moment. And I’m going to be showing my ad to a lot of people who may be interested in services like mine, but who may not be my ideal client.

Conversely, that also means that your ads are going to be missing some people who are your ideal clients and who are in the market for your services.

But not if Google+ hits its stride. With Google+, Google will be able to combine information about a person’s search terms with information from their social profile to deliver your message to your ideal clients at the precise moment that they’re looking for services like yours.

(And this doesn’t just apply to search-based Pay-Per-Click campaigns either. Because Google also owns the world’s largest banner ad network in DoubleClick, this same kind of targeting will be possible for large-scale banner campaigns as well).

Not only will this mean that your messages will be more on-point and therefore more effective, you’ll also be able to use your ad budget more efficiently. Instead of competing for the same 30 or so search terms that everyone in your industry is going after, with constantly escalating costs-per-click because of the competition, you’ll be able to stick-handle around your competition and focus on tight market niches where the competition (and costs-per-click) are minimal .

Democratization of online ads

The other big sea change that Google+ could bring about is the democratization of banner advertising.

Right now, it doesn’t make huge sense for smaller businesses to buy banner advertising on big national Web sites like Yahoo! A typical small business ad budget would only reach a few hundred or so people. And because the big sites reach such a large and broad audience, you’d blow through that budget in no time, without a good chance of your message being seen by your ideal customer.

But if you could target the right couple of hundred people on Yahoo! (or wherever) it’d make a lot more sense to get your brand seen in the same places as the big players.

Of course, all of this depends on Google’s ability to turn the initial high interest level in Google+ into a thriving and interesting social networking tool that people use every day.

It’s also going to depend on Google’s  ability to address the inevitable concerns about privacy. People are going to be creeped out by the targeting potential, and Google is going to have to take serious and credible steps to safeguard people’s identities at the same time that they’re using facets of that information to provide them with content.