The task of converting almost 800 million Facebooker’s into active Google+ users is going to be a battle for Google. Facebook has become so deeply ingrained into our everyday lives that many of us (marketing types and not) find it hard to imagine a time before it. Wooing the everyday user might be a hard task but converting advertisers and brands might be easier if they use all the Google tools and most importantly, learn from the weaknesses of the Facebook platform.
As Google hunts the demographic ad market after quite successfully conquering the search/intent market, here is what I think Google should include within their brand Google+ pages.
Full Fledge Analytics
Facebook Insights is abysmal. Almost so awful that it comes close to being worthless. Maybe this is because I’m spoilt and used to the analytics fruit supplied by Google or maybe it is because it is just that terrible. I’d be very surprised not to see some sort of Google Analytics within the administration area of Google+ brand pages.
Full In-Page Commerce
At the moment brands can advertise a promotion via a status update or message and direct traffic back to their website in the hope that a conversion is made. Apart from CTR marketers do not know what the traffic is doing once it has landed on-page. A successful message update might send a bucket load of traffic back to a website but conversions might be zilch! With services such as Google Checkout, Google could offer real in-network purchasing and offer brands the insight to see what fans/followers are converting and what drives them to purchase.
Demographic Sharing
Facebook offers the function to be able to customise updates to particular segments of people connected to your page but it’s restricted to only location and language. This of course is dependent upon individuals belonging to a particular ‘network’ which is opt-in data entry for every Facebook user.
Brands want to ensure their marketing messages are tailored to every possible demographic segment. Gender and age range are two notable categories Facebook is failing to address. Time to step up Google+.
Events Calendar Syncing
Google Calendar is an awesome tool and works almost as flawlessly as the native OSX iCal. I get tons of invites through Facebook inviting me to all kinds of shindigs but often ignore them because they seem too truncated from the rest of my everyday life. I go by the rule that if it’s not in my calendar (I use MobileMe) then I am free yet I may have agreed to attend a Facebook event. Even the events I do accept and promise my humble appearance I get a mere little message reminding me of it. FAIL.
Imagine a yoga school offering their weekly timetable as a calendar download for its customers then to be able to sync across multiple computers and mobile devices.
Closer YouTube Integration
Even though it is rather simple to share a YouTube video on Facebook, it is not particularly effective. Impressions offer some degree of success but us marketers want to know more. Add the power of YouTube Analytics and Google is on to a winner here :)
Also, YouTube content is publicly viewable offering better search opportunities for brands wanting to show off their content.
