In the digital world, where new products are launched frequently and new technology appears on a regular basis, there is always a race to be “the first” or “one of a select group”. Invariably however this doesn’t stay the case for long as other companies catch up and your claim of being unique is no longer enough to cut through the noise. Being first into a market is great, but what’s more important is how you react when the competition catches up.
What has brought this to light recently for me is the Analytics market and specifically the Google accreditation of Google Authorised Analytics Consultant (GAAC). in the past few month or so I must have seen press releases from or spoken 4 or 5 UK search marketing agencies who had just been accredited the qualification. All of them claiming to be “one of the only agencies in Europe” or “one of a select few agencies” to have achieved the award, most of them also claiming to have a dedicated team of analytics experts. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that with each one of these press releases this “select group” becomes less select and the claim of being part of it become less and less of a USP.
What becomes important now is how you gain cut through, once being there, an being part of an “elite group” is not enough. This is where the real marketing theory come in of aligning your product, price and promotion to the needs of your customers whilst also hopefully trying to evolve to make sure you are offering something your customers are not, or can not offer.
In the search marketing industry Google Analytics and analytics consultancy runs the risk of never realising its potential for agencies because they struggle to build it into a scalable product or service. After all, the end product itself is free, so you have to make sure you have some value to add which you can charge for in a profitable way. It is the responsibility of the agencies to ensure that the GAAC doesn’t just become one of a list of accreditations that they have because they feel they should (much the way Google Adwords Professional has gone) and that they use it to support a product which brings value to their customers and their own business.