What Every Business Must Learn from Google’s Business

The lifeblood of any business, including yours, is dependent on the revenue flowing into it. In a typical business survival situation, revenue must balance all operating costs, and leave a reasonable margin for profit.
To this end, many businesses lay greater emphasis on a higher revenue inflow.
What if I told you that the survival of your business is not to first lay emphasis on higher revenue inflow?
Of course, the first thing you’d want to do is judge me, something like, who am I to say that?
However, when a successful multi-billion dollar business like Google demonstrates that to you, I believe that should earn your attention.
Google is setting the pace by demonstrating to businesses what they must learn to survive. I bet you wouldn’t love your business to go bankrupt or fold up, which is why you must not just learn, but practice what Google’s business is teaching every business.
Google’s business is teaching every business that wishes to survive and sail comfortably in realms of profitability these things:
i. Listen to (with empathy),
ii. Understand,
iii. Serve, and
iv. Delight (or awe) everybody, whether you consider them genuine prospects or not.
Practically, what any business must learn is this, concentrate on solving customers problems first, worry about high revenue inflow second.
Sounds tough right?
It should, telling you to consider four huge painstaking tasks before considering revenue inflow is definitely difficult to accept.
But, that’s what your business needs to survive.
Wondering how? Or, confused why? Well, using Google’s business as a blueprint, I’d show you how.
Before I get on with it, here’s something you should ponder on: for all the times you have initiated a search on Google, with the intent to buy or gather information of what you intend buying, what financial benefit did you offer Google?
Ponder on that for a bit, while I jump to the very first thing your business must learn from Google for it to stand a chance at survival.
i. Listen to (with empathy)
In one of my favorite books, ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People,’ Stephen R. Covey wrote, “seek first to understand before you demand to be understood.”
That is first, of the things Google’s business does.
That is exactly what your business must do from this day onward.
In the nearest future, that will play a vital role in determining which businesses thrive.
Now let me break down how Google does it, so your business too can learn.
Prior to the Hummingbird Google search engine update, primary for displaying it’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP), where keywords and backlinks. That is, website pages having exact keywords match, a higher domain authority, page authority, and backlinks pointing to such websites stood a greater chance of ranking on the first page.
These things still play a role in determining the results Google displays for search queries, however, Google now lays greater emphasis on the search intent of the person making the research.
In other words, Google’s sophisticated algorithms, which came with the Hummingbird update, does a wonderful listening job. It doesn’t stop at just listening to the search queries it receives, it does it with empathy.
Rather than display search results having the exact match keywords you used, Google empathically listens to you, demonstrating the wisdom that sometimes, our words doesn’t reflect what our minds want to express.
Even though Google is a machine, which explains why it’s search results are displayed in seconds, the next three things it does before displaying millions of results for a single search query will reveal to you the excellent listening job at work in the process.
The lesson?
In my experience designing digital marketing strategies for small businesses, a common theme most of them seem to have are these: ‘I want aggressive marketing, I want my business on everybody’s face, I want to start making money…’
In their myopic view, starting a business is a rare milestone. People had no option than to patronize them.
One thing that always proves difficult to explain to them is: how can this business empathically listen to what its prospects are saying?
Starting a business, or having one running out there is an applaudable feat, but does your business listen to the people it is trying to sell to?
How on earth can your business understand, serve, and delight customers, then move on to higher revenue inflow, if it doesn’t even listen to the people it is trying to sell to?
Can you as a person understand, serve, and delight someone if you don’t listen to what they’re saying?
Mind you, your business will probably be interacting physically with prospects and customers, so listening here shouldn’t be restricted to spoken words alone.
Listen to the context, facial expressions (if you can), mood, gestures,… listen to everything you can before considering the next steps.
This is what Google’s business does first. It is what your business must also do.
ii. Understand
Once Google receives a search query, it activates its sophisticated algorithms aided with AI into work, trying to understand what it is the researcher could possibly be searching for using such keywords.
You’d expect this stage to have very few lines of explanation, considering the swift seconds the process take place.
For Google, it must’ve understood a search query before I even typed the word, ‘Google.’ But for your business (unless you’ve such automated algorithms), you must take ample time and brainstorm in other to understand the questions your prospects or customers are asking.
It is a fact that people prefer to buy from people as against buying from businesses. This is where the understanding curve of your business is tasked.
Trying to understand your prospects and customers will flesh out the human connect needed to make people feel belonged and cared for. Nothing ignites emotions more than this, and no factor plays a better role than emotions does when people look to tie their loyalty nuts to a brand.
The Inbound marketing technique is one every business should adopt, as it involves a marketing process where smart marketers seek first to understand prospects before applying the right content and context to market to them.
It is because Google listens to understand the search queries it receives that enables it to serve researchers the results it displays. It is the exact same process your business must take to be able to serve your customers right.
If your business takes the time to listen, and then understand what prospects and customers are saying, only then will it be ready for the next thing, which Google’s business does excellently.
iii. Serve
Growing up, my grandmom taught me this: ‘if you know what you want, and are sure it is what’s best for you, you’ve solved 50% of your problems.’
Through empathic listening and understanding of search queries, Google knows what to serve researchers, and in almost every situation, it has a high probability of solving their problems.
A reason why a 2014 report showed that over 32% of researchers find what they want on the first page of Google.
In addition, it does it swiftly.
With millions upon millions of options to choose from.
To further buttress, Google serves you drums of different types of relative meals for a request for a single plate of meal. That’s why everybody turns to them to ask for anything. It is why businesses invest resources (in the form of paid Ads), to enable Google to serve them as options to prospects.
Not only will Google’s business serve you valuable and useful results for your search queries, it will go ahead and suggest other questions people who made your kind of research in the past used.
It’s what makes them the biggest search engine. Such kind of service, which has made them an indispensable part of human life, is also, what your business must learn, and practice.
Everybody loves to be served. It is a principle of life that if you serve diligently, you’d not go unrewarded.
Is your business serving her customers?
The customer remains king and will remain so for as long as businesses exist. Your business must serve them to survive. You must learn and practice the kind of mind-blowing service Google offers.
Put yourself in the shoes of a customer. In the midst of several options, you see yourself drift naturally towards a particular business. Most times, it is not because they offer the best prices, it is because you enjoy the way you’re being served.
Like Google, businesses that truly serve do not brag or make press releases for it. Serving customers are established as a core operational principle, a prerequisite for any staff to function.
However, the search engine giants even take it further, they go beyond serving, and they round it up with the next and final step…
Your business, actually, every business must do the same.
iv. Delight (or awe)

Here’s where Google got me. This is where they impress the hell out of me. For me, Google is a business driven by a passion to delight customers.
Did I say customers? Apparently, I think I got that one wrong. Google delights everybody, customer or not.
This is how I see them do it.
On the Google search engine results page, websites of businesses (for emphasis, just assume all displayed results are business websites), those the search algorithms deem fit to display as close enough to respond to a search query are displayed.
Depending on the search query, the first 3 displayed results are sponsored Ads, the next 4 or 5 are organic search results (displayed results not backed by Ads).
From this Google article, the results that are displayed without paid Ads don’t make it to the first page because there aren’t paid Ads to take their place, rather, they make it to the first page because Google considers them very valuable results for a search query.
This is what gave birth to the importance of valuable content. It also gave birth to the need to publish longer contents as criteria for ranking higher on search engines results page.
It re-positioned marketers’ efforts from mere keywords research to topical keywords research. The former is the practice of exhaustively covering a topic when creating content, while the latter attempts to only target a particular keyword.
Concisely, Google will rather give you something very valuable for your search query before considering companies that pay it to display their services to you.
How delightful can that be? You see, Google does turn down the opportunity to make money in other to give you what you want. It is a very rare treatment and an underlying reason why you delightfully turn to them for your next research.
As if that isn’t enough, they would even delay some paid results that are likely to serve your search query until the next page, in so doing, populate the front page with valuable unpaid results.
Can your business, or will your business, readily turn down an opportunity to make more money just to delightfully satisfy a prospect?
When I say prospect, this is what I mean, will your business delightfully satisfy someone you think will not patronize your business in the future?
Maybe that is even too far your consideration. Does your business make efforts to delight existing customers? Will you go out of your way just to give customers that wow feeling?
The final tonic Google adds when developing its business mix for anybody using its search engine is ‘delight.’ It is something your business must look to do because if you delight customers, you will arm your business with worthy ambassadors that will proclaim your business to the far ends of the earth.
Do I still have to tell you what happens if your business is proclaimed to the far ends of the earth?
Just so that you don’t miss it, or still having doubt if you should learn and practice what Google’s business does, you will unleash an endless flow of higher revenue inflow.
Anybody making contact with your business will not only stick to it but will attract their friends and loved ones to your business.
And if you learn and practice a combination of listening, understanding, serving, and delighting anybody that makes contact with your business, just like Google does, you will see your business embraced and spread throughout the world, just like Google.
