Google’s private content marketing weapons─Doodle, Santa Tracker and Google Primer


Google, which has dominated the online advertising and video markets for many years, most people think of search engines and keyword advertising intuitively. Compared with traditional advertising and public relations methods, search engines and derived keyword advertising are important aids to content marketing. They direct the attention (traffic) of people who want to find specific things to the web pages operated by content marketing.

What’s interesting is that Google is actually deeply involved in content marketing, but it’s not doing it in a particularly big way. There are even some irregular surprises that people look forward to. Google often puts special Doodle pictures or animations, and sometimes mini-games, on the search homepage to celebrate or commemorate important events that happened on a certain day in history, such as national days of various countries, or birthdays of important celebrities, etc., to attract people to click and display search results related to the event.


Google Doodles make people want to know about the important historical events of the day around the world

In addition to the eye-catching Doodle, Google also quietly produced [Santa Tracker] (https://santatracker.google.com/intl/zh-TW/village.html) (there is a Chinese version). For 13 consecutive years, it has provided some interesting games or videos every year to explain the basics of programming; or it has allowed users to make their own interesting Christmas pictures as content elements.


Every Christmas Eve, Google will update Santa Tracker to provide more interesting mini-games

Free introductory course on digital marketing─Google Primer

And Google has generously used its own digital marketing essence through [Google Primer] (http://yourprimer.com/), a free app, in the form of a 5-minute micro course as a simple but brilliant content marketing tool. Primer’s main target audience is small and medium-sized business owners and marketers who want to learn digital marketing.


Google Primer Digital Marketing Micro Course

Primer uses a rare picture-card style learning. Each course is guided by very easy-to-understand short texts + pictures. Each course will not exceed 5 minutes, which is very suitable for ordinary netizens to study in fragmented time such as taking the MRT and bus. There will also be some quizzes included in the course to gauge students’ understanding of the course.


Currently, Primer has launched more than ten types of courses, covering popular marketing topics such as content marketing, social media and mobile marketing. Primer students can also use the statistical function in the App to understand their current accumulated learning progress.



In fact, Google launched Primer as early as 2014, and several online media in the United States have successively introduced and recommended this useful learning tool with special articles. However, perhaps due to language issues (Primer is only available in English), it has not received corresponding attention in Taiwan, which is a pity.

Google Primer is a sub-project for small and medium-sized enterprises under the “Grow with Google” project. This large-scale learning program also provides corresponding learning resources for different fields such as teachers/students, job seekers, developers, and new businesses. It can be said to be a content marketing weapon created by Google using its own abundant resources.


Grow with Google is Google’s huge educational learning resource center and an important content marketing method.

Learning: What I sell is not products, but knowledge.

I believe that many business or marketing personnel think that they are selling the products/services designated by the company. But in fact, what potential users buy is “experience” and “trust.” Questions that consumers will ask are such as “Is this thing really so good? Is it easy to use everywhere? How can it help me?” and “Who recommends this product?”.

Google makes good use of the relevant resources accumulated from its own product line, rearranges and packages them into assistance tools and mini-games for people in different fields, to answer various questions from potential users. For content hackers, what you can think about is the sales and marketing experience accumulated in the past and customer responses. How to organize and present it effectively? Then integrate and master it to become a new content marketing tool?

If discounts and promotions are no longer enough to attract potential customers, please make good use of the content resources you have accumulated. At this moment, unexpected good ideas may arise!

Image source: Pixabay, Google related websites

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Further reading

• Experience from participating in the 2nd Content Hacking Lecture (CHL2)─Deconstructing previous experience and becoming your own editor-in-chief
• The secret of content marketing that turns passive into proactive─sharing the summary of the 2nd Content Hacking Lecture (CHL2)
• Experiences from the 1st Content Hacking Lecture (CHL1)─Only by continuously cultivating content can we establish influence

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☕️ Invite Vista to have a cup of coffee

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