Google aims to build SEM expertise in Hong Kong businesses

The ‘Google online marketing: exploring new business opportunities’ initiative will see Google work alongside up to 270,000 companies to help stimulate business growth through effective search marketing.

Google will assist firms in upgrading their websites, selecting search keywords, tracking web traffic and analysing consumer behaviour online. The company will also offer free AdWords trials to newly registered customers.

The programme will be extended over the coming 12 months.

In a statement, Google’s Greater China vice-president of sales, John Liu (pictured), said that with the city having emerged from the recession, Hong Kong’s small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) should “take advantage of this opportunity to look for innovative, cost-effective and flexible ways to market themselves and their product offerings”.

Liu described SMBs as “the backbone of the Hong Kong economy” and stated that Google was “fully committed to contributing in ways that will support the local SMBs to seize business opportunities and quickly expand into the global market until the recovery is firmly in place”.

Asia-Pacific accounts for close to 25 per cent of the global e-commerce market. Google’s investment in Hong Kong is part of a Greater China stimulus programme aiming to encourage Chinese businesses to use the internet to drive growth.