Internet giant Google is readying a new strategy aimed at bringing local doctors, lawyers and plumbers onto its advertising platform. Google is hoping to persuade millions of small and medium enterprises in India to sign up for digital advertising using Google products.

To start with, the company is helping the small businesses to get an online presence through free tools. Already about 2.5 lakh SMEs have gone online under this programme. The target is to get to 5 lakh over the next few months.

“Out of the total 47 million estimated SMEs in India – 8 million can immediately benefit from digital advertising. First step in this is to help them create some form of web presence such as an e-mail address or a Web site,” Todd Rowe, Managing Director, Google SMB Global Sales, told Business Line .

Google has partnered with 7 firms in India to handle the operations the project. Over the next 18 months, Google plans to expand to 30 partners with a collective sales force of 10,000 people. “We will be working through the partners’ sales force for educating the SMEs about why online presence is important and how digital advertising can help improve their businesses,” said Rowe. This partner network will help Google reach SMEs spread across 100 cities. In turn Google is hoping that the SMEs would be persuaded to sign up for using Google’s online advertising platform.

Once the small business signs up, the partners create customised campaign, with keywords that drive traffic to their webpage. The SME also get business intelligence on page visits and how many of these visits actually converted into sales.

According to Rowe, the Indian SME market is one of the fastest growing in the world and hence Google is investing in this market. “India has had a grand awakening in digital marketing so we are investing significantly. We tripled the size of our team here in India and we will invest significantly more in 2013,” said Rowe. Google is also investing in terms of offering market development fund to help partners better manage customer accounts.

Google’s efforts in India are already translating into revenues for the company. “We are making money but our philosophy is to invest ahead of the curve. We are well ahead of the revenue targets in this market,” he said.

Globally, Google has about 250 partners who are chasing the SME business. But the challenge for the Internet firm in India would be to convince small businesses about the advantages of being online. The other hurdle is the lack of understanding about digital advertising. “SMEs in Germany like to do it themselves. In India they want managed service. SMEs in some of the other countries are more techs savvy,” said Rowe.

> thomas.thomas@thehindu.co.in

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