Google and Salesforce Team up and Target SMBs

June 7, 2007: Confirming what was a poorly kept secret at best, Google and Salesforce have announced a groundbreaking deal to bring Google’s AdWords and Salesforce’s CRM platform together.

The only difference in the final announcement to the rumours, is that the deal will focus on SMBs rather than enterprises, with the two claiming that SMBs will now be able to push their online presence harder and generate more sales opportunities.

Called Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords, the new service sees Salesforce acting as an AdWords reseller, enabling small businesses to buy text ads through the search giant’s advertising powerhouse and then collect and manage sales leads from the clicks generated.

Aside from reselling AdWords to SMBs and gleaning important customer data, the two say that Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords enables growth analysis with dashboards that offer for lead generation, sales metrics, and company growth, plus mash-ups of over 600 business applications including technologies for mapping and productivity.

“The Web has quickly become the most powerful tool small and medium sized businesses can use to compete and win in today’s economy,” said Google CEO Eric Schmidt. “Combining the power and simplicity of Salesforce with Google AdWords helps businesses find and keep customers to ultimately drive their continued success.”

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