Even the world’s largest search engine needs a little marketing help sometimes.  Despite its previous reluctance to use a traditional integrated marketing plan, Google reportedly spent $213 million in 2011 to advertise its services in the U.S—and the expenses are growing.

Google is often referred to as the shining example for companies that believe they can do all of their marketing online. While the majority of the advertisements ran by Google are still online, the multi-billion dollar company infiltrated the television market in a big way to promote Google+. Google spent $12 million on just one ad that featured characters from The Muppets singing Queen’s “Under Pressure.”

Even the king of online marketing is conceding when it comes to traditional marketing tactics. While Google may dominate in the search engine realm of technology, companies such as Apple generally have the upper hand in other technological departments. This realization may have led Google to reconsider its unwillingness to seek promotional help via more traditional advertising routes.

What Google’s transition into traditional marketing proves is that a company is never too big or too well-known to benefit from an integrated marketing plan. When a company makes the decision to run advertisements or hire a PR firm, it is making an investment in its future. The millions of dollars spent on Google’s advertisements is a nod to the marketing industry as a whole. The bottom line is simple: no matter how much a company is worth, there is simply no substitute for a complete marketing strategy.