Mythology - The Meaning Behind the Marketing

Microsoft Marketing Goes "Bing!"

I often observe my old company's marketing with a mix of critical eye and hopefulness, all colored by my fourteen years at the company. So I'm obviously enjoying the marketing related to the launch of Bing, Microsoft's latest effort to humble Google.

In many ways this is classic Microsoft: an emphasis on feature-rich improvements over the competition, a major publicity push, and "launch event" stunts like a campy "Bing-a-thon" hosted by Hulu.com and (of course) a Space Needle stunt.

(Some of these launch stunts can go horribly wrong. I still cringe and break into cold sweats at the memory from my days as a young Microsoft marketer in the early Nineties when someone thought that sticking MS execs in a broadway-musical style product launch musical was a smart thing to do. Yikes.)

In terms of raising awareness that there is an actual choice in search engines now, it seems to be working.

Google has always taken pride in not really marketing itself other than by coyly generating buzz about what service it may or may not be launching. In some ways that approach has created significant media and consumer craving for the next cool Google innovation.

Microsoft has rarely, if ever, taken the understated approach to marketing. It has a saturation-style approach that in many ways is "old school." The Bing campaign seems to be an interesting mix of old and new media and tactics.

At least - thank goodness - the central marketing group has taught the Microsoft product groups to consider unique, memorable names vs. "Microsoft Search Engine 3.0". You can take that to the Bing. That's a major breakthrough, although some are disagreeing.

For the good of search engine competition and more options in search marketing, let's hope Microsoft gets some traction this time.

Mapping Marketing to Purchase Funnel Decisions

IDG Communications released a report recently demonstrating how the web site content provided by technology marketers is not relevant to the needs of their customers 50% of the time. The online research conducted last October captured feedback from 400 technologists and business buyers on what they prefer as they move from general education to business case development to final decisions in purchasing products and services.

In other words, as prospects moved through the purchase funnel, they did not find the relevant content they needed to make a decision. (This problem is addressed by  Mythology's first pillar of Empowered Marketing: Understanding.)

On average, the report found that six decision-makers from IT, business units and finance were involved in a typical IT product/service purchase. Note how influential each source of information was in their decision-making:

In addition to finding relevant educational and transactional content on a vendor's web site, the decision-makers reported that peer dialogue and independent authority dialogue were major influencers. Are you building this into your marketing engagement plans to assist prospects in making informed, credible decisions?

Tactics such as featuring a blog with guest posts from actual customers, or video clips featuring industry experts speaking about your products are very powerful influencers and are a welcome part of the decision process with customers.

The survey respondents reported that they could find relevant content on IT vendor sites only 42% of the time. The lack of relevant content reduced a vendor's chance of a sale by 45%! In light of this lack of information, decisions often go to the vendor who answered their questions and connected them with peer and expert content.

Your web site is your conversation hub, and a rigorous content management approach is critical to using the web to help move customers down the purchase funnel from Awareness to Purchase...and hopefully over time, Advocacy.

Pre-Super Bowl Thoughts: Evidence of Integrated Campaigns

As I sit here watching the 17 hour Super Bowl pre-game show, it's pretty clear that marketers still believe in traditional advertising. NBC (finally) sold out their Super Bowl ad spots and set a new record for advertising revenue at $206 million.

However, I think we'll notice that throughout the game that new media, social networks and search have permeated almost all major campaigns. Whether it be involving consumers in the creation of an ad like Doritos, integrating a Facebook experience like CareerBuilder, showing the outtakes of a commercial like E*Trade, or integrating search keywords with the media effort (70% of advertisers did this year), you probably noticed the new world of marketing in its tween years.

Now the question: is your organization leveraging best practices for integrating efforts across all marketing channels? If not, we're to help.

Today's "Did You Know"

Forbes Magazine has some interesting statistics on direct and online marketing worth reviewing:

• 12.3% of small business ad/marketing budgets are spent on direct mail.
• Despite the rocket growth of Google, only 3.3% of small business ad budgets are spent on pay-per-click advertising.
• The average cost-per-click ad costs .47 cents per click.
• A locally targeted cost-per-click costs $1.20  on average.
• 46% of online newspaper readers say they bought something because of an ad they saw on the site.

Local, highly accountable search marketing tools are becoming a hot item for small businesses looking for regionalized customers. However, very few small business owners (as well as many corporate and product marketers) truly understand this powerful tool.