Advertising Planning Portfolio Essay

Market Analysis and Background Bing is considered to be ‘the new’ search engine. Released in June 2009, Bing is Microsoft’s solution to the current search engine market monopolist, Google. Microsoft has focused on Bing being the search engine with the best quality results. One-click access to desired information, easy-to-use exploring tools, simplified search tasks and more specific search results are the main competitive advantages of Bing. â€Å"Google Australia accounted for 74.61% of Australian searches during February, with Google.com taking 12.65%, equating to an overall market share of 87.26%† Stafford, P. (2011). We can see the incredible market share of Google (refer to Appendix 1) despite the fact that Microsoft has invested more that $80 million dollars on Bing since its launch in 2009 (Sullivan, D. 2009). Google currently owns 89.68% of the search engine market share, while Bing is responsible for a minute 3.77% of the Australian market and 4.21% worldwide (StatCounter, 2011). Business Objectives Increase awareness in Australia Regardless of Bing’s release into the market almost 2 years ago with such a large advertising and marketing budget, many people are still unaware of Bing and it’s functions. The campaign aims to increase awareness by 80% in Australia, and by 90% in the specified Australian Target market within 12 months. Increase brand usage: The 12 month campaign will look to increase Bing’s market share by 6% and also a 40% increase in search engine consumers who have utilized the website at least once. Communication Objective Increase brand loyalty The campaign needs to communicate to the Target Audience how Bing is the best search engine for them. They need to connect with the campaign personally and put Bing at the forefront of their minds when it comes to search engine. Consumer Objective The campaign should increase consumer preference. Over 12 months the objective is for an increase by 10% of the Target Market to prefer Bing rather than Google and other search engines. This will probably prove to be the hardest objective to achieve as consumers have been found to be extremely difficult to change current search engine preference. Target Audience The researched has directed the campaign to a primary and a secondary target market. One is the early adopters – so Bing can build and grow in time, and the other is the older generation – to increase short-term market share. Primary market The primary market for the campaign will be 6 to 13 year olds of both genders. They will have a middle to high education, go to school, and be tech savvy. They will spend much of their free-time online, exploring entertainment and social networking sites such as Youtube and Facebook. They are interested in games (online and video), movies, music, sport and are active information seekers. This market is young, future trendsetters and will not have the strong loyalty that the majority of the search engine market has with Google. Rationale It has been proven to be almost impossible to get current loyal Google users to switch to Bing. Focus group research revealed that 8 out of 12 users thought they would stay with Google as their preferred search engine, despite a positive experience with Bing (Shaer, M. 2009). Also a current Google user stated in an interview â€Å"Bing generates interest, but it’s hard to take me away from Google because I’m so comfortable with it’ (Shaer, M. 2009). Secondary The secondary market will be males and females aged 50 – 65. They will be more likely to have children, slightly less educated, not so tech savvy, generally live in metropolitan areas. They are wealthier than the average search engine user, although due to their children, have a small level of disposable income. Rationale Again it is not possible to effectively target current Google users. This audience is not quite as familiar with the Internet, and therefore do not have the brand loyalty with Google. Also Bing is often the default homepage on Microsoft browsers, therefore if a consumer does not have loyalty to another search engine, all that is needed is brand awareness and they will generally use Bing. The Site-reference: Comparing Google and Bing Demographics video (2010) reveals that this outlined target audience is also Bing’s current target audience and therefore, advertisers who have been wanting to reach a similar market have been investing more on Bing advertising and optimization. This is making the website actually better suited to this audience and must be utilized by Bing ( SWOT Strengths * Massive amount of funds available * Owned by Microsoft * Less ‘clicks’ to arrive at desired result * Provides more visual search options Weaknesses * New search Engine * Low brand recognition * Low customer loyalty Opportunities * Future business expansion * Performing in a thriving and growing market Threats * Google holds a monopolistic position in the market * The many other search engines will be added clutter to affect Bing’s advertising Research Bing is a new search engine, facing an enormous task at competing against the web giant Google, the largest website in the world. However, research has shown that Bing has a number of competitive advantages that are superior to Google. And, although slow, Bing has the potential to slowly grow and increase its market share. Bing is a new search engine, still seeking to position and market itself within the industry to properly compete with Google. Research has been conducted to understand where Bing is currently out and how it has got there. Research has also found gaps in the market; places where Google should be heading in the market and how they can best reach these goals in the future market. Research first found that Google consumers expect that they have to dig through search results before stumbling across the desired answer (Sebald, B. 2009). Bing aims to provide a faster, easier and more specific service than its competitor engines. â€Å"We chose Bing because it’s short, memorable, and symbolic of the moment when information and opportunity come together and a simple search becomes an engine for taking action† state Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (Hartley, M. 2009). The name came about by focus groups, where regular Internet users were probed for a short, simple, catchy name that personified the exact moment when the idea pops into your head. Much research has been conducted to find consumers are not entirely happy when searching for information online. They receive a lot of clutter and it was found that 50% of other search engines results failed to meet people’s needs and also 72% were after help to better organize their results (Hartley, M. 2009). Since Bing’s arrival to the mark place, more recent research states â€Å"81% of the searches done on Bing and Yahoo resulted in an actual visit to a website. Google only showed a 65% rate† (Sebald, B. 2011). The comparison of this research is evidence that Bing has a great search engine, with advantages over Google that are answering consumer demands. Schwartz (2009) reveals, â€Å"Consumers can process results with images 20% faster than text only results†. From this Bing has developed ‘visual search’, an innovative way to search the Internet with images rather than words. Bing search intends to provide a more specific, more integrated results incorporating video and images to the results.