Google or Bing - I am not the only one

Hey,

Just a quick one relating to my last post. 5 reasons to move to Bing and some of the stats I was missing. Where do you go to search?

Bing and Google

Hey all,

Its been on my mind for a while about this whole Google vs Bing debate. I know Bing has a strong international presence, particularly in China but is it really going to compete in the UK. I don’t have the official figures to hand but I know there is still a massive market share gap between the two search engines.

The whole point of a search engine is one point of contact and hub to answer all your questions and queries. So inevitably people are going to choose or show preference towards one of the two. With the growth in search engine marketing and its likely dominance of ad spend in the future this is a serious area we as marketers and strategists need to get a grasp on. Is there any chances everyone will suddenly start to type in Bing rather than Google? I honestly don’t think so.

However my concern is that we are starting to look at search on too broad a platform. I know there is a certain amount of people who will say if in doubt plough your money into Google. Which to be fair is not a bad idea. However when looking to be more and more targeted and the pressures on ROI should we truly just dismiss the niggle that is Bing? I think, maybe not. We need to seriously look further than market share. Who are these people using Bing within the UK? Chinese students and expats? Younger audiences? Older audiences?

Who are these people!?

Could we be missing out on an opportunity to really hone in on a segment of the UK population to tailor messages to? Search is growing and growing as an advertising channel and I think we really need to look strategically at search not just how much money to split across the content and search network but which search engines to utilise. This should not be just resigned to international campaigns but also those within the UK.

That’s it for now!
Cheers, E x

I've recently wrote a lot of draft blogs and either lost my train of thought and failed to complete them or find myself re-reading them and thinking what the hell am I rambling about. But then I guess when you read the tag line of my blog that is exactly what is to be expected.

I need to find more time to take and out and really get back into blogging. It is so easy these days to say your too busy but to be honest sharing and connecting is the society of today. So why disconnect yourself by claiming to be too busy, ultimately it can cause a lot of loneliness. Recently with advertising, being the tougher industry it is in these times, I have found myself becoming more and more absorbed in the day to day and forgetting to take a step back and remember the bigger picture. With the pressure to hit targets and bring in money the fine line between sales and marketing becomes much easier to cross. What, which is ever so more important in these times, is strategy. Without strategy you are spitting into the wind and just hoping in the short-term you can keep dodging and diving and stay dry. However the law of averages says eventually you are going to get wet, building the right strategy even if you do spit into the wind can significantly reduce this probability.

In the advertising industry it is not just internal strategy you have to think about but that of your clients. Sometimes it is much easier to take an outside consultative approach to developing strategy by being able to take in the wider environment as well as getting deep into the skin of clients. Now is the time to embrace change not skim over the pot holes and hope for the best. We need to engage, anticipate and embrace the changes in every industry not just our own and have ears close to the ground on not only what change will come but how to take hold of it and mould it before it emerges.

Anyway just a brief one, more to remind myself than anything else.

Been a long day!

Signing out,

E x