Why Microsoft Is Wasting $100 Million On Bing

This post is not intended to critique the new search engine or analyze its new, differentiating features from the dominant leader in the search arena; Google. What I want to do is lay out a few reasons why I believe Microsoft is wasting $100 million dollars on marketing Bing.

Using an old media approach on the internet just doesn’t work. It used to be that if you had a product or service you wanted to promote, you could spend a ton of money on tv, radio, newspapers, and magazines spreading word to the masses. You controlled the distribution and the message. Masses would adopt your product and you win. The internet doesn’t work like that. People use online tools because they work and solve a problem or need. Word spreads, often virally, and the service is adopted. The following list of sites were not launched with massive fan fare or $100 million in advertising: Google, Twitter, Digg, Facebook, Craigslist, Youtube, Myspace, Hotmail, PayPal, the list goes on and on. The point is that people adopted these tools and word spread about their usefulness for one reason: they worked. They identified a need or a problem that others had and they filled the gap. I’m hard pressed to think of an internet service that beat out an established market leader due to a bigger advertising spend.

If something isn’t broken, or people don’t think they have a problem or need, than good luck getting them to switch from what is comfortable. People use and trust Google to deliver them relevant search results. I am all in favor of companies trying to take search to another level. It is better for all of us if Google has more competition. The problem for Bing is that Google works pretty well right now delivering relevant results. $100 million might get people to check out your new search engine, but something very different and remarkable needs to be waiting there to get us to switch. If it isn’t obvious very quickly why Bing is so much better, people will be back to using Google or Yahoo on their very next search. The search engine Cuil launched with a big PR release, got lots of visitors checking out their new engine, and then everyone went back to using what they had previously.

New features are easy to replicate, users are not. The fact is that if Bing has a new feature or layout that people love, Google can easily copy that. What Google has right now that Bing doesn’t is a loyal base of users. Advertising won’t buy loyalty. It will buy views, curiosity, or interest but not loyalty. Search engines are not a direct response marketing product like Oxyclean. People need to come back again and again for Bing to be successful. That will take a remarkable product, not $100 million dollars.

Don’t just be the next version of the market leader, be something different entirely. It is very difficult to topple a market leader with a slight modification of its existing product. While Bing is being called a “decision engine” as far as anyone who isn't on the Microsoft marketing team is concerned it’s a search engine. You need to do something completely different to win over users. Take Twitter search for example. By providing the ability to search real-time tweets you get a much different set of results than Google delivers. I could see people using this for certain types of searches to get better or different results. You must be different to get adopted on a massive scale.

Jeff Berman
jb@attorneysync.com
lawyermarketing.attorneysync.com/