Influencers vs. Fans; Microsoft's Key to Success for Bing Search Engine

Do not worry—you will not offend Lise Brende, Microsoft Bing’s director of marketing analytics, by suggesting her company’s search portal is not as hip, exciting or fan-friendly as a professional athlete or performing artist.

A search engine like Bing faces an uphill battle building a social media presence, and Google’s ongoing dominance in the sector doesn’t make the battle any easier.

"Not many people want to be fans of a search engine, especially a new one and especially when they’re habitual Google users," explains Brende, a speaker at Customer Management IQ’s Customer Analytics & Intelligence Conference, in an exclusive podcast interview with CMIQ.

Bing, nonetheless, is far from a non-factor in the world of online engagement. Having seen its market share nearly double to 17%, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, the heavily-promoted new search engine has a Facebook fanbase of over 1.7 million.

Brende credits Bing’s success to a taut understanding of its target audience—Generation Ys aged 16-34—and its ability to engage "influentials" within that audience.

"What we’ve found is that Generation Y makes up 20% of the internet, but they account for 47% of all searches," details Brende. "We really wanted to find out how we can speak to them and understand what they want and how we can actually talk to them, so we’re not just coming after them without doing our homework."

With its core audience defined, Bing’s subsequent challenge was multi-layered. Once it understood how its target customers behave and what they want out of a search engine, it needed to engage the influentials who can properly convey the brand’s message to that audience.

Speaking frankly, Brende explains, "People might be fans [of us on social networks], but if they don’t have any influence or reach, it’s not really worth our time to spend a lot of energy…we can’t talk to everyone… We have to define who are these influentials."

How does Bing locate influencers within its social media fanbases? How does it motivate them to advocate on behalf of the company? What is Bing doing to track unprompted social dialogue? Lise Brende answers these questions and more in the new Customer Management IQ Customer Creation Podcast!

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