Bing has made some nice waves in a short amount of time.  Of course, having the weight of Microsoft behind one’s efforts can’t hurt.  But Microsoft/Bing didn’t set out to just coast on the power of their already established brand.  They wanted serious penetration into the market, and that called for some marketing finesse.

One thing they started early on was airing numerous commercials with their “Decision Engine” tag line which separated them from their competition.  In a vast sea of sameness, it is very valuable to stand out from the crowd.

Another, possibly more interesting, advertising tactic Bing used was advertising via Farmville.  You’ve probably heard of Farmville, and chances are, you’ve actually played it.  In the off chance that you haven’t, Farmville is a game played while logged in to Facebook.  Farmville has an addictive game play and also promotes a social aspect by posting events from the game as Status Updates in Facebook.

Why did Bing want to use a game as an advertising platform, even a wildly popular one?  For one, more people play Farmville than have Twitter accounts.  These are nice numbers.  Second is the game’s social aspect.

Bing marketers decided to create a special offer inside Farmville that gave players the opportunity to get free “farm cash” if they became a fan of Bing on Facebook.  The more association with a brand, the more continued interaction with that brand.

Here are the results:

Over 72% of the players who clicked on the offer became fans of Bing
About 59,000 people published the story to their News Feed
Over 70,000 clicks were received from News Feed stories
After one day, just 24 hours, Bing had over 400,000 new Facebook fans

In this age of digital connectivity and lightning speed information delivery, clever marketers can engage with consumers like never before.  And Microsoft decided to capitalize on that.  The key, as realized by Microsoft, is to be able to deliver your message, to connect, with people in the moment, to put your message in front of them even when they aren’t looking for it.  If you can do this in an unobtrusive manner, then you’ve got a leg up on your competition.

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