On a recent scouring of the web for marketing news, I stumbled across this fabulous story about copywriter Alex Brownstein. Fed up of not being able to get in front of some of New York’s finest Creative Directors, he devised a PPC strategy to get himself noticed by the likes of Scott Virtrone and Ian Reichenthal… by playing on that egotistical moment when these guys would Google themselves!

Marketers have for a long time now realised that by focusing on long-tail keywords that have less competition, not only will you pay less per click, but you will also have a higher conversion rate. In fact this conversion rate can be as high as 200% when compared to short-tail, or generic, keywords.

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The search engines are always trying to find ways to tempt the user into using their specific site. After all, they are in it to make money, lots of money, buckets of the stuff in fact. Mark my words and mark them well. In the future we will all live and work at the whim of GoogleCorp… until that day, there is some competition in the shape of Microsoft’s oddly named Bing!

Now last year amid much fanfare and cries of invaded privacy (who can forget the poor guy caught leaving a house of ill repute) Google launched ‘Google street view’ a thoroughly marvellous piece of photo tomfoolery that allowed you to walk a virtual mile through any major city in the U.S. and then the UK and Europe.

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Contrary to myth, Bing is not a recursive acronym ‘Bing is not Google’, nor is it slang for cocaine (as I found out when I presented this to the agency!). It is in fact, the reincarnation of Microsoft Live search, a much publicised, heavily advertised step by Microsoft to finally get it right and rival Google. Bing is actually an onomatopoeic name, designed to represent the sound of the ‘moment of discovery and decision making’.

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