In the already popular “Bing It On” marketing campaign for Microsoft’s search engine there have been quite a few different and interesting ways of getting people to take the Bing It On challenge. They’ve advertised on television, they’ve put a Bing It On kiosk across the street from Google’s I/O conference and now they are offering people in select airports with faster WiFi if they take the challenge.
According to Bing, they have partnered with 13 large airports to offer those who connect to their free public WiFi with improved service in exchange for taking the challenge. When individuals in the airport connect to the WiFi they are presented with the option to take the challenge. If they decline they get the normal, slower, internet connection. Those who take the challenge, however, will be rewarded with a faster internet connection.
The airports participating in this campaign are:
- John Wayne-Orange County (SNA)
- Sacramento (SMF)
- San Francisco (SFO)
- San Diego (SAN)
- Providence-TF Green (PVD)
- Omahaw Eppley Airfield (OMA)
- Oakland (OAK)
- Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP)
- Los Angeles (LAX)
- Indianapolis (IND)
- Baltimore (BWI)
- Buffalo (BUF)
- Boston Logan (BOS)
Something interesting you may notice is that most of these airports are in California or on the East coast of the United States. This is worth pointing out because as Perform Insider pointed out last month HERE, Google is most dominate in these types of areas. This could be Bing’s attempt to make gains in the areas where they haven’t been performing quite as well as they had hoped.
Whatever the reason for choosing these airports, however, it can’t be denied that this is a great way to get people to take their challenge. They have a fairly captive audience, many of whom have little else to do while waiting for a flight. If they can get faster internet for free, most people will be happy to do five quick searches and choose which search engine they prefer. If Bing’s claims that they have consistently outperformed Google in this challenge are true than they could be winning over many people using this marketing campaign.
Have you taken the Bing It On challenge? Despite remaining far behind Google in the number of searches, it can’t be doubted that Microsoft is pulling out all the stops when it comes to ensuring the long term success of their search engine. This will be an interesting battle to watch over the coming years.
