Target Markets of Microsoft and Google

Microsoft and Google are two of the most powerful brand names that you can hear nowadays. These are the companies that have billions of users and will continue to stay at the top probably for more decades. Surely, one of the essential factors behind their huge success is their strategies of accurately identifying and targeting the markets. In this blog post, I am going to speak about some of those tactics which helped them to reach their desired markets.

So, firstly I want to start by discussing one of the ways that Microsoft uses to target a specific market

To do so, let’s go through one of their commercials.

Here is the Microsoft Super Bowl 2020 Commercial about Katie Sowers, who is the first-ever woman to coach in Super Bowl. 

In the commercial, Katie talks about the story of her and how she was in love with football and dreamt about being a part of the football team since childhood. Today, she is the Offensive Assistant Coach for the San Francisco 49ers. 

This was a story of an ambitious woman, who has made history with her “believe” and “never give up” attitudes. A female leader/tutor off the pitch in an all-men team speaks for her strong personality.  So, what can we assume from the personality traits presented in the video? Surely, we can state that Katie Sowers belongs to the Actualizers segment, and thus, one of their important targets is Actualizers.

What do we need to know about Actualizers?

Lifestyle and Values: 

Actualizers have a high level of confidence. They are very successful people and most of them consider themselves perfectionists. This makes them feel the necessity of controlling everything they do in their lives. They consider their lives happy because they have certainty in it and are determined towards their goals. 

Often very reluctant to take risks, but very ambitious. In the workplace, they make high efforts to meet and even exceed the expectations, as they look at the job not just as a way to get money, but also as a career.  What refers to security and family, these are the things that come first for them. They believe that happiness is not measured with money, as they rather have more spare time with family and a job with security.

The family has huge importance for them. They consider the education and development of their children as one of their main responsibilities. They try to maintain a balanced and healthy lifestyle for their family and are kind of people who would make sure the kid eats at least 1 yogurt for the vitamins because they are not able to control their meals in school/kindergarten.

They are very modern and intellectual people who are interested in international events, arts, music, and different cultures. Always keep up with new trends, technologies, and events going on around them. 

Shopping Preferences:

Actualizers mainly prefer premium brands. They give huge importance to their quality and even, they may sometimes treat themselves to something they hardly need. Always try to keep themselves up-to-date and are considered one of the “early majority” purchasers of their favorite brands.

Their attitude towards shopping is very practical, as they always try to plan their purchases and prefer to do the shopping in one shop. Local brand usage is above average in their case, which they like to try and promote. 

Their decisions are highly affected by the family’s desires and needs. They try hard to make the wishes of their children come true, but at the same time try to keep the products in a line that is perceived as good and acceptable by them. 

Here are some interesting facts about Actualizers:

1. The best way of entertainment for them is by spending time with family. Making dinner and enjoying a quiet evening at home is enough for them to rest. Also, they like spending their time in a garden and enjoying nature.
2. They also like filling their time with cultural activities, such as painting, listening to music, visiting exhibitions, concerts, theatres. More than that, they like creating similar interesting activities for children like teaching them painting or handcrafting, watching cultural programs or documentary movies with them, etc.
3. The Internet helps them to stay up-to-date with the world and their environment. Through the internet, they find interesting information regarding a healthy lifestyle, children’s upbringing, gardening, and other hobbies. What refers to TV, they only use it for specific programs related to their interests. 

16 Personalities (what is for your business?)

Microsoft as a brand is moving forward with big steps, helped by the good relationship with their customers, as a result of which this brand became one of the leading brands on the planet. As a target customer or, as we like to call it, as an ideal Buyer Persona, Microsoft has chosen the Actualizers as ideal Buyer Persona.

Microsoft was able to correctly analyze the consumer behavior of Actualizers and realized that the latter gave priority to the innovative feature of the product when making purchases. Microsoft focused on innovation and used Actualizers as their main buying auditory.

What are the hidden insights of Actualizers?

.. Actualizers always want to be involved in many projects. They are very hardworking. Thanks to this skill they achieve everything in their life. Despite this, they lack talent. They like to plan everything in advance, not to deviate from the plan, they hate impulsive steps, and improvisations in life, because they lack creativity.

․․ Events and vacations turn into a planned project for them, which Actualizers have to complete, they don’t get real pleasure. Instead, you will always have the advantage of working with them, as they are very punctual and responsible. They will never break their promises. But never expect creative, impulsive decisions from them. Everything must be planned.․․ Actualizers are analyzing people. They like discipline and schedule in life. For example, when they need to build a restaurant, they won’t trust the architect at first, they will require a detailed plan, and calculations. After all, they don’t study these calculations in detail. That’s just insurance.

Full information about Actualizers can be found in the electronic version of the creative workbook called “16 Personalities“ developed by THE SOCIAL GRABBER team, the link to which is placed in the image below. The question arises, how to attract hedonists? What are the characteristics of their consumer behavior? Let me tell you that the book “16 Personalities” describes the detailed revelations of all the secrets that will significantly change the previous perception of every Businessman, Marketer or Startup about Buyer Persona.

      As you can see from the title of the book, Actualizers are just one of all 16 Personalities. I am confident that the study of the individuality of each segment will take the marketing and sales strategy of each business to a new level.  When you look at all 16 of them one by one, you will definitely find the ideal Buyer Persona for your brand, so you can focus all your mind on it. Such a targeting strategy is doomed to success.

For a refresher, some interesting facts about Microsoft.

1. At Microsoft, they love pizza! Every day, Microsoft offers free meals to its approximately 35000 employees and has a huge variety of food options. However, the most popular food among Microsoft employees is pizza!
2. Microsoft once saved Apple from bankruptcy: Yes you read it correctly. In 1997, Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy, and so Bill Gates bought $150 million worth non-voting shares from Apple Computer, as well as provided Apple with free access to use Microsoft Office. This in fact, saved Apple from bankruptcy.
3. One of the most number of patent holders in the USA: As of 2020, the number of patients reaches to 3,081.
4. The majority of employees are male: As of 2018, 73.4 % of employees in Microsoft are male. For some years, Microsoft tries to decrease this number, and in fact, in 2019 this number slightly changed by decreasing to 73.3%.

Now after discussing Microsoft, it’s time to move forward and speak a little about Google.

A powerful search engine company found in 1998 by 2 young enthusiasts Sergey Brin and Larry Page, which today implements more than 70% of global online search requests and offers more than 50 Internet products and services.

It has a huge advantage over its main competitor Microsoft owned Bing in the search engine industry. What makes Google very special is the integration of its services like Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Google Contacts, etc. Moreover, their algorithms developed by AI make the search engine even smarter with advanced options and suggestions based on previous experiences. 

The products that Google offers are for everyday use, especially for the people who face different types of challenges in the workplace daily. The search engine and the variety of services that Google offers are very useful for conscious people who try to find instant solutions to their workplace tasks/problems through the internet. Besides search engines, other services like Gmail, Google Calendar, or Google Drive are effective solutions for communications, data sharing, planning, and many other similar purposes.

The opportunities that Google offers are available and actively used by almost every segment around the world. However, there is this one segment that Google puts a comparatively bigger emphasis on and who are the ones that enjoy their benefits the most. This segment is called Conscious Progressives. 

Who are Conscious Progressives? 

Lifestyle and Values:

Conscious Progressives are very intelligent young people. They always seek new information and are into working towards self-development. They make each decision by carefully analyzing their consequences, pros, and cons.  

Their outlook on life is very practical, especially when it’s about spending money. They are considered very down-to-earth people, and one of the adjectives that makes them so is the importance they give to the honesty towards themselves. Some of them are impulsive, but anyway, they manage to find a way to make conscious decisions. 

It’s important for them to look attractive, but it’s not expressed the same way with them as with the others. They have a casual style, but sometimes they like to add a little sophistication to it. However, they do not find a person’s attractiveness only in the way they look or they dress, but also they consider a person attractive by its personality and intellect. 

They might have a lot of friends, but they value the friendships that are deep and valuable. A very important value for them is inclusivity which is noticeable in many different groupings of friends they have with different backgrounds and inspirations.  Their social life is variety-filled which includes going bars and pubs with friends and sometimes they organize gatherings at their houses. They like entertaining the guests and they are actually good at it. 

Shopping Preferences: 

Packaging has less influence on them compared to the other segments. While shopping they have the attitude of “what’s inside not how it looks or is positioned”. Like everyone else, the reasons behind their purchase are emotional factors, however, compared to other segments they are more demanding towards the functionality. 

Their attitude towards the quality of a product they are purchasing is disproportionate. A big part of them considers it an important factor while making a purchasing decision. Surely, this is a reflection of their conscious personality. Thus, they make their buying decisions based on functional reasons, rather than on brand name or image. 

75% of Conscious Progressives think that advertisements should be entertaining. The intelligence and relevance of an ad is a very important factor in attracting them. For most of them, advertisements are not annoying, so a catchy one can easily involve them. 

Here are some interesting facts about Conscious Progressives:

1. Socially they are very active as they go to new places, make new friends and discover new things very often. Unlike most of the other segments, they don’t exaggerate their social life and leisure activities and are not into sharing some photos and Instagram stories about their social life too often, although they mostly have a life that’s worth sharing. 
2. They like debating around intellectual topics and always have strong arguments regarding politics and society. If the issue interests them, they research it and analyze it to be completely aware of I which in line with their openness makes them very interesting and challenging discussion/debate partners.
3. Family is very important to them and 86% of them say that they like spending time with family members. Moreover, they like the feeling of making the family members proud of them and do everything to make family members think they are doing well and heading in the right direction. 
4. Conscious Progressives are above average internet users. They use Facebook, Instagram to stay up-to-date about events going on around them and around the world. They like reading some interesting articles and news which helps them expand their world which is a key factor for their desire of staying well-informed and open-minded about the world.  

And we go again to interesting facts, but this time about Google.

1. Google was originally called BackRub: Yes I know, it sounds strange. The name was in reference to the fact, that the programs were supposed to analyze the web’s “back links” to understand the importance of a certain website and find the other websites that it is related to. However, its life lasted for only a little more than a year, which inhabited on Stanford’s servers. 
2. Google name is the modified version of googol word: Many of you probably didn’t know that the “googol” word exists in English. In fact it does exist which is a mathematical term. 1 googol = 1.0 x 10^100.
3. Google’s first head chef used to be a caterer of the Grateful Dead band: Another one… I mean one more unusual fact. The roots of this date back to 1999 when Google’s employees held a cook-off, and guess who won the votes. Charlie Ayers, a former caterer for Grateful Dead who held the position for the following 7 years.
4. In 1999 Google was almost sold for less than a million dollars. The name of the guy who made this “good decision” not to buy Google for $750.000 is George Bell, former CEO of Excite. In 1999 he was offered a chance to buy it for the above-mentioned price, however, he declined, stating that the price is too high. Yet, today it’s considered one of the worst business decisions ever made, which I think is pretty unfair because we cannot guess what the company’s fate would be after the purchase. 

So these were some analyses and facts regarding the main target segments of Microsoft and Google. The information itself indicates why those segments have vital roles in the marketing strategies of these giant companies. Thank you for reading this blogpost. For more similar posts check out our main page.