Did you ever wonder why (looking back in history) you can look at 2 companies or people and one of them succeeded while the other did not? Sometimes the difference in what they did was very subtle but one is remembered and the other forgotten. It wasn't always for lack of resources or timing or any of those things we attribute to being successful. Sometimes it is because one has a clearer idea of who their market is or who they are really catering to.

McDonald's restaurant knows this. They cater to kids. They have kids friendly restaurants and give out little toys and create an atmosphere that is appealing to this target market. I have 4 young kids and it is a pretty special time for them to go to McDonald's. I really don't care for the food that much but we go because the kids enjoy the environment.

Let's look at Google and Yahoo. Both are successful search engines, very large, have been in business for some time and are well known. But see, Google knows who their market is. The marketer. If you want to advertise on Google, they make it very easy. You can go there and within 5 minutes set yourself up an adwords account, put up ads and start advertising. You can pull up your stats and see what your campaigns are doing very quickly. The stats aren't real-time but not too far out. If you want to display their ads on your website, no problem. Set yourself up an adsense account and start showing ads that are relevant to your content and cater to your viewers. No problem.

They are in business to do business and if you are a marketer you can work with them.

I recently went to Yahoo Search to set up a PPC account. It was a bit more involved and not nearly as straight forward. I haven't been back in a while to check my stats because I have a hard time finding the login button on their page and I don't feel like searching for it. When I signed up for my account, I had a coupon for some free advertising and it took a few days to get that applied to my account - after I emailed them. Just seems like I am bothering them if I want to advertise with them.
I am going to quote from an email I just got from Pay Per Click authority Perry Marshall (in regards to the former Overture/Yahoo keyword research tool):

"Any business plan so utterly STUPID as to abandon one of the

best loved keyword research tools on the entire Internet….

(notice: Google introduced this new stuff immediately after

Yahoo disabled theirs) and build such a royally bureaucratic

PPC system as Yahoo has…

….Deserves to have their ass kicked by Carl Icahn,

shareholder mutiny, hostile takeover by Microsoft, or

whatever other grim fate befalls them."

The point here is to know who your market is - and it may not always be what it looks like on the outside. Google is a search engine that the average person uses and is familiar with. If you were to ask around, you might think they are in the business of offering a search service to people looking for things online. But Google knows that their market is the marketer. If they cater to the marketer by making it easy to do business, they will have a successful search engine. They will remain popular because the people who are advertising (read: spending the money) are welcome to use their service.

Thanks to Google for picking up the slack and serving the marketing crowd.