We all know Google is the king of search traffic. It has about 90% of the market share with the rest being divided between several competitors. This leads many to make the marketing mistake of believing Bing ads are a waste of time.
While discounting Bing might be understandable, we think marketers should give it more consideration. Its market share might only be a fraction of Google’s, but it still offers a lot of value. Bing’s fraction of the market is still made up of 700 million unique searchers. That is a large audience.
Furthermore, there are people who only use Bing. There might not be nearly as many people who only use Google, but it is still a lot of people. If you are only pushing your PPC campaigns on Google Ads, you are missing a large audience that is probably being overlooked by your competitors as well.
Along with that, Bing’s ads offer some nice opportunities. With Microsoft Advertising, you not only have the search engine ads, but you have other formats like Bing native ads that can be placed on other websites and online properties.
Why Use Bing Ads?
If you are already using Google Ads, you might think Bing ads aren’t worth your time. We would argue that they could be a way to help you get ahead of competitors. While they are focusing on the advantages of Google Ads and Facebook ads, you can use those platforms and take advantage of the underexploited Bing.
The first reason to use Bing ads is the audience. It might not be nearly as big as Google’s, but it is still a large audience. Beyond that, much of Bing’s audience is unique from Google’s. They tend to be a little older, more educated and higher in income.
Another reason to use Bing is that you can get more bang for your buck. Ad placement on Google is competitive. With more people bidding for the same space, the prices tend to be higher. When you look at Bing, there is less competition, which results in lower prices for ad placement. That means you can run similar ads with similar placement at a lower cost.
Bing also makes it easy to get started. The ads manager is similar to the one you would use in Google. Along with that, Bing also has a feature that allows you to import ad campaigns from Google Ads to Bing ads. If you are already using Google Ads, getting started with Bing Ads is very easy.
Tips for Bing Advertising
While Google Ads and Bing Ads are similar and you can import campaigns, there are differences. You don’t want to just import campaigns and keep everything the same. You need to know how to use Bing Ads before you get started. The following are a few tips to help advertisers succeed with Bing Ads:
Conversion Tracking
Just like Google Ads and other networks, Microsoft Advertising offers event tracking. If you want to see what people are doing after they click your ads and take advantage of remarketing, you need to set up Universal Event Tracking on your website.
Import Campaigns
You can set up unique campaigns for Bing, but importing campaigns from your Google Ads account can be great for getting started. Much of the work is already done, so it can be a way to save time with your first Bing ad campaigns.
Make Adjustments
Importing ads can be helpful, but you might want to make some adjustments for the new platform and audience. Since there is less competition, you might want to adjust your bidding strategy for Bing ads. There might also be good reason to tweak some of the text or target different keywords.
Action Extensions
Action extensions allow you to put a CTA button in a Bing ad. They offer 62 preset actions like “subscribe” or “browse” and they can be effective for driving action on the part of consumers.
Responsive Ads
Responsive ads offer the option to submit a range of headlines and descriptions for an ad set. Bing then uses artificial intelligence to match the most effective combinations for each search query. This can be good for making sure your audience is always getting the right messaging and it can be a way to test more headlines and descriptions.
Bing might not be as big as Google, but there is still a lot of marketing value in those search ads. We wouldn’t recommend leaving Google for Bing, but it can help you reach a new audience and the lower cost means that it has the potential to offer a much higher return on ad spend.
In some cases, Bing may be preferable and a PPC agency can help guide you towards picking the platform best suited for your business.
