In France, Bing accounts for 392 million of monthly searches, 17 million unique users and a 16% share of the online search market.
With Google controlling the majority of online traffic, it's easy to ignore other search engines. Yet Microsoft's advertising platform (now called Microsoft Ads) offers huge potential for businesses with modest budgets.
Let's go! Discover our tips for a successful Bing Ads campaign!
Bing! What is it?
Microsoft was looking for a name for its search engine and 'bingo!' The name was found... It would be Bing. Short, easy to remember, and for a search engine, that's pretty well suited.
Bing has had a somewhat bumpy history. It was presented by its CEO for the first time in 2009 before being made available to internet users.
Some features of Bing
Bing is a search engine. One of its features is that, when it has searched within a domain, it displays a menu called the 'Explore pane' on the left of the screen. There, the user can see results organized by relevance categories — images, biographies, and so on.
According to Microsoft, this has the advantage of making it easier for users to search.
Bing offers other features that help it stand out from the competition, particularly Google. Among other things, searches are made easier by offering an interface optimized for discovery.
Bing in numbers
In France, as everywhere else in the world, it is Google that dominates all other search engines such as Qwant, Bing... It holds about 90% of the market share, and this has lasted for many years. Diversity is important to cover the majority of users and their needs, and also to avoid creating a monopoly.
However, Bing comes in second place, with approximately 5% of the French market share. It deserves credit and is rolling out various initiatives to try to gain ground.
Bing Ads
To gain popularity and increase its presence in the search engine market, Bing offers advantages such as Bing Ads.
A simple setup
Thanks to Bing Ads, you have the ability to replicate your AdWords campaigns in a simplified way.
If you manage your Tags with Google Tag Manager, you can configure your conversion tracking tag in a simplified way.
The tool that lets you import Bing Ads will automatically convert your "AdWords" UTM tracking parameters to "Bing." This will save you time.
Limitations of Bing Ads
As with anything, there are also drawbacks. Here is a list of limiting aspects of Bing Ads
- You cannot import the rules configured in AdWords automatically.
- Multi-language targeting cannot be imported either. However, you can do this by duplicating your ad groups and assigning each one to a specific language target.
- When you import keywords, you cannot modify them. However, you can of course create new ones.
Configuration differences between Bing Ads and AdWords
You can note some differences between Bing Ads and AdWords.
- Geographic targeting
In AdWords you handle geographic targeting at the campaign level. Bing does too, but you also have the option to set it up at the AdGroup level.
- Search Network Partners integration
For Bing, you must set it at the AdGroup level, whereas on AdWords you do it at the campaign level.
- Setting up schedules
Bing uses the user's time zone while AdWords uses your account's time zone.
How to import from Google Ads
First, you should know that if you use two-step authentication to access your Google Ads account, you need to create a password for Microsoft Advertising.
Here are the steps for a direct import:
- On Microsoft Advertising, click "import a campaign" then import from Google Ads.
- Click "connect to Google" and enter your login information.
- Select the Google Ads campaign you want and click "continue".
- Choose the Microsoft Advertising account you want to import to and the import options (time zone, bids, budgets, etc.).
- Import
You have the option to change URLs later and to share the ad extensions from your campaigns.
What's new in Bing Ads
In this section, we present some new features offered by Bing Ads.
- Countdown account customization.
It's an option to place a custom countdown on your promotional campaigns indicating the days, hours, and minutes until the campaign ends.
This makes your ad more dynamic in that it can convey a sense of urgency.
- Label integration
- Automatic ad extensions
- Multi-image extensions
Microsoft offers an image extension that AdWords doesn't have. It allows you to display up to 6 images below your ad, which makes it more visible and appealing.
- Price extensions
- Audience creation.
This enables activating RLSA (remarketing for Search Ads) on Bing.
- Audience segmentation
- This helps with managing your campaigns.
- Automated bidding
Why advertise on Bing Ads?
Looking for reasons to run your ads on Bing Ads? Here are 4 advantages compared to Google Ads:
Less competition and lower CPC
With Bing Ads, you generate leads at a relatively low cost. Most advertisers are busy fighting for ad placement on Google, which leaves you free room on Microsoft's search engine.
Result: because there are fewer advertisers, the cost per click is lower. You therefore get a better return on investment.
The average click-through rate on Bing ads is 2.83%, which is 50% higher than on Google Ads. As for cost per click, it is 33% less expensive.
A better option for device targeting
Bing advertisers can exclude traffic from specific device types (desktop computers or tablets, for example) from their campaigns. You can even target specific mobile devices by specifying your preferred operating systems.
More transparency
Bing offers advertisers the ability to target users of Bing and Yahoosearch partners, or both, at the ad group level.
In addition, you can quickly run a report to see exactly which search partners are sending traffic to your website. This is an important detail for optimizing your campaigns and improving your return on investment.
If you see a source performing much worse than the others, you can even exclude it entirely!
More control over your demographic targeting
Bing Ads' most innovative and underused feature is probably the ability to control the demographic groups by gender and age that see your ads. Targeting is rather vague on Google Ads!
Yet demographic criteria prove essential for advertisers whose products or services are typically purchased by a particular gender or age group.
How to advertise on Bing Ads?
Before you start launching campaigns on Bing Ads, you must first have an account Microsoft AdvertisingThen, install the Universal Event Tracking, the platform's conversion tracking pixel. It will help you analyze your performance.
Now you're ready to move on to the next 4 steps to advertise on Bing Ads!
Step 1: Configure the campaign
By going to the dashboard of your Microsoft Advertising account, you can:
- Set your campaign settings, including its name and its budget.
- Choose an individual daily budget or use a budget from the shared library.
- Set a general location or specific postal codes, as well as the users who should see your ads.
- Choose the languages of the audiences who will see your ad.
Step 2: Ad groups and keywords
In the second step, you choose to create ad groups by selecting your keywords.
Note that for search ads, it's always preferable to create tight ad groups with a limited number of relevant keywords. This can improve your campaign's ranking and performance.
The best approach is to create a single ad group for each service you offer. Microsoft provides a keyword suggestion tool to help you choose the ones that seem relevant.
Step 3: Create your Bing ad
This is where you'll create the actual ad, writing the text and adding site link extensions.
When creating the ad, you have 30 characters for each of the three headline sections and 90 for each of the two ad text fields.
There are separators between the headlines, so you should treat each one as unique.
You can also add mobile-specific URLs if you have separate mobile landing pages.
Step 4: Budget and bids
In this final step, you must clearly define your campaign budget and your bids.
As for bidding strategy, enhanced CPC is a good choice to take advantage of Bing's automation services.
Otherwise, you can always use manual bidding. This way you can easily set separate bids for each ad group, and even adjust them based on the user's location, device, or time of day.
Also read : Business: 8 steps to budget it without investors
Our tip
Bing does not have the same potential as Google, that's undeniable. However, they can be very complementary. Indeed, Bing is a channel for your promotions and has its own audience that will complement Google's. Moreover, campaigns are less costly, which can allow you to play on both fronts and gain visibility.
If you already have success on Google Ads, succeeding with Microsoft Advertising is almost as easy! Even better, you can import your Google Ads campaigns and therefore duplicate what already works…
You can also delegate the management of your paid search to experts. Post your project on Codeur.com and receive free quotes from paid search consultants.
