With AI's ongoing development and implementation into advertising, using Google Ads as your main advertising platform is an obvious choice. Campaign types like Performance Max and Demand Generation use machine learning and AI signals to get you the most out of your marketing budget. It makes a hands-off approach to marketing a predominant selling point of the platform. As a result, Microsoft Ads can be forgotten about, and many businesses are missing out on expanding their audiences and increasing their profit. Whilst not as advanced as the Google Ads platform, Microsoft/Bing ads have their list of benefits. In this blog we’re going to explore:
-
Visibility
-
Platform integrations & audience targeting
-
Ease of use
-
Cost-effective advertising
Increasing Visibility
Over 100 million unique users are using Microsoft. Microsoft ads allow businesses access to these users, providing the opportunity to expand beyond the scope of organic traffic. By advertising on Microsoft Ads, you can attract brand new customers that you will miss out on if you’re focusing entirely on your Google presence. Ads run on Microsoft don’t only appear on Microsoft search. If you choose to include audience networks, your ads will also have access to two additional search engines - Yahoo and AOL. When creating campaigns, you can choose to use Microsoft’s Audience Network, which will allow industry-specific targeting and show your image or feed promotions on MSN, Edge, Outlook, Yahoo, and more. Additional ad placements mean that you have a better chance of showing your target audience at the exact moment that they’re ready to commit to a business.
Lower Competiton Levels
Despite its growth as a platform, Microsoft Ads does not have the same level of competition as you see in Google Ads. As fewer businesses utilise the Bing platform, you have a better chance of showing to your audience and reduced risks of spending ridiculous amounts per click. Less competition means a better chance at being at the top of the page for high-volume keywords that you may be missing out on with Google Ads.
Platform Integration & Targeting
The Microsoft ads platform works in hand with several other Microsoft products, such as its keyword planning tool Microsoft Advertising Intelligence, Microsoft Excel and Power BI, the Microsoft equivalent of Google Data Studio. This integration of these platforms means you’ll have additional insight into all of your valuable insights and data, increasing optimisation points that will ultimately help increase your ROI.
The B2B Bing Advantage & LinkedIn
One of the integration options available to advertisers using Microsoft Ads is the “LinkedIn Profile” targeting option. Using this as an audience target means that your ads will show to LinkedIn members who use/have used the Microsoft search engine. This can make your advertising more specific as you can tailor your campaigns to three areas of LinkedIn: Industry, job function, and company.
If you want to focus on very specific audiences, then using LinkedIn targeting can give you a heightened level of control over who sees your ads and has the potential to lead to heightened levels of conversions from the most important audiences to your business.
This feature is exclusive to Microsoft Advertising. You won’t have access to these audiences through the Google Ads platform.
Cost Effective Advertising
With more users on offer, more search networks to appear across and better audience targeting, it’s easy to assume that advertising on Bing will be more expensive. You can show more often, in more places, to millions of people, so why would it be any cheaper than Google?
Because fewer people are making the most of it.
Less competition = cheaper CPCs.
Getting high-volume keywords at a lower CPC means you can fully maximise your budget because you’re getting more clicks for your money. For e-commerce accounts, Bing has, on average, a 45% higher CTR the Google after partnering with Amazon, OfferUp and GumTree. According to Bing, it reaches over a third of all online retail searches. As it is more affordable than Google Ads, it’s an ideal starting point for smaller businesses that have a smaller advertising budget.
Keep in mind, less competition does not always mean more conversions, but it’s better to have the chance to convert than not to convert at all.
Google Ads Integration
Integrating Bing and Google into one marketing strategy is actually really simple. You don’t have to worry about setting up brand-new campaigns or brand new merchant centre codes, as it can all be done through a simple link to your Google account. Campaigns can be imported over and Microsoft’s merchant centre can take a copy of your existing shopping feed.
When importing information from Google Ads to Microsoft Ads, make sure to go through the process carefully - you don’t want to pull through campaigns with really high budgets and then have loads of unnecessary spending while you’re getting used to the platform.
Google Analytics can also be linked to Bing through UTM tags, so you can have all of your reports and results in one place, meaning you don’t have to take any additional steps to understand the results of your marketing efforts. Microsoft Ads is a massively underutilised platform that has the capacity to elevate your business to the next level, increasing traffic, conversions and ROI. If you’re unsure where to start with Microsoft Ads or want to make sure that your Google Ads account is up to date and meet best practices, get in touch with one of our experts, and we’ll take a look for you!
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I only use one advertising platform?
If you want to maximise reach and get as much traffic to your site as possible, then using only one platform can be extremely limited. Google and Microsoft have access to massive numbers of people, and using only one platform means you’re cutting yourself off completely from millions of people. There are also platforms like LinkedIn and Meta advertising which have other types of audiences available to you.
Just because you can use all doesn’t mean you should use all - pick the ones that are best for you and your business goals.
How hard is it to set up a Bing/Microsoft ads account?
Setting up a Microsoft account is a relatively simple procedure. Go to the Microsoft Ads sign-up page and follow the instructions. You simply have to enter your business and banking information, and then, after a quick review period, you’re good to start running ads!
