Are Bing Ads relevant? Depending on whom you ask, you may get a resounding yes or be met with a scoff and a snicker while being told that Bing is outdated, irrelevant, and a waste of money.
Neither answers are correct.
Neither answers are wrong, either.
It's a variable that comes down to analyzing your industry, goals, and intended target demographic.
When thinking about running a search engine PPC campaign, digital marketers' brains go immediately to Google to solve for their client's needs. After all, Google is the Queen Bee when it comes to search engines.
WordStream estimates that every day there are 3.5 billion searches on Google. So, it's reasonable that most marketing budgets and efforts are spent on such a popular platform.
Ah, but...
However, Microsoft Ads, formerly Bing Ads, may often be an overlooked area to help propel and increase your digital marketing efforts.
How Bing Can Help Your Marketing
When you look at the bigger picture, you will find that 29% of the search marketplace consists of Yahoo and Bing searches. (It is worth noting that Bing ads also display on Yahoo and AOL search engines.)
Who are these folks, and what are their search queries? Depending on your industry, this information could be crucial to know.
If you are selling consumable products to young people between the ages of 18-30, Bing probably isn't going to yield the kind of results that you're hoping.
However, if you're offering Employment or Career services, things may be different.
Employment or Career services estimate a 3.53% CTR on Bing. That CTR is above industry standard and beats Google's estimated 2.42% CTR. These statistics can prove to be quite beneficial for your efforts and budget. Sure, fewer people may be seeing that particular employment or career services ad. Still, with a higher click-through rate we can assume those seeing the ads are more likely to click and convert – meaning you're money is going further down the sales/lead process and not stopping at just an impression.
In this particular instance, you may want to invest in Microsoft Advertising as a supplement to Google.
Finding Your Audience
Think about how you use your social media.
You know that Twitter is where you go for witty 140-character thoughts. Facebook is where you use Marketplace or share family photos, LinkedIn is for professional development, and Instagram is where we share day-to-day images of our lives.
Without written rules, we intrinsically read the environment of these platforms and adjust posting behaviors to fit the criteria in which content is appropriate within the limitations, intended use, and audience.
Digital advertising follows an identical concept.
Sometimes it is hard to know where your audience is and where they're searching for content. These statistics can be helpful to understanding which platform your digital marketing efforts may be best utilized.
Most users who use Bing as their primary search engine make an average household income of over $40,000 a year. What's even more interesting is that one-third of all Bing users make $100,000 or more a year. Failing to advertise on Bing may eliminate some of the most profitable opportunities and leads.
Identifying your customer persona will help determine if investing in Bing is worth the time and money.
Cost
Simply put, Bing typically will cost less.
Digital marketing budgets are subjected to seasonal, economic, and industry fluctuations at any given time. However, overall we typically see Bing budgets between 20% - 35% of the equivalent spend on Google Ads.
This may be very impressive if you’re in a competitive industry, and high-cost-per-click keywords constantly eat up your Google ad budget. If nothing else, these two graphs can illustrate differences in their competitive landscapes.
You're probably using Bing more than You Realize...
...and you might even be calling it Alexa.
Amazon's Alexa is one of the most famous and well-known voice assistants in the marketing place and uses Bing as the search engine for obtaining answers to queries – putting Bing into 100 million households!
Likewise, Bing search engines are widely utilized on Android phones and frequently the default search engine on work computers - making its results sometimes just as important and proving more relevant than naysayers may have you believe.
Key takeaways:
- Google has billions of searches every day.
- Yet, Bing still retains millions of searches.
- Depending on target demographics and budget, Bing may go further.
- Critically assessing your KPIs, goals, and audience are essential for knowing which platform to allocate your budget.
- It isn't for everyone, so I do not recommend reallocating your budget without a critical audit and strategy in place.
