I am going to say something now that will probably astound, shock, maybe even offend around 70% of you and what I am going to say might not even be believed, but here goes ….
There are other search engines outside of Google!
I know, sit down, jaw up, drink whiskey and all that, but on a more serious note now is the time to start realising that if you are only using Adwords for your Pay Per Click marketing, you are potentially missing out on 20 – 30% of users that Bing and Yahoo share, because although you are quite right to chase the masses, making sure you get in front of the smaller share is equally important and sometimes just as rewarding.
It is important to remember that Bing and Yahoo are now effectively one, no matter how many times a Yahoo employee will tell you differently, but one thing is for certain and that is your Pay Per Click (or BingAds as they are known), will appear on both Bing and Yahoo and their own network, which means that you are potentially appealing to a whole new audience that you could well be missing out on right now.
According to Bing, this audience is quite significant, with 530 million searches of which 22 million are from the UK, so if you assume a percentage of those people will probably not use Google as well, you are missing out on a lot of people, which is a lot of traffic, which could be a lot of sales. All because you didn’t think it was worth it? Well, how wrong you are, and because setting up a campaign is pretty much the same as Google Adwords, you really have no excuse – you can even IMPORT your campaign from Google, now that is clever Bing, very clever.
Whenever I get called to discuss Pay Per Click or asked to look at a business’s current campaigns, Bing is nearly always missed and I really just do not understand the reason why. A bit like the Great Uncle you never visit as you think he lives too far away and frankly, is of not much benefit to you getting to know, BingAds seems to be overlooked as potentially being something worth pursuing. Not only is it a great platform to use, but the fact you can pretty much clone your Adwords campaign and with a few minor changes it can go live, the extra audience potential it brings makes it a no brainer for me when it comes to using it is a paid advertising platform.
When you add to the fact that across most areas, the Bing cost per click is often a lot lower than your Adwords cost per click, you don’t even have to worry about finding the same budget to run your new BingAds campaign, as you can quite easily afford to run similar aspects for a lot less of the costs, which makes it even more appealing. I have personally seen keywords that are half the cost of Adwords for exactly the same click, but of course when supply and demand plays a key role then the price will often be higher the more that are bidding.
Many advertisers worry about spending too much in too many areas, but having Adwords and BingAds running together as part of your paid marketing is a must for me, as although you want the juicy Google searchers, you also want the Bing and Yahoo searchers as well, because if you fail to take these people into account then you have just wiped out 20 – 30% of the total searches online, which is a pretty large amount of potential traffic to dismiss.
So, to sum up, the main reasons to not forget BingAds are –
- Reach a whole new audience
- Easy to set up – can import your Adwords campaigns
- Often cheaper per click than Adwords
- Different advert functionality
The positives far outweigh the negatives when it comes to using BingAds and this is why I would never discount one for the other, as I believe you need both running, else you will never know what you are potentially missing. Both Adwords and BingAds offer conversion tracking code as well, so you can quickly compare campaigns to see what is working for you. If you find Bing is working better, put some of your Adwords budget there, as it makes complete and logical sense to spend money on what works.
I do find the BingAds system sometimes a bit slow, a bit clunky and in need of improvement in some areas, but they, like Google, implement new changes all the time, so although I do not think it will ever match the Adwords system in terms of ease of use, functionality and quality, I do believe that over time and with investment, Bing can quite happily offer a platform that more and more advertisers will be willing to work with. Up until a year ago I had never used it, but with the campaigns I now take care of I really wouldn’t be without it, as when it comes to traffic, you can never have too much, especially if it is targeted and relevant which is what every business is after.
