In the era of online marketing, which is different from traditional marketing, you need to craft a well-planned marketing strategy keeping in mind the PPC trends and SEO trends to achieve your target goals. The PPC plan & strategy keeps evolving with changes in marketing trends like running holiday ads, digital marketing at the times of coronavirus, etc. While Google is a revered king in the stamping ground of search engines, Microsoft Bing closely follows it and plays a second fiddle. Using Microsoft Ads, you can reach nearly 6.7% of the global market share. Microsoft performs over four billion searches per month. So, to make the target audience reach your landing page, you need to focus on a Microsoft ad optimization strategy that generates leads and improves PPC campaign conversion rate.
Tips to optimize Microsoft Ads
When creating ads on any platform, you need to focus on the PPC metrics so that the target audience moves down the marketing funnel after reaching your landing page. There are constant updates by advertising platforms like Google removing expanded text ads, Facebook changing its name to Meta, etc. So, you need to work on an ad optimization strategy to increase the user's trust in your brand. With the launch of mobile-first indexing, you need to focus on optimizing the Microsoft Ads for mobile devices. Also, you have the most impatient users as the visitor leaves a page that takes more than 3 seconds to load, so you need to improve the page load speed.
Any PPC campaign requires focusing on ad optimization strategy to keep the interest of the user engaged with your ad. You need to ensure that the users choose your brand the next time they enter your business's search terms or keywords. You also need to focus on keeping the ad relevant so that the target audience promotes your brand name to friends and family, thus helping in peer-to-peer marketing. In your Bing advertising strategy also, you need to optimize Microsoft Ads to increase traffic to your landing page, improve your click-through rate, etc. You should focus on some of the points discussed below to increase your advertising ROI in your Bing account. As in search engine optimization you focus on optimizing the performance of SEO campaigns, so that the website ranking on the SERPs increases. To do so, you may outsource SEO services and avail of white label SEO services for the best results. The SEO professionals have expertise with video SEO, SEO analytics, link building, etc. and help in achieving the desired marketing goals.
1. Focus on keyword research - Given that each keyword has a specific search volume, you need to choose the high-traffic relevant keywords so that the visitors can get in touch with your business. You need to conduct timely keyword research. This helps you write compelling ad copies, great product page descriptions, optimize post-click landing pages, etc. With this, you have the option to optimize your ads for holiday seasons, run PPC campaigns during new year, etc.
You need to identify the primary keyword within a group of similar terms. In your PPC advertising strategy, you need to focus on choosing the relevant keywords that drive quality traffic to your landing page. To make the user click on your PPC ad, you need to include the target keyword in your ad copy, ad description, ad headlines, etc., so that the user gets to know about your product or services at the beginning itself. When running Microsoft Bing Ads, you need to pay money to the Bing search engine every time a click is made on your ad. So, to avoid the irrelevant clicks on your ads, you can include negative keywords so that your ad does not pop up for the irrelevant search queries. Some points to consider in your keyword research process is mentioned below:
• A well-optimized keyword strategy drives quality traffic to your landing page. Since Bing has targeted users who have high chances of taking the intended action, it improves the conversion rate.
• You can consider using tools like SEMrush and many others that make the work easier by analyzing popular keywords in your industry.
• You can even prepare a PPC report and then include the important, relevant keywords to write engaging ads to connect with users with high chances of taking the intended action.
2. Create relevant ad copies - Having performed the keyword research for your ad groups, you now need to write ad copies that make the user click on your ad. Ad copies are a form of content that aims to make the potential lead click on the ad and convert them into a customer. The ad copies provide the user with a descriptive idea of your product or services. It plays a crucial role in making the user click on your ad. You should also focus on keeping the ad relevant, meaning that the content on the landing page is the same as the one displayed on the ad, thus increasing users' trust. Some points to focus on writing better ad copies are:
• Understanding your target audience - The ad copies you are writing should be written keeping the target audience in mind. You need to work on demographic targeting that helps your ads cater to the right users. This will help you make your advertising efforts connect with your audience with niche marketing. It also allows you to have your ad copies written with the users' intent and enables you to design your ads keeping the buyer persona in mind.
• Address the users directly - In your Microsoft Ad optimization strategy, you should focus on keeping the conversational tone in sync with the user. As there is less competition with Microsoft Bing Ads, so you need to write ad copies that directly address the user. The ad copies should be written in a user-friendly way like self-explanatory lines, short and relevant content, etc., so that the impressions convert into clicks and finally to customers on the landing page.
• Ad space - Another point to focus on when writing ad copies is not exceeding the word limit. In the process of your Microsoft Ad optimization strategy, you need to focus on keeping your content within the ad space provided in the Bing account.
• Unique selling proposition (USP) - The next point to focus on in your Microsoft Ad optimization strategy is to focus on Unique selling proposition and highlight what makes your product or services unique from your competition.
• Use of CTAs - You can use strong and eye-catching call-to-action to make the target audience click on your ad. You can use time constraints to encourage users to create urgency among the users to convert. You can consider using a limited-time offer, an offer valid only till sunday, etc., to give them more reasons to click rather than navigate away.
You should ensure to use relevant keywords in your headline, descriptive sections on the landing page, etc. The ad descriptions and the offers should all be coherent and laser-guided in one direction so that the visitor does not feel misguided in taking the intended action.
3. Optimize bidding strategies - You need to choose the appropriate Microsoft Ad bidding type and implement a solid strategy for adjusting bids to cut your PPC ads cost. You may quickly see your ad budget drain if you do not have a smart bidding strategy. However, you can take your Microsoft Ads performance to an entirely different level with the right approach and ad optimization strategy. Although you can even consider automatic bidding in the Bing account, it is not much advised, as at times, spending a bit more is beneficial for your business.
This lowering and raising of the bid can be done manually and you can refine your bidding process to get the best value for your money. Microsoft Ads has an excellent customization feature that allows you to set distinctive bids for individual ad groups, user location, device, and time of day. Suppose you find managing the bid strategy difficult. In that case, you can outsource PPC services to experts and rest assured to achieve the desired results. With a proper bidding strategy, you can see the performance of some of the KPIs improving, which are mentioned below:
• Maximize clicks
• Maximize conversions
• Enhanced CPC
• Target CPA
• Target ROAS
4. Use of ad extensions - Ad extensions are additional pieces of information about your product or services. There are various types of ad extensions that provide information about your product or services and redirect them to specific landing pages. These ad extensions should be smartly used in your PPC campaigns to redirect the target audience to the specified page. Some of the extensions you can use with your Microsoft Bing Ads are discussed below:
• Call extension - Using this extension, you can provide your company’s phone number so that the users can directly make a call to clear ask questions, clear doubts, etc.
• Call out extension - These extensions provide an extra snippet of information about your product or services. They are not clickable but appear along with your ad description and increase the target audience's chance to make a click on your ad.
• Price extension - These are ad extensions that display the prices to the users for the product or services you are offering.
• Promotion extension - These ad extensions provide the users with offers, deals, discounts, etc. These are helpful to use at the time of holidays, during the festive season, etc. You can even consider adding the offer time and validity to make the niche audience click on your ad.
• App extension - These are extensions used to install your business app on the devices used by the user. These extensions ask users to click on it and redirect them to the relevant landing pages or app stores to download the app like mobile devices, laptops, etc.
5. Perform remarketing - It is essential to perform to make the most of your Microsoft Ads. In the Bing account, you can work on remarketing strategy. This is done to target a specific audience or get in touch with the audience who did not take the intended action on the landing page. You have the option of in-market audiences and custom audiences to get in touch with the relevant audience. You can include email marketing, content marketing, etc., to make the target audience click on your ad. The options provided in the Bing account to perform remarketing are illustrated below:
• In-market audiences - In-market audiences are users that look for a specific product. The audiences may have clicked on your PPC ad and reached your landing page. They may have even navigated through different sections on the landing page but did not take the desired action. So, in your Microsoft Ads optimization strategy, you need to work on PPC audit and understand the user intent to make them move down the marketing funnel.
• Custom audience - These are similar to the In-market audience, but you can use some points to target them. You can work on purchase history, time since they last purchased the product or services, which landing pages they mostly visit, which products or services they prefer most, etc.
Why use Microsoft Ads?
Microsoft Ads are a type of PPC ad that appears on the Bing advertising platform. One of the advantages of using Bing advertising is that your PPC ads appear across three popular search engines: Bing, Yahoo and AOL. Bing advertising has gone from AdCenter to Bing Ads to finally becoming Microsoft Ads on 29 April 2019. It was done so that even-small sized businesses could take maximum advantage of running PPC campaigns.
Any form of digital advertising, whether it is search engine optimization, search engine marketing, social media marketing, etc., requires focusing on ad optimization to make the target audience click on the ad. Facebook Ads, YouTube Ads, LinkedIn Ads and many other social media platforms keep updating their features like stories, reels, etc. So, you need to focus on ad optimization so that your PPC ads are in sync with the marketing trends.
When running PPC campaigns, Google Ads is the preferred platform chosen by advertisers as it has nearly 3.5 billion searches per day. Bing advertising is also not too far as, after Google, users choose this platform to perform searches. Although there is not much difference between Google Ads and Microsoft Ads, some of the points you need to focus on Bing advertising are listed below.
1. Less competition - While many marketers concentrate their advertising efforts on Google, any savvy expert would wish to leverage every online platform to get in touch with their potential customers and make them move down the marketing funnel with a proper PPC strategy. Whether it is search engine optimization technique or running PPC Ads, Bing advertising provides you with less competition, thus improving cost per click (CPC).
Running Microsoft Ads should not be seen as an afterthought but should be in your PPC advertising strategy so that none of the target audience is left untouched. Microsoft Ads work in the same auction style as Google Ads, but due to less competition, it means you have more opportunity to improve ad rank and position, improve click-through rate, etc. The less competition, the higher the chances of greater efficiency and productivity, providing space for more experimentation with ads, etc. By availing of white label PPC audit services you can have a complete complete detail of competition analysis and stay ahead of competitors.
2. Search volume - Bing advertising platform has less search volume compared to Google. It is pretty evident also, as Google is the largest search engine. This is also because searching on Google gets you to have users from partner sites like YouTube, etc. It also provides you to run display ads across Google Display Network. So, it is obvious that it has a huge search volume with a huge number of search linkages. So, in your PPC plan & strategy, you need to focus on optimizing Google Ads, optimizing YouTube Ads, and ads on other partner sites, etc.
Bing search has 82.6 million searches per day, though it is less than Google searches but is only next to it. Another point of using Microsoft Bing Ads is that as the search volume is less, the number of clicks, number of impression share, traffic to the landing page, etc., will be less. But, the point to focus here is that you will have a quality-traffic, improved conversion rate, etc., as Bing advertising provides you with the users who have high chances of taking the intended action and do not just perform window shopping.
With its artificial intelligence and algorithm, Google uses the search queries made by the user(if any) and location in the past when generating results. Google is primarily concerned with E.A.T. (expertise, authority and trust.) and focuses on matching user intent to show the desired results. On the other hand, as Bing has lower competition than Google, it focuses on optimizing ad copies, ad descriptions, URL paths, etc. As the search volume on Bing is low, it clearly means that you easily perform a/b test, your cost per acquisition is less, etc.
3. Cost per click - Cost is another undeniable factor in Bing Ads. Another prime reason why you should focus on using Bing Ads is that it provides you with a lower cost per click as compared to Google Ads. Since Bing Ads has a lower search volume than Google, you have the option to make the most of your advertising budget. However, this does not guarantee the fact that you will get the desired results with your advertising strategy.
Microsoft Bing Ads are a type of PPC ad where you have to pay money to the search engine every time a click is made on the ads. A lower cost per click means that you have to pay a low amount to Bing search engine for clicks made on your ad.
Let’s say, for instance, that you have an identical PPC campaign running on both Google and Bing; then, you may see the cost per click is less on Bing than compared to Google. This happens as Bing has a lower search volume and the users have high chances of taking the intended action. So, it becomes even more essential for small businesses to use Bing Ads to achieve their advertising goals. However, you always need to focus on the performance of Bing Ads. Even though your ads have lower CPC but are not yielding desired ad ROI, you are not saving money; instead, the ad budget is getting wasted.
4. Demographics - Another reason you should consider using Bing Ads in your PPC campaign is demographic targeting. Your target audience demographics are of prime concern in online advertising. There are various types of Bing Ads that you can use for your business, like responsive ads, dynamic search ads, multimedia ads, expanded text ads, etc. So, your target audience needs to clearly understand what the ad campaign provides them. Like, search ads display the desired search results for the keywords or search term entered by the user, app install ads direct the users to install the ads, etc.
To maximize the PPC ads campaign performance, you need to have demographic targeting in your ad strategy. Each search engine has its own flaws and combining Bing Ads in your PPC campaign strategy will help you increase online sales. This ad targeting in Bing Ads can be done based on:
• Geographic location.
• Day of the week.
• Time of the day.
• Gender and age.
• Type of device being used.
5. Location targeting - Microsoft Ads provides you with the option of choosing specific locations. Location targeting within Bing Ads will give your ad campaigns or ad groups more precise targeting for your ads. When creating a Microsoft Ad, you need to specify a location that you wish your ads to be targeted in your Bing account. This location targeting option in the Bing account helps you have clear insights into the user’s activity. You can then prepare a PPC report and choose the ad type and ad description you should consider in your PPC campaign.
Microsoft Ads are an effective form of PPC advertising. They provide your ad campaigns with new marketing avenues and lower-cost conversions. To have the best return on your ad spend, you need to focus on conducting keyword research, creating great content, eye-catching call-to-action, etc., to make the target audience reach the landing page and take the intended action.
Round off
When it comes to the world of paid advertising, Google mostly takes the digital world on its own. To unleash the full potential of pay-per-click advertising, you must consider different search networks to maximize your users. Search engine Bing is also not too far from getting in touch with the relevant users and luring more advertisers to start using Microsoft Bing Ads to achieve their marketing goals. To have the maximum advantage of PPC ads, you should also consider Microsoft Ads in your advertising portfolio.
In your Bing account, you should work on ad scheduling, location targeting, etc., to increase the number of clicks on your Microsoft Bing Ads. Bing advertising is almost similar to Google ads with few differences. One of them is that you can only run search ads and not video ads in the Bing account. Suppose your business deals with e-commerce PPC ads. In that case, it is crucial to use Microsoft Ads as the user may search your products on the Bing advertising platform. If you find the Microsoft Ads optimization process cumbersome, in that case, you can get in touch with a digital marketing company with expertise insearch ads, mobile ads, campaign analysis, e-commerce PPC, competition analysis, go to market strategy, etc. and see a surge in sales. Availing of white label label PPC services helps in increasing the ad visibility and enhances the performance of the paid ad campaigns. The better the ad visibility the chances of the users clicking on the ad increases. The impression share of the ad increases and more number of users get to see the ad.
References:
• Learn how to get better returns from Microsoft Ads
• 8 Must-know Microsoft Ads tips to get more clicks and conversions