March 2025 Update To Previously Published Blog Post:

You can find some information at the bottom of this post about the cost-per-click and click-thru rate we experienced related to running Microsoft Bing Ads for our own company, and we’ve been running Bing Ads now for a number of months for one our clients, and they also achieved an impressive cost-per-click related to their SEM (Search Engine Marketing) ads on Bing. While we continue to run one campaign for the client in-question on Bing, we paused a number of their campaigns recently. Why? Because while the cost-per-click was far cheaper than it was for Google Search Ads, the ads did not “convert” well, i.e., Bing ad clickers who visited the client’s website did not take desired actions such as e-mailing, calling, or submitting an inquiry form nearly as much as Google Ads clickers did. This ultimately meant that the cost-per-conversion was far higher for Bing Ads than it was for Google Ads, even though the cost-per-click was far lower. We can’t say or predict if this would be the case for another client or advertiser.

Why Microsoft Bing Search Ads Might Have A Higher Cost-Per-Conversion Than Google Search Ads

Our theory for why the Microsoft Bing Ads achieved a much higher cost-per-conversion than Google Ads is this. We believe that, because far fewer people use Microsoft Bing’s search-engine tool to complete a relevant search in relevant geographies, Bing takes greater liberties related to the search terms for which it will serve up an advertiser’s ads. While, as with all search engine marketing/paid search ads, you provide Microsoft Bing with keywords — both positive ones (ones you want ads served up for) and negative ones (ones you don’t want ads served up for) — and you can also use “phrase match” keywords to add further limitations to which search terms Bing can serve up your ads, we still found Bing taking far too many liberties. Therefore, ads were being served up to people who weren’t the right fit, and some of those “wrong fits” were clicking on the ads. But, of course, because they weren’t the right fit for our client’s products and services, they weren’t taking any kind of inquiry type action on the site.

Original Post:

Recently, we’ve been hearing more about organizations running paid search ads on Bing. And, more clients are interested in employing them to see how effective they are in creating awareness, generating leads, and causing sales of products or engagements for services. Here’s some of the reasons why Microsoft Bing Search Advertising is suddenly becoming hot:

• if available data is accurate, there’s been a recent uptick as of the time of this blog post (June 2024) in the % of search-engine users who are using Bing vs. other search engines like Google
• searchers using Bing’s search engine skew older, and therefore, may have higher incomes — ultimately, making them more likely to make a purchase
• Bing searchers tend to be more mission-driven and are using Bing’s search-engine to really hone in on information that will answer their question(s) or allow them to complete a desire action — ultimately, leading to a strong ad click-thru rate. And, since they tend to spend a longer amount of time on the websites they visit as a result of conducting a search, they tend to “convert” better
• since to-date, far fewer advertisers advertise on Bing vs. Google, there’s less competition to have ads shown to searchers on relevant search terms who meet other targeting criteria, such as geography
• cost-per-click paid for search ads on Bing vs. Google tends to be significantly lower (we’re talking 50% or more), which means an advertiser’s budget goes much further
• as with Google Search ads, whose ads appear on Partner sites, such as YouTube, Bing ads can appear on Yahoo and LinkedIn

Our Boston SEO Company Now Offers Microsoft Bing Advertising

As part of our overall, and paid SEO services, effective June 2024, our Boston digital marketing agency and SEO Company is offering Microsoft Bing search advertising services to existing and new clients. As a component of the SEM (Search Engine Marketing/paid search) portion of an overall SEO strategy, these ads can either complement current and planned Google Ads, or be used as the primary/only form of paid search advertising.

With over 15 years of experience related to Google Search advertising, we’ve got lots of very relevant experience related to search marketing, and we can help you import existing Google Ads campaigns into Microsoft Bing’s advertising tool.

Reach Out Today To Get Your Microsoft Bing Ad Campaign Going!

As we pointed out above, it’s easy to import an existing Google Ads campaign into Bing, so you don’t have to recreate the wheel if you decide you want to run identical search campaigns on both Google and Bing simultaneously. Reach out today and our team of SEO experts will be glad to get you started on reaping the benefits of advertising on Microsoft Bing!

Bing Ads Deliver Strong Results

July 9 2024 Update: To test the waters and get to know the Bing Ads manager tool better, we ran Bing Ads for our own business. We were very pleased with the following Bing Ads KPIs (key performance indicators):

• Very strong click-thru rate (CTR): during our 8-day pilot, our ads generated a very strong CTR of 24.68%. We checked the search terms report which shows the actual terms that someone entered in Bing for which ads were served up, and we were pleased with the search terms we were seeing.
• Extremely reasonable cost-per-click: just 22 cents! Far lower than what we experienced when we ran Google Ads for our business and extremely favorable for B2B (business-to-business) services advertising.

While to-date, we haven’t generated any leads — inquiries or sales — from the ads (unfortunately, we believe a lot of competitors search on relevant terms to see what their competition is doing, and then, click on our ads), we like to practice what we preach about landing pages, so the ads caused us to revisit our SEO services ads landing page to make sure it was more effective!