As the Internet matures it is becoming harder for your online advertising to be seen above your competitors. Google Adwords is certainly the king of Pay Per Click (PPC) online advertising but with reduced ‘cut through’ due to the increased competition perhaps it’s time to look beyond the Google world to eke out a bit more value from your advertising spend.
There’s no doubt that Google is the behemoth that yields many more impressions than Bing, the distant second in the PPC race.
In fact in November 2013 ComScore stated Google had 66.7 percent of search queries conducted. Google sites declined ever so slightly from the previous period measure (October 2013) however, Microsoft sites which include Bing, held their own with no change at 18.1 per cent.
Of course Bing is not in the same league as Google in terms of volume, however, those who do use Bing, click through at a much better rate than those who use Google.
Quality not quantity
It’s a case of quality over quantity: Bing’s conversion rates can be double that of Google’s. Given the expense of Google perhaps it’s time you reconsidered Bing as part of your promotional arsenal? It can be used a complementary search that augments your Google Ad campaigns to help get your company’s name up ahead of the ant heap.
It would be a pretty boring old world if we didn’t have challengers to keep market leaders on their toes.
In a flashback to the 80s, Bing is using the Pepsi Challenge paradigm to get consumers to challenge their prejudices via its BingItOn initiative. After all we “Google” everything not “Bing” when we search for stuff, right?
Well, the results are not as clear cut as you may think. But you’d have to be a statistics expert to unravel whether the parameters of the various challenges set up by Microsoft for its BingItOn challenge are bona fide. Was the sample size big enough, where the conditions completely comparable, were they truly comparing apples with apples?
Hmmm. Hard to know exactly. What we do know is that Bing is not to be discounted. It could be used for example as a lower cost way to test ads or websites.
You could play around and blend your Adwords and Bing spend. Use Adwords to generate a large volume of clicks and Bing to both reduce costs and yield results with better ROI. You may be surprised!
Decision engine
Bing is apparently designed to reduce the junk to streamline the results. In fact Microsoft calls Bing a “decision engine” as opposed to a search engine. Bing also tries to improve the navigation of search results via the Explore Pane. This also has a history of your recent searches and recommends searches that may be of interest.
A handy feature is Deep Links which is a sort of preview capability that allows you to determine what the search result contains without committing to actually clicking on it. Interestingly there is plenty of evidence to suggest that there is a lot of accidental clicking going on. Imagine if you could save on your PPC campaigns if the error rate by users was reduced.
Some commentators say that Bing has smoother integration with Facebook and Twitter as it can access more social data as Google relies on the Google+ network which is less popular.
Of course it’s a matter of personal preference but it’s said that Bing’s search results pages are more visually appealing.
There are other points of difference including Bing’s graphic-driven main page vs Google’s minimalist design approach. Bing clearly has a different approach to image and map searches.
In the end perhaps the main reason for business to give Bing a try is the potential to reduce your marketing ROI by mixing in a lower PPC alternative.
Fatpublisher provides Adwords management services to our clients. If you are interested in finding out about our Adwords management packages, please contact us.
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