Even though Google is in the lead in the UK with a market share of 83%, you shouldn’t un­der­es­tim­ate its com­pet­it­or, Bing (currently in second place with 11% as of July 2017). If you want to reach as wide a target group as possible, it is advisable to advertise with the Microsoft search engine. Of course, Google AdWords comes first for search engine ad­vert­ising (SEA), but ad­vert­ising on Bing can also reel in potential customers for your company.

What are Bing ads?

Microsoft Bing ads is the ad­vert­ising program from the search engine provider. A major advantage: the search engine is part of the Yahoo! Bing network. Therefore, ad­vert­ise­ments from this Microsoft offer will also appear in Yahoo! search engine’s search hits.

Initially marketed under the name adCentre, Bing ads has been compared to its com­pet­it­or, Google, in terms of its func­tion­al­ity rather than its reach. The system is based on pay-per-click (PPC) just like Google’s system. This means that ad­vert­isers only pay when users actually click on the ad­vert­ise­ment, and not when the website displays an ad­vert­ise­ment.

Bing ads can be divided into different groups: campaigns, ad groups, ads, and keywords. These have a hier­arch­ic­al re­la­tion­ship with one another. The campaign is a col­lec­tion of ad groups. These are practical con­tain­ers for your ads and keywords.

  • Campaign: When you start a campaign with Bing ads, you should first consider what the focus of the campaign should be. Is there a new product coming out? Do you want to push a special discount? Define your goal for the campaign and orientate your ads ac­cord­ingly.
  • Ad group: Ad groups are intended to manage ads. In the groups, keywords are defined and suitable adverts are created. This is how different variants of ads with the same keywords are created.
  • Ad­vert­ise­ment: Your ad­vert­ise­ment uses the keywords that you created in the ad group. The ads within an ad group therefore all have the same focus and can be dif­fer­en­ti­ated by the details.
  • Keywords: With your ad groups or ads, you can offer ad­vert­ising space for certain keywords in auctions. You determine which keywords are important for marketing within your campaign.
Image: Representation of the organisational structure of Bing ads
Bing ads enables you to organise ads into groups and campaigns

Re­gis­ter­ing with Bing ads

Image: Registration window for a Bing ads account
If you don’t have your own e-mail address, you can also create a new one when you register with Bing ads

If you want to register with Bing ads, the re­gis­tra­tion form asks you for your: name, e-mail address, website URL, and business phone number. There’s also a captcha to make sure the form isn’t being filled out by a spambot.

The next step is to start creating an ad­vert­ising campaign. It’s also possible to import existing campaigns from Google AdWords or to skip this step and complete the re­gis­tra­tion. In the final step, 'Activate your campaign', Bing asks for payment in­form­a­tion, but this step can also be skipped for the time being. Your re­gis­tra­tion is now complete.

Image: Overview page of Bing ads
Once you’ve created your first campaign, you can monitor it on the Bing ads homepage

Bing’s features: Ad­vert­ising at a glance

Up until June 30th 2017, Bing ads still dis­tin­guished between so-called search campaigns and content campaigns. The latter group were adverts that didn’t show up in Bing’s search results, but were instead used as classic ad­vert­ise­ments in other software offers from Microsoft. In the meantime, however, the provider dis­con­tin­ued this ad­vert­ising format. Search campaigns consist of ad­vert­ise­ments that appear in Bing’s search queries. The search engine presents the ads either above the organic search results or in a sidebar. Bing shows the positions 1 through 9; the first four are located directly un­der­neath the search bar (mainline) and the rest are places in the sidebar.

Operators of online shops can also create shopping campaigns. The system displays your products directly in the search results – including a photo and the price. To do this, you must first set up Bing Webmaster tools and an account in the Merchant Centre. Then generate ad­di­tion­al attention with eye-catching product ads.

Search engine marketing: Bing ads tutorial

When you create a new campaign using Bing ads, the web service asks you what your goals are e.g. would you prefer to generate more traffic or more con­ver­sions? Depending on your choice, suitable features will be suggested to you. However, no matter which option you choose, you will still be able to use all of Bing ads’ features. Being asked about your goals should only serve as a guide.

Image: Menu for selecting goals when creating a campaign with Bing ads
When you start creating campaigns with Bing, the service will ask you what the goals of your marketing efforts are

Campaign

Firstly, enter a name for you campaign: choose a unique one so you will im­me­di­ately be able to recognise which campaign it is, even from several campaigns you might have running parallel to each other in the future. Then determine how much your daily budget is for the Bing ads. You also have the choice of whether Bing should dis­trib­ute this budget – and therefore your ad­vert­ise­ments – evenly over the day or spend it as quickly as possible. The standard option (dis­trib­uted over the day) is usually the ideal choice for most purposes. There’s also the option of a common budget where several campaigns can share a budget. This is only possible if you have already created ad­di­tion­al campaigns.

In the next step, you are prompted to select your language and location. First, choose the language that you want the ad­vert­ise­ments to be displayed in. This will already limit your target group: only English speaking users will see adverts in English. The same applies to the location. However, here you specify whether the ads target users who live in a selected location, or those who are spe­cific­ally searching for it in the search engine. This dif­fer­en­ti­ation helps to reduce scat­ter­ing loss.

Image: Menu with settings for an advertising campaign with Bing
When you configure the initial settings of your campaign, you lay the found­a­tion for your marketing campaign

Ad groups & keywords

In the next step, you define ad groups and keywords: a campaign is made up of several ad groups. With the different groups, you can make sure that your ads are displayed when different search terms are entered: for this to work, however, you must assign different keywords to the different groups. It’s re­com­men­ded to specify at least 20 keywords per ad group. These keywords are extremely important for your campaign’s success, since a user will only come across your campaign if they enter one of these keywords. This is why Bing ads helps you to find the right words: simply enter the URL of your website and the product you want to promote. The system analyses both the content of your site and the type of product or service ad­vert­ised, and then proposes numerous keywords. To give you as much control as possible over when your ad should be displayed, Bing provides you with the helpful tool, Broad Match Modifier. This enables you to decide exactly how the user’s input cor­res­ponds with the keywords you have defined for the ad­vert­ise­ment to be displayed:

  • Keyword: If you enter a keyword without a modifier, a rough match will display the ad­vert­ise­ment. This means that Bing also values the keywords even when they are in­teg­rated into other words.
  • +Keyword: The plus sign indicates that variants (i.e. the plural form) of the word can also be used as triggers.
  • “Keyword”: Write the keyword in quotation marks for the advert to be displayed only when the user types in an exact ex­pres­sion. Other words can be entered before and after the phrase.
  • [Keyword]: By using square brackets, you specify that you want the keyword phrase to be matched exactly for the ad­vert­ise­ment to be triggered. The user must enter the keyword into the search bar in the exact same way so that Bing can display the ad.
Tip

Keyword research is one of the fun­da­ment­al pillars of online marketing and more com­plic­ated than you might think. When selecting the keywords, it is always important to know what the goals of your marketing campaign are. You can find out more about keyword research in our detailed article.

Ad­vert­ise­ments

Once you have selected all the keywords you want and have created enough ad groups, you can proceed to the next step: creating your ads. An ad­vert­ise­ment with Bing consists of a title, ad text, and a URL that you want to forward to. The title consists of two separate parts, each with 30 char­ac­ters. Both title elements are separated with a hyphen. It makes sense to include one of your most important keywords in the title, which consists of 80 char­ac­ters. Your text should be relevant for readers and inform them what your offer is about.

Tip

If you place an ad on Bing, you want users to not only notice it, but also to click on it. Write your texts in such a way that the reader wants to click to find out more. To do this, the text must comply with the user’s search intention and get their attention.

A special feature is the dynamic text that you insert into your titles and ad texts: this is a place­hold­er that Bing fills out depending on the user’s search query. There are two different types of place­hold­ers available:

  • {KeyWord}: if you use this place­hold­er, the system inserts the keyword that the user is looking for into the text. This signals how relevant your ad­vert­ise­ment is to the user.
  • {param1}/{param2}/{param3}: Bing allows you to enter up to three different user-defined texts. You assign these to keywords. For example, you can draw attention to different discounts for different products – depending on what the user is looking for.

You enter two different links to your website: the final URL and the so-called path. The first one is the URL that leads directly to the correct web page e.g. the product page. However, it is linked via the heading. The user, on the other hand, sees the path as part of the ad­vert­ise­ment with the exact wording: it should therefore be more user-friendly than the real URL. To make it clearer to the user where they are, you should insert up to two sub­dir­ect­or­ies into the path. This way, you can make it clear to future visitors of your website which sub­cat­egory the URL leads them to.

Image: Input mask to create an ad on Bing ads
Write texts that are relevant to your target group

While you are designing your ad, the pre­lim­in­ary result can be checked in three different preview views: what does the ad look like directly below the search bar, in the sidebar, and in the mobile view? Once you have filled in all the fields and are satisfied with the results, you should save it and create the next ad. You can create 100 entries for each ad group.

Upgrading ad­vert­ise­ments

With Bing, you have the option of upgrading your ads using ex­ten­sions. The ex­ten­sions should provide ad­di­tion­al in­form­a­tion for users and encourage them to click on them.

  • Location ex­ten­sions: Your ad will be extended to your shop or office location. If you have multiple locations, Bing will show users the closest location. However, if there is no business or office close to them, Bing simply won’t show an address. In addition, your telephone number will also appear in the ad­vert­ise­ment: when users access the ad on their mobile device, they can call you just by clicking on the number provided in the ad.
  • Rating ex­ten­sions: Your ad comes across par­tic­u­larly well if the user can see positive ratings. This extension allows you to display reviews from review sites such as Yelp or Tri­pAd­visor. You choose the feedback you want to display.
  • Site linking ex­ten­sions: With these ex­ten­sions, you have the pos­sib­il­ity of adding more links to your ad. By adding up to ten links under the ad text, you can recommend other products and services to the user. Add ad­di­tion­al de­scrip­tions to each link so your ad will be bigger and more no­tice­able.
  • Caller ex­ten­sions: Bing ads inserts a telephone number into your ad via the location extension. However, if you would like to enter a number that is in­de­pend­ent of your location, simply use the call extension. With this ad extension, you can also create a call-only ad for smart­phones: Users who only see your ad­vert­ising on the go will not be re­dir­ec­ted to a website by clicking on the link, but will be able to call you directly.
  • App ex­ten­sions: If you provide an app in addition to your website, you have the pos­sib­il­ity of using the ad to refer users to this app. Bing auto­mat­ic­ally detects which device and operating system users are accessing the display with, and can forward them to the right App Store or Play Store.
  • Legend ex­ten­sions: With this extension, you can insert ad­di­tion­al text into your ad. This text is not clickable, but you can make your ad­vert­ise­ment more in­ter­est­ing for users by adding this ad­di­tion­al text.
  • Snippet ex­ten­sions: Struc­tured Snippets work in a similar way. For a par­tic­u­lar category (e.g. 'Goods'), you can enter at least three examples from your as­sort­ment or spectrum.
  • Image ex­ten­sions: Add a suitable image to your advert. This will make you more no­tice­able in the search results and give users a better im­pres­sion of the ad­vert­ised product.

You decide whether you want to set up ex­ten­sions for entire campaigns or ad groups. However, it is not for certain that these will actually be shown. Just like the ads them­selves, Bing only releases the ad ex­ten­sions after they have been checked. To ensure that the system displays the extension, you should follow the ap­pro­pri­ate guidelines. But even if you follow the guidelines correctly, it is still possible that Bing ads won’t display the ex­ten­sions: in some cases, ex­ten­sions only make sense under special cir­cum­stances (e.g. when users are using smart­phones) or they are not visible because other ex­ten­sions cancel it out. In general, ex­ten­sions are free of charge and you only pay for them when visitors click on them – just like ads without ex­ten­sions.

Image: Input mask for creating a location extension
The ad ex­ten­sions also include location ex­ten­sions that guide users to your business or office

Budget

In the last step before you launch your campaign, you need to determine the budget. Although you already entered your budget in the first step, you now have another op­por­tun­ity to adjust it. Next comes the bidding strategy: with Bing ads – just like with Google AdWords – you don’t just buy ads, you win them through auctions. Therefore, the cost of an ad depends heavily on the choice of keywords and their com­pet­i­tion. Because several companies want to present their ad­vert­ise­ments for each keyword. When a user enters a search term using Bing, several ads compete for the sponsored space in the search results. Within mil­li­seconds, the bids are compared and the winner is de­term­ined.

Fact

It isn’t only the size of your bid that will determine whether your ad will win. The quality score also plays a role. This value indicates how high Bing estimates the quality of the ad­vert­ise­ment.

As a Bing ads user, you can decide whether you want to set a certain bid yourself or let Bing customise it. If you choose the second option, Bing can increase your bid by up to 30% to increase the pos­sib­il­ity of the bid being closed. However, you must first set up a trade tracking system so that Bing knows what goals you are pursuing and whether you will achieve them (you need to include a Universal Event Tracking (UET) tag on your website to enable Bing to track the con­ver­sions). You always set bids for an ad group and bid on clicks: you only pay for the ad when a user clicks on it, which is why it’s known as pay-per-click (PPC).

As you adjust the amount of your bid, Bing presents you with some estimated values related to your advert: How many clicks will you get with your bid? How many people are likely to see your ad? What are the monthly costs for this ad group looking at your previous settings? And finally: which position in the search results is your ad likely to be placed? Adjust the value until you are satisfied with the result (remember that these are only estimated results. Bing cannot predict who your com­pet­i­tion will be in the auction).

The advanced target group settings enable you to adjust your budgeting even more precisely:

  • Location: Increase or decrease your bid for the selected countries, depending on how important the local market is for you.
  • Ad schedule: This setting allows you to plan when your ad should run. Here, you can set a daily time frame: Do people only search for your products and services during their working hours or after work? The schedule helps you to plan this.
  • Device: If you want to address smart­phone users in par­tic­u­lar, or if your target group is more likely to be found sitting at a desktop computer, you can set the bidding according to the device (ad­vert­ising for apps, for example, will be of par­tic­u­lar interest to smart­phone users, whereas high-quality gaming graphic cards are more suited to PC users).
  • Ad dis­tri­bu­tion: The Bing network does not just include its own search engine. Would you prefer to use just Bing or also AOL and Yahoo, or other search partners (websites that have Bing in­teg­rated as their search engine)?

Click on 'Save' and your advert is ready to go online.

Tools in Bing ads

In addition to the web interface, Bing ads offers other tools to enable users to work as ef­fect­ively as possible. These either help to organise and manage workflows or provide ad­di­tion­al functions.

Display preview and diagnosis tool

You can use this ad analysis tool to preview Bing results. To do this, enter any keyword into the search, then set the market that you are currently in­ter­ested in and let the search begin. Now check if and where an advert of yours appears when this keyword is searched for. You can also see what the ads look like in the search results.

Keyword Planner

The Keyword Planner works in the same way as the sug­ges­tions that Bing provides when creating a campaign. For example, you enter a product or your website’s address, and the Keyword Planner will suggest suitable keywords. You will then receive analyses of the selected keywords, which are par­tic­u­larly helpful when planning your budget. You can see exactly which results to expect from your bid. Customise the bid and create a new campaign directly.

Image: Analysis results from the Keyword Planner
The Keyword Planner provides useful in­form­a­tion on keywords

Bing ads Editor

With the Bing ads Editor software, you can even plan and design offline campaigns and ads. Instead of using a browser, create your ad­vert­ise­ment using the free editor. To do this, download the in­stall­a­tion file (available for Mac and Windows) and connect to your existing Bing ads account. The software then loads your campaigns from the internet. The structure and func­tion­al­ity of the desktop app is hardly any different from the ap­plic­a­tion in the browser. The editor makes it par­tic­u­larly easy to make multiple changes at once and manage different campaigns and ad groups. Since this is an offline ap­plic­a­tion, you shouldn’t forget to put all your changes online.

Image: View of the Bing ads Editor
The Bing ads Editor is similar to the web service, which means the trans­ition to the new software is easy

Bing ads In­tel­li­gence

Bing ads In­tel­li­gence is an extension for Microsoft Excel, which helps you to manage keywords. The in­stall­a­tion file is available free of charge. After executing it, you will receive a new tab in your Excel interface. This tool also connects the program to your account. If you enter keywords in the Excel sheet, you will receive sug­ges­tions for related terms. All keywords can be analysed from different points of view – directly within data pro­cessing. Spread­sheets allow you to manage large numbers of terms. Finally, select suitable keywords and export the data to use it for your campaigns.

wkglohfL1Xs.jpg To display this video, third-party cookies are required. You can access and change your cookie settings here.

Bing vs. Google Ad­vert­ising

Bing has been trying for quite a while to push Google off the top search engine spot. However, Google doesn’t need to worry about its com­pet­i­tion just yet. But Bing has some ad­vant­ages for marketers and en­tre­pren­eurs:

Reach

The biggest advantage of Google is clearly its immense reach: its market share is 83% in the UK, but is a lot higher in other countries such as Germany with a 90% share. Microsoft’s offering is in second place. However, it is par­tic­u­larly in­ter­est­ing for ad­vert­isers to know that Bing ads don’t only offer ads in one search engine: thanks to the Yahoo! Bing Network, ads are also published on the third largest search engine. Bing has gained some momentum in recent years, not least because the search engine is one of the default settings of every Microsoft product.

Effort

Bing makes in par­tic­u­larly easy for users to implement campaigns from Google AdWords. Since you probably aren’t avoiding putting your ads on Google, combining both search engines will only require a little more effort (you just have to adjust a few settings). Anyone who has worked with Google AdWords up to now will quickly find their way around Bing: the operation and struc­tures are similar for both providers.

Cost

With both ad­vert­ising options, you determine your own budgets and bids. Therefore, it’s not possible to directly compare costs. As far as the auction system is concerned, Bing’s low market share could be seen as an advantage: while many companies bid on a keyword with Google, the com­pet­i­tion with Bing is much smaller. Therefore, the suc­cess­ful bids on keywords at Bing should be much lower than with Google.

Functions

The func­tion­al­ity of the two providers is almost identical. However, the way ad­vert­ise­ments are displayed has now changed: for a while now, Google has stopped placing classic ads in the sidebar. This is still possible with Bing and so the smaller com­pet­i­tion offers more space for your marketing.

Go to Main Menu