If you’re looking to promote your brand online, then the first place to look is to PPC campaigns. A PPC campaign is of course ‘Pay Per Click’. That means that you pay each time a user actually clicks on one of your ads. There are several things that make this a fantastic way to generate traffic, which we’ll look at later.Introducing Bing Ads is better than fighting with Google.

Pay Per Click

For now, though, suffice to say that PPC gives you the precise control that any advertising campaign needs and allows you to build a perfect business plan with a precise advertising spend, target demographic and profit margin.
But when it comes to PPC, only one word will often come to mind: Google AdWords. Google AdWords is by far the biggest PPC platform and the one that most new marketers will go to first.

There Are Other Options Out There.

And actually, focussing on only Google AdWords can be a big mistake for your campaign. We’ll look in more detail at why this is in the coming chapters but suffice to say that Google AdWords is actually more expensive, more competitive and less precise in many ways.

This is where Bing comes in. Bing can help you to reach an entirely different section of your market while avoiding direct competition with some of the bigger competitors in the field. As we’ll learn, Bing can offer you the perfect ‘back door’ and even help your rankings on Google. It’s the perfect starting point for the small, lean business and a very wise ‘backup’ source of traffic for ALL online businesses.

Bing and how it differs From Google.

You’ll learn why it’s crucial to start paying attention to Bing and you’ll learn how to take advantage of all its unique features. At the same time, we’ll also be going in depth looking at the best practices for creating successful PPC advertising campaigns on Google OR Bing, and we’ll see how you can use this as part  of a comprehensive business plan.

Wake Up To Bing

Whether you’re interested in using Bing ads, or you’re just thinking about doing more search optimization for Bing, it’s time that you stopped forgetting this search engine and focussing entirely on Google. Let’s be honest – most of us don’t really practice SEO (Search Engine Optimization), we practice GO (Google Optimization). Google is the first and last word in internet marketing as far as a huge proportion of internet marketers and SEO agencies are concerned.

But it’s time to change that way of thinking. But why? Why break the habit of a lifetime?

Well for starters, Bing has 20% market share.

That woke you up, right?
Many of us think of the search engine industry as being a one-horse race but that’s really not the case. 20% is actually a pretty decent chunk of the market.
And when you consider that Yahoo! Also, makes up around 10% still – and that Bing is powered by Yahoo that number goes up to 30%. This is a serious amount of web traffic!

Now ask yourself: in what other scenario would you be happy to let 30% of a market walk? If I told you that you could get 30% more visitors to your highstreet store by changing your shop name, you would change it in a heartbeat!

30% of potential visitors means 30% of potential customers and 30% of potential profit! Instead of earning $50k a year from your website, you could be earning $65K a year just by paying attention to Bing. That’s a massive different (and a free holiday). And there are plenty more reasons to wake up to the reality of Bing as well.

For starters, Bing is integrated with Windows 10.

Windows 10 is the latest iteration of Windows from Microsoft and it comes with Bing deeply ingrained into the system. What’s more, is that Microsoft says this is the ‘last version of Windows ever’. That is to say that future upgrades to Windows are going to be iterative rather than complete overhauls. So we can safely say that Bing is there to stay.

Not only is Bing the default search engine for the default ‘Edge Browser’ (which comes with some neat tricks up its sleeves) but it’s also the search engine used by Cortana. Cortana is a digital assistant like Siri that now lives on your desktop. If you want to find out the weather for instance, you can simply ask Cortana while you’re typing and she’ll pull results from Bing and tell you. Bing has also recently made the transition to Android and iOS and is found nicely

This means that even if someone should set Google as their default search engine, they’re still likely to be using Bing on their desktop without realizing it just by speaking with Cortana.

If they ask ‘what does hypertrophy mean?’, Cortana will open up Bing and show the results in the browser. That could be your website.

And the same is true if they own an Xbox One. We don’t have the exact sales figures for Xbox One right now (Microsoft are remaining tight lipped about them) but we do know that they’re in excess of 25 million around the world. Xbox One comes with a lot of home-entertainment functions including a browser that you can use while playing games or chatting on Skype.

And guess what search engine the Xbox One browser uses?

While the Xbox One isn’t quite the massive success that Microsoft hoped for (PS4 has the lead at the moment), the company is getting great reviews in all other departments and is generally considered to be firing on all cylinders at the moment. Examples of this can be seen with the success of Windows 10, the Microsoft Band and the Surface line of hardware. Then there’s the huge buzz surrounding the HoloLens. HoloLens is a piece of ‘Mixed Reality’ hardware that might well introduce the world to a new form of computing.

And guess what search engine it will use?

Anything could happen in the next few years to upset the apple cart and lead to Google losing market share. For example, Apple have repeatedly threatened to ditch Google as the default browser on iPhone and this could very easily lead to a seismic shift for the search landscape.
Then again it might never happen. But the question is: can you afford to take that risk?
Are you happy knowing that all your eggs are in Google’s basket?

Introducing Bing Ads. Part 2 tomorrow.