McCord Web Services is a Microsoft Advertising Partner
Just this last week Bing Ads rebranded itself as Microsoft Advertising. This is an interesting update for a platform that looks to move outside the box consumers have put it in.
With advertising from Bing Ads appearing on Windows PCs in many areas and on Microsoft properties, it makes perfect sense to move beyond the Bing platform and make the name more descriptive.
I expect that there will be additional integrations with Microsoft products in the months to come as the powers that be re-brand the platform and enlarge offerings.
The Bing Partners program portal has been updated to reflect this new name and branding.
Of course you’ve listed your business on Google, but have you grabbed your Bing Places account? With Windows 10 and more Bing integration with this new platform, I am finding my own self on Bing more. So don’t forget you want your own business to be found easier and faster on Bing too as they get more traffic.
Grab Your Listing
First make sure you have a Microsoft ID for your business, then visit Bing Places online at https://www.bingplaces.com/ then go to the site and login and enter in your business phone number. Bing will auto populate a form with what it knows about your business. You can then either claim the listing or create a new one.
If your old address shows, go ahead and claim it as you have to claim and verify by phone before you can change to your new address.
Update Your Listing
Then work your way through the five or so screens to add information about your business. You’ll be asked to choose one of Bing’s categories for your business. This is not the time to get creative, you’ve got to choose one of theirs. Add pictures to your listing, but they have to be bigger than 468 pixels wide by 360 pixels tall.
Verify Your Listing by Snail Mail
To assure Bing that you are who you say you are, you will for the first time need to verify your listing by snail mail. Bing will regular mail you a postcard with a PIN. It will typically arrive in less than one week.
There’s No Optimization
Really there is nothing more you can do for your listing. Don’t get fooled into buying any optimization services. There is simply nothing else that can be added to your listing to boost performance.
Do I think it is important to claim your listing – absolutely! Better to provide the “right” information as the business owner than for Bing to guess about your business hours and possibly even use the wrong phone number.
There’s something new you may have missed in Bing Ads in the extension tab – Structured Snippets.
They are easy to set up and Bing Ads likes to display them under your ad like Callouts. There is no link with the text, but the Snippets give you a chance to quickly let your clients know what else you do or offer.
Here’s how to set them up:
Go to the “Extension” tab.
2. In the drop down select “Structured Snippets”
3. Select your category – I typically use Types.
4. Add up to 20 Snippets.
5. Make sure to click save.
I usually set these up at the campaign level, but you can set them up at the ad group level too.
If you are looking for a savvy Bing Ads account manager, make sure to check out our services and pricing.
Nancy McCord is and now Rebecca and Roberta McCord are Bing Ads Accredited Professionals.
This last week I recertified my Bing Ads professional credentials for another year and renewed my Bing Partner status.
Additionally, two of my staff members, Rebecca A. McCord and Roberta S. McCord, passed the exam for the first time to become as Bing Accredited Professionals. Both are my daughters and work in my business to assist with client account management.
Certifications assure that your account management is done by professionals with knowledge of the pay per click platforms and how to optimize accounts. Both team members still work closely with me and perform account review and management under my supervision as they work to develop strong expertise on their own.
Many businesses only consider advertising on Google AdWords, but for many businesses, Bing Ads should be considered a viable adjunct to AdWords.
For many of my clients (but not all), Bing Ads brings in lower cost conversions than AdWords. For medical professionals, I’ve had good success in most markets in generating conversions at a lower cost (sometimes as much as 50% less) than in Google AdWords.
There are differences between Google AdWords and Bing Ads and many similarities as well.
Here are just a few of the differences:
Bing Ads is best used for US and Canada advertising and not for global coverage. AdWords is great for global advertising.
Bing Ads uses the user’s browser setting to determine language – Google uses the Google.com language setting.
Bing Ads is still using a 30% bid cap when you use eCPC bid settings. Google did away with theirs this last year and so it can sometimes be expensive to let Google adjust your bid to be competitive.
Bing Ads has made it very, very easy to import AdWords programs into Bing Ads. Google has done nothing to make this easy. There are times when a program is performing better in Bing Ads and the only way to get it into AdWords is an Excel import with further tweaking after the load.
In Bing Ads the enhanced site links will only show for keywords that have won the auction and have a high quality score and are to appear in the top ad position on the page.
Bing Ads now has a “get a ride” feature next to directions in the location settings that interface directly with your personal Uber account. The get a ride extension setting is automatic.
Consumers have embraced pay per click ads! No longer do users of Google or Bing scroll to see the organic search results, rather they are clicking the first and second pay per click ads on a page, and especially when on a smartphone.
Over the years, pay per click ads have become more relevant than even the organic listings. And, as the organic listings are getting harder to find, click activity is happening at the top of the page.
With the advent of personalized search, sophisticated device tracking, and a myriad of ad extensions that selectively show, tailored to the user’s history, intent, and location, pay per click is usurping the place of organic search results on the Web.
As user’s hurry to make decisions and want information tailored to their personal needs, the dynamic nature and relevancy of ad serving is revolutionizing web searches.
With deep sitelinks, listings of services, current promotions, maps of your store location, and click to call buttons, these new ad versions are attractive for consumers to click and give immediate results.
As we watch many client accounts, we see pay per click traffic numbers are on the rise and organic numbers are declining in our monthly Google Analytics action reports. For businesses this sets a new landscape for the Web – one that is now pay to play, and it’s big business for Google and Bing.
Think that you don’t need to get involved in pay per click advertising? Take a careful review of the search results page on your desktop and smartphone. With shrinking organic real estate and with most organic search results now below the page fold, consumers are making decisions and clicking on ads and in many cases not even looking at organic listings.
