When you’re looking at putting together a PPC advertising campaign for your business, you’re likely to think of Google straight away.
Perhaps you’d considering advertising on social networks such as Twitter, LinkedIn, or the obvious choice of Facebook. After all, it’s likely you can find your audience on one of these platforms, or others.
However, many businesses overlook advertising on Microsoft’s search engine, Bing.
Do people use Bing?
Contrary to popular opinion, of course people use Bing.
In December 2017, 5.82% of internet users worldwide searched with search engine Bing.
In January 2018 in the UK – Google had the highest market share, which comes as no surprise, with 84.91% of the desktop, tablet and console UK search engine market.
However, after Google comes Bing with a market share of 11.23%, followed by the Yahoo! with 2.64%and MSN’s search engine with 0.55%.
Why would you choose to spend money advertising on Bing when Google is so dominant? While more people may be using Google much more frequently, there’s still reasons to consider Bing.
Less Competition
Most people use Google, which means any business taking digital marketing seriously is likely to be using Google AdWords to advertise goods or services.
This means there is a lot of competition for basically any niche that Google AdWords is deemed useful for.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be using Google AdWords – far from it. Google AdWords is still one of the best ways to generate traffic and find your audience exactly at the time they are looking for what you have to offer. And it’s the most likely place to find people searching for your goods or services.
However on Bing, you could find a lot less competition. Which means that if someone searches a keyword you deem useful, then you’re more likely to appear right at the top, with fewer companies bidding on the same keywords as you.
Lower ad spend
As Google, and Google AdWords specifically, is more popular, it costs more than Bing ads.
Because Bing is less used, and Bing ads aren’t as widespread as AdWords, this means there’s less competition. Which means you can spend less overall.
Of course, this is all assuming your audience is using Bing, and that the traffic is there. But overall, Bing is far cheaper, which makes it an attractive prospect for many businesses.
Better return on ad spend
While it may not be worthwhile spending the same on Bing as you do for AdWords, due to the level of traffic, it still means you may see a better return on your advertising spend from Bing. Even if you spend 1/4 of what you spend on AdWords on Bing, you may see better results in terms of conversions or purchases compared to your spend.
Consider your audience (which may be using Bing)
If you are a B2B business, are your customers searching at work? Could they be using Bing? Quite possibly. Because of restricted PCs at work, with default settings, Bing may be used more largely at work.
Many businesses have made the upgrade to Windows 10. Microsoft Edge is often the default browser, or perhaps even locked as the only browser to use. Bing will be the default search engine.
How many people are likely to go in and change this? Sure, people may change this on their personal machines, but are they likely to take the time at work? They may not even know how to actively change the default search engine.
If you’re not sure on your audience, consider the following statistics from Bing:
- 24% of the UK desktop search market.
- 960 million monthly desktop searches on the Bing Network in the UK.
- 18.5% share of the French desktop search market.
- 12.9% share of the German desktop search market.
Aside from B2B uses, some demographics will be more likely to be found on Bing.
Audiences that Bing attracts seems to be:
- Audiences of age 35+ but especially 55-64
- US audiences
- Parents – due to age difference
- Blue-collar workers
Some people like and use Bing
While Google’s dominance is staggering, it seems Bing gets a bad rap. But the fact is, Bing is actually quite good. Many people use Bing not by being forced, but out of choice. And still, Bing has a lot of benefits over competitors.
It’s often renowned for good image search. It is also famed for having better satellite imagery over Google Maps and similar competitors.
Whether B2B or not, some people are not techy whatsoever, and simply wouldn’t know how (or why they should) change their default search engine. They may simply get a new machine with Windows 10, Microsoft Edge, and use Bing without a care in the world. Chrome used to be the quickest browser when it launched, but nowadays it’s as bloated as the browsers it sought to replace. Google itself used to be stripped down and simple, but has now become a monopoly with more ads and unnecessary info in the results. This can put people off.
Some people will be fans of Microsoft and opt for Bing. Some people will refuse to use Google and see Bing as the next best thing, or perhaps the next viable alternative.
Perhaps for one of these reasons, people will stick to Bing. And that’s still a good reason to use Bing – because why not? It’s still the second most used search engine in the UK. It’s an additional audience to your Google AdWords audience, and it has a few benefits over it.
Not convinced? Check out the short video below from Bing:
If you need a hand in setting up or managing your Bing ads, get in touch with the team at Xanthos, who will be happy to help you grow your business through digital marketing.