Active Web Group’s Digital Marketing team strives to bring optimal value for our clients’ spend. Time was when Google Ads triumphed above all their competitors’ initiatives. But today, there has been a paradigm shift, and now Bing Ads (A.K.A.: Microsoft Advertising (MA)) should be strongly considered for your B2B digital ad marketing. Note that we are not advising a total shift from Google to solely Bing Ads, only that MAs are not the fall-back position when you have a limited marketing budget anymore. Here’s why MA often outperforms expectations in the B2B sphere:
1. High-Value Audience
- Bing/Microsoft Ads reach professionals using Microsoft products like Windows, Office, and LinkedIn integrations, making the audience more business oriented.
- Fact: Stakeholders, executives, and corporate employees often default to Bing as their search engine in workplace environments. This means your ad will be more likely to be viewed by company decision-makers and potentially influence them to “pull the trigger”. This leads to higher average orders, greater ROI, and best of all, less competition to win the “bigger fish”.
2. Gain Potential Customers
- Google still dominates the market share, however, Bing’s numbers are still significant. Recent figures indicate that Bing accounted for almost 20% of the global market share, or over 14 billion monthly searches. In the U.S., Bing actually accounts for over 38% of the PC market share, representing 6.4 billion monthly searches by potential customers.
3. Lower Competition, Lower CPCs
- Perhaps the strongest argument for investing in Microsoft Advertising, when compared to Google Ads, there’s typically less competition on Bing, which means lower cost-per-click (CPC) while still maintaining strong lead quality. While your competitors may still be investing all their marketing spend on Google Ads, they are entirely missing the potential customers that only use Bing as their browser. Less competition = more bang for your hard-earned bucks.
4. LinkedIn Targeting Integration
- Microsoft Ads offers unique LinkedIn profile targeting. This allows your AWG team to refine your campaign by job title, company, industry as well as other topics. This offers a huge advantage in B2B where relevance matters.
5. Higher Conversion Potential
- B2B buyers searching on Bing are often in a professional mindset, conducting research for business needs. This makes the platform highly effective for lead generation and account-based marketing (ABM) campaigns.
6. Cross-Device & Demographic Reach
- Bing’s audience tends to skew toward an older, higher-income demographic, often aligning with decision-makers and budget holders in businesses.
Most important takeaway: For B2B advertisers, Microsoft Ads isn’t just an alternative to Google. Instead, it’s a cost-efficient way to directly target professionals and business decision makers, leading to more engagement, more customers, and an increase in your ROI.
Be aware, however, that a shift from all Google to, say a mix of both Google and Bing Ads will not likely resolve all your conversion issues overnight. And if you think that high click-through rates and low cost-per-click metrics are all that are required to make your campaign a success, you’re mistaken. Those clicks must convert into meaningful engagements leading to loyal consumers and/or sales to achieve your objectives. Instead, campaigns must be optimized around actions that reflect genuine buyer interest.
That’s where the professionals at Active Web Group excel. For over two decades, we’ve assisted companies of all sizes and across a wide range of industries to maximize their online presence and earnings potential. We invite you to contact our team to discuss a change in strategy coupled with a campaign utilizing Microsoft Ads to their full potential to score a “win-win” for all parties.
