Growing a business often involves vision, discipline and diversification in operations. When it comes to marketing, many business people would say it is the life blood of their business.
Ask anyone what is helping their business grow, and we can tell you that one of the top answers is reliable and consistent marketing. Let’s face it, and we may be a little biased here, but it’s no secret that data driven marketing channels that you can see drive a positive return on investment are incredible.
At Push, we love businesses that have passion to grow and what we know from over 12 years of experience is that businesses running online marketing or considering online marketing are one step ahead of the game.
One powerful way of being diverse with your business involves creating additional marketing channels. The biggest incentive is that it will mitigate risk and protect your business from market shifts. Like the adage goes, “Never put all of your eggs in one basket.” Keep the business flexible and easy to adapt to trends and changes.
So, the question becomes how can you utilise an existing successful marketing channel and replicate it. Take Google Ads for example. This is predominantly a search based platform with users seeking products and services with intent. The same principle applies with Bing or as it is now known, Microsoft Advertising. What is interesting with Bing is that its audience tend to be a little more mature and their market share is growing.
Microsoft’s search engine is a substantial presence globally – accounting for 36.4% of desktop/laptop searches in the US last year (22.2% in the UK). That’s up from 31.4% last year (17.6% UK) which is huge.
This represents a huge, and growing, number of users that your ads aren’t reaching if you’re not on Bing. Yes, your Google Ads campaigns might be bringing you success – but why stop there? Growing a business depends on diversifying the operation, and that diversity in turn can grow income whilst protecting your business from volatile market shifts. Microsoft Ads is a great way to quickly diversify your marketing strategy, and see immediate revenue growth results.
An Open Goal?
Google’s Ads platform is bursting at the seams with advertisers. Bing, at least for the time being, isn’t. It’s pretty straightforward: fewer advertisers equals the greatest potential to dominate the market, Yes, there’s also lower search volumes, but what this means is that the same investment you’d funnel into Google Ads will generally go a lot further on Bing. Naturally, there’s variation from industry to industry; but Microsoft Ads tend to have lower CPCs and therefore lower costs to acquire new customers.
More business owners are starting to get wise to the potential of Bing ads – especially ones with nationwide reach, so don’t let yourself miss out.
Quality > Quantity
Microsoft’s acquisition of the LinkedIn platform quietly asserted themselves as a dominant force for targeted ads in the professional, b2b space. With their new BETA allowing businesses to overlay audiences with LinkedIn data – it is becoming possible to create custom audiences along lines of industry, job function, or even a specific companies.
It’s not all focused on business, though. On the b2c side, Bing currently gives the marketer access to an audience with greater buying power. Bing users are generally older: 71% of them are over 35. With that demographic factor comes better establishment and, in many cases, greater disposable income.
Is Microsoft Ads A Good Fit For Your Business?
Keep 2 things in mind. Number 1 is your marketing budget and what volume of leads you can handle. Bing may only be able to deliver 10-15% of the lead volume your business generates from Google ads, although the big goal should not be volume initially but rather the cheaper cost per acquisition. Number 2 is your target audience. If you know that people over 35 are higher value or drive a better return on investment, then you have to seriously consider running Bing.
Getting Started
The process is fairly straightforward and if you are currently running Google ads with success it’s much easier, as we can pull your existing account into Microsoft. This is not actually our first option because sometimes Bing requires a different approach. We’ve got years of experience integrating Microsoft into the marketing mix for our clients – and being a Microsoft Select partner doesn’t do us any harm on that front… ;).
As part of that partnership, we’re currently able to apply a hefty advertising credit amount of up to £500!
We’re looking to implement this for up to 50 SMEs.
If you’re thinking that deal sounds too good to be true, you should know that there is qualifying criteria, because we know it can go a long way, so have a read on couple points below:
- Currently run a marketing channel and have a benchmark CPL / CPA target to benchmark or work towards.
- Currently have a website or landing page live and kicking (not literally).
- Thy customer acquisition model must be lead generation (ie/ contact/form submission enquiries).
- Your business can not compete with a current client (it would be a little unethical and tiny bit awkward).
- You are open to investing a minimum advertising budget of £250 per month (for a period of at least 2 months – essentially what you invest — we match!).
- You must have a thank you page (URL tracking purposes so we can measure conversions which are those form submissions we mentioned 3 points ago).
If this sounds like something you want to get onboard with, simply get in touch with our lead generation manager directly via email with the subject line “Bring On Bing” and tell us a bit about your business.
Email is tariq@pushgroup.co.uk
