Google Vs. Bing: Which Ad Platform is Better for Your Business?
All digital marketers know that Google is the main search engine for many of their consumers. Google dominates the search engine world, it has 40,000 search queries every second, which is about 3.5 billion searches a day with over two billion users worldwide, that is pretty impressive number. Bing on the other hand, has about 167 million users, which don’t get me wrong, is still an impressive number, but that is nothing compared to two billion for Google. Bing may not have majority of the market share for search engines, but there is still value in using Bing Ads.
Bing Ads works very similar to Google Ads. Bing Ads targets through keywords, location, language, scheduling, the device type, time of day, the day of the week, audience targeting, and shopping habits. Going more into keywords, there words are vital for your consumer’s internet search. Keywords are the words or phrases used by the customer when doing a search on Bing. In Bing, you create a list of potential words your customer might use when searching for their solution. Having customers see your ads is all dependent of the accuracy of your keyword list.
Bing Ads has four levels of organization for their advertisement: the customer, accounts, campaigns, and ad groups. Customer is one or more accounts, it has a customer ID with your business name tied to it, while accounts have access to one or more campaigns. Accounts contain all the information about prepay, postpay, the form of payment, and the users who do have permissions to the account. Campaigns consist of usually more than one ad groups, sharing the campaign budget. Campaigns can be two things: Search and Content Campaign, or a Search Campaign. Search and Content Campaigns are for the United States only, while Search Campaign is non United States only. Lastly, ad groups are the advertisements related to the keyword list.
Bing also has PPC bidding, which matching related advertisements to your target market, it is an important factor because it can affect your ad position in Bing. In PPC bidding you do not want to overpay for your the performance of your ads, so remember that the keyword maximum price, how much you are willing to pay in your budget, but the price does vary, and could potentially be lower. Your ad budget does affect the amount of times your advertisement is clicked in a day, so it is crucial to know how to optimize your advertisements for the sake of your budget. Most importantly, always always ALWAYS remember to review your keywords periodically to enhance your PPC bidding
On the other hand, Google Ads has some benefits to it when compared to its competitor Bing. In the article, “Bing Ads Vs. Google Adwords,” Mary Davin gives some insight on comparing Bing Ads to Google Adwords. Bing Ads runs on a cost-per-click basis, which is typically a lower price point than Adwords, but Adwords does have more search volume, making it easier to reach more customers, but it is more spendy. When analyzing the click-through-rate for Adwords vs Bing Ads, Bing had a higher click-through-rate than Google, making it more effective to run ads in Bing than Google. Conversion rate, the rate every digital marketer is worried about, for every three search completed, two of those searches are done in Google, making it higher for search volume. Users on Google are more likely to convert than on Bing. Don’t forget that Bing and Google do have different demographics who use their platform. Bing users tend to be in the age range of 35-54 years old, while Google users are usually younger. Bing and Google both have benefits to using them for advertisements, Bing has a more effective positioning strategy, but Google does have a higher search volume. It is for you to decide, based on your target audience, which platform will be more effective for your digital marketing strategy.
When looking at a MBA program, and how they can use PPC to increase the awareness of the program with its applications. I would recommend that the MBA program truly understands their target audience, and which platform will be more effective to reach them. If the MBA program decides to go with Bing, they should remember to ALWAYS be attempting to better their keyword list to better reach potential students. Also, when analyzing the target market for the MBA program consider all factors including the audience’s location, language, scheduling, the device type, time of day, the day of the week, audience targeting, and shopping habits.