Why Your Dealership Needs a Paid Microsoft Strategy

Written by our Paid Media Director, Sarah Ciociola

An average of 26 digital touch points are crossed before a potentially qualified shopper chooses to convert with a dealership online. With a range of actions including a form submission, call, chat, text, or visiting a showroom, dealers need to be ever-present for every potential customer during each of those scenarios.

With every interaction counting in 2024, dealers can’t afford to miss out on any opportunities.?Enter Microsoft, which owns three major search engines: Bing, Yahoo, and AOL. Advertising on Bing’s Search and Display Networks means executing a paid search strategy on their platform, a similar experience to advertising on Google. In other words, extending beyond Google alone allows you to simultaneously advertise across all three major Microsoft-owned search engines. While Google has a higher number of “search” traffic, Bing has a higher number of "shopper traffic” – this group largely comprises an audience of individuals 45 to 54 years old with average incomes of $100,000 or more, making Microsoft the ideal network for luxury car dealers to advertise on.

Let’s look at some additional Microsoft statistics:

• Microsoft Bing’s US market share is 17.21% on desktop in 2024.
• 32% of Bing searchers spend more online than the average Google searcher, and 48% of Bing users are in the top 25% of household incomes in the US.
• Every month, Bing gets 26% more branded searches than Google.
• Bing search engine is the most popular among the 25-34 age group (22.17%), followed by the 18-34 age group (30.7%.)

Microsoft Ads reach 63 million searchers who aren’t reached with Google Ads

Bing has far less competition than Google in the arena of pay-per-click ads, making the former a cost-effective digital strategy. More specifically, the less crowded space results in clicks being cheaper and advertisers' dollars stretching even further. By creating a Bing strategy that complements your Google Ads approach, the results can grow and accelerate together.

Running search ads in tandem with dynamic inventory advertising on Microsoft advertising has proven successful for dealers at PCG Digital.

Let's Look At Results

In June 2024, Matick Toyota generated an additional 269,862 impressions, 1,119 clicks, and 57 conversions that they would have missed out on if they solely advertised on Google. While PCG doesn’t recommend having a strategy as aggressive or budget-heavy when compared to Google, we strongly encourage every dealer to give themselves the best chance of driving digital success by adding Bing to their repertoire.

If you’d like to learn more about PCG's Microsoft Advertising services, email our Chief Revenue Officer, Brian Larkin at [email protected].