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How to Rapidly Grow With Microsoft Ads?
If you haven’t worked with Microsoft Ads yet or have tried it while it was still called Bing Ads, this is for you. We recently co-hosted a webinar with Microsoft Ads to help advertisers make their first successful moves on Microsoft Ads. The webinar focused on how to utilize the recent changes in Microsoft Ads for quick wins and better results – generating cheaper, better traffic with minimal investment of time and ongoing effort.
In this article, we’ll cover 3 main topics:
1. Four points for rapid growth
2. Rising opportunities in times of uncertainty
3. Roadmap to Success: The Microsoft network & roadmap updates
Click here to download the full presentation
1. Four points for rapid growth
- There’s a new MCC account (manager account) structure – a similar look to Google – that allows easy navigation between accounts and clients. The management dashboard also provides better control in audiences, extensions, experiments, and much more.
- Good news! Importing and scheduling updates of campaigns from Google into Microsoft Ads became much easier. This cuts down the time and effort of creating and optimizing new campaigns and simplifies it to a couple of clicks. Expanding ad activity has never been easier.
- Create a DSA (Dynamic Search Ads) campaign – this campaign type uses content from the landing pages of your website to target your ads to searchers. The ads are automatically created, and all that’s left is to set bid management and optimize search terms from time to time. This works really well, especially in industries with high competition levels such as Travel, Finance, or home services.
- Unique targeting options: Outshine competitors and generate higher value for clients or in-house marketing by using Microsoft’s qualitative edge – the advantage that Microsoft has over other platforms:
1. LinkedIn profile targeting:
This can help target and adjust bids more precisely to the right audience, helping you to reach your goals. This works great for eCommerce, lead gen, and B2B campaigns. Outside of LinkedIn itself, Microsoft Advertising is the only digital advertising platform to offer LinkedIn Profile Targeting. That means you can get Linkedin accurate targeting options with Microsoft’s broad reach – so it’s broader and cheaper than Linkedin AND has better targeting options. This is a must-have for B2B businesses, business services, luxury brands, travel, apparel, and more.
If you haven’t worked with Microsoft Ads yet or have tried it while it was still called Bing Ads, this is for you. Learn how to make your first successful moves on Microsoft Ads.
2. Microsoft Audience Network:
Rich user understanding that powers high performance and is called the Microsoft Graph. The Microsoft Graph consists of robust data sets, including search and web activity, LinkedIn professional profiles, demographics, and more. We the advertisers can then target affinity and in-market audiences based on this data. The data is continually updated every second based on user activities. By mapping audience data on such an enormous scale, the Graph helps us spot trends and uncover insights, both of which allow us to effectively reach our customers.
2. Rising opportunities in times of uncertainty
Some of our clients have experienced drastic jumps in activity while others had to close or narrow their activity. We were also affected – we work, communicate, and socialize differently.
The times of uncertainty can be perceived as a threat to your business, however, it’s important to remember that threats and opportunities go hand in hand. We must adapt our business, workflows, tools, and our work methods to seize the opportunities.
Consumers made the move from offline to online – a trend that was definitely accelerated by Covid-19. Compared to 2019, there’s a significant uplift in traffic and search volume online. Retail and eCommerce in general have made a major step forward. Businesses that had some online activity in the past have shifted their focus to online, small brick and mortar shops were pushed to sell and serve online in order to survive, and the online industry, in general, had huge growth. More businesses now sell online and users that had never made an online purchase have changed their behavior. This results in an increased need for digital marketing.
According to several economic analyses, in the next 6 – 12 months, growing businesses will continue to grow and declining businesses will continue to fall – what’s also known as the K movement. Therefore, digital marketers should shift towards the industries that benefit from the situation:
- Home office and decor
- Domestic travel over international travel
- E-learning and home education
- Health and fitness, mostly home and online-based services.
3. Roadmap to success:
Microsoft is highly focused on personalization – which leads to better marketing performance for advertisers. The wide reach of the Microsoft search network is via products, devices, platforms, and, above all, partnerships. As consumers move their interactions and searches beyond the browser and throughout the day, the search network will meet them where they are. The traffic is of high quality from brands such as Yahoo, AOL, Gumtree, and a diverse set of partners like DuckDuckGo and Ecosia.
User interaction and engagement with Microsoft properties are ingested into the Microsoft Graph. The graph gives a rich user understanding of who people are, their interests, and their dislikes, allowing Microsoft Ads to match your ads with the right user at the right time.
Using the search and audience networks combined can have a huge impact on your search campaign performance.
In an initial study evaluating campaigns from multiple advertisers over a 3-month period, Microsoft Audience Network advertisers saw an increased performance in their search campaign with a +43% lift in searches post-exposure (post impression or post-click) and a 2.3% lift in CTR (click-through rates).
These lift metrics are measured by evaluating the impressions per user and searches per user for those who were exposed compared to a group of similar users who were not exposed to those brands’ Microsoft Audience Network ads. The lift is not a total lift on the entire search program, but rather on a per-user basis for the users who were exposed. A larger exposed user base on the Microsoft Audience Network would lead to a larger increase in total searches.
To conclude: Microsoft Ads has a giant potential for all industries to leverage their broad audience and varied placements to get an unmatched return on ad spend (ROAS). Their platform makes it super quick and simple to import from Google Ads and get started – so why not give it a try?
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