Adwords vs. Bing Ads - Which you should go with first

Adwords vs. Bing Ads - Which you should go with first

Many people talk about how they should use PPC campaigns and when they should start.  Well, it's not as easy as saying "Start with Adwords" or "Bing Ads is what you should begin with" because there are plenty of variables that come into play.

Some of the variables are how much you're looking to spend on each click to get quality traffic and who you're targeting.  Your budget comes into play because you can hit your daily spending limit each day on both platforms, but you could be wasting money depending on how your targeting is set up.  Yes, you can target the same keywords on each platform, but you will get more clicks usually through Adwords than you will through Bing Ads due to Google having the majority of searches each month.

Now then, let's go over the good and bad about both platforms so you can get a better idea of what you would want to use starting off.


Adwords
Many of us know what this is, for those of you who don't, Adwords is Google's advertising platform that allows you to put ads within the search results and on partner websites to get traffic directly to your site.

The Good
Adwords is fantastic because you can get a ton of traffic to your website that is super targeted and high quality.  If you set up your ads just right, you will get people clicking through who already intend to purchase from you, and this will boost your conversion rate exponentially.  

Google has the majority of traffic and searches compared to all of the other search engines out there, and this is why many people prefer to run Adwords campaigns over Bing Ads campaigns.  You can target more people around the world and not have to worry about setting up accounts and campaigns on other platforms to pull in more traffic.  People don't usually max out their daily limits in Adwords, if they're unlimited, because of all the traffic that could be going to your website.  Want to set your daily budget at $100 a day?  Go for it!  You'll get a ton of traffic to your site.  Want to set it at $10,000 a day???  Well, you'll probably be able to spend that much if your keywords are more difficult and you appear at #1.

The Bad
Adwords tends to cost more than most of the PPC platforms out there, and people think this is because they're the top dogs in the market and can get away with it.  A real theory is that more prominent companies are using Adwords and can afford to boost up their CPC for targeted keywords which would make it more difficult for the little guys to compete.

Adwords tends to ban quickly and never responds to you even if you fix the infraction that got you into hot water.  It's rarer to get an Adwords out of suspension than it is to see big foot lol.


Bing Ads
When it comes to a top PPC contender, you will hear people talk about Bing Ads because it's powerful even though it doesn't have as much traffic as Google.  Bing Ads is partnered with Microsoft/Yahoo, so they have a pretty far reach and can get you traffic from all over the place.

The Good
Bing ads tend to be cheaper than adwords, and this is one of the main reasons people migrate to it.  If you were spending $0.50 per click on Adwords, you could likely get that same click for just $0.20 through Bing Ads.  Yes, it's that much cheaper but not always because it depends on your competition.

If your website is set up just right, Bing Ads can be a cash cow for you since the competition isn't as cutthroat compared to Adwords.  I've set up plenty of successful campaigns through Bing Ads, and it did take a little optimization before I started to see great results.

You can target pretty much whatever you want within Bing Ads as long as you're not promoting hateful material.

The Bad
You can cap out your daily budget, but it might not be as high quality of traffic compared to Adwords, which is why it will take some time to optimize and make it as best as you can.  

You might get a lot of cheaper traffic, but that means it could also be of lower quality.  You could get the most traffic from countries that don't convert well, or they might convert well if your prices were 50% lower than they are, so you'll need to optimize everything and be sure to exclude countries that can't afford you.  


In the end,
Every PPC campaign, no matter the platform, can ruin your bank account if you're not paying attention to it.  If you're not optimizing your campaigns, keywords, and targeting you will figuratively be burning your money.  Adwords usually has higher quality traffic but tends to cost more while Bing Ads has average traffic and costs less per click.  If you can, run a campaign on both platforms and use UTM parameters to be sure what's working and what isn't.  Remove ads that aren't performing and keep the profitable ones.  You can be successful on both platforms, it just takes time and split testing, so get to work


Thanks for reading

Tommy Carey
https://www.seoclerks.com/user/TommyCarey