What are the common pitfalls to avoid in SEM campaigns on Bing?

There are several common pitfalls to avoid when managing SEM campaigns on Bing that can significantly impact the campaign’s success. One major mistake is neglecting Bing’s audience demographics. Bing users tend to be older and more affluent compared to Google users, so failing to tailor your ad copy and targeting to suit this audience can lead to lower engagement. Another pitfall is assuming that a campaign optimized for Google will perform equally well on Bing without adjustments. Bing’s algorithms and bidding strategies differ from Google’s, so campaigns need to be optimized separately. Additionally, overlooking device targeting is another common mistake. Bing has a higher percentage of desktop users, so adjusting your bids and ad strategies to prioritize desktop traffic can improve performance. Failing to utilize Bing-specific features, such as unique ad extensions or Bing Shopping, is another missed opportunity. Finally, not monitoring performance data closely enough and failing to adjust your bidding strategies or ad copy based on real-time results can cause campaigns to underperform. Regular analysis and optimization are key to avoiding these pitfalls and ensuring the campaign delivers a strong return on investment.

Blindly importing from Google Ads. Bing will, be defualt, open up location targeting most of the time. If you import a Google Ads campaign that is targeting areas in a specific state, Bing could well default to tareting the entire state, or sometimes the entire country. Location targeting needs checking after importing and before setting the Bing campaign(s) live.

Setting up recurring imports. Microsoft / Bing will push you to set up recurring imports however these will do more harm than good. You don't necessarily want the same daily budget or keyword bids in Microsoft Ads as you do inside Google Ads. Take them as two different platforms that need different inputs - turn off any recurring import and ignore their notifications to set up new ones.

Ads showing on Microsoft's partner network - this is the equivalent of Google's search partner network and will be the default setting. Best practice is to apply an account-level exclusion list that includes the majority of the third-party sites found in their network. These lists can be found online.

 

To put it simply, running campaigns to an audience or demographic that isn’t there.

Bing search has a lot of potential. But when you consider who the demographic is, it can only work for certain niches.

Typically the Bing search demographic is much older (good old Grandad getting his first laptop that is installed with Microsoft Edge as the browser).

And what is the Search engine associated with Microsoft Edge? Yep, you got it right! Bing!

Point is, it’s a much older demographic.

So you need to make sure if you want to test advertising on Bing search, that the business or website corresponds to the older demographic.

For example, I have a client in this niche, and we tested Bing search for a month and the results were so promising, the campaign is still running right now!

Whereas, if you were to try running an advertising campaign for Nike or Adidas shoes, you might not see the results you’d be hoping for.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t try it, of course you should.

But for me, the biggest “pitfall” of running ads on Bing is just not having the right business, website or offer for the demographic that uses Bing the most.