Are you trying to figure out Microsoft advertising as a beginner? Do you want to know the difference between Microsoft advertising and Google advertising? Do you want to learn how to set up a campaign using Microsoft advertising? Are you looking for a complete guide on Microsoft ads? Or are you looking for step-by-step instructions for setting up your account at Microsoft Ads? Are Microsoft Ads worth?
If yes, then you’ve come to the right place as we will be providing you with a detailed guide on Microsoft ads for beginners so make sure you read till the end.
If you’re looking to bring traffic to your website and are looking forward to getting profit from selling products and services then choosing to advertise on search engines is one of the best strategies that you can come up with, the phenomenon of “searching and spending” keeps on growing year over year and this market is about to hit $112 billion in the United States, alone in 2023.
It’s the perfect time to encourage more people to engage with your website and sell them your products and services through advertising and getting the attention of as many potential clients as possible.
We have all heard of Google ads. it’s the leading and most popular advertising service, Microsoft advertising, which was previously known as Bing Advertising and was named after the search engine of Microsoft which is known as Bing, comes in a close second and has more than a billion monthly users from all over the world.
Entrepreneurs and businessmen from all over the world use this service to get the most out of their efforts simply because Microsoft advertising has formed a ladder for these people to climb on, and enhance their business’s reach as well as exceed their business goals. This service has made many people from all over the world by helping them in meeting new clients and has given them countless new opportunities to grow their businesses, sometimes in ways that they never imagined.
Although the process of running campaigns through Microsoft advertising is neither difficult nor easy, beginners might overthink the process and get overwhelmed by Microsoft advertising. If you’re a beginner, don’t worry as we have got you covered, we have given you a complete guide to what Microsoft advertising is, and how you can use this service to enhance your business’s reach and get more clients.
We will be covering all the basics that you need to know when starting campaigns to run through Microsoft advertising, and we will be simplifying some things that might seem tough to understand along the way. So read till the very end to understand what Microsoft advertising is, and how to take advantage of it as a beginner.
Without any further ado let’s get started,
What Are Microsoft Ads?
Microsoft ads is a PPC (pay-per-click) platform that lets brands advertise their products and services on Bing search networks and its partner networks, which are Yahoo and AOL etc. The ads that you will run are going to appear on the top, bottom, or side of the search results page on Bing and other partners of Bing like Yahoo.
Running ad campaigns through Microsoft advertising services will help you in enhancing your reach and will get your service or product on the screens of more potential customers, who will interact with your product or service if it attracts them enough. This also includes demographic groups that might be difficult to reach on other platforms that provide this service.
If you have used Google ads previously the. You will be pleased to know that Microsoft ads work on almost the same interface in terms of functionality and setup. When setting up a campaign, you will have to set up different keywords that you think people might search for when looking for your product or service, you will also have to set up the category that your product or service falls into or you can also choose to set your keyword which is based on the category of your product.
Next, you wait till Bing matches your ad with the searches that have been conducted, in case of a successful match, the search engine will get triggered to show your ad along the organic search results on the search results page.
You can also set filters, if you want to choose a specific device to display your ad on, or if you want your ad to only appear on devices other than one. You can choose the mobile traffic option to filter it from desktop and tablet.
Microsoft Ads vs. Google Ads
There are many similarities between ad service providers, much like both the service providers are based on PPC which is pay-per-click. For some reason, Microsoft ads continue to develop in terms of popularity and gaining attention.
It has a rapidly growing audience, partially among the people who are most familiar with the Microsoft ecosystem, and of course, Bing, which is the basic necessity that is used to display your advertisements, it’s used by billions all over the world and the platform registered 1.2 billion users in 2022. The secret to Microsoft’s rapidly increasing popularity is the benefits that they provide to its users, their benefits include.
1. Low CPC (Cost Per Click) Rates!
Microsoft still has a lower market share than Google which is why it has less competition when it comes to keywords and phrases. According to some studies made on Microsoft, the CPC rates are lower in Microsoft Ads than on Google ads, and many people are willing to settle for the second best if it gets them cheaper costs and saves them money, and the people who chose Microsoft will also be able to spend their budget in many other places or save it if they don’t have anywhere else to spend it on. Most people use their leftover budget to buy more shares of keywords.
2. The Unique Audience Is Just For You!
Bing usually attracts a specific kind of audience, with three out of four quarters of its users over the age of 35, however, Bing users spend more on an average basis too, it has 22% more amount spent on purchases occurring through Bing, than any other search engine.
So if you’re looking to reach out to adults with your market campaigns, and are specifically looking for an audience a little older, then Microsoft Ads is suitable for you, and advertising through Microsoft Ads should be a no-brainer.
3. Targets Are Excellently Chosen:
As one of the top search engine ads solutions, Microsoft’s platform comes with several ways to reach your target audience, and this makes it one of the best services to target your kind of audience for your ads. Moreover, Microsoft’s advertising system uses AI technology that specifically targets the audience and is focused on the customer’s intent.
Yes, you read that right, the AI detects the potential of the audience by specifically focusing on their intent, also Microsoft collects data from Microsoft-owned platforms like LinkedIn and uses that data to help you engage more with your target audience and refines the whole targeting process to the edge of perfection.
Another plus point of Microsoft ads is that you can control every aspect of your targeting strategy, from the demographics that you plan on reaching to the location of your target audience to specifically targeting the audience currently present in that location.
You can even choose to target customers based on the specifics of the device that they’re using, down to the details of the Operating System that is running on that device. Now that you know the basics of what Microsoft advertising is, let’s move on to how to use Microsoft advertising and how to create your first campaign on Microsoft advertising.
Create Your First-Ever Campaign On Microsoft Ads
Microsoft ads allow you to reach billions of users worldwide and help you in spreading the reach of your business throughout the whole world if you want to, it lets you target your audience with ease and displays your ads on the Bing search engine, and shows it to the people who use Bing to search for information, products and services of their interest, follow the steps given below to start your very first campaign as a beginner.
1. Create a Microsoft Ads Account:
Visit the Microsoft Ads homepage and click on the green sign up now button. It will take you to the sign-up page and will ask you for some of the information that is required to sign you up on the platform.
If you already have a Microsoft account enter the email address and the password for it and hit enter, Microsoft will create an ads account for you in no time. Follow the instructions given below if you don’t have a Microsoft account.
Follow the prompts and fill in the required detail in the spaces given, the required information will include general information only, like they will demand your email address, phone number and business location, etc. Once you’re finished setting up your account, they will ask you to agree to the terms and conditions that apply when creating an account, agree to the terms and conditions and then click on the option that says, “create a new campaign”
2. Setting Up Your Goals:
This step is all about setting up your campaign goals, which are the results that you demand your campaign to achieve, this includes,
- Number of Visits to my website.
- Number of calls on my business phone.
- Visits to my business location.
- Sales of products online.
- Conversions on my website.
Once you decide on the goal and select it, they will allow you to launch a campaign but make sure that you choose something that aligns with your business strategy and the type of your business.
3. Bidding On Keywords:
Start this step by choosing to enter the keywords that you’re planning to bid on, make sure to pick the keyword that relates to your products and services, then study the results that you’re presented with, it will include information like, what are the statistics for average monthly searches? And how much competition lies there with the top-rank bid? Based on what you find, make a list of keywords that you will input and use in your campaign.
Usually, advertisers need to click on the “tools” section in the header section of their account’s dashboard to access the keyword planner, however, your first campaign will be presented to you directly from the platform.
4. Choosing The Type Of Advertisement:
Once you have selected your goal and have planned on how the campaign will do for your business, it’s time to choose the type of advertisement that you want to run your campaign on, Microsoft ads let you choose between two types of ads, they are audience ads and search ads.
Audience ads are placed in non-search areas, like within articles, etc. Which is on the partner sites of Microsoft, including Edge, MSN, Outlook, and other partners of Microsoft. Meanwhile, most beginners start with search-based ads, simply because they are convenient to set up and easier to manage than audience ads.
5. Creating Your First Ads:
Now the platform will ask you to create your first ad, you will be presented with a page that will have the following options for you to choose from and add to your campaign,
- Your business’s name.
- Images, maximum 6.
- A long headline, with 90 characters max.
- A short headline with 30 characters max.
- Ad text with a limit of 30 characters max.
- Final URLs, for both desktop and mobile.
- Click Save, once done.
6. Set Your Daily Budget And Bids:
Next, Microsoft will ask you to set your daily budget, enter an amount you’re comfortable with and this will be the amount of money that you will be paying each day till your campaign is active and your ad is running.
Microsoft will also estimate the number of impressions that you will get and it will be estimated according to the amount of cash that you’re willing to pay daily. Make sure you find the sweet spot and pay according to the goals that you have set up.
7. Add Your Payment Information:
After you’re done with the above step of setting your budget, fill out your business and payment information. Microsoft will then offer two payment options,
Pre-Pay:
Choosing this will allow you to pay beforehand, and you will have to pay for the ads for the next month.
Post-pay:
This option allows you to pay for your ads at the end of the month.
The company only accepts credit and debit card payments on the post-pay plan.
8. Launch Your Finalized Ad Campaign:
Finally, click save to launch your first ever Microsoft ads campaign, your ads will now be displayed to people who trigger your keywords when searching for something, make sure that you monitor the performance of your campaign so you can learn which among your ads are encouraging the targeted audience to engage with your ads, then you can focus on improving those ads and hopefully get even better results than before.
Final words
Setting up a campaign for beginners can be a scary thing to do, but don’t worry, we’ve got your back, just follow the simplified steps given above and your ads will be up and running in no time, we have given you all the basic information about Microsoft’s advertising platform and how to use and take advantage of this platform, with a hint on the differences between Google ads and Microsoft ads, with this guide you will know everything that you need to know as a beginner we hope that you read till the very end and that you got the information that you’re looking for. We wish you the best of luck.
