Let’s not beat around the bush, Google is king in the paid search arena. In most cases, the majority of a paid search marketer’s time is spent working within Google because of the sheer volume it has over Bing when it comes to regular users and daily search volume. According to searchenginejournal.com, Google controls almost 64% of US desktop searches, while Bing sits around 22%, and the rest is scattered between smaller search engines. With over a 40% difference in volume, it only makes sense that Google takes priority in a paid search marketer’s strategy.
However, Bing is getting bigger and better by the day. Bing stated in a recent “Bing Connect” event in Milwaukee that nearly 8 million searches are performed on Bing each day, reaching 254 million unique searchers a year. In the grand scheme of things, that equates to about one search on Bing per person in the US. This further justifies the need for search marketers not only to be on Bing, but also be relevant on Bing. This doesn’t mean just having simple branded campaigns visible with a couple one-off non-branded campaigns that you know your client will care about. No. Paid search marketers need a full comprehensive paid search program within Bing. But time and resources are limited. With so much focus on Google, how can you put the same efforts into Bing? There is a solution.
The Solution: Automated Imports
Bing seems to be completely aware of this gap and responding. Bing now allows paid search marketers to automatically sync new campaigns and changes from AdWords directly into the Bing Ads interface. Whether it be ad copy, sitelinks, extensions, budgets or more, automated imports allows you to schedule imports from your AdWords campaigns to update campaigns in Bing.
via searchengineland.com
This is huge right now, considering the addition of expanded text ads within Bing. Since the Google deadline for editing standard text ads has passed (Deadline: Jan 31, 2017), all paid search marketers should have their ads already written within Google. This allows for a much easier import of all expanded text ads from Google into the Bing interface.
It also allows all those great changes you’ve made in Google to be applied in Bing. For example, let’s say you spent a lengthy amount of time diving into search query reports and adding negative keywords across multiple campaigns for the most refined and precise campaign. These negative keywords will then be automatically added into your Bing campaigns with the automated imports you set.
While seemingly the best thing to hit paid search management, there are some downfalls to automated imports.
The Downfall: Customization
These are the top four clear caveats to Automated Imports:
- Budget
- Oftentimes for businesses and organizations, Bing receives a smaller paid search budget than Google and as such, many marketers don’t run all the same campaigns within Bing. With automated imports, an advertiser can control what they choose to import from Google, but they have to be very careful to ensure they aren’t importing a bunch of high-cost campaigns and keywords that could screw up monthly budgets.
- Messaging
- This can be tricky. A good paid strategist tests ad copy, and tests often. When syncing campaigns across both engines, one can essentially run a test on both engines, gather more data, and get a better understanding of what messaging works best for users. Even with the additional data through automated imports, running the same test across both engines forces you to miss out on the opportunity to test differently on each engine.
- Campaign Structure
- Campaign structure per engine may be different depending on goals. For example, on Google, an advertiser may be more focused on a KPI like total revenue, whereas on Bing, the advertiser may be focused on return on ad spend (ROAS). These two different KPIs would have much different campaign structures, as well as bidding strategies. With automated imports, the advertiser would have to be very meticulous on what is imported, how, and at what bid and budget.
- “A (Google) Doesn’t Always Equal B (Bing)”
- Another downfall is Google and Bing aren’t always one in the same. For example, often times we see a keyword that may perform poorly on Google, yet perform well on Bing and vice versa. If too many changes are made in Google without cross-referencing Bing, a paid search marketer could be pausing their most profitable keyword in Bing and not even know it.
Conclusion
Overall, automated imports is a tool every paid search strategist could use to make working in both Google and Bing easier. The most important things they must keep in mind are: the overall goal of the paid search program, the differences between Google and Bing for the client, and what can run on both engines in-sync to best reach their KPIs.
