If you’re looking to make the most of your Microsoft Advertising account (formerly Bing ads) then you’ve come to the right place. Did you know that Microsoft Advertising (MSA) has a 22% PC market share in Canada and 37% in the US? To reach a sophisticated audience, you should maximize this platform’s capabilities.
With an optimized Microsoft Ads account, you can leverage unique targeting capabilities and reach your audience through an extensive list of networks and syndicated partners.
Search ads are your bottom-funnel best friend. You know what they are and what they do, but did you know that you can add image extensions to your ads to increase engagement? Delight users with impactful imagery and, in return, bring relevant visitors to your site.
You can add a single image or associate multiple images with each campaign or ad group. You can also extend into the audience network with image extensions by adding a positive audience ad bid adjustment. Attract attention, allow your ads to show in more places, and drive high-quality clicks to your site.
Display ads are a proven awareness tactic to showcase great imagery about your product or service and remind users to take the desired action. Some may say that display ads are a thing of the past, but those people would be wrong.
When used correctly, display ads add valuable reach and frequency to a campaign. They help new users discover your brand or function as a reminder to those who have already engaged with your site. The Microsoft Audience Network, however, is a native ad solution leveraging Microsoft Graph (AI) data that takes your images/shopping feed and showcases them to appear integrated with the site users are exploring. This makes the ad feel less intrusive. While most of your conversions will likely come from search, users are often influenced by interacting with display ads.
Microsoft Audience Ads offer a unique owned and operated, brand-safe environment for these ads to run on, which includes MSN.com, Outlook, and the Microsoft Edge browser, among others.
Ad extensions will get your audience where they need to go, faster. The main benefit of using ad extensions is to help provide relevant shortcuts to users to get them the information they need, whether that be a specific web page or just a phone number. These additions drive actionable results. MSA has a number of great extensions to help create engagement, garner more clicks, and drive leads.
We’ve already discussed the benefits of image extensions available through Microsoft Audience Network, but there’s more! There are sitelink extensions to drive users to specific pages, call extensions for that more-personal connection, and price extensions.
Some of the unique extension offerings that Microsoft has available as part of the Action Extension offerings are Review Extensions and over 60 different predefined CTA. All are designed to help increase your ad visibility on the SERP. The predefined CTAs let people know what action you want them to take such as “Download”, “Sign Up”, or “Get Quote” — and they’re all supported in 9 different languages.
Ensure you’re reaching the right people. Why waste dollars trying to reach everyone when you have the tools to target those most likely to interact with your business? MSA is uniquely capable of tapping into LinkedIn audiences meaning that you can target by company, industry, and job type on top of your usual geographic and demographic targeting.
The Microsoft Ads account also offers In-Market audiences. This is to bucket people’s online behaviour into categories such as “pet lover”, “car enthusiast”, or “loves DIY projects”. You also have the option to incorporate custom lists so targeting the right people has never been easier — or more accurate.
Do you already have a Google Ads account with search ads running? Do you like finding efficiencies? You can import your existing Google Ads into your Microsoft Ads Account platform. This a.) keeps your accounts consistent and b.) saves you a ton of time. Performance may differ by platform so regular optimizations would still be key and unique to the available data.
Now that you have your Microsoft tools, tips, and tricks you’re ready to take a look around your account. Ensure that your account is fully optimized and that you’re taking advantage of the unique audiences, extensions, and networks that Microsoft offers to maximize reach and get the most out of your campaigns. Looking for support to review your account? We can help! Simply get in touch with us today.
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