Bing Brings You the Bling Unlocking the secrets to this little goldmine
INTRODUCTION I m gonna keep this short and sweet because that s my style. Bing. What a sweet little sucker of a traffic source this is. Five massive benefits 1) It s almost like anything goes 2) You get super cheap clicks 3) You can send the traffic send pretty much anywhere, it s a little bit like the early days of Adwords 4) Bing is a bit desperate to capture market share 5) Some people are forced to use Bing by default (e.g. Internet Explorer users) and don t know how to switch to Google. Bing clicks are legitimate and I ve been getting them for as little as 0.06c a click. Now, I ve spent a lot of time in the solo ad world buying traffic. You don t get cheap, honest clicks like that in the solo ad world. It s sharp and punchy, designed to give you everything you need to get up and running quickly. A few areas you are going to love include: a) Exact demos of pages that work incredibly well with Bing Traffic b) How to outsource the entire Bing Ads setup for peanuts so it can free up your time Let s get into this little firecracker and unlock a whole new traffic source that you can dive into!
1. NICHES THAT WORK WITH BING ADS 4 2. TYPES OF PAGES THAT WORK WELL ON BING ADS 6 INTRODUCTION TOBING QUALITY SCORE 6 SIMPLE SQUEEZE PAGE 8 INFORMATIVE SQUEEZE PAGE 9 BLOG POST 10 ARE THERE ANY OTHER TYPES OF PAGES THAT WORK WELL? 12 3. HOW TO DO KEYWORD RESEARCH FOR BING ADS 13 FIND YOUR MAIN KEYWORDS 13 START BUILDING OUT YOUR KEYWORD LIST 14 RESEARCH TIME 15 SORTING AND SAVING THE RESULTS 17 4. HOW TO SETUP A BING ADS CAMPAIGN 19 CAMPAIGN SETTINGS 19 CREATE AN AD 22 KEYWORDS 23 TARGETING AND ADVANCED SETTINGS 25 WHAT ARE AD GROUPS AND WHY DO YOU NEED THEM? 27 KEEP TWEAKING YOUR ADS 27 5. WHERE TO OUTSOURCE YOUR BING ADS SETUP 28 FINAL WORDS 31
1. Niches that work with Bing Ads The answer to this is really anything. What are you into? So are Bing Ads. They want to be your friend. They re a bit desperate. You can dominate them :D But, while some niches might perhaps be easier than others to get profitable on Bing Ads, the fact is that almost anything can work with the right combination of enticing ads, careful keyword research and a suitable landing page. What's important to remember about Bing is that it's the default search engine on many PC's. This can mean a few things: 1) The people may not be that savvy on the ol computer 2) The people may be old 3) The people may like Bing (*gasp*) 4) The people may accidentally be searching on Bing 5) The people may not be bothered to change their browser. But what does that list have in common? They re all people with needs, desires, wants, feelings, emotions, email addresses and cash (well mostly) lol. That said, the majority of the popular niches favored by online marketers work very well on Bing Ads. Here's a (non-exhaustive) list with some suggestions: Internet marketing/making money online Magic Survival
Woman s health (the more obscure the better) Paleo diet Brain performance and improvement Learn to play musical instruments (guitar etc.) How to pick up chicks How to pick up dudes Fertility Financial offers like insurance and loans Diet and weight loss offers Beauty/anti-aging/skin care Information products (think Clickbank) Physical products (think Commission Junction, Amazon, etc)...and many more! My recommendation is that you start with something you know reasonably well. That makes the whole process a lot easier as you'll be somewhat familiar with keywords, terminology and so on. Even better if you already have a site up and running that you are not leveraging Bing Ads to send traffic to. Personally I ve been using Bing Ads in a number of niches. Definitely the Internet Marketing niches (and a couple of others that I will not go into here)
2. Types of pages that work well on Bing Ads If you've heard about how strict Adwords are with what kind of landing pages they allow, it should come as welcome news to learn that Bing is a bit more relaxed. That doesn't mean there are no rules at all, but typically you won't have to worry as much about it on Bing. Introduction to Bing Quality Score Just like Adwords, Bing gives each landing page a "Quality Score" based on their perception of how relevant it is to your ads, and how useful it is to the searcher. This is an automated process conducted by a bot that visits the page at regular intervals. The better your quality score is the cheaper your clicks will be, so it's something you should be paying attention to in order to get those super-cheap visitors. The easiest way to get a good quality score is to try to ensure your ads are relevant to your keywords, and your landing page is relevant to your ads. Simply including the keywords you bid on (or variations of them) in both your ads and on your landing pages is often sufficient to bump your QS. You really must get the keyword your targeting into your title/meta tags as well as the actual content of the landing page. You may even have to add some short informational text on the subject to be deemed relevant and useful. You should also try to offer a good "user experience" on your landing page. It should be fast loading and offer the solution to what the user is searching for (not be misleading). Also, be careful not to include auto-playing video on your landing page as that's something that is frowned upon.
Some types of landing pages, like a typical squeeze page with very little information and just a big opt-in box (like the 'Simple squeeze page' below), can be deemed to not offer a good user experience because they "force" the user to opt-in. It's not always going to happen, but there's a chance it might. The remedy for this is usually adding more text content and information to the page. Most of the time you'll be able to get a good campaign going by just understanding the basics of QS, but in case you want to dig deeper and learn exactly how it works, check out these resources: http://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us/help-topic/howto/50813/quality-score-in-depth http://www.searchenginejournal.com/things-you-need-to-know-about-bingads-quality-score/64491/ Now that you have a basic grasp of how Quality Score works, let's go over a few types of pages that work well with Bing traffic.
Simple squeeze page The first type of page that works well in Bing is about as basic as they come. One teasing, well-written headline and a big opt-in box below it, and that's it! These types of pages usually convert extremely well, especially if the "lead magnet" (the free report or similar that's offered in exchange for an e-mail address) promises to answer exactly what the user is looking for. This type of page is definitely a good place to start. High converting, simple to create. The only thing about these style squeeze page is that sometimes Bing don t like em. The Quality Score is just too low to get those tasty super cheap clicks So if this happens, then we have a solution that is almost foolproof:
Informative squeeze page This is a beefed-up version of a regular squeeze page, with lots of extra content on the page. Usually the opt-in box and main benefits are listed above the fold (the part of the page the user can see without scrolling) and the rest of the content below. In many cases the content below can be simple filler content, mainly there to please the bots and increase the Quality Score. While this type of page may not get as incredibly high opt-in rates as the simple type, you may actually find that the quality of subscribers will be higher. And
when you're building a list, quality is extremely important as you know. What's the use of having a big list if no one is opening your e-mails anyway? And this brings me to example number 3 of the type of page you can send that sweet sweet Bing traffic: Blog post Here's one type of landing page that not a lot of people think about trying.
Actually, some wouldn't even call it a landing page since it's actually just a post on a regular blog. On a first glance this doesn't look like a commercial site at all. The trick, however, is popping up an opt-in box at the right moment (preferably when the user has started reading the content, which has to be engaging and relevant to hook them). Since the person has already started reading and learned that you do indeed have something interesting to say, they will be eager to opt in when the offer pops up. Here's an example of a pop-up that works well: For best results with this method, try different types of posts and experiment with the interval before popping up the opt-in box. Also, be advised that Bing doesn't like pop-ups much. If you try to pop the box immediately upon arrival, or automatically pop it when they try to go back or
close the page, you may find yourself with a low Quality Score. Try to keep the user experience in mind when designing your campaign. Another great example of a site that does this well is Quick Sprout. Check out the way he manages it here: http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/12/10/how-spending-162301-42-onclothes-made-me-692500/ Are there any other types of pages that work well? Absolutely! Almost any type of landing page can work well on Bing Ads, but the ones we've covered so far are the best types if you're trying to build a list using the super-cheap traffic available on Bing. If your goal is making direct sales from your ads, you may want to other types of pages (like review pages). Keep in mind though that in most situations you'll be best off building a list first and then going for the sale. It usually converts better, meaning a better bang for your buck, plus you get to keep the subscribers so you can promote to them more than once.
3. How to do keyword research for Bing Ads the step by step part ;) Keyword research for Bing is actually a simple, straight-forward process that is easy to learn. If you've ever done any other form of keyword research for something like Adwords or SEO, you'll feel right at home. Don't worry if you haven't though, you'll pick up on it quickly. Find your main keywords The first thing you need to do, before you start the actual research process, is figure out the main keyword(s) in your niche. You'll later use these as seeds to expand on and generate a whole list of related keywords. Believe it or not, the most effective way of coming up with main keywords is actually using your own brain. You simply need to figure out the broadest possible keywords in your niche. For example, if you were to advertise a diet product your main keywords would be things like "diet", "lose weight" and "weight loss". If you're in the Internet marketing niche it could be something like "make money online". Keep in mind that these are just examples. If you think about it you could probably come up with more main keywords in each of these niches. The point, though, is only choosing keywords people are likely to search for. For example, people could theoretically be searching for "eliminate fat" when they want to lose weight, but is it likely? Probably not. Go for the most obvious terms only (at least for now).
Start building out your keyword list Once you have assembled a list of your main keywords, it's time to start building it out in the Bing Keyword Research tool. You find it under Tools > Research Keywords in the top menu. Now, before you do anything else, let's go over the various settings this tool offers you. To see (and change) them, click on 'Advanced targeting options:' just above the 'Search' button. The available settings will pop into view, looking something like this: So let's start from the top and go over what these settings mean and how they affect your research. Language This should be set to 'English' unless you're doing keyword research in another language.
Country/Region Changing this from the default (US only) will affect both the keywords it suggests for you and also the search volumes. Remember though that your setting here doesn't affect your actual campaign when you run it; this is just for research purposes. It's fine to leave it at US only in most cases, unless you know you're also going to be targeting other countries. Device This also doesn't affect your actual campaign, but it will affect the search volumes. For research purposes it's fine to leave it at the default setting, which is 'Desktops and Laptops'. Max suggestions per keyword This is one setting you could actually change in order to get more results. You can go ahead and set this to '60' instead of the default '30'. Show brand names Here's a setting where you may need to do some thinking before you decide. Basically, the idea is to allow you to hide brand names (trademarks) from the suggestions so you don't risk bidding on them in your campaign. You should be fine leaving this at 'Yes' unless you know that there are many brand names among the keywords which you want to avoid using. Research time Okay, we've gone over the settings and now we're ready to actually start researching some keywords. To start the process, enter your main keywords in the Keywords box and hit 'Search'.
The results will be displayed in the table below it, looking similar to this: These results are from the main keywords "make money online" and "work from home". Let's go over what the different columns mean: Last Month Searches This is how many searches that were conducted in total last month for each keyword, using the settings you specified (language, device, etc). Impr. Short for 'impressions', meaning how many ad impressions that were shown for each keyword. Clicks How many clicks on ads that were generated from these impressions.
CTR (%) CTR stands for Click-Through Rate and is really just the amount of clicks divided by the amount of impressions. A very low CTR means people who searched for this keyword weren't interested in what the available ads had to offer them. The reason could be that most of the ads were irrelevant to their search term, or perhaps that they used a "navigational" keyword, like how when people search for Facebook 99.9% of them are going to click the #1 organic result because that's what they are looking for. Avg. CPC This is an interesting, though rarely accurate, number. This shows you the average cost per click paid by the advertisers for each keyword. A high CPC usually means the keyword is profitable to advertise on, for whatever reason, as advertisers are prepared to pay more for an ad that nets them a positive return on investment. Low CPC's are usually seen on keywords with low commercial intent, meaning they're difficult to turn into sales/leads. Take these numbers with a grain of salt though and use them mostly to compare with each other. As stated before, they're rarely accurate and do not reflect what you end up paying per click later on. Spend This is just the Avg CPC multiplied with the number of clicks - no need to pay much attention to this. Sorting and saving the results By clicking on the different columns you can sort the results as you wish. It is often a good idea to sort the results after Last Month Searches, high to low, especially if you're looking primarily for keywords with good search volume.
You could also try sorting them in order of least to most expensive CPC to find those keywords that you may be able to get really cheap clicks on. Don't forget to look at the CTR and Clicks columns though to ensure people are really clicking on the ads for these keywords. Before you go ahead and save these keywords, or add them to one of your campaigns (if you've already created one), you need to go through all of them manually and ensure that they're actually relevant. It's very common for some completely irrelevant keywords to slip in among the results. In the 'make money online' example you just saw, Bing actually thought keywords like 'homework help' were relevant. Needless to say, those would perform very poorly in this campaign. So, to summarize: You're looking for keywords with high search volume, good CTR, relevance (as determined by you) and low CPC. Those are the keywords you'll want to keep.
4. How to setup a Bing Ads campaign Creating your first campaign on Bing Ads is actually not that difficult. Once you have your landing page ready to go and a list of suitable keywords, it all comes down to deciding on some campaign settings, placing your bids (how much you want to pay per click) and writing the ads. Simple! Let's get started. In your Bing Ads account, click on 'Campaigns' and then 'Create campaign'. Choose 'Search & content campaign' in the dropdown menu. You'll see the 'Create campaign' page that has three different sections: 'Campaign settings', 'Create an ad' and 'Choose your keywords'. We'll go over them one by one. Campaign settings
Some of these settings you'll actually recognize from the keyword research chapter. Campaign name Pretty self-explanatory, choose a campaign name (whatever you want). Time zone This is mainly for reporting purposes, and if you later on choose to run your ads only during specific times. For now leave it at your current time zone. Campaign budget Now this one is interesting. Here you can set the maximum amount that you're willing to spend on this campaign, on a daily or monthly basis. If you're just starting out it is recommended that you set this low and increase it later on. Note that the default setting is to spend your budget evenly throughout the time period (day/month), meaning if you would set it to $24 per day it would try to spend $1 per hour for you. However, you can also click on 'Daily budget options' and switch to 'Accelerated if you would prefer to spend your whole budget as fast as possible (useful if you're testing things and want quick results). Ad language Choose the language your customers speak. In most cases you'll want to leave this on English.
Locations For this one you need to think about what you're trying to sell. If it's an affiliate offer you should check the terms of it to see which countries that are accepted. If you're mainly trying to build a list in order to sell info products or similar, consider going with the main English-speaking countries (US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). Or, stick to US only if you're uncertain. Advanced location options In most situations you're going to want this set to 'Show ads to people in your targeted location'. The other settings will include people not in your target location who are only viewing pages related to it (unlikely to affect your campaign but still not a good idea).
Create an ad Next up is creating your first ad for this campaign. You will probably end up writing many more ads for this campaign later on (we'll go over the reasons for this later), but for now let's just write one initial ad for the campaign. Here's how the section looks: As you can see, an ad on Bing Ads consists of 4 different parts: Ad title The title should be eye-catching, to the point and ideally include at least part of the search term/keyword. Let's say the keywords you're bidding on are 'make money online' and variations, some example titles could be: How To Make Money Online Making Money Online Is Easy Ways To Make Money Online And so on. They can be up to 25 characters long, and it is usually a good idea to capitalize the words as in the examples. Ad text This is the main part of your ad where you'll present your offer and give the user a reason to click on your ad. You've got 71 characters to convince them. A
good start would be a brief description (including keywords if possible) plus a "call to action" that tells the visitor what you expect them to do. Example: Free course teaches you how to make money online. Sign up today! That example could work for a free e-mail course promoted through a squeeze page. You will, of course, have to tailor the message to what you're trying to sell. Just make sure you don't promise something you can't deliver, and that you try to speak directly to the searcher, providing an answer to what they're looking for. Display URL This will be shown below the ad text when the ad is displayed. In most scenarios you'll want to put in just your domain, or your domain and a path. Examples: MyDomain.com MyDomain.com/course Believe it or not, even this part will affect your CTR (click-through rate), so you may have to experiment to see what works best. Destination URL Nothing to experiment with here, just input the full URL to your landing page. That's it for this section, next up is adding your keywords. Keywords Not a whole lot to do here if you've already researched your keywords. Enter your keywords in the box and click on 'Add'. They'll pop up in the right box, looking like this:
Choosing the type The 'Type' column is where you choose what variations of this keyword that will trigger your ad to show. The main choices are broad, phrase and exact. There's also 'content' but ignore that one for now as that relates to Bing's contextual ad network which is something else entirely. Broad match will show your display whenever someone searches for anything remotely related to your keyword. For example, 'make money online' on broad match would probably trigger when someone searches for 'online money making' too. This option will get you the most impressions, but you risk showing your ad on unrelated keywords too. Phrase match will match whenever someone searches for a term that includes your keyword, like 'make money online free' or 'ways to make money online'. Basically any term where 'make money online' is present. Exact match is the strictest of them, triggering your ad only when someone searches for the exact keyword. This will give you the least amount of impressions, but they are guaranteed to be related to your ad/keyword. So how do you choose among them? There is no right or wrong here. As a general rule it can be a good idea to start with exact match keywords and then only change the type if that doesn't generate enough impressions. It's definitely easier to "lose your shirt" with broad match as you risk bidding on tons of unrelated terms without even knowing.
How much to bid? In the right dropdown box there will be a number of suggestions, showing how much it would cost to get your ad on the first page, in the "mainline" section (not in the sidebar but above the organic results) or in the best possible position. There is no rule to dictate which one to choose, most of the time you'll have to keep experimenting with your bids until you reach a good balance between good traffic and low click costs. You should not bid lower than the first page bid, however, or you'll get practically no impressions at all. The other options are always more expensive than just bidding for the first page, but in some cases it can definitely pay off to try them. When you're done adding your keywords, click on 'Save' to bring up the next step. Targeting and advanced settings Now you'll see a new section that looks similar to this:
Usually you can leave most of these as they are if you don't have good reasons to change them. However, consider changing the 'Ad distribution' setting so your ads aren't displayed on the 'Content network' as that is a completely different beast than regular search and should be targeted in a separate campaign (if you even want to try it - most find it very difficult to make money with). It's also possible to choose whether you want your ads to display on Bing's and Yahoo's partner site or not. Some people find that this gives them a boost in traffic with good conversions, while others find this traffic to convert poorly and choose to turn partner sites off. You may have to experiment with this setting to find what works for you. Another option to pay attention to is 'Device' under 'Targeting options'. Here you can choose whether you want to display your ads on desktops and tablets, smartphones or both. If you're promoting a website or affiliate offer that doesn't have a mobile version you should definitely uncheck smartphones or you'll have to pay for a lot of traffic that will never convert.
That concludes the campaign creation. Hit 'Save' and you will be taken to your new campaign within the Bing Ads interface. You can now choose to tweak it, or just wait until it starts delivering traffic! What are ad groups and why do you need them? In order to make your keywords and ads as relevant as possible you will probably want to divide them into ad groups. Bing will give you a default ad group when you first create the campaign, but if you take some time to create more it usually pays off big time. The basic idea is to make one ad group around each main keyword (remember those from the keyword research chapter?). Then you'll add only keywords directly related to that main keyword, and write one or more ads that contain the main keyword. This way everything is as relevant as it gets and your Quality Score will be high, resulting in cheaper clicks and more traffic. Using the previous example, we could make two ad groups. One called 'make money online' and one called 'earn money online'. The first could contain keywords such as 'make money online free' and 'how to make money online', while the second could include 'how to earn money online' and 'ways to earn money online'. You may not need to do this if your keywords are already tightly related to each other, but if there are many variations it is definitely a good idea to build out separate ad groups for them. Keep tweaking your ads Now all you have to do is wait for Bing to start showing your ads. It usually doesn't take long. After that it's just a matter of continually tweaking your ads for better CTR, lower click costs and higher Quality Score. You should never stop experimenting - there's always something to improve!
5. Where to outsource your Bing Ads setup I love this part of the process. And to be honest, it s something I always try to put into my products. Why? Because it is one of the most important skills you will acquire online. It is super powerful. Breaks down barriers that you come up against. Frees up your time. Really, the benefits are just massive. Let s get into it. If you don't have the time required to setup campaigns, or you'd rather focus mainly on other parts of your business, you can actually outsource campaign creation to a skilled professional. It doesn't have to cost much, and it could be a wise decision if you're just starting out. Once you have one good campaign setup by a professional you can always refer back to that for inspiration when you want to get another campaign going. Now the thing to keep in mind when you're shopping around for someone to do this is to look for someone with a proven track record. You don't want someone who can't prove their skills and who can't show you reviews from previous satisfied customers. Almost all freelancing/gig platforms let you see reviews so that shouldn't be a problem. Also, don't be afraid to ask a lot of questions if anything's unclear.
Here are some example freelancers you can work with: odesk https://www.odesk.com/o/profiles/users/_~0157c37e614ad60d84/ https://www.odesk.com/o/profiles/users/_~016fa89d7538d534ff/ One great technique is to filter by 4.5 stars and above with a maximum $10 per hour rate, andthen contact the people you find through that. You can use this filter and URL for that: https://www.odesk.com/o/profiles/browse/fb/45/max/10/?q=bing Don't forget that you can also put up your own job posting detailing what you are looking for and let freelancers bid on it. Then you can simply sort through the bids and go with one that looks skilled and doesn't cost too much. Fiverr I've actually used this guy and paid him $30 to setup my campaign: https://www.fiverr.com/fagun33/setup-bing-ads-campaign-within-1-day It was fast, efficient and got me some good traffic. Others you could try: https://www.fiverr.com/marketsearch1/build-your-microsoft-bing-ads-ppcsearchcampaign?context=advanced_search&context_type=auto&funnel=2014120708 210248110056480 A word of caution Please do your due diligence before hiring a freelancer. It's always better to take your time than to rush things and possibly regret it later. That said,
learning to outsource low-level tasks is definitely a step in the right direction towards building a successful online business, so it's definitely something you should consider.
Final words Bing Ads. Get into it. This has been a mash up of step by step info for how to get you up and running with Bing Ads ASAP to drive traffic. But the *real* value in this product is opening your world to an alternative traffic source that is actually extremely high quality. I really want to make sure you have everything you need to start firing down some Bing traffic to your offers and site So, you should have a pretty good grasp of how to build a campaign on Bing Ads. Hopefully your first campaign turns out a profitable success, but if not, don't give up! PPC advertising is all about optimizing, trying different offers and angels, and tweaking stuff until you find the "magic" combination that just works. Honestly, having a successful PPC campaign running is as close as it gets to legally printing money. I know it sounds ridiculous, but that's exactly what it feels like. You put x dollars in, you get x+y dollars out. Simple and predictable. Now, get to work and good luck!