Microsoft Is Shaking Up Search Marketing With An All-New Bing

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Bing Network for IZEA. All opinions are 100% mine. Microsoft is finally going alone. It’s taken off the training wheels, put both hands on the handlebars… and it might even have attached a rocket to the back wheel. Last month, the company announced the end of the Yahoo Bing Network, the advertising network it ran with Yahoo, and the launch of Bing Network, an advertising network it’s running alone. It’s a big step for a giant company, and it’s been a long time coming. For years, we’ve all grown used to Google being the standard for search and for search marketing. But over the last few years, Microsoft has been quietly growing its search tool. As PC users have upgraded to Windows 10, searches with Bing have grown by 30 percent. About 60 million people in the US only use Microsoft’s search engine, and a quarter of the clicks on ads that run across the Bing network are the result of queries that were looked for exclusively on Bing. That’s a big audience for marketers that’s only available from Microsoft. The company also says that those searchers spend 22 percent more than average. That’s a stat that should win all of our attention. Microsoft has built that audience by not being just on websites. It also powers the search fields on the Xbox, inside Windows 10, in Apple’s Siri and in Microsoft’s PC assistant, Cortana. It’s also used on Yelp and Foursquare and it’s Bing that drives the translation of tweets on Twitter. Bing has long been the default search on my browser and apparently I was also using it during my experiment as an Uber driver: Bing powers the company’s mapping units. Who knew? If you’re not using Bing to make your online searches, there’s a good chance that you’re using it somewhere else, and you probably didn’t even know. This is all good news, and it’s news that every marketer needs to pay attention to. The search market is big enough for than one giant player and we need to know about all of them, especially when we’re engaging in digital marketing. If 60 million people are only searching with Bing, then I want to know if my audience is among that 60 million. If people are breaking off their alien-bashing to look for a new game controller while using their Xbox, then if I’m selling games controllers I’d want to be there. I’m always talking about the importance of testing. It’s the only way to find out for certain which strategies work best for you. Microsoft seems to be breathing a new breath of life into Bing so this is the time to begin testing. If you’re buying traffic or leads through search marketing you should create an account and experiment with Bing Network’s ad settings. Play around with the content network and the search network, and compare the results with what you’ve been receiving in the past. This is an exciting time. Change is coming to search marketing, and we all need to stay on top of it. Learn more about Bing Network

The post Microsoft Is Shaking Up Search Marketing With An All-New Bing appeared first on Joel Comm | Author, Speaker, Entrepreneur, Consultant.