Whether your business is looking to use Q4 as the last push toward meeting annual corporate projections, or you're one of the many online retailers who does the majority of its business from October through December, year-end marketing strategies often mean “make it or break it” time. So, is your search marketing ready to help generate a year-end boost?

With holiday sales coming from Google increasing 59% last year and Google maintaining a 65% search market share, it’s clear that Google should be central to your search strategy. But if you want to increase your search marketing return this year, it might also make sense to incorporate Bing’s paid search adCenter platform and Bing Webmaster Tools for SEO. Here are 6 reasons why digital marketers should use Bing for paid search.

1. Bing Serves 30% of All Searches

According to comScore, the search alliance of Yahoo and Bing combined represent 30% of the U.S. online search market. Bing not only serves its search results on Yahoo!’s portal, but it also has 14.1% search share itself. And Bing’s search share percentage is rising fast. (In April of 2010, Bing had 9% of search market.)

2. Bing's Cost-Per-Click (CPC) Costs Less

Of course, every keyword and client differs, but here are just a few examples of recent keyword CPC costs we’ve experienced with our clients on Bing versus Google PPC (all Avg. Pos 1).

3. Bing's Ad Platform Results Are Similar to Google's

Keywords that work best on Google often have similar results on Bing. Try this:

• Test on Google first. The search volume will help you optimize.
• When satisfied with results, port campaigns and keywords over to Bing.
• Utilize templates to port accounts. NOTE: Bing actually encourages this by making it easy to import your Google campaigns directly into Bing.
• For additional information on how to import Google AdWords into Bing, download this free guide.

4. Bing Has Made Recent Platform Improvements

Bing recently made some welcomed changes to its daily budget options. Now you only need to specify how much you want to spend each day. The adCenter system then determines your monthly maximum amount. The benefit of the new change is a lesser daily commitment requirement for budget.

5. Bing Offers Greater Ad Flexibility

Google has a 25-character title limit, while Bing and Yahoo! have a 40-character limit. Just think. If you add those 15 characters to your Bing PPC -- and other “lazy” marketers don’t -- you could gain a competitive advantage with better performing ads.

6. Bing May Lead to Better Sales & Conversion Rates

Some studies show that retail companies tend to get better sales conversion rates with Bing. For our B2B companies, lead conversion rates are the same on Google as they are on Bing. But even so, if CPCs are 50-70% lower on Bing, your overall ROI is going to improve.

Overall, Bing's paid search channel can help achieve full, year-end growth for your business. It's clear Bing has taken a big chunk of the search market, and by strategically investing in its paid search platform, you can get found by people who are searching for your goods and services on Bing and Yahoo!, and not Google.

Google may still be the search giant, but you can still leverage other platforms in your search marketing efforts. Are you optimizing your paid search strategy for these other platforms?


This a guest post by Donald Nosek, VP business development at ymarketing, a full service digital marketing agency and sponsor at this year's HubSpot User Group Summit.