Paid Search Engine Exposure is No Longer Optional

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Unfortunately, it is true that paid search engine exposure using Google Ads on Google.com and Microsoft Advertising ads on Bing.com is no longer optional for business growth.

The ever shrinking landscape and increased competition for space online and particularly on small screen devices has made positioning your brand or service in paid search engine ads nearly mandatory for growth. Of interesting note is that even social networks are starting to become paid vehicles for business too.

The days of posting great content and being discovered and placed organically with that content are nearly a thing of the past.

With a typical business spending 10% of it’s sales budget on marketing, it is time to review how much you are spending in paid search and even paid social placements and platforms.

Here’s what we see as of March 2020 as important trends and client use:

• Clients are increasing budgets in Google Ads and using more Display and audience features to provide value and targeted results. The typical client is spending over $3,000 for clicks per month and many significantly more as they receive a strong return on their investment.

• We have clients in the social marketing space, but have not seen high numbers move into paid marketing hereyet, but competitors in some industries are investing in sponsored content in social in increasing numbers. This will be a high growth area for spending in the upcoming years for some business sectors. Specifically we expect this growth to happen on Facebook and Instagram.

• More clients are moving into Microsoft Advertising as remarketing can still be done for healthcare and legal professionals – whereas these markets are banned from using this type of advertising through Google Ads.

• We are seeing strong interest in Microsoft Advertising for LinkedIn targeted audiences on Bing.com. For most accounts we are not seeing this as an option in account settings yet, but it is coming, and will be an excellent reason to advertise on Bing.com. For business to business selling clients – this new targeting option will be reason enough to move into the Microsoft Advertising platform.

• Google is making big changes to the Google Partners program and many agencies will be dropping or not be able to re certify with the  new program. Our value to you is that we will continue to work to comply with all requirements to keep our Google Partner status. We will soon be certified in all areas and fully expect our certification to be renewed in June. Watch your account management firm’s credentials to assure that they do not let slip this important qualification that sets professional account managers, like ourselves, apart from managers that are not serious or skilled in account management.

As a Google Partner and Microsoft Advertising Partner, McCord Web Services takes strategic account management seriously. Find out more about our services and qualifications today. We would be glad to chat with you to see if our services and capabilities are a good match for your search engine marketing management needs.

How to Get Started Advertising on Bing to LinkedIn Users

Image of a team reviewing a proposal from McCord Web Services in a conference room.
Nancy McCord is a Microsoft Advertising Certified Professional.
Nancy McCord is a Microsoft Advertising Certified Professional.

Microsoft Advertising now allows you to target LinkedIn users, based on their profile settings, with pay per click ads on Bing.com.

For many Business to Business companies, being able to target decision makers is a potentially productive marketing strategy.

How do you get started?

Once you have set up your Microsoft Advertising or Bing Ads account you can select your campaign and then scroll to the section called targeting. It is typically below where you will set your locations to target.

Once you tick open the selector you will see targeting options for company, job function, and industry.  Microsoft Advertising will set a plus click bid of 15% which you can adjust manually up or down.

We have found that targeting by company can be highly valuable. You can add company names not URLs in the add field one by one manually. There is no bulk import option in the online ad platform.

Once a company is entered, Microsoft Advertising will show a drop down and you confirm that this is the firm you want to target. Just complete and repeat for each company name entry.

Important Note

Remember, this is totally different from LinkedIn advertising. The ads and targeting you are using in Microsoft Advertising are to show ads with a plus up bid for people with LinkedIn profiles that are using Bing.com for a search. They will only see your ads there.

Get Help with Your Microsoft Advertising Program Today

If you need more information about how you can use LinkedIn targeting for your Microsoft Advertising, just visit our services page on our website to learn more and to get started with our services.

 

How to Move Your Website to SSL

Be in the Know on Microsoft Advertising

Many website owners are getting approached by their hosts to move from http to https. What is important to know is that there is an easy way to do this and a hard way.

Here are my tips to easily move from http to https

Typically I will recommend that you buy your SSL certificate through your web host. Although it may be slightly more expensive, when you use your host’s provider your host is eager to help you set up your SSL cert correctly.

I paid $199 for my SSL certificate which is renewable each year through my web host. Once you have purchase the certificate, your host take over the installation on your server. For most clients this is all that needs to be done. Everything should work yet be under the green padlock and your site should start with https.

I do recommend that if you do move to SSL that you have your webmaster review your website files to assure that there are no hard coded in page links within your website referencing http. If there are, you will want them to change them to https.

Also if you are running WordPress in a directory on your site, you will want to update your logins and locations so that your blog and the blog access control panel are now all https.

Last of all do not forget to update the links in Google Ads. Change your site links and ad URLs to https to complete the project.

One tip, I typically recommend moving to https before you do a website redesign. There is nothing worse than having to troubleshoot server issues for https while you are troubleshooting a new site launch. Don’t do these updates at the same time.