My office assistant works remotely and he and I manage our work together through a calendar in Outlook.com, Sky Drive, and Skype. I am excited that soon Microsoft will integrate Skype into Outlook.com making it easier for us to do business.
My son is my assistant and when he returned to college three hours north of us we needed a way to stay in touch with tasking and to effectively manage files we both work on. Plus we found out that his cell phone doesn’t work great up in the mountainous Frostburg area. In preparation for him leaving we tried all types of applications to stay in touch. We settled on the ease of use of Outlook.com and Skype.
For over a year Microsoft has promised to include Skype in its set of online tools. Right now Skype is available in Outlook.com in the UK and the recent announcement states that Skype will be available for USA users in summer 2013. When it’s available you’ll need to download a browser plug-in, but one will be available for Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox.
To access the new feature you’ll simply click an new icon near a contact, in an instant message, or in an email. This new integration will make Outlook.com a terrific tool for business and personal use. I’ll let you know when I see this appear in my own account, but for now, just know it is coming and something to definitely consider checking out.
McCord Web Services is a Bing Ads Accredited Professional Company.
As a Google AdWords Certified Partner and Bing Ads Accredited Professional, I am very familiar with both platforms and the benefits and differences of each. This article will show you how to “Bing Up” and enhance your Bing Ads campaigns to mimic some of the functionality available in Google AdWords Enhanced Campaigns.Google AdWords has recently rolled out Enhanced Campaigns and will be migrating all AdWords advertisers into their new program by mid-June. If you have embraced AdWords Enhanced Campaigns early and like the new extra power of Enhanced Campaigns, here’s how you can “Enhance” your Bing Ads campaigns.
First, one important difference between AdWords and Bing Ads, if you had previously segregated your mobile campaigns out from your desktop and tablet campaigns you can still continue to do so with Bing Ads. Google AdWords did away with this option in Enhanced Campaigns.
Second, you can tweak your Bing Ads settings to provide much of the same functionality as Google AdWords Enhanced campaigns with a few savvy setting updates. Remember, in Bing Ads you have some of the same, but also improved functionality, as you can set your targeting at the campaign level or ad group level. In Google AdWords you only set targeting at the campaign level.
How to “Enhance” Your Bing Ads Program
For this example I am only going to mention how to “Enhance” settings at the campaign level, but you can follow these same steps at the ad group level as well, overriding any campaign settings.Let’s get started, click the campaign name from the campaign summary page and then click settings. Go to locations and open the selector by clicking the arrow. Tick the radio button next to “Selected cities, metro areas, states/provinces, and countries/regions”.
Use the “browse” or “research” tab underneath “Selected cities, metro areas, states/provinces, and countries/regions” to find the locations you want to add. Click to add your state or city name. Make sure to click to include that location and it will appear in the field just above in the “show your ads in these locations”. Make sure to change your incremental bid as you desire for these newly added locations.I will typically bid higher incrementally as I near the location to my client’s business. For example, my default bid may be at the US level, I may bid +10% for the state location, and I may bid +25% more for the city location. If you prefer you can bid by radius by selecting the radio button “near a business or other location”, but be aware you will only be able to set one radius location not multiple locations as in AdWords Enhanced Campaigns.
Just underneath the “Locations” section you will find “Targeting Options”, click to see your options in this section and review where you may want to consider adding additional incremental bids. Select days, hours, gender, and age. You can leave your bid at the default of +0% or bid up your selection up to +100% of your default bid. AdWords does not offer the ability to target age or gender at this time for search campaigns unlike Bing Ads.
In “Targeting” underneath the demographics options you can select which devices to show your ads on; desktops, mobile devices with full Internet browsers, and tablets. AdWords Enhanced Campaigns will only allow you to bid up or down on the mobile setting at the campaign level, but Bing Ads continued to allow you full control and even the ability to create a separate campaign or ad group to target advertising uniquely for mobile devices, tablets, or desktops.Although you cannot adjust bids incrementally by device in this screen, by setting up separate ad groups or campaigns and targeting different devices you have full bid control. It is easy to create “mirror” campaigns or ad groups by using Bing Ads Editor and the copy and paste function. Then, just set your device targeting uniquely as you desire and bid accordingly in your default CPC or keyword bid.
For many advertisers the ability to continue to segregate out advertising programs that target mobile only and desktop and tablets together separately will be worth the time to look carefully at advertising on Bing Ads if you are not already advertising there.
Make sure to create a smaller version text ad for mobile. Remember typically that even smartphones won’t be able to show all the allowed 70 characters of the description. I will typically use 40 to 45 characters out of the 70 available for best display on a smartphone, especially if I am creating ad text for a mobile only ad group or campaign.
At the campaign level click “ad extensions” and then make sure to add in your website sitelinks. Just click create and add up to 10 links for each campaign. Although you cannot select which to show on mobile, keep character count for the description in mind and keep your link title short yet descriptive. In the future Bing Ads will have call extension, but for now the U.S. does not have this option available.
Although there continue to be some differences between Google AdWords Enhanced Campaigns and Bing Ads you can tweak your Bing Ads program to mimic some of the same functionality that you may like in the new AdWords Enhanced Campaigns and you get to keep the functionality in Bing Ads that you have lost in AdWords in regards to separate device targeting.
About the Author
Nancy McCord is the founder and President of McCord Web Services LLC which is a Bing Ads Accredited Professional Company and provides Bing Ads account set up and management and Google AdWords account management services. Since 2001, Nancy McCord has developed a reputation as an expert on how businesses can promote their products and services on the Web using pay per click. You can visit Nancy and her firm at www.McCordWeb.com. Connect with her @mccordweb on Twitter, in the Bing Ads LinkedIn Group, +Nancy McCord at Google+, and on Facebook. You can also chat with Nancy at her Google+ Community online called Bing Ads Strategies.
April 8th, 2013 will be a big day for Skype and Microsoft. That’s the day that Microsoft pulls the plug on Live Messenger and other Live products in favor of Skype. Personally I loved the Live products. I used Live Mesh and Live Messenger for business and found both easy to use. Plus I used Live Mesh remote desktop when I traveled to connect to my computer all for free.
I like Skype but have not used it much, however I have already started to move ahead of the April 8th deadline to embrace these new products. When you set up Skype you are now asked to login with your Live ID which then migrates all your Live Messenger settings.
Here are just a few things you will be able to do with the new Skype:
What I find very exciting is to consider what Microsoft will be doing with Skype in the future. Will we see Bing Ads integration for click to call options for advertising? Will we see Skype used on Facebook as Bing tighten their partnership? Who’s to say what’s in store, but this is just the start of an exciting new integration with Skype and Microsoft products.
I am very careful in crafting my ad text so that when the dynamic keyword or phrase is inserted it makes sense to a reader. This is why my keyword trigger lists are small and concise and include a desired reader action such as buy, order, or purchase in the phrase. I will not duplicate these action words in my ad text; rather let the keyword phrase contain them.
Bing Ads has recently added some nice new capitalization options that you may not be aware of when it comes to dynamic text use. Here are some examples that now allow you to have total control over how your dynamic text appears in your ad’s title and description. Using the keyword phrase buy roses as an example:
{KeyWord} translates into Buy Roses (note the caps on B and R)
{keyword} translates into buy roses (note all lower case)
{Keyword} translates into Buy roses (note the caps on the B and lower case on the r)
There are even options for All Caps where appropriate based on how you capitalize the keyword contained within the brackets. For all examples, please visit the ‘How to use dynamic text to insert keywords in ads’ article to see all examples and uses.
Did you know that Bing Ads allows you to use one keyword in an ad that is all caps? So my dynamic text for Buy ROSES would be installed in the account as {KeyWORD:Buy ROSES}. Note the all caps on the word I want to be in all caps in the ad text. If I wanted BUY Roses, I would enter in {KEYWord:BUY Roses} instead. Be aware that excessive use of capitalization is not allowed. Check the editorial style guidelines here.
Where possible, but not always, I use {param1} insertion for unique URLs by keyword, and sometimes even {param2} and {param3} for promotional discount text by item. Read more about how to use the different forms of dynamic text here.
I always include default text when I am doing dynamic text insertion. For a keyword, use this format: {KeyWord:Buy Roses} note the colon with no space and then the default text capitalized the way I want it to appear. Bing Ads will automatically show your default ad text when you exceed your character count with a keyword phrase you had wanted inserted.
I have personally found that the click through rate is higher on ads where I am using dynamic text insertion and in many cases the conversion rate will be higher as well. If you haven’t tried using dynamic text in your Bing Ads program, now’s the time to do a little testing by creating a small ad group. Use your top converting keywords crafted into meaningful phrases for your program to test if you can boost conversions even more by using keyword and phrase insertion. Remember Bing Ads will bold this special text item when it is inserted into your ad when your phrase matches a search query – drawing the reader’s eye right to your ad!
If you need a Bing Ads savvy account manager, please visit our Bing Ads services page to find out more about how we can help you.
