Microsoft Ads, previously known as Bing Ads, is an effective way to use search ads to target a wider audience. It also provides you with the opportunity to reach a slightly different demographic compared to Google users. So, expanding your pay-per-click (PPC) strategy to account for Microsoft-run search engines can have significant advantages.

But, how much of your PPC budget should you spend on Microsoft Advertising? Calculating a suitable Microsoft and Bing Ads budget for your needs depends on several factors. We’ve covered everything you need to know about setting your budget for success below.

Microsoft Ads Cost: How Much Do You Pay Per Click?

Before setting your budget for Microsoft Ads, it’s helpful to understand what your spend will be based on. As Microsoft Ads work similarly to Google Ads, advertisers only pay when a user clicks on their ad. So, your spend will be determined by how many clicks you want to aim for and how much each click is worth to you.

For example, if your target number of clicks per day is 100 and your maximum value for cost per click (CPC) is $0.50, you multiply $0.50 by 100 to get your daily budget.

You have the option to choose between a targeted daily limit for ad spend and a shared budget for multiple campaigns.

It’s important to note that your daily budget is a target and the actual spend could fluctuate slightly due to traffic volumes and the automatic detection of fraud clicks.

Our Tips for Setting Your Microsoft Advertising Budget

Consider your target demographic

Knowing your audience benefits all of your marketing efforts and PPC is no exception. Research suggests that the user demographics for Bing vs Google are not one and the same. So, being aware of your target demographic will help you to determine how many clicks to aim for per day on each platform.

If you want to target the older, highly educated crowd, you may want to prioritise Microsoft Advertising over Google’s younger, tech-savvy users. However, this data should only be used as a very rough guide. Even if the average visitor demographics of Google are a closer match to your target audience, it would be a mistake to pass on the large number of Bing’s unique visitors. Instead, utilise Microsoft’s demographic targeting tools, which are some of the best available on the market today.

Don’t replicate your Google Ads budget

A benefit of using Microsoft Advertising could be gaining a higher ROI than Google Ads. Bing tends to face lower competition on keywords. So, be careful not to overspend on Microsoft Ads as smaller amounts could actually get you the same, if not better results.

Use device analytics to your advantage

Do you know what devices your target audience are mainly using? Use your analytics to find out as this information can help you to determine your Microsoft Advertising spend. Unlike with Google, Microsoft Ads gives you the ability to target specific devices and even discount desktop viewers altogether. This feature can further improve your conversion and click through rates, helping you to focus your PPC budget.

Read our full article comparing Bing and Google.

So, Are Microsoft Ads Worth It?

In conclusion, assessing the value that Microsoft Advertising can bring to your business is key to determining your budget. Unfortunately, there is no one size fits all when it comes to setting your individual spend.

Importantly, you don’t have to worry if your initial budget isn’t quite right. Microsoft allows you to change your daily budget amount at any time, with amends taking effect within hours. The biggest mistake you can make is to completely disregard Microsoft as an advertising platform before considering the factors listed above.

Learn more about the Microsoft Ads Tools available on our platform that brings all of your advertising to one place.

Or, for a complete introduction to Microsoft Advertising, take a look at our comprehensive online guide.

If you’re managing both Google and Microsoft campaigns, you’ll know the headache of optimizing one and then painstakingly having to replicate your work over to the other account. 

And if you’re just using Google, you’re missing out on new audiences, improved results, and a better reach because you just don’t have the time to set up and manage both accounts. Until now. 

Thanks to AdSync by Adzooma, you can reach new audiences while saving time. 

This brand new feature imports your Google Ads campaigns into Microsoft Ads – and keeps them updated. Any improvements to your campaigns, including adding new keywords, adjusting for better ad copy, etc, will be automatically copied over to the same campaigns on Microsoft. That’s two advertising accounts managed at once. 

And if you’re new to Microsoft, we’ll also give you $125 free ad spend to get started. 

Same campaigns, different advertising accounts 

Our new AdSync feature allows you to import your campaigns into Microsoft advertising in a few easy steps. With it, you can: 

• Import every campaign in your account, or just select your best ones. 
• Adjust bids and budgets, allowing you to reduce or increase your budget for Microsoft. 
• Edit the status of your campaigns, so you can pause them until you’ve done the final checks. 

Optimizations automatically synced to Microsoft 

Two birds, one stone. With AdSync, every change you make to your Google campaigns is copied over to Microsoft. 

Whatever optimizations, new keywords, ad copy or alterations you make, we’ll copy them. And don’t worry – if you’ve altered your bid or budget for Microsoft we’ll keep this up to date as well. 

If you’re spending £500 on a Google campaign and set up a decrease in budget of 10%, your Microsoft campaign will be £450. If you update your Google budget to £1000, we’ll change your Microsoft one to £900, making sure you always spend 10% less. 

Every change is covered in AdSync, so you can manage two campaigns at once. 

Why sync your campaigns to Microsoft?

Microsoft Advertising may not have the biggest share of the global search market. But like most underdogs, it shouldn’t be overlooked. 

Ignoring Microsoft is like owning a gas station and not offering diesel because you already sell petrol. 

Put plainly, Microsoft reaches 63 million users that Google doesn’t, giving you access to a whole new audience that would have just been forgotten about. What’s more, because there’s less competition, you’ll also get cheaper clicks, giving you a better return on your investment. 

And in case you think that’s too good to be true, we ran these tests on our own campaigns. Overall, we found that: 

• Cost Per Click on Google was an average of £5.15 compared to Microsoft’s £1.17.
• Comparing 44 randomly selected keywords, the average CPC for Google is £11.76 while Microsoft is £2.06.

With AdSync by Adzooma, you get access to these amazing results and cost savings without having to manually manage your Microsoft campaigns. 

New to Microsoft? Get $125 free ad spend. 

We’re proud to offer all new customers $125 in extra advertising when you spend $25.

That’s $150 of advertising, for $25.

To claim your free spend, you just need to: 

1. Sign up to Microsoft using this link
2. Add $25 of credit to your account 

Once done, you’ll have $150 of spend to use on your first Microsoft campaigns. And with AdSync by Adzooma, you’ll be able to synchronize your Google campaigns over for hands-free campaign management. 

Turn on Adzooma Adsync today

Ready to double your advertising success? 

Just click on the AdSync banner from your accounts page. Then, just follow the 4 step instructions to get your Adsync setup and running. 

During this setup, you’ll select which campaigns you want to sync and any adjustments in your budget or bids. If you missed a campaign or want to link to more than one account, just follow the same process as many times as you need. There’s no limit. 

Once done, just sit back and manage your campaigns as normal. We’ll copy all the changes over and ensure your Microsoft campaigns are running as smoothly as your Google ones.

And remember, if you’re new to Microsoft Advertising, you can get $125 of free advertising spend by signing up today. 

With all the keyword research, copy creation and manually building out ad groups, you’re looking at 4 hours, or even longer. Well, not anymore. 

With Adzooma’s new feature, the Proposal Builder, the whole process will take seconds with their automatic campaign builder and onboarding tool. That’s a saving of half a day per client. 

Onboard new clients in seconds with the Proposal Builder

The Proposal Builder is Adzooma’s new feature that will change the way agencies and freelancers onboard clients and build campaigns. Instead of manually inputting and building all the elements yourself, our system will automatically build campaigns for you. 

• You provide us with a few client details, such as their name, website, location and industry. 
• We’ll instantly create ready to publish Google Search, Google Display or Microsoft Display campaigns. 

Your new campaign will include: 

• Call and Site Link Extensions, automatically pulled from your client’s website. 
• A professionally built campaign, with filled out ad groups, keywords, adverts and negative keywords. 
• Advert previews to see the finished result of your campaign. 

Want to add your personal touch? No problem. You can edit or add to any part of the campaign with a click of a button.  The whole process is so quick, you can create complete campaigns while on an introductory phone call. 

It’s everything you need to scale your business and make low-spend clients profitable. 

Include your own fees for accurate projections 

The Proposal Builder doesn’t just create new client campaigns. It also shows you the projected results for the campaign depending on the budget that you set. 

What’s better, you can also set your own fees as part of this calculator, including both fixed amounts and variable rates. You’ll see how many clicks and impressions your clients will get for their spend, with a breakdown of their advertising budget and fees. 

Advertising account creation for your newest clients 

If your client is ready to go, you can set the campaign live in a single click by hitting the ‘Publish’ button. 

If they don’t have an advertising account, you can make one inside of Adzooma – and their first campaign will already be live and waiting.

What’s more, you can also manage their account using Adzooma’s free advertising platform for results-driven optimization suggestions, time-saving automated rules and more. Create in seconds, publish in a click and manage weekly in Adzooma. 

Unlimited draft campaigns in every plan 

With every Proposal Builder subscription, you’ll get unlimited draft proposals for free. That means you can add as many prospective clients and campaigns that you want. 

Use it as part of your lead generation, to prospect new clients or even create show existing clients the success they could be having on another PPC channel. Create as many as you want – our plans are based on how many campaigns you want to publish. 

Need something bespoke? Custom plans are available on request. Speak to our team to build your perfect solution. 

Ready to upgrade? 

Just log into your Adzooma account and click ‘Proposal Builder’ from the top navigation bar to choose your plan. 

Or, head to billing in your right hand menu to manage the Proposal Builder and Adzooma Plus plans in one place. 

We thank you for making Adzooma the platform it is today.

What we had to say

The Microsoft Global Awards “aim to recognise and reward outstanding, creative, and passionate work by search advertising individuals, teams, agencies, channel and technology partners working with Microsoft Advertising.”

After winning the Rising Star of the Year award at the Europe, the Middle East and Africa Microsoft Awards in February against the likes of the fantastic Happy Idiots and Mabo Media, we were put forward to the global award ceremony alongside the winners from the Americas and Asia Pacific.

This saw us line up alongside more of Microsoft’s amazing strategic partners in what must have been a really difficult decision for the judges. We’re massive fans of the work they do, so to win this award while up against great businesses like those makes this achievement even sweeter.

Speaking on the triumph, here’s what some of our staff had to say:

“Over the last year there have been so many different businesses popping up online so the timing of this burgeoning relationship with Microsoft couldn’t have been better for us in helping to serve these businesses in such a meaningful way at such a time of need.”

Puneet Vaghela, Head of Innovation

“One of the key areas today is that digital marketing and online advertising is more important than ever, especially in the current situation. We’ve experienced a global pandemic and it’s become more important for businesses to move online. For a lot of people that’s complicated and challenging as they’re not digital marketers but to succeed their business needs to be online. At Adzooma we make it easier for businesses by working with global partners like Microsoft.”

Robert Wass, Director & Co-Founder

“We’ve got a very good team structure and everyone is very supportive at the company. When we’ve worked with Microsoft they’ve been the same, indeed, it’s almost like they’re an extension of our company in many ways. It’s been a great experience to work alongside them.“

Jaye Bonser, Social Media Executive

“I’ve had the pleasure of working very closely with Microsoft over the past 18 months and it’s been a real pleasure. We’re both very similar in the way we approach things and I think that’s probably one of the reasons why we won this award today. I can’t wait to see what the future holds.”

Thomas Hampson, CTO & Founder

“Microsoft has always been at the forefront of putting customers and clients first and helping people to grow their business. Together with Adzooma, it’s a very similar strategy and I think there is a strong alignment. If anything it re-enforces the decision making process for customers to come and work with Adzooma and Microsoft.”

Warren Jacobs, Director & Partner

“We take these global awards really seriously. Microsoft are obviously a fantastic partner and company to be working with and we really aim as a company to succeed and win for our customers.” 

Dave Sharpe, CEO & Founder

What’s next

It’s great to be recognised by such an esteemed company like Microsoft for what we do. But it’s what comes next that really matters. 

Over the past year since going free, thousands of businesses have transformed their paid advertising campaigns through Adzooma and taken their Microsoft, Google and Facebook ads to new heights.

We’ve seen the freelancer Phillip Bacon increase conversions by 200% for an 1100% ROAS through the platform. We’ve helped Joshua Medina the CEO of an ecommerce business get set up on Microsoft and save a day a week managing his ads. We’ve streamlined agency owner Phil Byrne’s business workflow. And so much more.

Going forward, that commitment won’t change. At Adzooma we are focused on creating a product that will continue to support businesses and the digital marketing community through the toughest of times, and hopefully soon enough, the good times too.

Working alongside you our users is how we’ll make this happen. Your loyalty and support has been crucial in helping us become the platform we are today and without you none of this would be possible. 

It’s your feedback and openness to collaboration that makes Adzooma. You help to guide us on in our journey. You help shape our roadmap. 

And in 2021, we only want to bring that relationship closer together. 

Because together we thrive.

It offers: 

• One of the cheapest Cost Per Click prices, with CPC 32.5% to 60.2% less than Google Ads. 
• Reaches 63 million users that Google doesn’t. 
• 75% of Bing users aged 35 and over; 50% of them have an income of over $75,000. 
• Incredible targeting options, including LinkedIn profile targeting, advanced device targeting and more. 

We’re big Microsoft advocates at Adzooma. In fact, if you’re new to Microsoft, we’ll give you $125 of search advertising spend for free when you sign up with $25.

However, if you really want to get the best results from your Microsoft Advertising campaigns, you need Adzooma. As an all-in-one advertising management platform, Adzooma offers more features than Microsoft Advertising alone to save you time, achieve better results and scale your business. 

Find out how Adzooma compares to Microsoft Advertising and the best features you might be missing out here.

Recognised as one of Microsoft’s best partners 

Adzooma wouldn’t be able to provide this platform without Microsoft’s help. 

Working alongside their team, together we created a truly one of its kind platform to help advertisers grow and scale their Microsoft Advertising success like never before. 

It’s why we won the Rising Star Of The Year award at the 2021 Microsoft Advertising Partner awards. We don’t just work with Microsoft, but how we go above and beyond to ensure that our users get the best possible result from their campaigns. 
In the same awards, this success was also recognised through 3 other nominations: 

• Account Team of the Year – Awarded to an exemplary account team or group that partners, engages, and drives Microsoft Advertising revenue growth and feature adoption throughout the year
• Community Response Award – This new award category offers recognition to partner organisations or someone within a partner organisation that has provided innovative support or services to the industry or the community this year amidst the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic
• Trailblazer of the Year [Chief Technology Officer Thomas Hampson] – Awarded to an individual that, in an innovative and engaging way evangelises Microsoft Advertising and drives Microsoft Advertising brand awareness and affinity internally, as well as in the industry

Our continued partnership with Microsoft means that together, we’ll continue to update, innovate and grow the platform for you to reap the rewards.

More intuitive for better time saving

Adzooma offers the same functionality as Microsoft Advertising. And more. Plus, we make it easier, quicker and more intuitive to use. 

For example, instead of having separate screens for your campaigns, ad groups, keywords and ads, Adzooma combines them all into one, single Management screen. 

All the key data you want to know, including impressions, clicks, conversions, cost, will be neatly displayed in your management table. If you want to get a closer look at your ad groups, keywords, or ads, just click the arrow to reach the right level. 

All of the metrics can be customised here, meaning that the data you want to see will always be displayed first. You can also customise the date range by clicking on the calendar icon at the top of the page.

Adzooma Management is more than just looking at your campaigns. It’s how you can make quick edits and adjustments without leaving the platform.

• If you want to change a budget for a particular campaign or a keyword bid, you just have to click the edit icon and enter your new budget. 
• If you want to make mass changes, just select the campaigns, ad groups, keywords or ads in question and click the ‘edit’ button at the top to make quick changes.
• If you want to pause or enable campaigns, just click the status toggle.

What’s more, you can add new campaigns, ad groups, keywords, search adverts or Responsive Search Adverts (RSAs)  to your account without leaving the platform with our advanced campaign builder. 

Just click the ‘Add campaign’ button to create an entire new campaign, or hit the ‘+’ button to add more ad groups, keywords or adverts to an existing campaign. 

It’s simple to operate and has fewer steps than Microsoft’s campaign builder, which means less time spent on new campaigns and more time gained to apply optimisations and scale your business.

What’s more, you can automatically create ad groups based on keyword match types.

To do this, just select ‘Match type’ at the top of the ad group builder and enter your keywords into the field. When you’re ready, we’ll automatically separate them out into different ad groups based on keyword match type.

What’s more, you can automatically create ad groups based on keyword match types.

To do this, just select ‘Match type’ at the top of the ad group builder and enter your keywords into the field. When you’re ready, we’ll automatically separate them out into different ad groups based on keyword match type.

One-click optimisation Opportunities

Microsoft Advertising has a recommendation system that will send you suggestions to optimise and get more out of your campaigns. Instead of recommendations, Adzooma has Opportunities. Don’t worry, there are more differences than just the name. 

To see your Microsoft recommendations, you need to click the recommendations tab from the campaigns page. There you’ll see a list of your recommendations split into these four types: 

• Ads and extensions, which include suggestions to add extensions to ads, try out different headline variations, or to use optimise ad rotation settings. 
• Bidding and budgets, which mostly suggest automated bidding targets, but also offer some suggestions when to raise budgets to keep ads running on your busiest days. 
• Keywords and targeting, which can identify poorly converting keywords or suggest other match types or negative keywords to add. 

Repairs, which aim to fix issues in your account such as making sure your campaigns are structured correctly, tracking is set up and enabled or any other certification issues you might have.

Most of the Microsoft Advertising recommendations are based around their own automated bidding strategies. At Adzooma, our suggestions are a little more intelligent than that. 

We offer 25 unique Opportunities for Microsoft Advertising, broken down into these key categories: 

• Improve Performance, which includes unique suggestions to make bid adjustments based on device, gender or age or even fix spelling mistakes. 
• Reduce Wasted Spend, which aims to increase your ROI with suggestions to stop targeting non-performing age ranges or genders, or decrease bids on your weak performers.  
• Best Practice, which uses industry standard practices to ensure your campaigns are competitive, including suggestions to check low performing landing pages or fix broken links. 

Occasionally, we’ll also have a special partner deal for you in there too, like claiming cashback on all your Microsoft Advertising spend with Revolut.

Each Opportunity will have two options: details or ignore. If you press details, you’ll be given a detailed explanation of why it’s important and how it can affect your account. If you want to apply it, click the ‘add to queue’ button. When you’re ready, hit ‘apply all’ Opportunities in the queue to action all these changes in a single click.

If you click ignore on an Opportunity, our platform will use this information to get smarter over time, making sure we only send you relevant Opportunities that you’ll want to action. 

We don’t just explain why we’ve generated this opportunity, we also give you estimated figures showing you how many impressions, clicks, conversions it could generate you, as well as how much money and time you’ve saved.

Automated rules every 30 minutes, not every day 

Automated rules are the PPC assistant you’ve always wanted. They’re there to provide around the clock optimisation, time-saving automatic actions and custom alerts of important changes. 

With rules, you can adjust budgets, pause poor-performing keywords or get custom alerts when it’s time to take action, saving you hours of manually monitoring the data. 

These are the instructions that Microsoft Advertising provide for setting up an automated rule: 

1. From the main menu on the far left, click All campaigns.
2. From the page menu, click either Ad groups, Ads and extensions, or Keywords.
3. Click Automate.
4. Select what you want to happen (for example, Pause campaigns when).
5. Optional: Specify the circumstances that you want to trigger your action (for example, CPC > $5.00). You can set up to five such triggers for each rule.
6. Specify how often you want the rule to run.
7. Choose if you want an email sent to you when the rule is run.
8. Optional: If you want to see a preview of what would happen if the rule were run immediately, click Preview results.
   For example, if you create a rule to automatically increase your budget based on CTR, you can use Preview results to see which budgets would change and by how much.
9. Click Save.

We’ve made this simpler at Adzooma.

To create a rule, just click Automation at the top and the ‘New Automation Rule’ button. There, you can choose a template (which we’ll cover below) or create your own custom rule. All rules are created using 5 steps – with detailed explanations all the way through if you need it. 

Whatever rule you want to make, you can do it from this one, simple creator.

What’s more, our automated rules are more advanced than Microsofts as we offer: 

• Rules that run every 30 minutes, not every day. This gives you greater control and enables you to make impactful changes at the right time to increase your success. 
• And/Or conditions, which allow you to create intelligent rules that will run on multiple metrics, for example, if a campaign has more than 50 conversions OR if it has a CPA of less than £5. 
• Select which teammates you want to be notified when a rule fires, without having to manually import their email address. 
• As many conditions as you want, instead of a limit of 5.

Simply put, Adzooma’s automated rules are smarter, faster and more efficient, helping you save time and scale.

For more information on creating your own automated rules, you can follow our step by step guide on creating a custom ‘high volume, low conversion’ rule here.

Templated rules to get you started quickly 

Unlike Microsoft Advertising, Adzooma also offers an entire library of premade rules that you can apply to your account in a few clicks. 

Each rule was created by PPC experts as the go-to rules that have been proven to increase performance, save time and improve their ROI. It’s perfect for those that are new to automated rules or are just looking for a quick way to apply them to your account. 

To see our rules, head to Automation and click ‘New Automation Rule’. Then, select ‘Choose Templates’ to be taken to our library of 28 premade rules that you can apply to your account.

When you’ve found one you like, just click on it, choose what campaigns you want to apply it to, how often you want it to run and click save. You can make any edits and customisations to these rules as you want – they’re your starting point for you to make them your own.

Want to know more about our templates? Find out our five most popular automation rules and why they’re used here.

Intelligent reporting to prioritise your workload 

The key to great campaigns is data. 

That’s why Microsoft Advertising runs multiple reports for you to get a deeper look at your data to figure out what’s working, what isn’t and what needs your attention. 

For example, Microsoft offer reports such as:

• The Keyword, Campaign, Ad and Ad group reports, which tell you which campaigns are performing well and how your keywords are contributing to campaign performance.
• The Search term report, which shows which words customers enter into search to cause your ads to display.
• The Share of voice report, which gives you an estimate on where you might be losing to competitors in the marketplace.

Once you’ve selected which report you want to run, there are a few extra steps you have to take. You’ll need to select the date range, which specific campaigns you want to run the report for and what metrics you want to appear in the columns before you can think about interpreting the results.

Adzooma does reporting differently. 

We offer 7 predefined reports to remove the hours of data analysis and number crunching, so you can prioritise your workload. 

Our flagship one is the PPC Performance Report. Analysing your Microsoft Advertising account, the PPC Performance report gives you an overall score out of 100 with a breakdown of how optimised your account is. The closer to 100 you are, the better optimised your ads are. 

Underneath the score, you’ll find cards showing you where you can improve and the actions you can take right now. To make things even easier, you can also click to action these changes inside Adzooma, taking you from reporting to optimisation in seconds. 

That means you’ll spend less time finding problems and more time fixing them.

Adzooma also offers customisable reports for complete freedom and control. ou can have as many pages, graphs, charts and data as you want. Add your own images and text and show off your success with clients or shareholders.

Whatever you need, just click it and Adzooma will add in the data. What’s more, every report will automatically update with the latest figures, giving you 100% accurate reports you can rely on.

Manage your Google and Facebook ads simultaneously 

Adzooma isn’t just for Microsoft Advertising. 

You can use it to manage your Google and Facebook accounts simultaneously, without having to use a separate platform. You can add as many accounts as you want and switch between them in seconds. 

When you log into Adzooma, you’ll be able to see top level data and PPC performance scores for your accounts, letting you prioritise which account needs your attention first. It’s your secret weapon to managing multiple accounts on the go. 

Want to know more?

• See how Adzooma compares to Google Ads 
• See how Adzooma compares to Facebook Ads

Ready to transform your Google Ads management with Adzooma? 

Sign up for free today.

What we had to say

“I’m absolutely delighted. To win Rising Star of the Year at a ceremony run by such an esteemed company is really something. It was just great to be nominated but to win is such an honour.

“The team worked so hard throughout 2020 to create a platform that helped businesses of all sizes thrive throughout such a difficult year and this award win will only embolden us to continue on in that endeavour.”

Thomas Hampson, Trailblazer of the Year nominee

“It was amazing to be nominated for four awards across a spectrum of categories from a business like Microsoft, but to win one is incredible.

“The past year has been tough for all of us, but our customer’s openness in supplying us with feedback and collaborating on feature launches throughout the year helped us to navigate the last 12 months in the way that we did, and we’re entirely grateful.”

Robert Wass, CEO & Co-Founder

“Microsoft Advertising is such an integral part of the paid media landscape and our customers throughout the year have commented as much.

“Throughout 2020 we created a host of new Microsoft Advertising Opportunities, built a dedicated Microsoft Performance Report, and produced in-depth analysis on the efficacy of Microsoft Advertising.

“Everything we introduced across the year received great feedback and that’s in part down to Microsoft’s enthusiasm and openness in collaboration to create a better product for our customers.”

Dave Sharpe, CEO & Co-Founder

Why This Matters To You

Being recognised by Microsoft for such awards like this demonstrates that:

• We are focused on creating a product that will support businesses and the digital marketing community even through the toughest of times
• We continue to be at the forefront of innovation within the digital marketing industry to create a product that is always improving and ever-evolving
• We are committed to undertaking research studies and analysis that helps develop and aid long term Microsoft Advertising strategies for our customers
• We are relentless in our pursuit of creating the best Microsoft Advertising management platform available

Learn more about Microsoft Advertising

• How To Get Set Up on Microsoft Ads
• Our Partnership with Microsoft
• How To Optimise Your Microsoft Ads (Tips & Advice)

But in order for that to happen, you need to make sure that your accounts are set up and optimised in the best way possible. If they aren’t, you could be wasting money on getting your adverts to appear to the wrong audience at the wrong moment. 

Ad scheduling is one way to stop this and make sure that your adverts are always shown at the right time. 

Find out more about the benefits of ad scheduling and how to apply it to your accounts here. 

What is ad scheduling?

Ad scheduling is a way of limiting what times and days that your ads are shown. For example, advertisers can set adverts to only run on Saturday and Sunday, or between the hours of 9-5 pm on a weekday. 

This means that outside of the times you set, your ad cannot be shown and therefore none of your budget will be used. 

Ad scheduling protects your advertising spend for your busiest, or most profitable periods and ensures that it doesn’t run out prematurely. 

Why should you use ad scheduling? 

Ad scheduling means that your ads are only shown during the times you set. That may not seem like much, but it can make a huge difference to your conversions and profits by using your budget in your most successful times. 

If you only offer services for certain times or days of the week, for example, if you’re a 9-5 service-based business, having clicks and leads come through on the weekend might be a waste as there’s no one around to chase them or answer your calls. 

If you’re an ecommerce business with a self-checkout system, you don’t need to limit your ads to your business hours. But, having them run 24/7 can be a waste if none of your customers are around to see it.

By looking at the data, you can work out when you’re most likely to get clicks and conversion and when your ads are performing the worst. Then, you can use an ad schedule to run in your busiest times, so your budget isn’t wasted on slow hours where your customers aren’t around. 

Ad scheduling can also be used to match individual campaigns as well. For example, if you own a restaurant, you could have a campaign that’s promoting your new lunch menu and choose to schedule it between 10am-1pm every day, hitting their customers at the right time of day to entice them in. 

Ad scheduling vs bid adjustments 

Ad scheduling means that your ads can only be shown during certain times. Now, there might be times when you still want your ads to show – but you don’t want them to eat up all of your budgets. 

This is where bid adjustments come in. 

Bid adjustments can alter your bids during certain times. So, if Monday is your busiest day you can add a bid adjustment to increase your budget by 20% on these days. If the weekend is your slowest point, you can set a bid adjustment to decrease your bids by 10% during this time. 

Bid adjustments are useful for the time periods where you’re still getting clicks and conversions – but just not at your best rate. If you scheduled your ads outside of these time you’d miss out on these sales. But if they ran as normal, there’s a chance you could waste most of your budget on your worst days. 

Bid adjustments are a way of protecting and relocating your budget to your busiest times, while allowing the ad to carry on running.

For more information on bid adjustments, take a look at our guide to managing your keyword bids more effectively.

How to set ad schedules on Google Ads

Using Google Ads? Here’s how you set up an ad schedule from the platform. 

1. While logged into your Google Ads account, click ‘Ad Schedule’ from the menu on the left. If you can’t see this option, you may have to click the ‘+ More’ button first to reveal it. 
2. Click the pencil icon at the top, then select which campaign you want to set a schedule for. 
3. Use the drop down menus to select the days and times you want your ad to run. You can add up to 6 ad schedules per day for each campaign. 
4. Click save and you’re good to go.

To edit a schedule, select it from the table and click the pencil icon. 

You can set bid adjustments from the same page by selecting the campaign from the table and finding the specific time frame and clicking the pencil icon in the bid adjustment column. Choose to increase or decrease the bid and set the percentage you want.

On Google, you can only set up bid adjustments for ad schedules that you’re already running. Do if you want to set up a bid adjustment on Saturday and Sunday, you need to already be running an ad schedule for it, unless you use a tool like Adzooma.

How to set ad schedules on Microsoft Advertising 

To set up ad scheduling in Microsoft Advertising: 

1. Click ‘Ad Schedule’ from the menu on the left.
2. Click the ‘Add Ad Schedule’ button and select which campaign you want to add a schedule to 
3. Enter the times you want your advert to run, or set up bid adjustments. You can choose up to 15 minute increments to schedule your ads by and adjust your bids by -90% to 900%.

Not using Microsoft Advertising yet? Sign up today to receive $125 of free advertising spend. 

How to set ad schedules on Facebook Ads 

Facebook Ads allows you to set schedules for ad sets. To do that, you need to find the ad set you want to schedule and click edit. 

1. Under budget and schedule, click the ‘show more options’ arrow. 
2. Hover over Ad scheduling and click edit.
3. Tick the box to run ads on a schedule, which will bring up a clickable calendar.
4. Click the time blocks that you want your rule to run. 

You can’t set up bid adjustments in Facebook the same way that you can for Google and Microsoft. Instead, Facebook will automatically adjust your bid for you depending on the type of bid strategy that you use. 

Automatically adjust ad schedules on Adzooma 

If you’re not using an ad schedule yet, Adzooma will generate an Opportunity for you to fix this without going through the menus and navigation on the native platform. 

All you have to do is click the Opportunity and select the dates and times you want your ad to run. 

Once you’re happy, click ‘Add to the Queue’ and take a look at the other optimisation Opportunities that we’ve generated for you, including ones that will suggest bid adjustments based on device, gender or age range. 

When you’re ready, click ‘Apply all’ Opportunities at the top of the page and they’ll be automatically applied to your account. That’s ad scheduling and much more in seconds with Adzooma. 

Not already a member? You can sign up to Adzooma for free here.

Guaranteed. I said it. No huge campaign overhauls, no 70 hour weeks, no hiring more staff. Just four simple tactics you can apply in a morning’s work.

 Let me show you how.

1. Get eyes on all your search terms data

I still find it ridiculous that this is even a thing. 

All of us should have access to all our search terms data anyway, but to huge outrage, in September Google updated their Ads Search Terms Report to only include terms searched for by “a significant number of users”.

This meant that PPCers who followed best practice to filter out costly small volume irrelevant search terms as negative keywords were no longer able to do it. 

Seer Interactive did some research into this and found that “for every $100K you spend on Google search, you get search term data for $71,000 of it.” Before the update, this figure stood at $98,700.

An enormous hit.

But it isn’t all doom and gloom and there are measures you can put in place to combat this problem. One super simple way is to utilise Google Analytics.

First, make sure that you have auto tagging enabled. Then in Google Analytics follow the path:

Acquisition > Google Ads > Search Queries

To see the search terms which were not appearing in Google Ads, add an advanced filter for: Clicks Equal to 0 and Sessions Greater than 0

And voila! You have your workaround. 

You may come across some inspiration for your own keywords here, but if not and what you find is all irrelevant, add them as negative keywords in Google Ads and you’ve solved the problem.

Just make sure to keep checking so you don’t waste any of that spend!

Want more help with negative keywords? Take a look at our negative keywords guide to find out everything you need to know.

2. Get cashback on all your ad spend

This is a no brainer and something you can do in no time at all.

In November 2020, Revolut and Adzooma agreed an exclusive deal to offer money back on every single £ users from the UK and EU spend on managing ads through Facebook, Google and/or Microsoft.

All you have to do is follow these three simple steps:

1. Open a Revolut account: head to the Revolut sign-up page to open a new business account – for free.
2. Connect your ad accounts: then you’ll need to connect your Google, Facebook and/or Microsoft accounts to Adzooma. Again, this is free to do. (Important: you need to link your Revolut business card to your ad accounts to qualify.)
3. Enjoy your cashback: and that’s it! Once you’ve set up both accounts, you’ll get a monthly cashback statement with quarterly payments.

Say you were spending £100 a day on ads, you would receive £91.25 in cashback every year. No catch, it’s just that simple. 

You can see how much money you’d save by using the cashback calculator here. 

This is the only deal of its kind around, an industry first, and it doesn’t cost a penny to get started.

3. Start utilising Automation

Automation is the buzzword of PPC right now. But buzzwords become buzzwords for a reason. Automation is a buzzword (I’ll stop saying buzzword now) because it’s so damn useful.

Automation makes your day to day PPC management so much easier. It’s a fail-safe in case anything goes wrong. It’s a way to automatically carry out the micro-changes you don’t have time for. It’s a custom alarm system letting you know when you need to spring into action.

Automation simply saves you time and money. It helps you to scale, analyse, manage and launch your ads quicker than you ever could before. Plus, with the complexity of PPC having increased considerably over the past decade, if you’re not using automation in 2021 you’re simply going to fall behind.

Let me quickly guide you through 4 automation templates you can use in the Adzooma platform that will save you money today. These automations also run and check your accounts every 30 minutes of every day, something you just couldn’t do manually:High Volume Low Conversion – Available at campaign and ad group level, this template will set up your campaign to pause or notify you if the cost per conversion gets too high for your liking

Ad Pausing on Scale – This allows you to automatically pause a number of ads should the CTR or conversion rate be too low

Pause High CPA Ad Groups – For Ad Group level, if your CPA is above what you’d like it to be, this automation template will stop it right in its tracks.

Pause Underperforming Keywords – A great one for keyword level, this template will pause the keywords that aren’t receiving a good click through rate or conversions.

It’s really simple stuff. Once you’re in your free Adzooma account, just head to Automation, click “New Automation Rule”, “Choose Template” then you can start applying these rules to the campaigns, ad groups, ads and keywords you deem necessary.

Each template also comes with a number of and/or conditions you can adjust and change to whatever suits you best.

And to reiterate, these automations run every half an hour, so if you’re looking for a true way to save money on your PPC campaigns, this is the way to go. 

You just couldn’t be this comprehensive without it.

4. Sign up to Microsoft Ads

Not advertising on Microsoft Advertising yet? Well lucky you, because when you set up a Microsoft Advertising account you get $125 free when you spend your first $25 on ads with our exclusive offer. 

Microsoft has long been overlooked by a lot of PPCers down the years, but just as you wouldn’t neglect radio if you were advertising on TV, you shouldn’t neglect Microsoft just because you’re on Google.

Microsoft is home to:

• 13.7 billion monthly PC searches
• 638 million unique PC users
• 63 million users that Google doesn’t reach

Not only that, but Microsoft’s audience is both more educated and more affluent with a third of Microsoft users in the US having a household income over $100k.

The demand is very much there too, despite the skepticism, as we found out in our recent research piece where we compared like for like Microsoft and Google campaigns.

It’s time for you to stop neglecting Microsoft Ads – especially when you get $125 for free when you give it a go!

Start saving today

There you have it, there are four sure ways to save money on your PPC campaigns today. No if’s, no maybe’s, just four guaranteed money-saving tactics you can implement right now.

Don’t rush the process, especially the first and third tactic should be conducted as thoroughly as you’d conduct any part of your work.

But there’s no huge overhauls, no long working night’s needed. Just follow the outlined steps and your results will change overnight.

• Advertisers using eCPC achieve 5-10% more conversions while maintaining their cost per acquisition (CPA).
• With eCPC, your average cost per click (CPC) won’t exceed the maximum bid you set.
• Some advertisers have used eCPC with technology provider bid strategies to achieve a +20% conversion rate (CVR) and -20% CPA due to the power of auction-time adjustments.
• eCPC benefits search partner performance by optimizing for high-quality clicks.

However, on the other hand, there are again concerns from the PPC community that this is a further step towards a loss of control over our ad campaigns.

So what does this actually mean?

Introduced in 2016, Microsoft’s Enhanced CPC utilises machine learning to analyse whether a searcher is more or less likely to convert based upon past conversions. 

“Enhanced CPC will help your campaign get more conversions, lower your cost per acquisition, and improve your return on investment in Bing Ads,” said the blog post at the time of announcement.

“With manual CPC bidding, the advertiser is completely in control of the maximum bid they set for a keyword,” says our PPC Manager Sophie Logan. 

“With Enhanced CPC, the platform’s algorithms can make adjustments to a bid when a click is more likely to result in a conversion. The algorithm is based on trends and patterns from your previous campaign performance, such as time of day, day of the week, location and browser type.”

For those that are still using Manual CPC, the migration will begin in March. By April 5th there will be no option of choosing Manual CPC for new campaigns. And by April 30th all campaigns not using Enhanced CPC will be automatically migrated.

“Most advertisers are already using some form of smart bidding, so it should not result in too much of a shake up,” says Sophie. “It does however mean that it is more important than ever to ensure that conversion tracking is set correctly. Without accurate data, the algorithm can not perform effectively.”

Have a read of our Conversion Tracking guide to make sure you’re firing on all cylinders.

In their blog post, Microsoft said they “recommend setting up tests to identify and/or validate your optimal automated bidding setup, which may include but is not limited to Enhanced CPC. For search campaigns, we recommend using Campaign Experiments to validate performance.”

And they’ve also laid out this decision tree to help get you started.

The Community’s Reaction

Whereas we saw the community blow up in reaction to Google phasing out the Broad Match Modifier, reactions have been a bit more tempered regarding this announcement (though, a lot of that is probably down to the fact this is Microsoft and not Google).

But that doesn’t mean we haven’t seen any activity. Here are some reactions and previous tweets on Enhanced CPC:

“Micromanaging your bids isn’t always a great idea, but manual CPC offers smaller or niche advertisers with less volume more control.”

Amalia Fowler, Director of Marketing at Snaptec Marketing. 

“This is a good reminder that I need to be constantly testing bid strategies in Google because we are still manual there,” says

Zack Bedingfield, Acquisition Marketing Manager at Coconstruct

“Again, the majority of advertisers are already using smart bidding in their accounts. So whilst on the surface it may sound like a huge change, the reality is that most advertisers won’t be affected. Those who will feel the impact the most are those who are not regularly monitoring and optimising their accounts, and reviewing the quality of their conversion tracking. It will be interesting to see if Google follows suit, but as it stands there are no plans to remove Manual CPC from Google Ads.”

Sophie Logan, PPC Manager at Adzooma

Being forced into automation isn’t necessarily a good thing, though. I’m currently running an A/B test on bid strategies and my manually run eCPC is outperforming Max Conv, replicating the results for the second time running this. #ppcchat

— Eric Heiken (@EricHeiken) February 4, 2021

What’s your take on Microsoft’s latest move? Head over to our Digital Marketing Facebook group to get involved in the conversation.

This includes stats that if done right, can earn you $2 for every $1 spent inside Google Ads. While on Microsoft you can lower your CTR 30-50%, increasing your ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) by a phenomenal amount.

These stats are all amazing. But in reality, if you’re staring at a set of campaigns that just aren’t converting, they can seem like a far off dream.

We’re here to help change that. These are the top 3 reasons why your Google and Microsoft ads might not be converting and how you can fix them.

1. You’re not targeting the right audience

Targeting is the centre of successful campaigns. You’re never going to increase clicks or sales if your ads are showing to people who aren’t interested in what you’re saying.

Now there are so many audience targeting options available on Google and Microsoft that it can be easy to get completely overwhelmed by them. So we’ll talk you through some of the options, including when you should be using them and when they should be avoided.

But before we dive into this, you need to think about who you’re targeting in the first place. Having a clear idea about your audience is necessary, so get that crystal clear first. If it helps, you might want to spend some time creating a customer persona.

Right, that’s the disclaimer out the way. Let’s talk about some of your targeting options.

Remarketing

Remarketing is a brilliant way of targeting people who have already interacted with your brand but didn’t buy from you. It’s great because you can create adverts that are super-specific and give your potential customers a second chance to buy.

You don’t have to go through the stages of making customers aware of your brand and building trust. They’re already familiar with you, all you need to do is nudge them over the final line. That’s why it’s always cheaper and easier to try and convert an existing customer than to bring new ones into your funnel.

Remarketing lists are available both on Google and Microsoft. All you need to do is install a pixel on your website (similar to Facebook) and select the type of users that you want to target, such as all site visitors or just cart abandoners.

Google Affinity Audiences

Affinity audiences let you target people based on their known interests and hobbies. So, if a Google user is known to commonly visit websites about fishing, they can be targeted under that assumption.

This type of audience is great for expanding your reach and building brand awareness in front of customers with specific interests.

In-Market Audiences

In-market audiences are similar to affinity audiences but are based on what people are searching right now. It’s not about long term interests here, it’s about people who have recently searched for purchased-based keywords, like “fishing rod for sale”.

They might not be a long-term fishing fan, but they’re in the market right now.

In-market audiences are great to use for campaigns that are closer to the end of the funnel. At the moment, in-market audiences are only available on Microsoft in the US, Canada and Australia.

Customer Match

Similar to remarketing, customer match audiences are customer lists that are made using your own data. For example, you could target people who have signed up to your newsletter, to watch a webinar or have given their email address in an in-store competition

Detailed Demographics

This allows you to target audiences on Google and Microsoft using on long-term facts, such as:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Language
• Education

You can also use free tools like Adzooma that help improve this audience targeting further too.

Once you’ve connected your Google or Microsoft account, your campaigns will be monitored on an ongoing basis and in the Opportunities tab you will get a list of actions you can take to improve your ads in just a couple of clicks. These Opportunities will be different for everyone depending on the status of your account, but here’s an example below:

From there, if you click details you’ll see what the recommendation Adzooma is making for you and why, plus the saving you can make by applying this Opportunity. By clicking Add To Queue, you will then apply this change to your campaign.

LinkedIn Profile Targeting

Because LinkedIn is a part of the Microsoft group, Microsoft Ads also gives you the option to target people based on their LinkedIn profiles. This can include information such as the company they work for, job title or industry – making it a really useful tool for B2B companies.

On average, the CVR for LinkedIn Profile Targeting campaigns are 42% higher than when the same ads are shown to non-audience targeted users. It’s one of the reasons why Microsoft Advertising is one of the strongest platforms around.

For more on LinkedIn targeting in Microsoft Ads, read our Mythbusters guide on Google Ads and Microsoft Ads.

Not advertising on Microsoft yet? You can get $125 in free ad spend when you spend $25, thanks to our exclusive offer.

Then connect your account to Adzooma and manage both your Google and Microsoft campaigns from one screen.

Similar Audiences

Similar audiences can be used on both Google and Microsoft to advertise to users that are similar to your existing customers. This feature is best for companies who are already achieving a good conversion rate with their advertising – but want to expand out to new users.

2. You’re not using the right keywords

If your campaigns aren’t converting, there’s a big chance you’re not targeting the right keywords.

It’s like trying to build a house on mud. You need to make sure that your foundations are solid before building up. One of the most common mistakes with keywords is not factoring in the intent.

Each time someone searches on Google or Microsoft, they’re doing it for a very specific reason. It’s not for fun, it’s because they need to know or find something asap. Knowing the search intent will help you target your ads to these audiences, giving them the exact info they need.

Generally, there are 4 types of keyword intent.

1. Informational

These are often questions based on the classic who, what, where, when and why when a user needs to know information. They’re best suited for top of the funnel ads and brand awareness.

Example: “How do you build a bathroom extension”

2. Commercial

These are searches that people make when they are researching a product or a service. They’re best used for the middle of the funnel adverts, where users know they’re in the market for a product but don’t know which one to buy.

Example: “The best bathroom fitters in York”

3. Transactional

These tend to be made by people who are ready to buy and usually have more technical or specific language involved. They present the most opportunity for your company to make conversions but will tend to be the most targeted and expensive keywords to bid on.

Example: “Buy chrome thermostatic shower mixer set”

4. Navigational

These searches are used when users want to know where a physical place or a specific web page is.

Example: “Amazon customer support”

Inspiration

We’ve written a real in depth piece about how to conduct keyword research the smart way, which you should read if you’re struggling for inspiration.

For a quick roundup, we talk about how knowing yourself is so important to attracting the right audience, how important it is to thoroughly research your industry and your competitor’s, and how you should always continue to optimise and refine even if you’re performing well.

Check out SEMRush’s Keyword Magic Tool which generates over 2 million keyword ideas for SEO and PPC campaigns and group them by topic. If you find a handful of interesting keywords, you can save them in the Keyword Analyzer and estimate the number of clicks and how likely you’ll rank for them in the top 10 of the SERPs.

You can also use SEMRush to analyse what keywords your competitors are bidding on. All in all, a great tool that will get your content up the SERPs.

You should utilise the Adzooma platform too to help with this. Again, if you head to the Opportunities tab you’ll see example actions you can take in the Improve Performance section that can help with your keywords like below.

Once you’ve clicked details you’ll see a little bit more info.

These keyword Opportunities are generated based on previous performance data which is analysed by our platform. From that analysis, it provides you an estimated impression and click uplift that you’d receive should you take the actions.

To add them to your campaign, you just need to click Add To Queue which saves you a whole chunk of time and effort in the research stage – approximately 2 hours according to our platform!

3. Your landing page isn’t optimised for conversions

Conversions happen when all pieces of your marketing come together. If you have a weak link in your customer journey, the whole thing can break.

If you’re getting the clicks but not the conversions, it means that there might be some issues with your landing page.

Your landing page is the page of your website that users go to after they click the ad. To up your conversions, it needs to be relevant to what people clicked and designed in a way that urges them to convert. And improving your landing page experience is part of the way Google Ads calculates your Quality Score and Ad Rank.

Common conversion pain points on your landing page are factors like not giving people enough information, missing testimonials or customer reviews or even site speed. If your website is too slow to load, customers will leave. That’s the harsh reality of how impatient we all are.

We’ve written some great pieces on this you should take a read through to improve your landing pages:

• What Makes A Landing Page Convert – A Cambridge University and Adzooma Study
• 15 Inspiring Landing Pages You’ll Want For Your Site
• How To Improve Your Landing Page Experience

Then once you’ve done your best to optimise your pages, the Adzooma platform will continually monitor things like your landing page experience, landing page load time, and landing page mobile UX to make sure your landing pages are always on form:

But improving your landing page isn’t always an easy fix, and that’s why we created the Adzooma Marketplace.

Our marketplace is full of agencies and specialists who transform your landing page if you don’t feel confident in doing it yourself. From leading copywriter and designers, to agencies who can take charge of all your PPC campaigns, Adzooma Marketplace is the place to find all the local and leading agencies that are available to help your business right now.

All you have to do is put in what you’re looking for and we’ll give you a list of available agencies ready to contact and help you boost your conversions.

Happy converting!