When it comes to your advertising dollar, you always want the most bang for your buck. Google has long been a favorite, dominating the market and practically commanding every dollar of your search engine marketing budget. It has been true for so long that many companies don’t even bother with the competitors, but is that a wise decision?
Lets take a look at how the market breaks down. According to comScore.com (and everyone you talk to ever) Google is still dominating the scene, commanding a whopping 66 percent of the search market. That doesn’t leave much room for competition, but Bing is certainly trying. As of July 2012, the Microsoft owned engine was pulling 15 percent of the market. Just behind Bing is the steadily falling Yahoo, dropping again to wind up third with 13 percent. Ask and AOL are bottom feeding with 3 and 1 percent respectively.
Looking at the numbers, it’s clear that Google still commands the bulk of your search engine marketing budget, but thats not to say it needs ALL of it. Yahoo is on it’s way down, but still has some small (and shrinking) merit. Bing is rising though, and deserves at least a piece of your attention. Here are some things to consider:
Bing is newer, and smaller, so it’s easier to get onto the first page. Google is saturated with advertisers and it can be difficult for a small business in a big field to get any recognition.
Bing users are a different demographic. While Google is all over the map, Bing tends to be much more heavily used by the 25-54 market. Think of it this way, fans of MSN are Bing users.
Bing is standardizing their advertising based on Google. What this means for you is that the same copy and bids you use on your Google ads will transfer seamlessly to Bing, with no need to change text length or bidding strategy.
Finally, Bing and Yahoo are forming an advertising alliance. With one account, you’ll be able to advertise across both engines, effectively reaching about 30 percent of the market.
Ultimately, there are obviously no shortages of places to spend your advertising money. You may be temped to go with only Google for simplicities sake, but take the chance and diversify, you just may be surprised by the results.
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