"By 2020, the average person will have more conversations with bots than with their spouse."
That is, according to Gartner's research.
Let that sink in for a moment. If you haven't watched Joaquin Phoenix's 2013 romantic sci-fi film, Her, now is probably the time, as it could be our future, if this astounding possibility comes to fruition.
It supports the research completed by HubSpot this year, that 35% of UK survey respondents admitted they believe most searches will be formed by voice within the next five years.
Almost 25% of US homes have a smart speaker - such as Amazon's Echo, Google's Home and Apple's Homepod - according to a Nielsen study, and the number is only expected to grow.
Of course, this is a separate issue to the constant niggling doubt: "Why do I need to spend time and money on Bing, when Google Ads is so much more powerful?"
Indeed, Google Ads roughly handles 60% of all US search queries, but Bing still accounts for 1/3 of all US desktop traffic.
Why?
Most people use Microsoft desktop computers at work, as opposed to Apple Macs or other systems. If users haven't customised their settings, the default search browser on a Microsoft system is Bing.
Additionally, let's roll back to the first topic of voice search - most voice-activated devices, including Amazon Echo and the Xbox, rely on Bing to provide voice answers.
3 Benefits of Investing in Bing
01. Competition is lower
Naturally, there are less people searching using Bing, so it's going to both cost less and be easier to rank on the Bing platform. Less competition and less cost equals a higher conversion rate - but at lower volumes than you're used to through Google Ads, of course. It still means an easier route to success!
02. Increased buying power
Data from Instapage reveals a variety of key indicators about the Bing network's household incomes and ages.
Bing's audience, generally speaking, is older and more educated. Almost 40% of the Bing Network ranges from 35-54 years old and nearly 3/4 of Bing users are over 35. This also comes with the knowledge that they're typically higher earners, with 1/3 of Bing users having a household income of $100,000 and almost half of the network has a household income of at least $75,000.
03. Easy to implement (if you're already using Google Ads)
Bing makes it really easy to "copy over" existing Google Ads campaigns - so if you don't want to change too much from your campaigns, but simply increase your reach, it can be done in 5-10 minutes, once you've created a Bing account.
Of course, we'd always recommend reviewing your settings, perhaps to suit the key demographics of the Bing Network, as outlined above. Ensuring you've completed further optimisation and testing of your ads, targeting and audience, should only take another maximum of 30 minutes if you're a proficient Google Ads user.
The verdict?
Bing is a fantastic platform which reaches approximately 63 million searches that aren't being reached through your Ads targeting, so splitting your budget across both platforms is a win-win experiment.
Bear in mind you're not going to see the sheer level of results that you typically do with Ads, but if, for instance, your target audience is a luxury shopper, they may be more likely found on Bing - so why wouldn't you try it?
