- Claiming your business on Bing and why it matters
- The kind of content Bing favors and how you can create it
- Why you should be running ads in Bing
- Plus, more tips on leveraging the perfect marriage of ChatGPT+Bing
Send us your questions, comments, feedback, praise! We can’t wait to hear from you!
Transcription:
Devon Hayes: Hi, I’m Devon Hayes.
Amanda Joyce: And I’m Amanda Joyce. And today’s topic is ChatGPT and Bing, and how you can leverage the marriage between the two. So here’s why you should care, the marriage between ChatGPT and Bing has really changed the landscape of search overnight. And if you shift your strategy just a little bit today, you can vastly increase the likelihood of your success in the future. So you’ll be light years ahead of your competition if you just take into account what we’re about to share with you.
Devon Hayes: Welcome to Trade Secrets, where we demystify digital marketing to help contractors get the most bang for their marketing bucks.
Amanda Joyce: This is for you if you’re a contractor looking for actionable marketing insights.
Devon Hayes: Learn from home services industry experts to elevate your business through simplified marketing strategies.
Amanda Joyce: Let’s dive into today’s trade secret.
Devon Hayes: Oh my gosh, I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again, if you would’ve told me a year ago that we would be sitting here talking about Bing being relevant …
Amanda Joyce: Bing, of all things.
Devon Hayes: It’s like the cauliflower of search engines, just making a big comeback out of nowhere.
Amanda Joyce: Exactly. We were all sleeping on it and now it’s back, it’s better than ever. It’s like that boyfriend we all had in college that shows back up and is hot and you’re like, “Whoa, what happened to you?”
Devon Hayes: Yeah. So for those of you who don’t know, last month, Bing and ChatGPT, they pretty much got married. Now, a feature within Bing, the search engine, is like a conversational search, so the functions and features of ChatGPT within the Bing search platform. And what’s even more interesting is with that marriage, no monies were exchanged. There’s nothing in there that says who gets how much money. Bing simply did it, and Microsoft simply did it to take market share away from Google, which is the best spite move of all time. I love it. Like, “No, no, I don’t want any money. I just want to take some of your business.”
Amanda Joyce: Yeah.
Devon Hayes: Yeah, no, there was money exchanged, just a sweet marriage, true love. They’re not marrying for money there. And it’s only been a month and already Bing seeing that increase in searches. So let’s see, what is it, so in 2022, I think Bing had, what is it, a little less than two and a half percent of all searches occurred on Bing, and 94% were on Google. And then the rest there is sprinkled out over Yahoo and …
Amanda Joyce: Those others that will remain nameless. But as of two months into the year, as of February of 2023, they were at 2.81% of global searches. So I know it’s not a huge amount, but when you think about the number of searches that are completed every day, it’s a good chunk, it’s moving in the right direction, and they’re only just getting started with ChatGPT. This is really exciting new technology that everybody wants to figure out how to harness in their daily lives. So it’s only going to continue to grow. And we’ve talked about this in a previous episode, Google has their own product that currently does not stand up to ChatGPT and the search wars are going to continue. But it’s funny, years and years ago when we both first entered this industry, there was this kind of search war that had just dissipated and it was just Google all day every day, no one even talked about the smaller guys. And this is kind of the David and Goliath, it’s coming, it’s changing things. So it’s time to take note now and kind of assess how to take advantage of this.
Devon Hayes: Totally. We’re recording this mid-March here, and as of just a couple days ago, Bing, for the first time ever reached 100 million daily active users. But to give you some perspective, Google has, I think, 200 billion or no, one billion active users each day. So 100 million versus a billion active users daily, there’s a huge variance there and we’re well aware, but as Amanda mentioned earlier, Bing is going to continue to gain some more of that market share from Google because of this ChatGPT feature within the Bing search platform.
So with that, there’s some differences in how you rank in Bing versus how you rank in Google, and understanding some of those, it will be helpful. And again, we’re not saying change your entire strategy for the sake of Bing. We want you to be aware and recognize that if you start taking action now, guaranteed your competition is not even thinking about Bing, they’re worried about how to rank on Google, so if you can start to lay the breadcrumbs now, then you’re going to be sitting pretty here in a couple years when it starts to have a bigger chunk of that search market.
Amanda Joyce: Absolutely. And another thing to point out is some people kind of wonder who even uses Bing. There’s a lot of different statistics that we went through before this, kind of talking about who that average demographic is, but there’s different reasons people use it. In some cases it’s perhaps your older, more affluent demographic that just ordered a Microsoft computer, it showed up at their house, they don’t care which search engine they’re using, they just want an answer to their question and Bing came preloaded on their computer and they’re just going to use it.
So you very well might get some of those wealthy geriatrics in your area that need your service and they’re just going to go to Bing and look it up, so why the heck would you not want to just make sure that you’re already ranking there. For that reason and then knowing that more young people are going to be coming to Bing as ChatGPT develops and becomes more even better than it is today. And if you’re already ranking there and they’re already hanging out in Bing, we’ve kind of beat this dead horse, but it’s only going to give you that leg up against the competition.
Devon Hayes: Yeah. And something kind of cool too within Bing, we all know that in Google, local search, a big ranking factor has to do with your brick and mortar, your physical location. But what’s kind of cool with Bing is that they have a marginally wider radius within their local results for a business. So that’s kind of helpful if your brick and mortar is outside of the service area you’re really targeting. So that would be another great reason strategically to maybe focus on Bing a little bit more and your SEO agency should know how to optimize for Bing versus Google, but I mean, it is something to discuss with them. We won’t dive into that here, I could geek out and talk about it all day, so I will not, I will spare you all the details. But with that, let’s dive into these, the five ways we’ve come up with to leverage that marriage between Bing and ChatGPT. Number one, grow your Facebook reviews.
Amanda Joyce: Absolutely. So people are really surprised when they learn this, but Bing pulls their reviews for their search results for local businesses from Facebook. It’s actually kind of amazing because instead of finding out that now you have to go get Bing reviews on top of Facebook, on top of the BBB, on top of Google, if you can just make sure that you’re continuing to grow your Facebook reviews, it’s going to have a positive impact obviously on your Facebook visibility, but more importantly for today’s topic, it’s going to start helping your reviews grow within the Bing search results.
Devon Hayes: Yeah. And help you get better positioning for those local results on Bing. So yeah, start getting a few more of those Facebook reviews. Number two, multimedia content.
Amanda Joyce: This one I love. Yeah, I love this one because I feel like this … I mean, Google obviously still likes multimedia content, but all signs within Bing points to the fact that they really, really value this. So if you’re creating a piece of content and it’s got a video embedded in it and it’s got maybe even an infographic asset, some high quality images, basically you’ve got a lot of multimedia that’s supporting whatever the topic of conversation is on your blog post or on a service page in your website, Bing is going to favor that content. So as somebody who heads up our marketing strategy here, I love hearing this because that’s what we’re constantly trying to do do with our clients, is create additional assets that support maybe the long form blog post we wrote, but we want to make sure that if we go share it on social, that we’ve got some really cool images that are going to capture people’s attention to drive them back to consume that content.
And Bing’s basically encouraging you to do that from the jumpstart, create all of those kind of assets, have them embedded within that nice piece of content. As a consumer, I prefer consuming that type of content. I don’t want just some long form page that just goes on and on and on about how great a company is and has some bullets in it. I’m going to go blind looking at that. But if you’ve got a video in there that speaks to it, you’ve got some cool images, you can really pull me in with that multimedia, I’m going to enjoy it more and it’s going to rank better in Bing.
Devon Hayes: Yeah, and what I like about that too is being on the search engine page itself, is that they have so many different ways to filter video and images and you don’t even have to leave Bing to preview a video. You get kind of a wider preview than the tiny thumbnail you get on Google. So you could see videos and images right there. And that’s great for roofing companies who use, say CompanyCam, for example, and they have those images on their site, it can pull those images in and now you’re kind of being rewarded for having that beautiful imagery of those finished projects and stuff on there. And you might get a click through to your site, but what’s pretty is that your work is displayed prominently.
So it really encourages you to get those high res, high quality images and show off your work and then Bing rewards you for it and customers see it in a bigger format, which is kind of a higher sell if you do higher end work especially, and you invest in those and you invest in a photographer to come back through and take pictures of this cool undermount lighting that you did in this beautiful high rise penthouse kitchen, you want to be rewarded on search for that. And people that see that and are those kind of buyers, they see it more prominently without having to click over to an images tab.
Amanda Joyce: Absolutely. I mean, it kind of surprises me that, I mean I know that Google’s just so kind of caught up in themselves, but I can’t believe they haven’t copied a little bit of Bing’s homework in that sense. I feel like their search results are more attractive, and it’s kind of surprising to me that, again, Google’s just always been the winner, so they don’t really even have to look at anybody else, they’ve been able to just forge ahead and I love that we’re shaking them up a little bit.
Devon Hayes: I do too. And I have to say, I have to admit, I signed up for Bing because I wanted to play with the chat engine feature of it, and I’m actually really impressed with the user experience and what kind of pops out on the search page itself and what’s highlighted, without me having to click through to something else. The amount of additional links when you hover over something that kind of pop up and serve, just give you a better user experience, they think they know what you’re looking for. They’re like, “Here, here’s some additional resources,” without having to do a secondary search or refining your search. So I do have to say there’s some pretty cool features within Bing itself that doesn’t have as many functions as Google does, but there’s some good UX up in there.
Amanda Joyce: It really is funny, once again we’re back to the, I never thought I would say this.
Devon Hayes: Who knew? Who knew? Oh my gosh, and this one, we are certainly taking advantage of for our clients, running ads in Bing.
Amanda Joyce: Yes, absolutely. So running ads in Bing, the cost per clicks are substantially lower. Again, I know we’re also talking about how the search volume’s lower there, all the things. So it’s just kind of like Google’s on steroids, Bing’s just a little bit more digestible down here. So can definitely, if you’ve got a little bit of extra budget, if you’re maybe not maxing things out in Google Ads or maybe you’re finding that it used to really convert for you and things have slowed down, it’s oversaturated, take some of that cash, take some of those ad dollars and invest them in some Bing ads.
I was going through and kind of comparing some of our clients the other day, and I mean, I’m talking cost per clicks at a third, if not a quarter of the cost per click on some of their keywords. Granted, like I said, the conversion rate hasn’t always been as strong. It hasn’t been as strong, but now that there’s this kind of resurgent interest in Bing, we really could start to see those conversions go back up again. So I’m really excited with some of our clients that we’ve reduced spin just because of that conversion rate, I’m really excited to open that funnel up again and see if this change in user behavior is going to have a positive impact on our results.
Devon Hayes: Totally. And in doing some homework for this, I was seeing actually a lot of home services contractors saying that the leads they get from Bing were higher quality, they were converting more. And so I wonder, in doing those ads for, it sounds like, a hell of a lot cheaper than on Google, that maybe the quality is there too in the actual user, and so they might be higher quality. I think it’s so good and it’s the nature of capitalism to have better competition. And this is certainly, I hope long term, maybe it’ll level the playing field a little bit more with Google and they’ll kind of come off their high horse maybe in a couple years from now. But for now we’re talking about how to leverage this marriage and now there’s going to be more eyeballs on Bing.
So yeah, put some ad spend in Bing. Your dollars are going to go exponentially further in CPC or cost per click ad campaigns in Bing over Google Ads. That’s just brilliant right there, we could hang up right now. That right now, if you’re a contractor and you need the phone to ring, I mean, that’s amazing.
Amanda Joyce: Yeah, [inaudible 00:15:13] you want the phone to ring, spend it in Bing.
Devon Hayes: Yeah. Oh, you should be in marketing. It’s true. I mean, seriously, think of this. Guys listening to this show, this is why you pick a niche down agency because we can take the data and look at it across the entire country in a variety of home services niches and look at, compare the cost of the ads in Bing versus Google, the cost per click and tell you actually it is not just fractionally lower. It’s like, what are we talking? Are we talking, I don’t know, $150 in Google would be like, what, 20 bucks in Bing, is that kind of what you were seeing, that much of a jump?
Amanda Joyce: Yeah, depending, I mean, I will say with the caveat that typically when I see a keyword going for 120 in Google, I just stop running it. So I don’t have a lot of comparisons there. The second it gets that high, I’m like, “Too rich for my blood.” We can’t like … because if you’re only going to convert 10% of those into a lead and then 40% of those are going to become a customer, too expensive. But on average in a lot of our niches, we’re spending between 50 and $80 a click. And then we’re seeing Bing at 20 bucks for that same verb, that same word, excuse me. So there’s a ton of opportunity there. So start, go back through, look at your historical data in Google, pick those high quality, high intent keywords and get them over into Bing and start testing them.
Devon Hayes: Love it. Love it. All right, number five, the fifth way to leverage the marriage between Bing and ChatGPT, if you haven’t already, claim your Bing Places for Business profile. There’s a lot of businesses unclaimed on Bing right now, you want to claim your brand asset, you can actually sync it with your Google business profile, so you don’t need to manually add all that information into your Bing profile. And then it’s a quick phone call, they’ll give you, I don’t know, I think they’ll give you a code, six digit code maybe, and then you enter it in. You can do an email verification, phone verification, but it’s really easy. They allow you to upload like 100 images if you want to, if you have a ton of images. So yeah, claim your business profile and they don’t have the same feature as Google where you post to your profile.
So I don’t know, if your business hours change or something and you updated it on Google, you can just go on the back end of Bing for Business and click sync with your Google Business Profile and it’ll automatically update that for you. If you’re working with an SEO agency, I will say there’s a caveat, it will pull in all the information. So we have what’s called a UTM code, a tracking code, and it will pull that over from your Google Business Profile. So you just want to make sure that the URL for your website, if it has a UTM code, meaning if you’re tracking where your traffic is coming from, you’ll want to track what’s coming from Bing. So just update that UTM code from like GBP, your agency might have in there, or they should be doing this for you if it’s your agency, but make sure that UTM code has Bing in it so you can see what kind of traffic you’re getting from Bing itself.
Google Analytics will segment this traffic, but as we transition from Universal Analytics into what’s known as GA4 or Google Analytics 4, the breakouts of your acquisition channels might not be as clear. We kind of think GA4 is still pretty wonky and not the best user experience, but July 1st, we’re all being forced to make that shift. So set up your Bing for Business Profile and make sure that you’re able to track the traffic that you do get from Bing.
Amanda Joyce: Absolutely. And ideally, over the next couple years, you’re going to see that grow. So get on it now, take advantage of these tips, and this really should help you have a leg up on the competition. So should we go back through and just run through them real fast?
Devon Hayes: I think so. Do it up, do it up.
Amanda Joyce: Let’s do it. Let’s do it. Okay. So grow your Facebook reviews, make sure you’re continuing to get more of those in there, they will benefit you greatly in your local search results within Bing. Create content that has multimedia in it, make sure you’ve got high quality images in that content, video whenever possible, infographics if it makes sense. You name it, just get that multimedia within your content strategy and make sure you’re embedding it in your content on your website. Optimize for exact match keywords, this has been an ongoing SEO tactic that used to work in Google. It’s kind of gone by the wayside, but it still matters in Bing, so keep doing it. Run ads in Bing, take advantage of those lower cost per clicks. And of course, if you haven’t already, claim that that Bing Places for Business Profile.
Devon Hayes: Voila, beautifully said. We hope you have enjoyed this episode and that you kind of understand how this marriage between ChatGPT and Bing can be great for your business. If you’ve implemented this and it’s working for you, let us know. We would love to hear about how it’s going. Did we miss anything in this episode? I think we covered it, but let us know. We love your feedback, we love your comments, we love the DMs, keep them coming.
Amanda Joyce: Until next time, thanks guys.
Devon Hayes: Thank you.
Amanda Joyce: That was today’s Trade Secret. Thanks for listening.
Devon Hayes: Did you find this helpful? We’re just getting started.
Amanda Joyce: Subscribe, and don’t miss our next review.
Devon Hayes: Until next time.
