By now you’ve probably heard – Microsoft has a new search engine called BING (does it really stand for “but it’s not Google?”). If you haven’t about Bing, gently wiggle yourself out from under that large rock and get back in the game!!
If you’re like most small business owners, you’re always on the lookout for the next on-line marketing silver bullet. Facebook came and everyone told you that you had to create a page for your business. You did it, but then found that nothing magical happened unless you were willing to promote the heck out of it. You read all about Twitter in the local business journals, so you spent a weekend and figured that out. Now your iPhone is overrun by Tweets from the “get rich quick” crowd. You started a blog, but after 10 posts, you realized that creating great content is a job in and of itself and now it’s been months since you logged in to look at it.
Well, now we have a new distraction and it’s name is Bing! I’ve heard it 4-5 times this week already – “how come you haven’t suggested setting me up with ads on Bing, it’s supposed to be the new Google?!”
So…
Is Bing worth your attention? Should you spend this Holiday weekend getting a new search engine marketing campaign together so that next week you’ll be doing nothing but taking orders? As usual, we take the conversation back to the numbers. Pop into your Google Analytics account and take a look at your top traffic sources in descending order for the last quarter. Now, if you were going to set a goal of doubling your website traffic by the end of Q3, on which traffic sources would you focus your (limited) time and attention?
Google Analytics - Top Traffic Sources Snapshot
So…
Do you think Ask /Organic (highlighted in pink at the bottom) – is a hidden opportunity to supercharge our traffic or would you focus on some of the traffic sources at the top of the screen shot?
Although we are big fans of scouring all of our traffic sources in search of a diamond in the rough, if we were put to a quick decision about where we would focus our attention if we had the aforementioned goal, it would be at the top of the screen shot above – not the bottom.
Yes, you might find an occasional pocket of gold lower on the page – some site that sent you a few quality visitors, but where you presently have limited visibility. But, in our experience, when you focus on improving your bottom traffic sources you’re far more likely to spend way too much time with limited results to show for your efforts than if you had focused on (further) improving your top sources. This is particularly true of you are not already maximizing your budgets with things like Google CPC or investing heavily in search engine optimization (SEO).
Is Bing worth watching?
Of course, but unless you’re currently maxing out your PPC budgets with Google and Yahoo and dominating their organic rankings, I’m not sure you should get real worked up over Bing.
Look at the data above (which is from Q2 from one of our websites).
It illustrates the incredible challenge Microsoft has in front of them. Google Organic sent us nearly 8,500 visitors in Q2 which resulted in nearly 1,000 phone calls.
How did Bing do?
Bing, Live and MSN combined generated a measly 500 visits which resulted in less than 50 phone inquiries. I know how much time and energy we’re going to put into Bing in Q3! For the record, I’m not anti-Microsoft or anti-Bing; although, I am a Google lover and user. I just know from interacting with hundreds of SMB’s on a regular basis how easily it is to get distracted with the “next marketing thing.” Focus on things that have the best potential to move the needle in a meaningful way. The rest is just noise.
Happy July 4th!!!
