Stop Treating the Yahoo! Bing Network Like the Red-Headed Stepchild [Infographic]

Paid search is a great way to kick off a new website or marketing campaign, offering the ability to immediately send traffic with just a few clicks of the mouse. Pay-per-click marketing can be used to test landing pages, gauge the interest and conversion rate of an offer, or simply start generating revenue while a search engine optimization campaign is laid out and in the early stages.

Heck, some campaigns are full-on PPC and don’t even rely on SEO in order to drive traffic. In very competitive industries this is common as it makes more financial sense to develop a very strong paid search marketing effort instead.  When it comes to paid search, we all tend to focus on AdWords, and while that is a great pay-per-click resource (number one, we all know!) it is time to stop treating the Yahoo! Bing Network like the red-headed stepchild.

There are several benefits to adding this neglected PPC option into a paid search campaign (this isn’t to say that Google should be abandoned at all, because that would be campaign suicide). However, there are many reasons why also allocating some of the spend to the Yahoo! Bing Network is a good idea. Take a look at this quick snapshot:

This was a quick test that was run for a few hours the other day before the weekend, and the total spend was less than $17. These are incredibly competitive financial keywords that sometimes cost more per click on AdWords than the total spend for this initial test. This client pays between $16 and $22 per click for these same keywords on AdWords depending on the ad position. The bid was set at a quarter to see what would come of this. Yes, a whole shiny QUARTER per click. As you can see from the screen grab above one keyword had a decent 7/10 quality score and the other was a 2/10, yet both averaged around the number 5 ad position.

There were a lot of impressions, a horrible click-through-rate, but a mind blowing 15 cent and 11 cent average cost-per-click. This little test resulted in two conversions. Now, we aren’t talking email submits or information requests. These are full-blown sales with the online shopping cart singing “cha-ching!” Each conversion is worth about $150 monthly for a year to this client. That is $3,600 in revenue from a $17 test. Now the ads and website can be tweaked, optimized, and further tested to get a higher ad position, CTR, more conversions…and more revenue!

There is no denying that there is search volume via Bing and Yahoo, meaning there are clicks, conversions, and revenue opportunities waiting. Take the same raw data in terms of impressions above and imagine a better CTR.  It only makes sense that it would lead to more conversions and revenue, right?

There is so much opportunity, yet the Yahoo! Bing Network continues to sit in the corner saying, “Hey, look at me!”

I am not saying you will automatically get dirt cheap clicks and huge ROIs, but what I am saying is that you owe it to yourself to at least try. There is also the opportunity to test ads and websites on a smaller (and less expensive) scale, find the perfect combination that delivers a nice CTR and then migrate what has been learned over to AdWords.

It is well worth running small tests on the Yahoo! Bing Network, as the payoff can be a massive ROI and an additional traffic source for paid search. The infographic below outlines some reasons why the YBN should not be ignored. Take a look at our below infographic to learn more.

“Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

(click image to enlarge)

Screenshot image: taken 1/18/2014
Main image credit: Shutterstock used under license
Infographic credit: Market Domination Media