Bing vs. Google Revenue Performance - August 2022 Comparison
20.74x ROAS on Bing 👀
I promise that Bing is not paying me to promote their search engine ad space.
For years, I’ve recognized that Bing PPC was not a part of most HVAC contractors core strategy and I begged some of our clients to test some spend on Bing and the intuition was right.
Before we break down the $20.74 return generated for every $1 spend on Bing, let’s look at some usage stats for the search engine:
5.85% market share of the US search engine market
36% market share for desktop users in the US
Some of the data points for Bing usage are murky, but what stood out to me was that Bing has 36% market share for desktop devices in the US.
That means out of every 100 searches performed on desktop devices, 36 are done on Bing and you can bet some of those searches are from customers looking for your services.
If you do a Bing search right now for “plumber near me”, “ac install near me”, etc. and you see aggregators in the top spots (HomeAdvisor, Angi, etc.) it means your competition probably isn’t using Bing as part of their core strategy and is an opportunity.
Since we measure revenue from multiple ad channels, we see the same pattern over and over:
(1) An ad channel starts performing really well and word gets out (think Google Local Service Ads)
(2) Vendors promote the ad channel and their management of it
(3) Flocks of competitors begin to use it at the promise of high returns and performance slowly declines with increased competition
(4) Other channels see less competition and better performance and the cycle starts over again
Bing is one channel over the last 3 years that I haven’t seen people flock to and I’m not sure why, but I hope you can use this data as your competitive advantage.
The channel is lower volume than Google, which is to be expect since Google has the dominate market-share of search engines, but it’s hard to ignore a 20.74x ROAS with a $6,320.81 average ticket, and 65% of closed revenue coming from new customers through the channel.
We also saw that out of every 100 Bing leads, 29 turned into a sold or closed job.
How Does Bing’s Performance in August Compare to Google’s?
Right off the bat, it’s important to acknowledge that Bing is a lower volume than Google thus it warranted a lower spend on the channel.
The spend on Google PPC was 7.6x higher than Bing PPC, which yielded:
8.6x more leads than Bing
5.1x more sold and closed revenue than Bing
The average ticket from Bing PPC was nearly $2,000 higher than Google PPC and is why Bing punched above its weight when comparing spend vs. output and return on ad spend.
Bing PPC generated 13.9% of sold revenue with 10.4% of the budget and Google PPC generated 86.1% of sold and closed revenue with 89.5% of the budget.
Both channels drove strong returns, but Bing was slightly more efficient, generating more revenue per dollar spent than Google.
Also, I want to point out that it should not be an or conversation - it’s not Google or Bing.
It’s an and conversion - Google and Bing.
Bing doesn’t have the search volume Google does, but is still a great supplement (in this case nearly 14% of revenue) that might have less competition in your market.
Analyzing How Bing Leads Convert on HVAC Websites
We tracked 500 leads from Bing in August and, surprisingly, only 50% of those leads converted via phone calls.
Usually, phone calls account for 75% - 80% of leads, but the way customers who came from Bing PPC converted on the website was more diverse:
50% of Bing leads converted via Phone Calls
32% of Bing leads converted via Forms
12% of Bing leads converted via Chat
6% of Bing leads converted via Schedule Engine
Next, we’ll looked at matched leads, which totaled 212 from Bing:
58% of matched leads came from Phone Calls
18% of matched leads from from Forms
13% of matched leads from from Chat
10% of matched leads came from Schedule Engine
Note: these percentages add up to 99%, only because I left out decimals to keep this cleaner
To recap, 212 leads from Bing matched to a new opportunity in the CRM, with 58% of those leads coming from phone calls.
Lastly, we’ll look at the average ticket from Bing conversions across the various conversion tools:
$7,821.93 average ticket for Form Leads
$7,101.81 average ticket for Schedule Engine
$5,592.44 average ticket for Phone Calls
$5,188.25 average ticket for Chat
These numbers are pretty similar to what we see in our usual conversion tool analysis:
Customers who came from Bing PPC and converted via Forms and Schedule Engine spent nearly $2,000 more on average than those who converted via Phone and Chat.
This is to be expected generally, but it did surprise me that the trends held same for Bing, because the channel is more popular with an older audience and I assumed less of them would use conversion tools like chat, form and online scheduling.
It’s a clue that even your customers in a higher age bracket still prefer convenience and may be looking for website features that mimic their online buying experience in other verticals like e-commerce.
Closing Thoughts
One of my favorite things to do is play the game of measuring trends and spotting fruitful ad channels before everyone else does - that’s when you have the chance at the highest possible returns.
I don’t think Bing is talked about a lot because revenue from the channel isn’t being measured accurately or at all and I think those of you on this list can benefit from these insights (at least that is my hope).
You can bet that it will change in 12 months, 18 months, 24 months and that favorable ad channels will keep changing forever, but if you follow the data and you aren’t afraid to take some risks by being “early” you can find yourself advertising to attention without as much competition as some of the mainstream advertising channels.
Stay tuned for my upcoming article, measuring revenue flow from click to revenue and everything in between for August 2022 and many more data points like this.
We are constantly improving our revenue tracking product and are so excited to share some more of the updates with you all.
If there are any questions or data points you’d like to see answered in these newsletters, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at Jon@SearchLightDigital.io.
Until next time . . .
-jon