Attention: PPC & Affiliate Bootcamp Phase 6 People. You need to read this!

byVitaliyG

55.7K followers

Updated 11 years ago

In honor of phase 6 of boot camp being all about PPC, I'd like to share with the WA community some really good and HORRIBLE experiences I've had with Bing Ads, the topic of Phase 6's training.

I've had years of experience with this organization and through my ordeals and successful times with them have developed a few "rules" I HIGHLY recommend you follow to ensure you don't make the same mistakes I did.

Before I get to these rules, I'd like to share some seriously crazy and what I believe to be retarded policies I've had to endure from Bing and something you may very well end up encountering if you also choose to do business with them:

Story 1: Careful what you promote. It may get flagged and it may not even be your fault either...

I was trying to promote a kettlebell program through a popular fitness DVD called "Brazil Butt Lift". I chose my keywords carefully, put them up, checked back a few hours later, nothing. Why? Because the word "butt" was flagged.

Now this is something you'll likely find in Adwords too, but my problem was that I my ad was only flagged for 1 country: Singapore.

What's even more unusual is that I DIDN'T even choose that place to show my ads, but it did, and it was because that place flagged my ad that it never even showed anywhere else. No matter how much I fixed it, the problem still persisted.

It took me (I kid you not) over 3 weeks to resolve this ridiculous issue. 3 freaking weeks. The problem was not mine, but Bing's but in order to solve it, I had to...

1. Call them up several times to clarify exactly what my issue was.

2. Escalate the issue to a supervisor (because most of their support staff don't know squat, even though they are VERY polite).

3. Keep waiting for them to resolve the issue with their technical staff.

I also have another version of this same story where I tried promoting P90X, but couldn't because the keyword "P90X" was a trademarked name. It took me another few weeks to actually settle this issue.

Story 2: Careful. If you screw up with them once, it'll haunt you for the rest of your days with them...

Apparently once you have an issue with 1 campaign/ad, your entire account gets flagged and this can negativity affect any current/future ads you may have.

What's worse is that this is something you aren't told in addition to some support staff not even knowing about it either. It's like a permanent record which inhibits your progress in life. How crazy is that people?

After my above issues took place (story 1), I noticed a decline in overall traffic #'s and called them up. It was then and only then that a supervisor revealed to me there was a flag on my account and that I could not take it off.

In the rules below, I'll show you how to avoid this.

Story 3: How I lost out on 5 figure profits because of Bing.

This story will always piss me off just thinking about it. I discovered a VERY popular diet which ended up making me 6 figures (full case study here). But since this success story dealt with Bing, you know there's going to be problems, and here is the one I encountered...

My first month with this niche yielded 5 figure profits. However, early in to the second month, something happened...

My ads VANISHED. Yep, just like that. I checked my CC, checked my account. Everything was fine. But the ad still didn't show. What the hell was up?

I called up Bing and no matter who I spoke to, the answers I always got were...

"Well sir we need 3-5 days to escalate this further". Then after that time period, they'd call me and say...

"Sir we're still figuring this out, we'll call within 7 days". Then the same trend would repeat itself.

Please keep in mind that for each day my ad wasn't up, I was losing out on A LOT of money. I wasn't kidding when I said 5 figures and this was MONTHLY profits.

Needless to say, I was pissed. And from what the support staff were telling me, I didn't do anything wrong, which added fuel to my rage.

A month had passed with no end in sight to my problem and I finally decided to stop waiting for them. I opened up another Bing ads account through a friend of mine and remade the same ad there (I paused the original in my old account so as not to cause any problems). Here's what happened...

The profits resumed! Hallelujah!

But here's the kicker...

6 months after this issue took place, I finally get a call from Bing. This time, they say they've figured out the problem and here it was: My monthly bid for this campaign was too high. I set it to $5,000 daily, and Bing multiplied that by 30 days and this total amount was apparently too high to their service to recognize, so they shut down my ad.

But no one knew about this, not the staff, not the supervisors, not even the technical people. It took them 6 months to figure out the problem was THEIR system. Had I waited for them, I would miss out on 6 months worth of profits. And for a niche that was making me 5 figures monthly, I couldn't wait. I doubt you could either!

Now with these horror stories in mind, let's get down to the rules to help you avoid all this crap I had to deal with...

1. Whenever calling up Bing, always, and I mean ALWAYS ask for a supervisor right away.

The support staff is pretty clueless when it comes to finding solutions for your problems. Most of the time, they'll give you cliche answers which will leave you wondering what you're supposed to do. Always ask for a supervisor.

What will usually happen you call up Bing is that your problem will be escalated anyway to a supervisor and that takes 3-5 days. So in reailty, by going through the standard methods, you just wasted 3-5 days instead of just going to the right person immediately. Don't make this mistake. Go straight to the head honcho and let them find the answers for you.

2. Don't set your daily bids into the $1,000s.

I had to set mine to that because my ads were costing this much everyday. If you set yours too high, you may wind up in the same problem I had in story 3. Only keep your daily bids high if you are actually spending close to that much.

3. Always have another Bing account set up (just in case).

Having a plan B when it comes to Bing ads is crucial. Depending on them to fix your problem quickly is something you WON'T encounter with this system. That is why when TSHTF, head over to account B and continue there.

Note: If you're looking to re-create the same ad on a different Bing ads account, make sure to always pause the original so as not to cause problems.

There you have it, the 3 rules. I had to learn them the hard way, but through this tutorial, you won't have to!

One other thing most people run into when doing PPC is the question of whether or not Bing ads is even worth doing and if they should stick to Google adwords. Here is my answer:

Bing ads WORKS. It's def got a lot of issues, but it also has a lot of opportunities and flexibility you won't find in Adwords.

Here is a blog post on this which will help you understand: Bing Ads vs Google Adwords.

Cheers all!

Vitaliy