Last year, we saw Bing ’s market share increase to 25% It seems that their strategy to entice people onto their search engine is working which, in turn, means that more and more digital marketers like myself are putting a larger focus on this platform.
Historically, Bing has often offered paid search with lower cost per clicks and conversions than Google Adwords. Whilst I won’t be hanging my Google cap up yet, I definitely think that Bing should be taken much more seriously as their popularity continues to grow.
What has Bing been up to this year?
Bing have been growing more than you may think by partnering up with eco-friendly platform: Ecosia.
Ecosia’s USP is that 80% of search ad profits (generated by Bing) goes towards a variety of tree planting projects. So far (at the point of writing) they have planted 18,405,631 and the number is constantly increasing.
Cleaner air and soil, the prevention of flooding and improved health and well-being for all of us are just a few of the many benefits of helping to plant more trees.
How can you play your part?
Ecosia’s goal is to plant one billion trees by 2020, and I for one would love to play my part and I hope that other digital marketers will do the same. In order to ensure your ads show on Ecosia, all you have to do is activate Search Partners in your Bing account. This will automatically opt your company in to showing ads via the Ecosia search engine.
If you want to play an even bigger role in this tree planting mission, set Ecosia as your default browser. For the purpose of this article, we will advise on how to activate Ecosia on your Chrome browser, however, it is also available on Safari and Firefox.
1) The first step is to navigate to https://info.ecosia.org/ and click ‘add to chrome’.
2) You will then be taken to an install page with a pop up that outlines how Ecosia will impact your web behaviour.
3) If you agree with the terms outlined here, click ‘add extension’.
Following activation, you can continue to enjoy using the world wide web but with the added benefit of knowing that you are helping the environment in the process.
Keep a track of how many trees you plant
Simply visit Ecosia’s website to see how many trees you have helped to plant by utilising this search engine. In addition to the central counter, there will also be a counter in the top left of your screen showing how many trees you have helped to plant just from carrying out an online search. You need to perform an average of 45 searches on Ecosia for a tree to be planted. The speed in which trees are being planted is testament to the popularity of Bing as a platform for search and shopping ads.