Jeff Woelker : Chicago SEO, SEM, and Social Media Consultant

Microsoft and Yahoo have both been doing their darnedest lately to try and take back some of the market share that Google has earned for itself these days. Although marketers are not always the ultimate decision makers when it comes to which platform to advertise against, it all goes into a decision funnel that influences clients and eventually search engine users. Let me expound.

So I have a client who is looking to start a search campaign. They are looking for a recommendation on which engine(s) to use, but don’t really have a preference. Being media agnostic, I’ll recommend the best engines for their campaign objectives. However, I won’t necessarily like it if the mix contains Yahoo or Microsoft (Bing). To me, those are added overhead, added frustration, and added management time I don’t need. If the client gives me a window of opportunity, I’m going to take the path of least resistance and here’s where Yahoo and Bing are missing out on a lot of ad dollars. In a nutshell, here are 5 reasons why marketers avoid Yahoo and Bing and flock to Google when they have the opportunity.

Adwords Editor
First and foremost is the management of the campaign. Here is where Google excels. They provide an easy-to-use and robust desktop management application that makes updating campaigns a snap whether it’s across ad groups, keywords, or campaigns. Yahoo and Bing are both missing these features and have for some time. They’ve added some functionality as a conceit to the fact that many search marketers use the Adwords Editor and have an import feature to duplicate search campaigns across engines. There’s even a company that is based off of this single issue called Acquisio. Here is an easy way for Yahoo and Bing to make the management issue less of a headache. And it’s not just me, I’ve heard many small marketers who complain about the same thing, and as a result only use Google.

New Features
I’m sure the customer service personnel at Yahoo and Bing are sick of hearing “Well, Adwords has it”. I can’t count the number of times I’ve said that to my customer rep. But it’s true, most new features originate in Adwords and permeate through the other engines based on what marketers want or don’t want. Although they don’t all stick around, at least they are showing me, as a marketer, that at least part of my money is being fed back to me to try to make my job easier and more efficient. I’m not getting that feeling from the other guys.

Customer Support
Whereas I almost have what amounts to concierge service at Google, it seems like Yahoo and Bing have the keystone kops running their customer support departments. I assume it’s a result of hiring fresh college grads who are inexpensive and easy to replace, but it all goes into the user experience and influences decisions I make down the line.  Here’s how a few choice conversation’s have gone:

[in reference to a mobile marketing feature Adwords has]
Rep: “Yes, we have that feature.”
Me: “Great, how do I access it?”
Rep: “Well, you have to login to another account. I’ll have to check on how to get that setup.”
(And then I never hear from that rep again – this has happened with both Yahoo and Bing recently)

Or better yet – when I try and setup an international campaign:
Me: “I’d like to setup a paid search campaign in Japan.”
Rep: “Well, we don’t talk with Japan. You’ll have to call them and setup the account through them.”
(So I call Japan at 7 pm at night or 5 am in the morning to get my account setup. And none of the reps I talk with speak English very well.)

So needless to say, I call each department less and less and chip away budget from each over time.

Mobile Marketing
This is the newest development in the paid search tactic bucket. I’ve been trying to setup mobile marketing accounts for a few of our clients and Google makes it a piece of cake and bundles it all into one interface. And as you can see from the conversation above, I still haven’t heard anything from Yahoo or Bing as to how to setup those features. I had to follow up several times to finally get an answer.

You’re not helping my clients
And here’s the ultimate rub for Yahoo and Microsoft – granted, you can make my life frustrating and, as part of serving my clients, I have to accept it, but if you stop producing measurable results or I can see a better way to optimize my client accounts, I’m going to move on that so fast, it will make your head spin. The definition of efficiency is moving from point A to point B with as little resistance as possible, and the more roadblocks you put up, the less likely I am to use you in the future.

So please Yahoo and Bing – listen up. I’m trying to give constructive criticism and ultimately make both our lives easier.

Am I oversimplifying this or do you share the same frustrations I do? Let me know in the comments.

UPDATE: Please see Microsoft’s Advertising Community Blogger’s response below. Thanks Mel!