Microsoft Ads for Technology and SaaS: Reaching Enterprise Buyers on Bing

Most technology and SaaS companies pour their paid search budget into Google Ads and treat Microsoft Ads as an afterthought. That’s a mistake, particularly for companies selling to enterprise buyers. The Bing search network reaches a different audience profile from Google, one that skews older, more senior and more likely to be using corporate-managed devices where Microsoft Edge and Bing are the default browser and search engine. Priority Pixels provides paid search and digital marketing for technology companies where Microsoft Ads is treated as a strategic channel rather than a checkbox exercise that gets a fraction of the Google budget.

For SaaS and tech companies targeting IT decision makers, procurement teams and C-suite executives at large organisations, the Microsoft Advertising network deserves more attention than it typically receives. The audience is smaller than Google’s, but the audience composition often aligns better with enterprise B2B buyer profiles. Lower competition on the platform means lower cost per click. Microsoft’s integration with LinkedIn targeting data adds a layer of professional audience filtering that Google simply doesn’t offer.

Why Enterprise Buyers Are on Bing

The assumption that nobody uses Bing is outdated. Microsoft’s search network handles a meaningful share of desktop search volume in the UK. The demographics of that audience are worth paying attention to. Bing’s user base includes a higher proportion of professionals aged 35 and above in management and executive roles. This isn’t accidental. It’s a direct result of corporate IT policies that deploy Windows devices with Edge as the default browser and Bing as the default search engine.

Large enterprises, government departments and regulated industries are among the organisations most likely to use managed device configurations. Their employees, many of whom are the exact people a SaaS company needs to reach, search on Bing as part of their daily workflow without actively choosing to do so. A technology company selling enterprise software, cloud infrastructure or managed IT services that ignores this channel is leaving a relevant audience unaddressed.

The Microsoft Advertising platform reports that its network reaches over a billion users globally through Bing, Yahoo and partner sites. For B2B tech companies, the volume is lower than Google, but the proportion of high-value enterprise prospects within that volume is often higher. That composition difference is what makes the channel worth investing in.

Lower Competition and Better CPCs

Because fewer advertisers compete on Microsoft Ads compared to Google, the cost per click for technology keywords tends to be significantly lower. Terms like “enterprise CRM software” or “cloud security platform” that carry premium CPCs on Google are often available on Bing at a fraction of the cost. This doesn’t mean the traffic is lower quality. It means fewer companies are bidding for it.

The cost efficiency of Microsoft Ads for technology companies is often the strongest argument for running campaigns on the platform. Lower CPCs on the same keywords mean your budget stretches further, your cost per lead drops. Your overall return on ad spend improves without changing anything about your targeting or messaging.

The analysis from WordStream comparing Bing and Google Ads performance has consistently shown lower average CPCs on Microsoft’s platform across B2B categories. For technology companies running tight budgets or testing new keyword themes, this makes Microsoft Ads a lower-risk environment to experiment in before scaling what works to Google.

Campaign Structure for SaaS on Microsoft Ads

The campaign structure that works for a SaaS company on Microsoft Ads follows similar principles to Google, but with some platform-specific considerations. Microsoft Ads supports most of the same campaign types, including search, shopping, audience and performance max (branded as Performance Max on Microsoft). For B2B tech companies, search campaigns targeting high-intent keywords are where the majority of budget should go.

Start with your highest-converting Google Ads campaigns and consider whether those same keywords and structures will perform on Bing. The audiences overlap but aren’t identical, so blindly importing everything from Google without adjusting bids and budgets to reflect Microsoft’s different auction dynamics wastes the opportunity to set things up properly from the start.

Separate campaigns by intent level, just as you would on Google. High-intent keywords with terms like “pricing”, “free trial”, “vs” and “reviews” should have their own campaigns with dedicated budgets. Paid search campaign management on Microsoft Ads benefits from the same structural discipline that works on Google, just with different bid levels and performance expectations.

LinkedIn Profile Targeting on Microsoft Ads

This is the feature that separates Microsoft Ads from every other search advertising platform. Because Microsoft owns LinkedIn, advertisers on the Microsoft Advertising platform can layer LinkedIn profile data onto their search campaigns. You can target or adjust bids based on company name, industry and job function, combining the intent signal of a search query with the professional identity data from LinkedIn.

For a SaaS company selling to enterprise IT departments, this means you can bid more aggressively when the searcher works at a Fortune 500 company or holds a director-level position in information technology. You’re still targeting the same keywords, but your bids reflect the value of the person behind the search rather than just the search term itself.

The LinkedIn targeting options on Microsoft Ads include company targeting (reaching employees of specific companies by name), industry targeting (filtering by the LinkedIn industry classification of the searcher’s employer) and job function targeting (reaching people in specific professional categories like engineering, IT or operations). These can be applied as bid modifiers on existing campaigns or as targeting criteria for dedicated campaigns aimed specifically at enterprise prospects.

Ad Formats and Extensions That Work for Technology Products

Microsoft Ads supports responsive search ads as the primary search ad format, mirroring what’s available on Google. The same principles apply: write headlines that address specific buyer needs, include concrete product details and test a range of messaging angles. Technical buyers respond to specifics over generalities on Microsoft just as they do on Google.

Ad extensions on Microsoft Ads are where technology companies can add useful detail without taking up headline space. The extensions worth configuring for SaaS and tech campaigns include:

• Sitelink extensions that point to pricing, features, case studies and free trial pages, giving the searcher direct access to the pages most relevant to their evaluation
• Callout extensions that highlight differentiators such as “No credit card required” or “SOC 2 certified” or “14-day free trial”
• Structured snippet extensions that list product categories, features or integration partners
• Call extensions for companies where phone conversations are part of the sales process
• Image extensions that add visual context to text ads, useful for showing product screenshots or interface previews

The extensions serve two purposes. They increase the physical size of your ad on the results page, which improves click-through rate. They also give you space to communicate additional selling points that don’t fit in the headline and description format. For companies already running Google Ads, many of these extensions can be replicated on Microsoft Ads with minimal additional effort.

Importing From Google vs Building Separately

Microsoft Ads offers a one-click import tool that pulls campaigns, ad groups, keywords, ads and some extensions directly from your Google Ads account. This is the fastest way to get started on the platform. For many technology companies it’s the right first step. Get your Google campaigns running on Microsoft, collect data on how they perform with a Bing audience, then adjust from there.

The import approach has limitations. Bid amounts from Google are usually too high for Microsoft’s less competitive auctions, so imported campaigns can overspend if you don’t adjust bids downward. Some Google Ads features don’t have direct Microsoft equivalents. Audience targeting configurations need separate setup. Smart bidding strategies may also behave differently on Microsoft due to the smaller data volume. Campaigns that use target CPA or maximise conversions on Google might need to start with manual bidding on Microsoft until they accumulate enough conversion data. The PPC experts at PPC Hero have noted that manual CPC bidding on Microsoft Ads often outperforms automated strategies in B2B verticals where conversion volumes are low and sales cycles are long.

The approach that tends to work is importing as a starting point, reducing bids by 20 to 30 per cent, monitoring performance for two to four weeks, then adjusting based on what the data shows. As mentioned in Search Engine Land’s coverage of Microsoft Ads strategy, treating the platform as a testing ground rather than a clone of your Google account produces better results over time.

Measuring Performance and Scaling What Works

Measuring Microsoft Ads performance for a technology company follows the same framework as any paid search channel: track the metrics that connect ad spend to business outcomes. Cost per click tells you what you’re paying for traffic. Cost per lead tells you what you’re paying for prospects. Cost per opportunity and cost per customer tell you whether the channel is contributing to revenue.

Microsoft Ads provides the UET (Universal Event Tracking) tag for conversion tracking, which functions similarly to Google’s conversion tracking. Install it on your website, configure conversion goals for the actions that matter (demo requests, trial sign-ups, contact form submissions) and let the data accumulate before making decisions about scaling or cutting campaigns.

The technology companies that succeed with Microsoft Ads are the ones that approach it with appropriate expectations. The volume will be lower than Google. The audience will be different. The CPCs will be lower. Judging the channel by the same volume benchmarks as Google misses the point. The right comparison is cost per qualified lead and pipeline contribution relative to spend. On those metrics, Microsoft Ads regularly outperforms Google for enterprise-focused technology companies because the audience composition is closer to the ideal buyer profile. A well-designed landing page that loads quickly and speaks directly to the enterprise buyer’s concerns converts Microsoft traffic just as effectively as Google traffic, often at a lower cost per acquisition.