By: Matt Beswick, Paid Marketing Manager, Quality Bearings Online
If you are a B2B marketer, you likely spend the vast majority of your day, and your budget, focused on Google. It’s the giant in the room, the default setting, the safe bet. But what if the "safe bet" is actually costing you efficiency? What if the customers with the highest purchasing power aren't even looking at your Google Ads?
As the Paid Marketing Manager at Quality Bearings Online, I specialize in B2B e-commerce, exporting engineering spares globally. In my time managing campaigns across platforms, I’ve developed a perspective that might just shake up your entire paid media strategy: Microsoft Advertising isn't just a backup plan; for B2B, it might actually be the superior platform for ROI.
Looking at data from my own campaigns in 2025, I found that while Google brought in more volume, Microsoft delivered a 46% higher return on ad spend (ROAS) and a 50% higher average order value.
If those numbers caught your attention, keep reading. In this post, I’m going to share why I believe Microsoft is a goldmine for B2B and how to adapt your strategy to make it work. Here is what you can expect:
The specific reasons why B2B buyers favor Microsoft.
Why "copying and pasting" your Google strategy is a recipe for disaster.
How to use Microsoft-exclusive features like LinkedIn targeting.
Practical tips for managing large inventories and Performance Max on the platform.
To understand why Microsoft works, you have to look at who is actually using it. It’s easy to joke about Bing, but the demographics tell a serious story for business owners.
There are three distinct reasons why the audience on Microsoft is prime territory for B2B sales:
The Demographic Factor: The user base on Microsoft tends to be slightly older. In the corporate world, age often correlates with seniority. These are the people who have been promoted to decision-making roles and, crucially, hold the company credit card. They have real purchasing power.
The "Corporate Policy" Reality: This is a fascinating insight that many marketers miss. Many large corporations, particularly in the US, have strict IT policies. They implement a "Microsoft Only" environment. Employees at these massive companies literally cannot download Google Chrome. If you are only advertising on Google, you are completely invisible to these potential buyers.
The Efficiency Gap: Because so many advertisers neglect Microsoft, there is less competition. Lower competition leads to lower Cost Per Click (CPC). Furthermore, even when competitors are present, their execution is often poor because they aren't paying attention to the account. This allows you to swoop in and dominate the space.
If you are convinced to give Microsoft a shot, your first instinct might be to use the "Import from Google" tool. It’s fast, it’s easy, and in my experience, it’s a mistake.
Think of it like this: You wouldn't wear a swimsuit to a formal dinner just because it fits your body. The context is completely different. Microsoft users shop differently, and the platform’s algorithm behaves differently.
Here is how to build a platform-specific strategy:
When you import campaigns directly from Google, you risk overriding critical settings. Budgets can go haywire (e.g., a £20 budget suddenly becoming £200), and bidding strategies that work on Google’s massive volume might fail on Microsoft. You need to treat Microsoft as its own independent ecosystem.
Google has an ocean of data, so you can afford to segment your campaigns granularly. Microsoft is a smaller pond. If you slice your campaigns too thin, the algorithm won't get enough data to learn and optimize.
I suggest taking consolidation to the extreme. If I have 25 campaigns on Google, I will often run less than 10 on Microsoft. You need "data density"—enough clicks and conversions flowing through a single campaign to let the machine learning do its job.
If you are in e-commerce with thousands of SKUs (at Quality Bearings Online, we have over 50,000), building manual search campaigns for everything is impossible.
Start by leaning heavily on Dynamic Search Ads (DSA). Let Microsoft’s AI crawl your site and match queries to your products. Once you see which products are gaining traction, you can pull them out into their own dedicated search campaigns.
Microsoft isn't just a "mini-Google." It has unique features that, frankly, leave Google in the dust when it comes to B2B targeting.
This is the holy grail for B2B marketers. Because Microsoft owns LinkedIn, you can overlay LinkedIn audience data onto your search and audience campaigns. You can target users based on:
Company Name
Job Title
Industry
This ensures your ads are only showing to the people who actually matter to your business.
We all know the frustration of Google’s Performance Max (PMax) campaigns cannibalizing branded search traffic. I've found that Microsoft’s version of PMax is surprisingly respectful. If you add negative keywords to protect your brand, Microsoft honors them and won't go fishing in your branded auctions. It allows you to run PMax alongside Shopping campaigns effectively.
Microsoft has been pushing hard into Audience Ads (native advertising on MSN, Outlook, Edge, etc.). Recently, they introduced feed-based audience ads. This means you can push your product feed directly into these visual placements. Given the high intent of the user base, the placements here are often significantly higher quality than what you might find on the Google Display Network.
The numbers speak for themselves. For our business, Microsoft spend is 48% lower than Google, yet the calls and form submissions - the "big juicy inquiries" - remain stable across both platforms.
So, I’ll leave you with this question: Is it time you stopped ignoring Microsoft? Or, at the very least, is it time you started treating it with the respect, and independent strategy, it deserves?
If you are ready to diversify your ad spend and target the decision-makers where they actually work, log in to Microsoft Advertising today. Just don't hit that "Import" button without a plan.
Matt Beswick is the Paid Marketing Manager at Quality Bearings Online
You can find him on LinkedIn