The Microsoft Ads Agency For Leads and Sales

Microsoft Ads, officially known as Microsoft Advertising, is a Pay-Per-Click advertising platform that allows businesses to reach customers across Microsoft’s search and advertising ecosystem. Advertisers can appear when people search for relevant products or services, with most search activity centred around Bing and Microsoft’s wider network of search partners.

Unlike SEO, where businesses earn visibility organically over time, Microsoft Ads allows you to pay for targeted exposure immediately. Campaigns can be built around specific keywords, locations, devices, audiences and business objectives, giving advertisers control over who they want to reach and how much they are willing to spend.

Microsoft Advertising also extends beyond traditional search advertising. Businesses can use Audience Ads, display advertising, Shopping campaigns, Performance Max and other formats to reach potential customers across Microsoft properties and partner websites.

A specialist Microsoft Ads Agency can use these different channels to generate additional leads and sales while reducing a business’s reliance on Google Ads alone.

Before launching a Microsoft Ads campaign, we first establish whether there is enough opportunity on the platform to justify your investment.

This starts with researching the searches being carried out by people looking for your products or services. We analyse keyword demand, commercial intent, estimated click costs and the level of competition within your market.

Microsoft Ads often represents an additional source of high-intent traffic for businesses already performing well through paid search. However, that does not mean every company should automatically advertise on the platform.

We calculate what your likely cost per lead or sale could be and compare this against your margins, conversion rates and customer value. This gives us a realistic understanding of what Microsoft Ads would need to achieve before we recommend investing significant budget.

For businesses with a proven search market, Microsoft Advertising can become a valuable second source of PPC leads alongside Google.

Optimising Microsoft Ads is about understanding where profitable customers are actually coming from and continuously moving budget towards those opportunities.

At ADdictive Digital, we analyse performance across keywords, search terms, devices, locations, audiences and campaigns. Poor-performing traffic is reduced or removed, while campaigns generating qualified leads and sales receive more budget.

This is particularly important with Microsoft Ads because copying a Google Ads account across and leaving it untouched rarely produces the best possible results. Microsoft has its own search behaviour, audiences, partner traffic and performance patterns that need to be managed independently.

Some of the first areas we focus on include:

• Search term quality: Reviewing the actual searches generating clicks and excluding irrelevant or low-value traffic.
• Keyword and landing page relevance: Making sure the intent behind each keyword closely matches the page users reach after clicking.
• Audience performance: Using Microsoft’s audience data to identify segments that are more likely to become customers.
• Conversion tracking: Ensuring UET and other tracking methods accurately capture the leads and sales that matter to your business.

As more conversion data becomes available, optimisation moves beyond simply generating cheaper clicks. The objective is to identify which campaigns are consistently producing profitable customers and scale those areas without allowing acquisition costs to spiral.

Microsoft Ads offers automated bidding strategies that use campaign and conversion data to determine how aggressively it should bid in each advertising auction.

Instead of manually deciding what every individual click is worth, an automated strategy can evaluate available signals and adjust bids according to the likelihood of achieving your campaign objective.

For lead generation campaigns, strategies such as Maximise Conversions and Target CPA can be particularly useful once enough reliable conversion data has been collected.

With Target CPA, for example, we tell Microsoft approximately how much the business is prepared to pay for a conversion. Microsoft then adjusts bidding across individual auctions in an attempt to generate conversions around that target.

The important part is the data being fed back into the platform.

If every form submission is treated equally, Microsoft will optimise towards generating more form submissions. If your conversion tracking identifies which enquiries become genuinely valuable opportunities, however, your optimisation can become significantly more commercially focused.

This is why ADdictive places so much emphasis on accurate conversion tracking before aggressively using automated bidding.

Automated strategies can also be managed differently across campaigns. A highly profitable product or service may justify a higher acquisition target than something with significantly smaller margins.

The goal is not simply to give Microsoft complete control of your advertising budget. It is to give the platform clear commercial objectives, reliable conversion data and sensible boundaries so its automation can work effectively.

When enough high-quality data is available, automated bidding can make thousands of auction-level decisions that would be impossible to reproduce manually.

Display advertising is a powerful form of Google Ads PPC that enables advertisers to use visually engaging images or banner ads to deliver their message and enhance brand awareness. In digital marketing, display ads are often considered the online equivalent of traditional advertising methods, such as flyer distribution. These ads are placed across a wide range of platforms, including websites, mobile apps, and social media, and can incorporate a mix of text, images, flash, audio, and even video.

By leveraging networks like the Google Display Network (GDN), businesses can expand their reach significantly. The GDN boasts an impressive reach, connecting advertisers to over 92% of global internet users across more than 2 million websites. This gives brands the opportunity to target potential customers across a vast array of online spaces, helping them stay top of mind and drive more traffic to their website.

Display ads are particularly effective for building brand recognition, re-engaging users who have interacted with your website or ads before, and attracting a new audience with eye-catching creative. Whether you’re looking to increase visibility, drive traffic, or boost conversions, display advertising within the Google Ads ecosystem is a key tool for reaching your marketing goals.

Microsoft Audience Ads allow businesses to reach potential customers outside traditional search results through visual and native advertising placements.

Rather than waiting for somebody to type a specific keyword into Bing, audience advertising allows you to reach people based on their interests, purchase intent, previous interactions with your business and other audience signals.

Ads can appear across Microsoft’s wider advertising ecosystem, including placements on properties such as MSN, Outlook and Microsoft Edge, as well as selected partner inventory.

This makes Audience Ads particularly useful for businesses that want to reach customers earlier in the decision-making process or reconnect with people who have already shown interest in their products or services.

Campaigns can use combinations of imagery, headlines, descriptions and audience targeting to attract attention while users browse content rather than actively search.

For many businesses, Microsoft Audience Ads work best alongside Search campaigns rather than replacing them. Search captures existing demand, while audience advertising helps create additional touchpoints around that demand.

Microsoft Audience Ads are most useful when there is a clear reason to reach customers beyond conventional keyword-based search campaigns.

For many businesses, we would normally establish a strong Search campaign first. Once there is enough data to understand who converts and what those customers look like, Audience Ads can be introduced to expand reach or bring previous visitors back into the funnel.

There are several targeting approaches worth considering:

1. Remarketing audiences: Reach people who have previously visited your website but left without completing an enquiry or purchase. These users already know your business, making them a logical audience to re-engage.
2. In-market audiences: Target groups Microsoft has identified as showing purchase intent within particular categories. This can help businesses reach new prospects who are already demonstrating behaviour associated with a buying decision.
3. Customer Match: Use first-party customer data to create audiences from people who already have a relationship with your business. These campaigns can support repeat purchases, renewals, upselling or cross-selling.
4. Contextual and placement targeting: Reach users while they are consuming content relevant to particular subjects or across selected Microsoft properties. This can be useful when the environment in which the advertisement appears matters to the campaign.

The best approach depends heavily on your objective.

If you want direct-response leads, we would normally keep targeting considerably tighter. If your objective is brand awareness or reaching a new market, broader audience targeting may make more sense.

Remarketing allows you to advertise differently to people who have already interacted with your business.

Instead of treating every potential customer as a completely new prospect, Microsoft Ads can use audience information to identify previous website visitors and adjust advertising accordingly.

This is particularly useful because many users do not convert during their first visit. They may compare competitors, research prices, discuss the decision internally or simply leave the site before completing an enquiry.

Remarketing gives you another opportunity to bring those people back.

Broadly, Microsoft Ads remarketing can be approached in two ways:

1. Website visitor remarketing: Audiences are created using activity recorded through UET. Visitors can be grouped according to the pages they viewed or actions they completed, allowing different types of users to receive different advertising.
2. Existing customer targeting: First-party customer information can be used through tools such as Customer Match. This allows businesses to differentiate between prospects and existing customers and create campaigns around repeat purchases, additional services or customer retention.

The most effective remarketing strategies avoid repeatedly showing identical advertisements to everyone.

Instead, the message should reflect what the user already knows about your business and what action you want them to take next.

Remarketing in Microsoft Ads can influence both who sees your advertising and how campaigns treat different types of users.

The process usually begins with installing Universal Event Tracking across the website. Once Microsoft is receiving enough data, audiences can be created around different user behaviours.

A typical remarketing strategy may include:

1. Creating audience lists: Website visitors are grouped according to meaningful actions, such as visiting an important service page, starting an application or reaching a particular stage of the conversion journey.
2. Separating visitors by intent: Someone who spent time on a key commercial page may be considerably more valuable than somebody who read a single blog article. Creating separate audiences allows these users to be treated differently.
3. Using remarketing with Search campaigns: Previous visitors can be associated with Search campaigns, helping advertisers analyse or optimise performance when those people search again.
4. Using Audience Ads: Previous website visitors can be reached through visual or native advertising while they browse Microsoft’s wider advertising network.
5. Creating tailored messaging: Ads can be changed according to the user’s previous interaction. Someone who abandoned an application may need a different message from somebody who simply visited the homepage.

The objective is to make your advertising increasingly relevant as a potential customer moves through the buying journey.

For most businesses generating meaningful website traffic, remarketing is worth considering.

People rarely make every buying decision during their first interaction with a company. Remarketing gives you another opportunity to reach those visitors without treating them like completely cold prospects.

There are several reasons businesses use Microsoft Ads remarketing:

1. Re-engage interested visitors: Someone who has already researched your product or service has demonstrated a level of interest. Remarketing gives you another opportunity to bring that visitor back.
2. Support longer buying journeys: High-value purchases and complex services often require several interactions before a customer is ready to act. Remarketing helps your brand remain visible throughout that process.
3. Create more relevant advertising: Different audiences can receive different messages based on how they previously interacted with your website.
4. Protect advertising efficiency: Instead of spending every pound acquiring completely new users, remarketing allows part of your budget to focus on people who have already entered your marketing funnel.
5. Exclude existing customers: Remarketing audiences can also help prevent inappropriate advertising. If someone has already purchased or completed an enquiry, they may be excluded from campaigns that are designed solely to find new customers.
6. Increase customer value: Existing customer audiences can be used to promote complementary products, renewals or additional services where appropriate.

Remarketing should still be treated strategically.

Showing advertisements indefinitely to every website visitor can waste budget and create a poor customer experience. Audience duration, exclusions, frequency and campaign performance should all be monitored.

Used correctly, remarketing becomes a way of improving the efficiency of the wider Microsoft Ads account rather than simply following users around the internet.

Retargeting and remarketing are commonly used to describe very similar advertising strategies.

Both involve reconnecting with people who already have some form of relationship with your business rather than exclusively targeting completely new prospects.

In Microsoft Ads, the platform generally uses the term remarketing when referring to audiences created from previous website visitors.

The wider marketing industry often uses retargeting as a broader description for advertising to people based on previous behaviour or interactions.

For example, a website visitor seeing an Audience Ad several days later could reasonably be described as both remarketing and retargeting.

The terminology matters less than the strategy behind it.

A successful campaign should identify what the person previously did, how valuable that behaviour is and what message is most likely to move them towards the next stage of the customer journey.

For practical purposes, when discussing Microsoft Ads management, we generally use remarketing and retargeting to describe the same overall objective: bringing interested users back and increasing their chances of becoming customers.

Microsoft Ads provides several ways to reconnect with users who have previously interacted with your business or demonstrated relevant intent.

The right strategy depends on your website traffic, customer journey and the amount of audience data available.

Here are some of the main approaches we consider:

1. Standard Website Remarketing

Standard remarketing creates audiences from people who have previously visited your website.

Using UET, visitors can be grouped according to rules such as which pages they viewed or whether they completed a particular action.

These audiences can then be used within Microsoft Ads to treat returning visitors differently from completely new prospects.

For example, users who viewed a service page without enquiring could be placed into an audience specifically designed to bring them back to the website.

2. High-Intent Visitor Remarketing

Not every website visitor has equal commercial value.

High-intent remarketing focuses specifically on users whose behaviour suggests they were seriously considering your product or service.

This could include people who visited pricing pages, started an application, viewed several product pages or reached an important stage of your conversion funnel.

Separating these users from general website traffic allows more budget and more persuasive messaging to be directed towards your strongest prospects.

3. Search Remarketing

Remarketing audiences can be used alongside Microsoft Search campaigns.

This allows advertisers to understand when someone who previously visited the website begins searching again and optimise campaigns accordingly.

A returning visitor searching for a highly commercial keyword may represent a very different opportunity from somebody interacting with the business for the first time.

Search remarketing helps bring previous website behaviour into that bidding and optimisation process.

4. Audience Network Remarketing

Microsoft Audience Ads allow previous website visitors to be reached beyond conventional search results.

Instead of waiting for a user to carry out another search, visual or native advertisements can keep the business visible while the user interacts with Microsoft properties or other eligible placements within the advertising network.

This can be particularly useful when customers take several days or weeks to make a decision.

5. Dynamic Remarketing

Dynamic remarketing is particularly useful for businesses with product catalogues.

Rather than displaying the same generic advertisement to every visitor, dynamic campaigns can use product information to show advertising related to items the user previously interacted with.

This creates a much more personalised experience and gives ecommerce businesses an opportunity to bring potential customers back to products they already considered.

6. Customer Match

Customer Match uses first-party customer information rather than relying solely on website visits.

Businesses can create audiences from customer email data and use those audiences within Microsoft Advertising where eligibility requirements are met.

This can support several strategies, including re-engaging previous customers, promoting complementary services, encouraging repeat purchases or excluding existing customers from new-customer acquisition campaigns.

7. Impression-Based Remarketing

Microsoft Advertising can also support remarketing based on previous advertising exposure in eligible campaigns.

Instead of requiring somebody to visit your website first, impression-based audiences can help advertisers reconnect with people who have previously seen their advertising.

This creates another opportunity to build a sequence of interactions rather than expecting a single advertisement to generate an immediate response.

It can be especially useful for campaigns where awareness and consideration happen before the customer is ready to visit the website.

8. Sequential Remarketing

Sequential remarketing changes the advertising message as the customer moves through the buying journey.

Instead of showing the same creative repeatedly, campaigns can introduce different messages over time.

The first advertisement might explain the problem your service solves. A later advertisement could introduce a case study, customer benefit or stronger call to action.

This approach allows remarketing to act more like a structured nurture journey rather than simple repetition.

9. Combined Audience Strategies

Microsoft Ads audiences do not always need to operate independently.

Different audience signals can be combined to create more precise targeting.

For example, a business may want to focus on previous website visitors who also show strong purchase intent within a relevant market. Another campaign might exclude existing customers while concentrating budget on new prospects.

Combining audience information allows campaigns to distinguish between very different types of users and allocate budget accordingly.

Ultimately, remarketing should not exist as an isolated campaign that simply follows previous visitors.

The strongest strategy uses remarketing as part of the wider Microsoft Ads account, connecting Search, Audience Ads, conversion tracking and first-party customer data.

By understanding who your users are, what they have already done and how valuable they are likely to become, Microsoft Ads can be used to deliver more relevant advertising and turn a greater proportion of existing interest into profitable leads and sales.