Who should be using MSAN?

Depending on your target audience, business, and goals, MSAN might or might not be the best option for you. Here are some businesses and cases in which MSAN would work better.

Startups on a budget

If you are just starting with your business, you probably don’t have a lot of money to spend on marketing and advertising. MSAN offers you a cheap and effective way to reach your target audience without breaking the bank.

Businesses targeting students or young professionals

As we mentioned before, the target audience on MSAN is mainly composed of students and young professionals. Therefore, if your business is aimed at this demographic, then MSAN should be your go-to platform.

B2C businesses with a limited budget

Not all businesses have an unlimited budget for marketing and advertising. If you find yourself in this position, then MSAN can be a great way to reach your target audience without spending too much money.

Businesses targeting specific LinkedIn groups

MSAN allows you to target specific LinkedIn groups with your ads. This can be a great way to reach a highly-targeted and engaged audience.

What do MSAN ads look like?

There are two types of responsive ad formats that you can choose from when using MSAN; these formats are:

Feed-based ads.

By using dynamic remarketing, you can determine your product’s message, image, and offer for each audience you want to target. Feed-based ads are also known as product listing ads (PLA) and work best for e-commerce businesses.

Image-based ads

Attractive and eye-catching images are sure to increase ad engagement. Consider using a professional graphic designer to create an appealing ad that attracts potential customers. It is always better to stand out from the rest of the competition by using stunning and colorful images.

How to get started with MSAN? (Creating the first campaign)

If you have experience setting up an ad campaign on any other platform, then working with MSAN should be no trouble. Even if you don’t have any experience, MSAN is a relatively easy-to-use platform with a user-friendly interface and excellent customer support. It is as simple as creating a Microsoft ad account; after that, it will be a piece of cake. Let’s go over the steps together.

#1 Select campaign budget

When setting up your campaign, you need to create a campaign name and set a daily budget that you want to spend (The recommended budget by Microsoft is usually $20). After that, they ask you how you would like to optimize your bid. Here, you have two choices:

• Enhanced CPC, which adjusts your bid to get a higher conversion rate on clicks, meaning it might change your budget without notice.
• Maximize Clicks (automated bidding), which prioritizes clicks and sets your bidding accordingly.

It would help if you chose the option depending on your goals for the campaign, you may want more clicks on your ad, or you might want to focus on converting those clicks to actual sales.

#2 Choose campaign target

Choosing your target will determine where you want your ads to appear and the target audience for your campaign.

For the location, you have two choices:

• Advertise in all available countries and regions. This is a good choice if you have a global market or product; it will reach a broad audience. This might be the right choice if you advertise a website or an application.
• Advertise in a specific location or region. This might be a better choice if you have a product for a particular audience; for example, you might not be able to ship your physical product abroad, so you should advertise in your local area.

After choosing the location, you must select who viewed your campaign; it can either be the people who are physically in the desired location or the people who are browsing pages about your chosen location. It all depends on the type of campaign that you are advertising.

#3 Create ad groups

Ad groups are a set of keywords that are essential to your campaign. The keywords should be researched thoroughly to determine what works best for you. Sometimes, the keywords don’t match the product, and you will get a low CPC or conversion rate.

After you determine keywords, your next step is to estimate the performance of the selected keywords compared to other campaigns on the platform. If you’re stuck and don’t know what will work best, Microsoft holds tools to give you suggestions and ideas for keywords based on your website traffic.

Keywords are crucial for your campaign, so do your research, look at other successful campaigns, and see what works for them to apply it to your campaign.

#4 Create an ad

In this step, Microsoft will give you suggestions for your ad. It will automatically create a headline and description based on your keywords and match what they think is best. We believe this tool is excellent, but if you need to personalize your ad, you can always create an ad from scratch by customizing your headline and description.

Another great tool from Microsoft is the Ad strength tool, which shows you the performance of your customized ad on their desktop and mobile websites. It even tells you what you are missing from your ad. So you can always keep tweaking your titles until you get the desired results. 

If you get stuck, you can check this link from the official Microsoft website that walks you through the precise steps of writing an effective ad.

#5 Set up an account

This is the easiest and final step; create your Microsoft advertising account. You will need to add information such as your legal business name, address, and phone number. You also must determine the purpose of this account (personal or as an ad agency).

After completing all of the above steps, you should be ready to go. It’s straightforward, and all the information you need is on the website. Try to keep everything concise; the ad should be easy for the user to read and interact with. Just think about what you might want to see and apply it to your campaign.

Tips and tricks for a successful campaign

By now, you should be able to start your campaign and get the desired results. However, although MSAN has been improving for the past year, you may get stuck with a dead drive yielding no results. So, to keep you on the straight and narrow, here are a few tricks that are sure to put you on the map.

• Start with a high budget – Although Microsoft recommends that you start your bidding at $20, it is sometimes wiser to increase your bidding price to overcome the competition, at least for the first few days of the campaign.
• Choose the right size for your audience – Sometimes, if you start with a smaller audience, you might not get a sufficient volume. So you would need to test with a larger audience over a wider area or region and then funnel it down based on the results.
• Pick the right platform for you – It is always better to limit your appearances on media that you think might work best for you. You don’t need your ad to appear on every Microsoft platform.
• Don’t touch your campaign for the first seven days – Let the algorithm work after you launch your MSAN campaign. It needs time to analyze the data and optimize the results. If you make some changes, you will interrupt this process.
• Research your keywords – Know what you are getting into before launching your campaign, look up competitor keywords and start bidding on them. After all, they have already chosen keywords that convert well.
• Less is more – Keep your ad short and to the point. You don’t want the customer to get bored. Use fewer words to get your point through.