Whether you run your own business or are a marketer managing your clients’ campaigns, getting banned from Bing Ads is nothing short of a disaster. Sure, you could create a new Bing Ads account and perhaps get away with using it for a few weeks, but it will only be a matter of time before you get banned again.
So then, how do you not get yourself banned using Bing Ads in the first place?
1. Don’t mislead visitors
It’s quite simple really, don’t lie on your ads. Don’t state you offer a free trial or software only for the prospect to be told to enter their credit card information before they can checkout.
Bing Ads are always on the lookout for: Business models that attempt to mislead site visitors, or that seem deceptive or fraudulent. - Bing Ads
Even if you were allowed to get away with this method, lying to your customers is not a sustainable business model.
2. Sending traffic to adverts on your page
Using Bing Ads to direct prospects to other clickable ads is a bannable offence. It’s okay to place a single Google AdSense unit or a banner from a sponsor, but if the sole purpose of your web page is to get others to click on your ads, you will be penalized.
3. Be careful with your marketing copy
If you had access to the Internet 10 years ago, you’ll remember the ads that promised you $5,919 of income within 3 hours of working from home. They plagued the Internet and pop-ups were a daily occurrence.
Fast-forward to 2015 and you almost never see them. Bing, Facebook, Google and all other major ad networks will not allow you to serve ads that make unrealistic claims. An unrealistic claim can be something like the example above, or it can be you claiming that your product is #1 and better than your competitors.
Bing state that they look out for: Sites that misrepresent the origin or intent of their content and as a result are likely to deceive a portion of the target audience.
4. Riding trending keywords that don’t relate to your business
Come Super Bowl or Black Friday a small amount of keywords that received no attention for 11 months of the year suddenly come alive. If your ads relate to Black Friday or the Super Bowl, you’re more than in your right to use such keywords in your campaigns.
However, if your landing page has no relevance to a trending keyword and you place it in your campaign, you may get in trouble. If you mistakenly enter one or two keywords then it’s not a problem, flags are only raised when you submit a large amount of unrelated keywords that lead prospects to a landing page that is totally unrelated.
Audit your ads before they go live
Before you start running ads on Bing, read their ads policy to ensure your website and offers are inline with their policies. I always tell everyone to use common sense and to be honest. Bid on keywords that are relevant to your business, direct prospects to websites that provide them value and not just marketing jargon.
It also helps to add your contact details in the footer of every page as that reduces the suspicion of fraudulent activity.
Summary
If you spend 30 minutes reading the Bing Ad guidelines and double check all your keywords, ad messages and landing pages before your ads go live, you should be fine.
Don’t use misleading messages or aim to fool prospects into making the intended action, you may get away with this for a week or two but you’ll end up getting your account restricted or even banned all together.
Bing Ads has been known to unban accounts but it’s done on a case by case basis.
Nick Bridges
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