Getting Started With Bing Shopping for Shopify
From your initial product feed to your first Shopping Campaign, we'll walk you through how to get everything up and running.
Your Guide To Getting Started With Bing Shopping
If you are looking to advertise your products on Bing and its partner sites at scale, then Bing Shopping is the way to go. Similar to Google Shopping, Bing Shopping is the broad term used to cover all the various building blocks within Bing Ads, needed to create and managed your products on the Bing Ads Network.
Quick Definitions
Before we jump right in, it is helpful to know the major pieces of the puzzle that are required to complete the process as we will reference them throughout the guide.
Create A Bing Shopping Product Feed
This section will walk you through creating a Bing Shopping Product Feed from your store and being able to submit it to Bing Ads.
Step 1: Install The Bing Shopping App
- Log in as the Administrator of Shopify Shopping Cart (your-store-name.myshopify.com/admin)
- Proceed to the following location: Apps > Visit Shopify App Store > Bing Shopping
- Select Get
- Click Install App (The base plan is FREE!)
- Head over the the Settings page in the app (top right link) to configure:
- Which product collection you would like to include
- If you want to use the optional “Search Engine” product titles and/or descriptions
- Include additional product attributes from Shopify’s Google Shopping App (if you installed it).
Step 2: Create a Bing Ads Account
- Go to https://bingads.microsoft.com/
- Select the option of Don’t have a Microsoft account? Sign up now
- Once you have gone through the account creation process and verified your email, login to https://bingads.microsoft.com/
Step 3: Create a Bing Webmaster Tools Account
- Go to the Bing Webmaster Tools URL: http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster.
- Sign in using the same Microsoft account. that you use to sign in to Bing Ads.
- Click Profile and then fill out the About Me, Contact Preference, and Alert Preference
- Under My Sites, enter your URL and click Add.
- Enter the public URL of your Shopify Shopping Cart (yourstore.com) NOT (your-store.myshopify.com)
- Follow Option 2: Option 2: Copy and paste a <meta> tag in your default webpage.
- In a new browser window, head over to your Shopify store admin.
- Once Loged in go to: Home > Sales Channels > Online Store > Themes > … > Edit HTML / CSS > Layout > theme.liquid
- Paste the meta tag which looks like: <meta name=”msvalidate.01″ content=”XXXXX” />, after the <head> tag in the liquid theme.
- Once the meta tag is pasted in your Shopify theme, select Save.
- Go back to Bing Webmaster Tools, select the domain you want to verify then navigate to: Configure My Site > Verify Ownership.
- Select the VERIFY button. You should see the site verified at the top of the page to confirm it the verification process is complete.
Step 4: Create a Bing Merchant Center Store
- In Bing Ads, click Tools in the upper right corner.
- Select Bing Merchant Center.
- Click Create a store.
- Enter your store information.
- For Ssl Checkout: Select Yes
- Do Not check Block aggregators
Step 5: Upload Your Catalog
- In Bing Ads, select Tools > Bing Merchant Center.
- Select the store that you want to update.
- Select Catalog Management
- Select Create Catalog
- Enter a Catalog Name (it can be anything, but if you are at a loss for words, enter Shopify)
- Make sure Enable publishing is checked
- For Location, Select the target country that the catalog will be advertised to (e.g. your Shopping Cart is in Canada, and you want to advertise in the United States, you will select United States)
- Under catalog feed file, select Automatically download file from URL
- For Source URL, copy and paste the URL from our Bing Shopping App installed on your Shopify Shopping Cart (e.g. http://api.shoppingcartapps.com/bing-shopping/datafeed/?guid=12345abcde)
- Download Frequency: Set to Daily
- Download Time: Set to 11 PM
- Download Time Zone: Select time zone that is within your country (e.g. Pacific Time if you are in the United States, regardless of your specific time zone.)
- Leave User name and Password blank
- Select Save
Step 6: Waiting For Approval
- Now that your catalog is submitted, it can take up to 5 business days for your product to begin being approved.
- If your product feed is disapproved or has not been approved in 5 business days, we recommend you contact Bing Ads Support. You can access support within Bing Ads by selecting the “gear” icon in the top right.
While you wait for your products to be approved, you can move on to creating your Bing Shopping Campaigns.
Great Job! Take 5, before moving on to creating your first Bing Shopping Campaign.
Create A Bing Shopping Campaign
This section will walk you through creating a Bing Shopping Campaign that uses your Bing Shopping Product Feed to display your products on the Bing Ads Network.
Step 1: Create a Bing Ads Account
- Go to https://bingads.microsoft.com/
- Select the option of Don’t have a Microsoft account? Sign up now
- Once you have gone through the account creation process and verified your email, login to https://bingads.microsoft.com/
Step 2: Create A Shopping Campaign
Below are our suggestions if this is your first Bing Shopping Campaign and or your first jump into digital advertising.
- In Bing Ads, select Campaigns > Create campaign > Shopping Campaign
Campaign settings
- Enter a Campaign name
- Select a Time Zone that matches the time zone of your store
- Enter a Campaign Budget, for beginners we recommend at least $10 per day per 1000 products products you have active in your feed. (e.g. if you have 10,000 products we recommend a starting daily budget of $100, if you have less than 1000 products, we recommend a minimum of $10 per day). Times this number by 30 and you know what this translates to on a monthly basis.*
- Daily budget options, unless you know when to use an Accelerated daily budget, we suggest you leave this leave the default option of Standard.
- Select the Locations you want to advertise in. Make sure to select location you also do not want to advertise in for such reasons as expensive shipping (usually Alaska and Hawaii) or because of territory restrictions, etc.
- Choose the Advanced location options right for you, usually the default option is fine in most cases.
Shopping settings
- Choose a Campaign priority. If this is your first and only Shopping Campaign. You can leave the default option.
- Select the Store, you previously set up in the Create A Bing Shopping Product Feed section.
- Choose which products you would like to Advertise in this campaign. We recommend starting with All Products to start.
- Select the Country/region of sale, which is the location of your Shopping Cart. (e.g. if your store is based in the USA, select the United States.)
Create a product ad
- Enter optional Promotional text such as “Free Shipping” or “Free Returns”. This promotional text will show up with your product ads, just make sure it applies to all the products you are advertising in this campaign.
- Select Save.
* DON’T ENTER A DAILY BUDGET AMOUNT YOU CAN’T AFORD TO LOSE. If this is your first time with digital advertising, there is a lot to learn and it is always better to start slow and small. As your experience and knowledge grows, you can always put more advertising dollars on the line.
Step 3: Bids, targeting and advanced settings
Once you save the initial settings of a new Shopping campaign, you will be presented with even more options. Lucky you!
Set Bid
- Search network bid: We suggest starting at $1. This is the maximum you are willing to pay per click. Depending on the competitiveness of the advertising market on Bing for your products this could be a few cents to a few dollars. This gets adjusted often as you managed your campaigns, so don’t waist time guessing, just pick something and wait a day or two for results.
Targeting options
- Advanced targeting options: We suggest you leave the defaults unless you have an informed reason on adjusting it.
Advanced settings
- Ad distribution: Leave defaults unless you want to limit your ad’s exposure on the Bing Ads Network
- Pricing model: This cannot be adjusted for Shopping campaigns. No thought required 🙂
- Schedule: Leave as default unless you want to delay the start of the campaign or end it on a specific date.
- Exclusions: Don’t want your ads to show up on specific sites or specific users based on IPs? Add them here. We suggest leaving this blank unless you have reason to do otherwise.
- Ad rotations: We suggest leaving the default “optimize for clicks” unless you have reason to do otherwise.
- Click Save.
That’s 2 for 2! Grab a snack, before moving on to implementing Bing Ads Conversion Tracking.
Bing Ads Conversion & Sales Tracking
Below we will cover the steps to proper Conversion and Sales tracking for Bing Ads so you can see things like ROAS, Cost to Convert, Avg Conversion Value, etc.
Step 1: Creating a UET (Universal Event Tracker) Tag
This is the equivalent of Google AdWords conversion code. Here is how you get it.
- Login to your Bing Ads Account and go to Campaigns > Conversion Tracking (bottom of left navigation bar) > UET tags
- Select Create UET tag
- Enter Shopify for UET tag name
- Enter Conversion and Sales tracking for Description
- You will be presented with a Javascript code (don’t worry, you don’t need to code!). Copy the code so you can use it in the next step.
Step 2: Adding UET code to your Shopify Store
- In the Admin of your Shopify store, go to Settings (gear icon) > Checkout > Order Processing
- Under the section of Additional scripts paste the UET code from Step 1: Creating a UET (Universal Event Tracker) Tag
- Just underneath the code you just pasted, add the following additional code, which will pass the transaction value back to Bing Ads along with the conversion:
<!-- Shopping Cart Apps: Passing conversion amount to Bing Ads UET Tag, checkout.subtotal_price = total dollar value of cart items - line-item discount - cart discount (shipping is also not included) -->
<script>
window.uetq = window.uetq || [];
window.uetq.push({ 'gv': {{ checkout.subtotal_price | money_without_currency }} });
</script>
- The combined code should look like this:
<!-- Shopping Cart Apps: Bing Ads UET Tag -->
<script>(function(w,d,t,r,u){var f,n,i;w[u]=w[u]||[],f=function(){var o={ti:"5317068"};o.q=w[u],w[u]=new UET(o),w[u].push("pageLoad")},n=d.createElement(t),n.src=r,n.async=1,n.onload=n.onreadystatechange=function(){var s=this.readyState;s&&s!=="loaded"&&s!=="complete"||(f(),n.onload=n.onreadystatechange=null)},i=d.getElementsByTagName(t)[0],i.parentNode.insertBefore(n,i)})(window,document,"script","//bat.bing.com/bat.js","uetq");</script><noscript><img src="//bat.bing.com/action/0?ti=5317068&Ver=2" height="0" width="0" style="display:none; visibility: hidden;" /></noscript>
<!-- Shopping Cart Apps: Passing conversion amount to Bing Ads UET Tag, checkout.subtotal_price = total dollar value of cart items - line-item discount - cart discount (shipping is also not included) -->
<script>
window.uetq = window.uetq || [];
window.uetq.push({ 'gv': {{ checkout.subtotal_price | money_without_currency }} });
</script>
Step 3: Creating A Conversion Goal
Lastly, we need to head back to Bing Ads, to create a goal, which tells Bing Ads that the conversion type was a Sale and that there is a unique value to it.
- Login to your Bing Ads Account and go to Campaigns > Conversion Tracking (bottom of left navigation bar) > Conversion Goals
- Select Create conversion goal
- Enter Transaction for Name
- Select Destination URL for Type
- Select Next
- For Goal details, configure the following
- Destination URL: select Contains and enter thank_you
- Scope: select your store’s Bing Ads Account
- Revenue value: select The value of this conversion action may vary (for instance, by purchase price)
- If no value is assigned: enter 0.00 in currency of you Bing Ads account.
- Count: select All
- Conversion window: enter 30 for days
- UET tag: select Shopify
- Select Save button
Step 4: Confirmation
To confirm everything is setup correctly and functioning, you’ll need one of your Bing Ads to convert a product sale on your site. This can be from a Shopping campaign or any other campaign in Bing Ads.
To speed up this process you can do the following:
- Search for an existing product of yours on Bing, click the shopping ad (or any other ad format you have running) and purchase the product.
- The following day you should see the conversion value and the transaction value (minus shipping and taxes) show up in the campaign associated with that ad you clicked.
- In case you need to do this multiple times, or you only sell high dollar value items, you can alternatively: Create a temporary test product for $.01, wait until it gets picked up and approved in Bing Merchant Center, then proceed with buying it at minimal cost.
What Now?
First a congratulations are in order. With a little help from our app, and little time on your part, you are now up and running on Bing Shopping. Here are a few resources to guide you further down the road to Bing Shopping success.
Bing Ads Support
When you need an official answer, this is the best place to start.
Search Engine Land
The latest news about Bing.com search engine technology and features for SEO professionals and search marketers.
Bing Ads Pro Directory
The pros in this directory are accredited members only — they’ve been trained and tested on their Bing Ads skills and recognized for their outstanding expertise. While these qualifications are not terribly hard to achieve, they do set a minimum standard. As with any professional services, do your homework and only work with companies and individuals that make logistical and financial sense for your situation.
Shopify Marketing Experts
Shopify Marketing Experts help drive customers to your website with special promotions, SEO optimization and social media campaigns. These experienced online promotion experts know how to build your brand and create a community around it.