How to Import Google Ads Campaigns into Microsoft Advertising

Expanding a proven Google Ads account onto Bing is the rare marketing project where the hard part is already done. Your keywords are researched, your ad copy is battle tested, your negative lists carry years of accumulated wisdom, and Microsoft built a doorway specifically to walk it all through. What follows is the process as we actually run it for Fraser Valley clients, including the steps the import wizard does well, the ones it fumbles, and the retuning that separates a profitable second channel from a slow leak.

Before importing anything

Two prerequisites make everything downstream easier. First, be genuinely profitable on Google, because import copies your economics along with your campaigns, and a leaky account duplicated is two leaky accounts. Second, clean house before the move, pause the experiments, tidy the campaign structure and update the sitelinks, because whatever state your account is in on import day is the state that arrives on the other side. Importing a clean account takes the same ten minutes as importing a messy one, and saves hours of untangling later.

What the import actually moves

Microsoft’s import tool connects to your Google account and carries across campaigns, ad groups, keywords, match types, bids, budgets, ads, extensions and negative lists, either as a one time copy or on a recurring sync. For most local businesses we recommend the one time copy, because recurring sync sounds convenient and quietly keeps your Bing account chained to decisions made for a different auction. The point of the second channel is that it gets managed as itself, not as Google’s shadow.

What the wizard gets wrong

Every import needs a post arrival inspection, because a few things reliably fumble. Location targeting deserves first attention, confirm the geography matches your actual service area and excludes the American side that creeps into wide radii around Abbotsford. Bids come across at Google prices, which overpay in Bing’s quieter auction, so an immediate downward adjustment usually saves money from day one. Some extensions and newer ad formats translate imperfectly and want rebuilding natively. And conversion tracking does not exist until you build it, which brings its own section, because an untracked account is an unaccountable one.

Tracking on one scoreboard

Install the Microsoft UET tag, define the same conversion events you count on Google, enquiries, calls, form fills, and route both platforms into one report where cost per enquiry sits side by side. This single page is where the whole expansion proves itself or does not, and it is the first thing we build in any Microsoft Bing ads engagement, before a dollar of spend moves. The promise of Bing is the same customer for less, and only a shared scoreboard can confirm the promise is being kept month after month.

The retune, where the profit lives

A straight copy leaks because the auctions behave differently, so the weeks after import are about tuning to the new room. Bids settle lower, often substantially, and finding the floor is free money. Match behaviour differs enough that search term reports deserve early scrutiny, with fresh negatives added for the queries Bing matches more loosely. The audience leans desktop heavy and older, which sometimes rewards adjusting ad schedules toward business hours and copy toward that reader. None of this is difficult, all of it is specific, and accounts that skip the retune are usually the source of the myth that Bing does not work. It works precisely as well as it is managed, like everything else in this trade.

A realistic timeline and budget

Expect the mechanical import in a day, tracking and inspection in the same week, and a readable verdict within four to eight weeks of modest spend. Fund it as a fraction of your Google budget, scale only when the scoreboard votes yes, and fold the review into the same monthly meeting as everything else. Most local accounts we run settle into Bing holding a permanent minority seat in the budget, bought entirely by its lower cost per enquiry, and the whole project traces back to one afternoon of competent setup. If you would rather hand that afternoon to a team that has run the checklist many times, ours is at the South Fraser Way office, benchmarks welcome, straight answers included.