Since the blog’s title comprises of the word – ‘Marketing’, we’ll discuss it first. To start, we just want to say that Marketing is a broad field in itself.
With respect to today’s dynamism, competition has reached such a level that it’s difficult for businesses and brands to make their marketing effective among their rivals.
Each day the marketing space is making us see the innovation in it by bringing out new techniques and approaches. And one such major innovative process for today’s competitive marketing strategy is Search Engine Marketing.
Not just it’s an innovative process; Search Engine Marketing is the most effective and finest approach for any business to market its products or services.
Search Engine Marketing, commonly known as SEM, is an essential marketing channel that helps a business generate increased amounts of web traffic.
It assists SEO and content marketing efforts and gets your business’s website at the top of search result pages of Google, Bing, etc. But it only happens if you play your SEM cards right.
Not long ago, SEM was used as an all-comprising term that included everything that dealt with online search marketing and encompassed processes like SEO.
But in recent times, marketers have started to make distinctions between SEO and SEM. SEM, today, refers to the paid advertising within search engines.
So in this blog of Sampark Infoways let’s have a brief overview of what is Search Engine Marketing and how it is beneficial for your business.
Table of Contents
What is Search Engine Marketing?
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a process that includes a variety of techniques and strategies a business/organization uses to drive more visitor traffic from search engine results pages to their website.
The objective of SEM is to boost a website’s visibility using paid search, contextual advertising, and organic search rankings. In short, SEM is a broader domain that comprises both SEO and PPC together.
Overall it’s a marketing strategy that includes managing a brand or website’s total presence in search engines.
Usually, SEO only includes organic optimization techniques and strategies that are created to improve a site’s performance based on Google or Bing’s ranking algorithms.
Through SEO, a site can be properly set up and optimized to naturally bring in traffic through search results.
On the other hand, SEM involves taking advantage of all the marketing tools available in search engines – including the paid ad results at the top of the SERP.
Considered by many to be the most resourceful method to spend marketing money, Search engine marketing helps businesses drive revenue and sales efficiently through search engine optimization and paid search.
Individually these two strategies can offer incredible results, but when used together they become a strong source of sustainable success.
How SEM Functions
By using complicated algorithms, search engines make sure that each search returns the most relevant results, including location and other available information.
In the case of paid search advertising (a facet of SEM), sponsored ads display at the top of and on the right-hand side of search engine results pages to achieve more visibility than the organic results.
For instance, a customer wants to look for a product or service online. He then goes to a search engine and types in his search terms (also known as keywords).
On his search results page, he sees different company ads whose keywords match the keywords in his search.
These ads get displayed in prominent locations on the page along with other organic search listings that match his keywords.
The paid ads being prominently visible as compared to organic listings make them highly relevant to the customer’s specific search, and prompt him to click it first.
Also Read: Formulate a Practical Long-Term SEO Strategy
How SEM campaigns function from the marketer’s perspective
SEM networks are tools that conduct automated operations. Once a network is selected, you can set a campaign up within a short period of time.
While building up a campaign within an SEM network, you should do the following things:
- Conduct keyword research and choose a bunch of keywords related to your website, product, or service.
- Choose a geographic location for the ad to be displayed in.
- Form a text-based ad to make it appear in the search results
- Bid on a charge you are willing to pay for each click on your ad.
Text-only ads are simple to create. You just have to formulate a headline, type in the text for the body of the ad, include a call-to-action and a URL for the hyperlink.
Examples of SEM Networks
The two prime SEM networks that professionals target are Google Ads and Bing Ads.
Google Ads comprises of two networks- Google Search Network and Google Display Network.
The former SEM network exclusively includes all search-related websites owned by Google, while the latter includes Google’s properties such as YouTube, Gmail, and Blogger.
Through Bing Ads, customers can buy ads on both Bing’s network of websites and Yahoo’s network.
Google Ads has a larger network (around 2x the size) as compared to Bing Ads. The pricing, however, is often lower on Bing Ads. You can get a superior rank for a competitive keyword phrase for fewer prices than you get on Google.
Some professionals claim that the click-through rates are higher in Bing as well.
6 Reasons Why SEM is Important?
More revenue generation
The primary benefit that SEM gives to clients is more money.
While Bing and other search engines provide lucrative playgrounds for search ads to bring in more money, Google has some solid data to prove it. Google claims that any business can double its investment through Google Ads.
Though it’s possible in reality to achieve 2x of what is invested, you should know what practices you’re doing to achieve the desired results. At the end of the day, SEM has the potential to make brands and agencies more money from their marketing campaigns.
Also Read: Why SEO is an Absolute Must for any Business?
Increases Brand Awareness
Although being considered a bottom-funnel marketing channel, SEM can also aid in brand awareness. As Google likes to state, search ads can boost brand awareness by 80%.
Even in the case when ads don’t get clicked, brand names still get clearly noticed on the top of the search result page, and users may still read or identify the product/service, brand’s name or URL when they see the ad.
Users searching online might also notice when ads comprise of keywords and search terms for rival brands, as the brain tends to evaluate things that are listed side by side.
Focuses more on conversion
Not every time money is the primary objective of marketing campaigns, other types of conversions/goals that a business is interested in may include new subscribers, newsletter signups, contest entries etc.
SEM is a chief conversion driver for any type of marketing campaign. This is because paid ads are generally linked to conversion-focused landing pages that move visitors through the sales funnel.
While organic results are not usually linked to landing pages, paid ads however are. Organic results can support brand awareness and initial level of funnel activity, while paid ads solely focus on a definite goal and end of funnel conversions.
SEM is Great for Local Marketing
As stated above SEM helps businesses drive website visits and get increased conversions on almost any budget. But it helps them further if they target local audience. Through local marketing, audiences can reach regional businesses with the nearby community that it services.
When searchers look online for local business services, like “restaurant near me” or “dry cleaner in Raipur,” it’s the local marketers who make these queries connect with business listings and ads in search engines.
Google helps local businesses by providing them an advantage when it comes to SEM results. Local SEM ads give them increased visibility when it comes to generating actual foot traffic for their local stores.
A research claims that more than 75% of people who search local business information online will visit a physical store under 24 hours, in hope to make their desired purchase.
Drives Consistent Traffic Source
Businesses need consistent web traffic not only to sustain their online visibility and sales, but also to plan, forecast and budget.
But in the online world, unexplained spikes and drops in traffic are often prevalent. To make up for some of the chaos, SEM can be used to create consistent traffic for certain keywords and help streamline the amount of traffic coming to a site.
Attracts More Qualified Leads
One of the principal benefits of Search Engine Marketing is the ability to bring in suitable and qualified traffic.
Unlike in organic search results, SEM can help you create a custom audience that would be far more likely to notice and engage with your ads than an average searcher.
SEM lets you target specific demographics as well as website visitors at any stage in the sales funnel. This would mean that the web traffic you receive from paid ads is more qualified than traffic generated from organic SEO.
Conclusion
Now that you have gone through 6 powerful reasons why search engine marketing is important, you should at least give paid search advertising a shot.
Search Engine Marketing has immense potential to provide instant results, conversions and more revenue, so even sceptics need not to wait long before they become SEM believers.
It’s crucial for businesses to concentrate on SEM so that they can realise both immediate and long-term results, examine that data for better insights, and, in turn, convert searchers into customers. SEM has the potential to do all that, and more.
If you’re looking for reliable SEM solutions in the market, you might as well take a look at Sampark Infoways. Sampark Infoways is an expert search engine marketing company in Raipur that provides best SEM, SEO and SMM services. Hop onto our website for more info.