Understanding SEM
Search Engine Marketingᅳor SEMᅳapplies to why online advertising is indispensable. Placing paid ads on search engine pages, like Google, boosts brand visibility and attracts more customers. It places a paid advertisement for the brand right in front of a person doing a search. Therefore, in comparison to the other marketing approaches, such as those of social media advertising and natural search engine ranking, SEM is an instrument of pay-to-play advertising. Some of the most popular tools that one may use to do this include Google Ads.
How Does SEM Work
Now that you’ve decided to invest your money in SEM, the next big question is how it actually works.
Paid marketing comes into play with various search engines, such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo offering an ad auction. Basically, you go into the same ad auction as any other ad you see in Google search results.
First, you have to decide on which specific keywords users are searching with in relation to your business. You bid on words according to your budget and target cost-per-click.
Sign up for the ad management platforms, such as Google AdWords, to participate in ad auctions. If your bid keywords match a user’s search, your ad will appear on SERPs.
Notice, however, that even with a perfect match of keywords, there is no guarantee of winning the bidding. Ad auctions on the search engines depend on two primary factors that are your maximum bid and your ad’s quality score.
Why SEM is important
Search Engine Marketing gets its place in digital marketing for several reasons. Higher visibility and more clicks are generated when business websites appear in SERPs. Targeted advertisements target specific audiences and specific search queries to garner the highest possible conversion rates. It offers instant results and analytics that are pretty accurate in measuring ROI. Moreover, it comes with flexibility regarding budget allocation and management of campaigns, enabling an advertiser to have quick control over its performance. In today’s competitive world, SEM helps secure maximum visibility and market share, and that’s why it cannot be left out of any sound marketing scheme.
Benefits of SEM
Here are some benefits of SEM
1. Highly Intent-driven: SEM provides an opportunity to contact potential customers at the very moment they need the solutions to the questions they’re actively searching for. It allows you to influence their purchasing decisions without hard-selling.
2. Immediate Results: In contrast to SEO and Social Media Marketing, which may take months to produce results, SEM offers instant visibility, in that your ads feature among the top search results. This immediate visibility shift garners immediate attention from the users.
3. Faster Brand Visibility: In this regard, startups and small businesses use SEM to fasten the pace of their online brand visibility in a manner to win the competition with established brands.
4. Instant Revenue Generation: An effective SEM campaign with attractive ad copy can instantly generate sales on the same day and also offer easy and speedy revenue creation.
5. Measurable Outcomes: SEM can track clicks and conversions, and therefore, it provides measurable outcomes for businesses regarding the performance of their campaigns. It is easier to adjust strategies promptly to achieve the set marketing goals. In the case that a campaign is under performance, funds can be reallocated elsewhere really quickly.
