SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is simply the use of search engines to market your business. If you sell in demand products or services, then utilising search engines to get your message to a new audience can be hugely profitable.
As with all forms of advertising it is a question of cost vs. return. For search engine marketing there are two methods to sell your products and services. They are pay per click (PPC) and search engine optimisation (SEO).
Pay per click (PPC)
To utilise PPC effectively you must ensure that your ad catches the eye. It is in competition with a lot of results on a search engine result page, and you only have a limited space to get your sales message across. Every word in your ad is important. Professional ad writers have stated that a change in one word can be the difference between 1 click and hundreds.
The second part relates to the keywords and demographics being targeted. It’s very important that the keywords you pick to deliver your ad are relevant to the product or service that you are selling to the right customer. Don’t restrict to only standard keywords you know of, but do some research of other keywords that your customers may be thinking of that may trigger interest in your offernings.
It is not just the ad and keyword which have to do the business. Your site’s landing page has to do the business as well. Landing page design is an art in itself. To make a PPC campaign profitable, you must ensure your page looks professional, is clear with instructions, and has big clear forms and or buttons which make it obvious what to do next. Your landing page and your ads and keywords should have context with one another.
If you can pull this off then your PPC campaign could be massively profitable. PPC works on a bidding system a little like eBay where you pay for position. So if your bid limit is £10, and your highest competitor bid is £8, you should appear first.
Organic SEO
The other way to market your business on search engines is to invest in an organic SEO campaign. Instead of marketing via ads, you make use of onsite and offsite SEO elements to help appear organically in the search listings following a keyword search. Costs can be a little murky but the results tend to be better than paid ads as they tend to be more trusted by users.
The downside to search engine marketing is that it can take time to get right, regardless of which route you go down. Organic SEO can also take time and there are pitfalls which are easy to fall in. Most businesses which successfully utilise search engine marketing normally use both PPC and organic methods.
TIP: To learn more about what is SEO, please click here.
Bring in Customers and Clients via Search Engines
With the draw of search engine marketing being potentially massive profits, it is too big a marketing opportunity to turn down. It has pitfalls however, and this is where our expertise comes into play. Talk to us about marketing your site on search engines today. Click here to learn more about our SEO services, or click here and complete the contact form in order to discuss your online marketing needs. The sooner you do, the sooner you can capture the market share from your competitors.