Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) encompasses a variety of delivery methods and formats; the common theme amongst them is that they are all forms of paid advertising. Such ads usually appear under headings such as ‘Sponsored Links’, ‘Sponsor Results’ or ‘Ads By...’; they are most prominent around the margins of the results pages of most search engines, but also appear within third party websites, directories, mapping and various other platforms, including mobile phones.
Ad formats encompass text, display, and increasingly video. The two most common payment models are Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM) and Cost Per Click (CPC).
Within Australia paid search is dominated by Google, which holds around 90% of the market. Most of the remaining 10% is divided between Yahoo, Microsoft Live and Sensis. With numbers like these you can understand why Google AdWords is our preferred SEM platform for advertising within Australia.
It’s a different kettle of fish
Search Engine Marketing has taken targeting, the tracking of results, and by extension ROI analysis to a new level. Unfortunately, many businesses are deploying their SEM campaigns with a traditional marketing mind-set of more is better. Exposing a marketing message to as wide an audience as possible is NOT a key success driver of search engine marketing. Targeting is. Good SEM requires that campaigns, and the ads within those campaigns, are targeted with sub-segment precision.
Segment your Market
You want specific ads to be triggered only by the specific keywords that people within each of your target segments would use to find what they’re after. Don’t for example run one campaign and ad for ‘ hats’ when it costs no more (in fact often times less) to run 4 segmented campaigns with 4 separate ads that target people looking for ‘100% wool hats’, ‘feather hats’, ‘ski hats’, or ‘fancy dress hats’.
Because market segmented keywords are more precise they will be searched on less and trigger fewer ads, but when these ads are triggered and searchers click on them you will have attracted highly qualified leads to your website. As you only pay if somebody clicks on one of your ads (hence ‘pay per click’), you can afford to run hundreds of non-overlapping targeted campaigns simultaneously, which collectively cover your entire service market.
Putting all of your keywords into one giant campaign may seem easier, and this one campaign ad on its own will certainly be served more frequently, but here’s what usually happens: you’ll end up generating low quality traffic to your website, with low conversion rates, and a sizable end of month bill from the search engine company. We’ve seen this happen to the extent that businesses often end up abandoning their search engine marketing as a waste of money. But the opposite is true – used correctly SEM is the most efficient form of advertising available to marketers today.
Want to Know More? Attend a NET:101 Internet Marketing & Social Media Workshop.
