Firstly, what is Search Engine Marketing?
Search Engine Marketing when done correctly, places your key web pages right in front of people that are searching for your product or service online. This is a paid ad service and ads appear instantly.
Click to view larger image of SEM vs SEO
On Google, these ads appear on the right hand side of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). So in a nutshell, Search Engine Marketing – or SEM – is the science of marketing your product or service on Search Engines. When a web user then searches for say “sunglasses” your SEM ad will be presented on the right hand side of the search results page as shown in yellow.
Tip:: If your key product is Sunglasses, it would be obvious to target users searching for only “sunglasses”. However, if you think laterally, it may also be beneficial to target people who are searching for other related products or services such as boating, hats, fishing or anything else where sunglasses may be useful. So these could be potential key words used in search phrases like “boating sunglasses”.
Do you need SEM?
Unless your website is a household name and gets millions of hits through word of mouth – you need SEM. But is it really worth it you may ask?
Would you print 10,000 brochures and then bury them in the desert?
What sort of a crazy question is that you might be asking? Well oddly enough, many companies today have a website built then sit back and think their job is done. But when it comes to the internet, this approach would be exactly the same as if you spent thousands of dollars printing brochures to promote your business and then drove hundreds of kilometres into a desert – and buried them! Sounds insane right? Obviously you wouldn’t expect a response from any of those buried brochures, yet this is exactly what some people do with their website by not allocating an advertising budget to promote it (through SEM). The metaphor of the brochures in the desert is meant to represent Search Engine Marketing (SEM). This is the number one way in which you can guarantee your website will be found online – albeit, in the paid search column on the right. Still great visibility and in time (with good SEO work) your site will hopefully climb up the organic rankings by default. This is the holy grail of websites – to be ranked number one in the organic search results. Arguably, if this happens you could scale back your paid ads as your visibility would be driving plenty of traffic to your site without you really trying.
When don’t you need SEM?
If you’re a large company with a six, seven or even eight figure media advertising budget that will drive traffic to your website – maybe you don’t need SEM. This is because a TV or Radio ad that gives out your web address will generate hits for your website anyway. The interesting thing is, many big companies today are actually spending more on SEM than on traditional media advertising. Why? Because they’ve paid big money for research that shows that consumers have shifted to embrace online sales. It’s a fact that some of the larger companies spend more than $250,000 per month in online advertising. These are smart profitable companies that have done their research and are now reaping the rewards of intelligent SEM. Now ask yourself this… if they’re doing it – why aren’t you?
To learn more about SEM visit Google Adwords or contact Metaweb today to see how we can help.
