SEM or Search Engine Marketing is an option for small businesses who owns websites that would like to boost traffic by buying ads on search engines.
It’s different from social media or SEO, but they can work together when it comes to achieving one common goal: increase traffic and potentially, sales.
You may think that this method would only let you invest more and gain less in the end. It all depends on how you manage it. Not to leave you hanging on how you can implement SEM method to your business effectively, here are some wise tips that you should take note:
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Understand Why Your Clients Use Search Engines
Think bigger when you consider SEM. It’s not just any typical ad campaign for your service or product. You have your marketing goals for your business, put yourselves in your client’s shoes and try to understand their behavior and reasons why they use search engines to look for something in the Internet. Here are the top reasons why people do this:
- For research purposes – users today find it more convenient to learn what they are looking for through search engines. If they need something specific or even general queries, they can get their answers instantly and be satisfied. With this, SEM can reach them every time they are researching.
- To be entertained – The Internet contains lots of activities that anyone can enjoy. They can even spend hours of navigation time on certain websites just to be amused. With this, you can think of a specific kind of entertainment that you can relate to your brand. To connect is one way to use SEM effectively.
- To purchase a product or service – again, people are happier today as to how convenient it is for them to make any types of transactions over the Internet. With this, you can take advantage of it, and make your ad a compelling one.
- To find websites without typing the web address – Not all people can memorize the web addresses especially if you are looking for something important and you’re clueless as to where you can get the information. If you have the right ad, you can target these users during this time and make your brand visible to them. And if it’s persuasive enough, you will definitely get that click.
Allocate Your Budget
In every business, there is always a need to set your budget plan wisely. Why? Reason being most people tend to spend more without second thoughts. If you have the budget, you can control your spending wisely.
For your SEM budget allocation, here are the things you need to include:
- Copywriting
- Research
- Landing pages creation
- Cost per click
- Campaign management
- Analytics (both paid and free tools)
Before doing SEM, you need to make sure that your website is already SEO powered in some elements, it’s mobile-friendly and user-friendly. To confirm that everything is good with your website, you can talk to your SEO expert on this matter.
Create And Set Your Goals
This is an important step in every business. Before you started out, you clearly have goals, right? So, what are your marketing goals for your business? If you are able to pinpoint clearly what they are, then we are ready to take the next steps.
Your goals can tell you whether you have achieved your desired results or not. Is your ad campaign working or not? To help you, there are available tools today that can measure data such as Google Analytics.
Identify Your Target Market
SEM is not just a method for you; it is, in fact, providing an opportunity for users to find exactly what they are looking for, and that could be your business. If you know what your market absolutely wants, then you can create your ad from that, enticing them to click on it.
So how do we understand our target market? Here are some tips that you will want to take note:
- Demographics – identify their age bracket, gender, education, income, occupation, etc. This is very important. It will tell you if your business fits a certain market.
- Always take notes – keeping the details in mind is not advisable to avoid forgetting important information. You organize the details, analyze it and then evaluate.
- Watch and listen in social media – here, you’ll know what’s hot and trending and even learn more on other people’s choices. You can join focus groups, forums, surveys and blogs.
Once you’ll understand your market, this will help you manage your SEM method efficiently. If this happens, you will have lower costs and a boost in the customer lifetime value. You will also know exactly the ones that will probably convert and purchase. With this, you can target the right market for your brand.
Utilize Ad Groups
It is advisable not to begin with more than 10 ads as it may be overkill. You can do the following for you to be able to connect to your target market:
- Reach out to different types of audiences.
- Reach out to the same type of audience with A/A or A/B testing. With the same type of audience, you can test different kinds of messaging.
Ad groups will make your life easier in staying organized while you are implementing other methods.
Your Landing Pages Should Be Smooth
Landing page is called in different ways: ‘static page’, ‘lead capture page’, or ‘destination page’. It’s a distinct website that appears as a response when someone has clicked the search result. This may not be your homepage or a generic page that has numerous offers. Statistics show that about 48% of businesses build a new landing page whenever they start launching their campaign. If an ad has offered to give you a free eBook for example, users will be directed to a landing page where it will tell them on how they can get it.
In essence, the landing page should be associated with your ads.
Keyword Research Is A Must For All Campaign
SEM needs keyword research for higher success rate in your campaign. For this method, it’s more on the phrases that visitors use whenever they are trying to look for information from a certain website such as yours. It will give you an idea as to how much you need to spend for the keyword.
You will not maximize your SEM’s full potential if you just stuff it in with keywords. Instead you need to align it with your ad copy. If it’s irrelevant, your quality score will decrease over time and with this, you’ll end up paying for more.
Adding Negative Keyword To Your Campaign
A negative keyword is a match type of PPC, which may be used in your ad group or campaign. You simply let Google Ads know that you don’t want that certain term to have your ad be shown for any query containing that word. You just don’t want it to be associated with your ad campaign. By doing so, it will allow your ads to appear only on relevant searches.
Maintain High-Quality Score By Staying Relevant
To keep your costs minimal, your quality score should always be up. The quality score in your ads is identified by the performance of your ad in the following areas:
- CTR or Click-Through Rate – it measures the total clicks that promoters collect on their ads campaign for every number of impressions.
- Quality of Landing Page – Google can know if your website is a bad one, or if it misleads the users whenever they click on the ad. Make sure that visitors don’t leave quickly.
- Relevance of Keyword – the more relevant the keyword is, better it would be to entice users to click it.
- Historical performance – search engines will know as to how your ads perform over time, so make sure to check on it always and maintain its good quality.
- The relevance of your Ad text – this shows how your keywords closely relate to your ad.
If you want to keep your ads affordable, you need to check your quality score every time. Just to give you a head up, there is a chance of you paying up to 400% more than if your score is low. However, if your score is high enough, then you will pay less.
Now you’ve got some helpful tips. If you are still a bit confused with all the terms and info that you just learned, you can talk to an SEO and SEM expert for further clarification and how they can help you more with your business. SEM can be every business’ secret weapon to success, especially if it’s done right.
