Ever since Google started offering AdWords (now known as Google Ads), marketing has been forever changed. Today, it is essential to have a presence online, and paid advertising is a key part of that. However, this medium is also competitive.
Here are a few of the keys to success:
• High-visibility advertisements.
• A scalable strategy that matches your brand.
• Tested campaigns with proven results.
• Engaging copy that drives conversion.
Search engine marketing (SEM), or paid search, can be a good way to increase the visibility and brand awareness of your company, and it is one of the facets of an overall digital marketing strategy we help our clients implement at Valux.
SEM is one of the fastest methods of targeting your audience to boost clicks on a call to action (CTA), drive quality traffic and maximize conversions for a website. It also improves ranking on search engine results pages. This can open your business to new customers and even help you streamline your online presence for maximum results.
What Is It?
All the acronyms in online marketing can get confusing. While you need to know what each one means, it can be easy to confuse similar terms. This is especially true when the tips and tricks for optimizing each one are nearly identical. SEM is known by several other names: paid search ads, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and paid advertising. It can go hand in hand with other online marketing strategies, such as search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing, to create a comprehensive plan.
One thing to note with this type of marketing is that search engines want your campaigns to be successful so that you will keep purchasing ad space with them. This means you can find many types of tools and advice from the search engines themselves, along with the data needed to improve your advertisements.
How Does It Work?
Search engine marketing works by paying Google, Yahoo or Bing to place your website at the top of the search engine results page, in the ad space, for specific keywords. These words can be location-specific, industry-specific, product-specific or a combination of all three. The more targeted these advertisements are, the more likely they are to be well received, and the more traffic you can expect.
By seeing which ones perform best and which ones need improving, with the help of the search engine’s data and tools, you can develop the best ads possible for your company. This can be done with insights into which ads gain the most clicks, which ones come up most often in searches and much more.
SEM In The Sales Funnel
In a digital marketing sales funnel, SEM plays a crucial role in each of the five stages: awareness, interest, desire, action and advocacy. It drives awareness with a “nonbranded search campaign” and captures interests with a “branded search campaign.” SEM also increases clicks and conversions online in the desire and action stages via search retargeting campaigns. It contributes to brand loyalty from returning traffic in the advocacy stage, and it converts a prospect to a customer who is an advocate for your brand.
Tips And Best Practices
Some tips I’ve found effective when working to optimize SEM campaigns include:
• Choosing proven keywords for your brand and considering the keywords that are likely to be in your desired results page.
• Determining the most important words and any synonyms of those words.
• Driving your keywords to specific landing pages with relevant content.
• Testing and learning to optimize toward the most successful tactics, keywords, copy, etc.
I’ve found that one of the most powerful tactics in digital advertising is remarketing. This seeks to bring visitors back to your site so that they make a conversion. A remarketing list for search ads (RLSA) campaign gives you the ability to target these visitors by tailoring the ads and bids to serve more targeted ads. This might mean increasing your bid by a certain percent to reach those who viewed your company’s site in the last 60 days.
Increasing spend and pacing on tactics that initially drive users to your website (e.g., prospecting, contextual, behavioral targeting, etc.) is critical. Prospecting captures new potential consumers, while retargeting is a lower-funnel tactic to engage consumers who have expressed interest. Prospecting leverages data to understand those who convert and can help to expand the potential consumer base.
Mobile is another critical player in the mix. It is a unique platform to reach consumers cluttered with competition. According to Google, its April 2017 to March 2018 data showed a steep increase (six times more) in “things to do/activities” plus “near me” searches on mobile compared to data from April 2015 to March 2016. It’s safe to assume consumers are using mobile as a research tool. You are not tied to one geographic location on mobile, so consider tailoring your campaign locally, nationally or internationally.
Search engine marketing is an important online marketing strategy for increasing a company’s reach. It can help you boost your sales by providing your website more traffic. You can use various tools available from the search engines to track and improve specific advertisements as well as build a better website for potential customers to land on.
SEM tips and tricks can sometimes seem intuitive, but knowing how each one can improve your company can help you better integrate them into your marketing strategy. The most successful search engine marketing campaign is one that evolves to meet the changing needs of your company, your customers and the search engines themselves.

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