SEM is advertising but what makes it special. It is measurable and targeted ! But why are those two things important ?

We all know what advertising is, paying money to get your message out there. We see it on the TV, in magazines and newspapers, on bill boards, t-shirts and anywhere advertisers can find to get their message in front of our eyes. They do this because advertising works. After all it's all great to say 'build it and they will come', I have a fantastic product that sells itself but even if you have the best product in the world, if no-one knows about it, you'll never sell it.

The trouble with traditional advertising (print, tv, billboards etc) is that it's expensive and then after you've spent the money and the campaign has run it's course, how on earth do you know how well that TV or full page newspaper ad actually worked. I know the salesman from the radio station was over the moon with enthusiasm and offered graphs and reports showing the reach and power of your shiny campaign but how do you really know ? Did the phone ring more ? Did sales go up, was it because of the new product you promoted or because it was just a busy week. Bottom line, a lot of the time, It's not easily measurable !

The other problem is, even with a strong campaign, it is very hard to control who actually sees your ads and guaranteed a lot of the people  who see your ad will probably never be interested in your product! That newspaper ad for lawn mowing services, sure the circulation of that newspaper might be 100,000 but straight off, maybe 20% live in flats and another 60% do their own mowing. Trouble is your still paying to get your ad in front of their eyes. That’s what we mean by traditional media not being very targetable.

Enter Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Pay Per Click (PPC), Google Adwords and the rest!

What is it? By far the most common form of Pay Per Click advertsing is seen in Google Adwords. In the picture below, the results on the left are called 'organic' links. We can help you with organic links with our Search Engine Optimisation services. Pay Per Click or Search Engine Marketing (SEM) can be seen at work on the right hand side of the page. These are paid ads, this is the exciting bit and I'll talk about this tomorrow ! Now this is advertising that is targetable AND measureable.

Targeting

Have you heard lately how rich Google is ? Well they  are very, very rich! Why is that ? Have they a product that is unbelievably popular and people keep coming back for more or because they cornered the peanut butter market? I think the first one, it’s that amazing product Adwords! I have said traditional advertising is not easily targetable and that is true but Adwords advertising is amazingly targetable. It still costs money, don’t get me wrong but boy can it be effective.

Using systems like Google Adwords, we can place your advertisements in front of people who are actively seeking your products and very little else. When a person searches on a search engine, they see the 'organic' results on the left and your ad (if you have purchased those keywords) on the right. The user might pick an organic result or yours depending on how suited it looks to their needs but at least your there! The great thing is you only pay if they click on your ad. The other terrific aspect of the system is you have complete control over how much you spend. You can target particular words or phrases and control how much is paid for those words. Changes in the campaign can be made at a moments notice, your spend increased or decreased. A common way of managing the spend is to say “let’s spend a hundred dollars” and then see how this is converted into enquiries and or sales.

The harder part of SEM is in choosing the words to target, developing advertisements which get a reaction from the customer and building great landing pages so that people coming to your site from and Adwords ad receive a welcome which reassures them they have come to the right place and helps them to take the next step.

Measuring

 So we have established that by targeting we can spend your advertising dollar better by offering your product to people who are actually in the market for your product. You might now say  "You talk big! How do we know these ads actually work and you're not just spinning a tale about how wonderful this kind of advertising is?" Well, that's because it really is measurable and there are many ways. One of the best and most informative ways is to use  Google Analytics tracking on your website to track exactly how much traffic the ads bring to your website. You can then also track their journey through the website and even, if yours is an ecommerce site, track the real world sales. On the other hand if your goal is to get them to a contact page or some other page, we can measure that too. One of the best ways to track, which also ties in with optimum digital marketing strategies, is to direct the traffic to a custom landing page, a page designed to welcome the visitor, enhance the message in the ad and with specifically tailored content, carry the visitor forward to your goal be it a purchase, an enquiry, a subscription to your mailing list or something else you value. The beauty of this landing page also is that it only gets traffic from your ad allowing exact measuring of the ads effectiveness.

If you would like to discuss an Adwords campaign contact us as we’re happy to talk!