The most instrumental tool the internet offered to businesses to reach their target audience is Search Engine Marketing (SEM). For every business, if there is a core need, it can earn their audience better and faster.
They recognize that their audiences are different and vary in psychographics. People have always been curious. These days, the internet has become a means to feed curiosities. That’s why search engines are so important to the business mix. Businesses can answer these questions and provide solutions and unique experiences that interest them.
Whatever brand or company shows up first or plays into their interest, they engage with. All of this is influenced by Search Engine Marketing.
What is a Search Engine?
Search engines are electronic tools or programs that shuffle through the internet to identify items in a database within the web that correspond to keywords or characters. These keywords are those used by the user who is curious about the subject matter. This does because it prescribes web pages where those keywords have been used and which pages are credible.
The search must be in the specified language to which the search engine tool has been set. Currently, the most popular search engine tools are programmable to multiple major languages in the world.
What search engine marketing means
Search engine marketing is the use of search engine tools to sell a product or service to a specific market.
The purpose of this strategy is to increase the visibility of a website or social media platform representing a company in search engine results pages (SERPs). An alternate name for this is paid search or pay per click (PPC). Paid because originally this marketing term once referred to the organic search activities involved in search visibility such as search engine optimization (SEO) and paid.
Why do your businesses need Search Engine Marketing?
Now more than ever, businesses can no longer market effectively without the use of Search Engine Marketing. In 2020, the COVID-19 global pandemic showcased a statistic of an increase in the use of online search engine tools. With this increased number of consumers who are researching and shopping for products online, search engine marketing is now the core of advertising and marketing.
This is instrumental for a brand that sells online as well as those who sell offline. It is now the most effective way of meeting the business audience. Any company that fails to adopt this new system of marketing will suffer to achieve its desired reach. This is because a majority of new visitors to a website will only find it by performing a query on a search engine.
The major advantages of this tool are timing and conditioning. Unlike social media, the visitors on this space are here for inquiry and are likely to buy. So, the brand that seeks to advertise pay for impressions that in turn lead to the visitors they desire. An investment into search engine marketing is the surest promise of return on investment (ROI).
Another strength of this platform is that the more visitors come to the webpage, the page gains needed traffic to climb the website ranking in organic search results.
Search Engine Marketing is so important because of its non-intrusive nature. Users don’t have to worry about being interrupted when surfing the internet.
For businesses, tracking progress is easy because the results are immediate. It is arguably the fastest and surest means available for any business to reach its audience. However, the major challenge most businesses face is not being able to maximize their immense benefits.
How to optimize search engine marketing for your businesses
The major issues with Search Engine Marketing are the complicated algorithms. The algorithms, however, are what ensure the return of relevant results for each search such as the location and other available information.
When businesses used these sponsored or paid ads on search engine tools, they usually appear on the top and side and in some cases bottom of the pages. These positions mostly are done per the UX ‘F’ format for web copies. This ensures ad visibility.
The ‘F’ format is how every good web page is written. This means the shape of the alphabet determines where the most important elements of the page are placed. The result for businesses is more prominent than the organic results. Prominence equates to the user clicking on the ad.
For marketers, setting up an ad on a search engine should follow this chain;
When setting up a campaign within an SEM network, the marketer is prompted to:
- Conduct keyword research and identify the set of keywords related to their website, service, or product
- Input or select the geographic location (of their target audience) for the ad to be displayed within.
- Create a catchy copy for the ad that will display in the search results
- Input the specific price they are willing to pay for each click on their ad.
After this ad goes up, they use an analytics platform to track down the results of the search engine. Search
Engine Marketing is what is considered the best way to get results for digital advertising. More often than not the ads need to be great to attract an audience.
Creating great copies for search engine marketing
For most digital ads the key is to create text-only ads—simple, direct, and relevant copies. The few tips to watch out for are;
- Headline: The major attractor the user sees. They are usually in bold and should only be written in an active voice and focus on the experience of getting the product and not the product.
- Body of the text: This is usually brief and explains the headline. This part describes the product or service.
- Call to action (CTA): The call to action tells your viewer what to do upon seeing your ad. CTAs such as Learn more, Read more, Place your Order are some good examples.
- URL for the hyperlink: This now takes the reader to the desired action you intend them to take.
Seeing there are so many benefits of search engine marketing, ignoring it or not leveraging it, would be deliberately losing a lot of potential clients.
