We picked up some great information on SEM (search engine marketing) at the latest digital marketing seminar put on by the Savannah Chamber of Commerce last week – read on for our notes! If you missed the last post in this series, you can read about seo for small business here.

What is SEM (Search Engine Marketing) and how is it different from SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?

Search engine optimization is working on your website to help it perform well, resulting in the maximum number of visitors coming to the site.

Search engine marketing is a paid model; it’s the promotion or advertising of your search engine optimized site. These are the ads that show up in google search.

SEO and SEM feed each other – what happens on the SEO side can drastically affect the SEM side.

Primary SEM Platforms

Google AdWords – 70% of the market share. This means more impressions and higher click-through rates. They have a robust help center, but it’s hard to talk to an actual person. More interaction with Google.

Yahoo/Bing Network – lower cost per click, less expense per generated lead. Great customer service. Less competition. Reaches around 150 million people, a good portion of which never touch Google.

Think about what your goal is – reach, cost effectiveness, etc., and use that to guide which network you use.

Google is focusing on ads, and getting more click throughs on those will help them get more ads. They will put your ad in the display network by default, that’s not necessarily best. (Think about ads on blogs) You can specify no display ads.

Amazon is getting into ads, too, and also consider YouTube.

Google is 2/3 of the search market.

For products, Yahoo/Bing might work a little better.

Keys to Search Engine Marketing

What’s your average sale for what you’re promoting, look at the ROI (return on investment). What does it cost to promote, and is it worth it?

Testing is important to see if your strategy is working.

You need to go into SEM knowing what your goal is – what are you tryjng to accomplish? Aren you trying to sell a product? How do you measure success?

Focus – keywords grouped together, text ads that match your keywords. Optimize your landing page so there’s no disconnect. You want the content of the page to be what the user is expecting from reading the ad, or they’ll leave.

Use Negative Keywords – eliminate keywords that you don’t want to show up for. If it’s not relevant to the user’s search, its not helping you. Think about Ford cars and Ford modeling agency. Two similar names, but totally different demographics and businesses. If you’re one of those, use negative keywords related to the other so you don’t show up on searches for the other.

How to Optimize SEM (Search Engine Marketing)

Set up five different groups of keywords. Use both short tail keywords (2-3 words, more broad general phrases) and long tail keywords(4-5 words, more specific niches). Get people to your site, then you want a conversion. Whether it’s a sale, a call, fill out a form, make sure the page on your site they’re coming to leads them to that conversion.

Keep an eye on analytics to get the most of your campaign.

Time of Day – what times do conversions happen? Set your campaign so it’s active when the most clicks are happening. If your conversion depends on office hours, I.e. a phone call or come in during store hours, do not have your ad campaign run during off hours.

You don’t want wasted spend.

Shifting Budgets – if one group is doing better than the others, move your money towards the keyword groups that are performing better.

Target specific locations – research cities that want what you’re selling. If your business depends on the local community, focus on those surrounding cities in your campaigns.

Make sure what your message is online matches your message offline if you’re a brick and mortar business. Brand confusion, mixed messages, not acknowledging what you’ve got going on online is bad.

Phone / tablet not as effective for SEM, unless you’re a business that people would be searching for on the go – restaurants, hotels, entertainment, etc. If yours isn’t a biz that would do a lot of sales via mobile, you can adjust your campaign to be less aggressive on mobile.

Your ad campaign gets a quality ranking, and you want a good score. Using a competitor’s name as a keyword can make it harder to have a good quality score, because when the user clicks your ad they may not be getting what they were really looking for. That can negatively affect your campaign.

Google won’t show your ad if it doesn’t match your site. If you’re advertising apples but you’re really selling elephants, that will negatively affect your campaign because you’re tricking the user.

BUT – you can piggyback on the name of a huge brand if it legitimatly relates to your business. Example – if you’re a dentist and you offer Invisalign, targeting that service in your campaign is smart.

Notes on Ad Copy for Search Engine Marketing

Small changes in your ad copy can change the performance drastically. Be true to your keywords and try not to sound shady. Give customers what they’re expecting on the click through. Keep your ad score in mind.

If you’re seeing a high bounce rate, change up your ad copy and maybe also the copy on the landing page. The landing page needs to be as relevant as possible once the click on the ad happens.

How has Mobile Affected SEM?

The intent of the mobile user is different from the desktop computer user. Change your strategy up for devices. Daytime mobile users are in active search mode, and they want instant gratification. During the evening hours, they’re more relaxed.

Figure out what your mobile user needs in order to make a conversion, because they’re looking for answers on the go. Your site MUST be ready for tablet / smartphone traffic. Conversion on mobile phones is way better for mobile responsive sites. If you’ve got a phone number you want them to call, they need to be able to click it on their phone.

Consider phone tracking service to keep track of the leads being generated through your ads.

Brick and mortar stores need to utilize geographic targeting for mobile ads.

How Do You Know if an Ad is Working?

Step 1, you need to know what a conversion is for you. Is it signing up for a list, filling out a form, calling a phone number?

Next, figure out how to track that action. Google analytics every 2-3 days, give it just a little time to see what’s happening. If bounce rate is huge, change up your campaign.

If you’re doing promotion across all channels, including print and tv in addition to SEM, measurements need to happen across all channels so you have a clear picture of what’s working and what isn’t.

Don’t forget about word of mouth referrals

Attribution mark – a lot of how a customer finds you is subconscious, and what compelled them to finally convert can be something random.

Some people won’t click search engine ads, but may go directly to the site a couple of days later. “View through” – the customers that go directly to the site after seeing an ad convert at a much higher ratio.

One benchmark to track could be how many searches for your brand happen before ads, and how many after ads have been running.

Know your limits

Full time jobs are dedicated to search engine marketing, it’s ok to admit it’s beyond your scope. When you’re taking budget into consideration, do you have budget to hire someone?

You can have the potential employee do a test campaign or explain results from another campaign they ran.

Understand that SEM isn’t set it and forget it. It requires active management, and it can go off the rails if you’re not monitoring it.

If you’re hiring a third party for search engine marketing, they should get in touch with you every week or so on what the ad is doing, how it can be optimized. They should be able to tell you about their process, and they should be concerned with helping to make your campaign a success.

Transparency is key – how much money is going to the marketing firm, and how much money is being spent on ads? The third party marketing company should also be able to give you keywords and data related to the campaign.

Google is forcing transparency as of Fall 2014, and third party marketing services must disclose.

Talk to three or four third party vendors, find out who you’re working with on the day to day campaign if it’s not who you meet with, find out rates, research it before picking the first one you find.