Have you ever considered using the internet to market your products?
The internet is a fast growing medium for people to consume news and to do research for products.
In an earlier article: Is Search Engine Marketing Really Important to Your Business, we learnt that 93.2% of internet users would actually go to the internet to research on a product or service online before carrying out a monetary transaction.
Paid clicks, as revealed in the Google’s financial report the 3rd Quarter 2012, has rose by 33% year on year basis. The data suggests that more businesses have realised the value proposition of having a digital media presence on the internet and allocated an increasing budget and effort to use paid search as an integral component of their marketing strategy.
Why People Would Love to Visit to Your Website on Search Marketing
Search marketing is essentially a non-intrusive marketing tool. When users search on the internet, search engines, with especially Google in particular, help to allocate the most relevant results to the users’ Search Engine Result Page (SERP).
In other form of advertising, be it online or offline, it often intrudes and disrupts the consumer behaviour. Similar to watching a television show, viewers who are anticipating the exciting storyline are often disrupted with advertisements (ads) which have no bearing or relevance to the television show. More often than not, viewers gradually become apathetic or even irritated at the irrelevant ad content.
Indeed, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a positive answer to this phenomenon. By helping to place relevant business ads to users’ searches for solutions on internet search engines, it inevitably draws users to the respective websites and increases the conversions from searches to enquiries or sales.
Through this method of advertising, you can setup a highly visible paid search campaign. Thereafter users who are interested can easily find your products, services and information, and delightfully enjoy your website on what you have to present and offer.
What are the benefits of Paid Search
Prompt Setup
Paid search allows for a swift setup of ads and provides the ability for ads to live within minutes.
Cost Flexibility According to Budget
Unlike traditional media advertisement which requires a huge budget, paid search is able to operate within a small or big budget. This budget can range from the hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars.
Variety of Ad Formats
Choose from a plethora of ad formats that include text, image, video and interactive. These are useful depending on your marketing strategy.
Reach
You can broadcast your ads on different mediums such as desktops, tablets or mobile phones. Depending on the nature of your business, the choice of medium can help you optimize your marketing strategy for more effectiveness and efficiency.
For example say you own a restaurant, by using paid search on mobile phones and utilising location-based technology, this would help to broadcast your ads to people who may be a few hundred metres radius of your restaurant location, making the targeting of ads more effective.
Bonus Tips
If you are trying out SEM and have no experience in this area, try starting out with a small budget first and see if you can capture a positive return on investment (ROI).
When you have a new product or service and are waiting for your search engine optimization (SEO) to kick in, invest a good amount of budget into your paid search campaigns to get some traffic early first. It may not be wise to wait for the full effect of SEO to set in because SEO techniques usually take a relative longer time to bring your webpage to the first page of the searcher’s SERP.
Whenever you are running promotions or offers, allocate sufficient resource into your paid search campaigns and execute them early. These can help to bring a good amount of targeted and relevant traffic to your website before the promotions or offers end officially.
To conclude, a paid search marketing campaign can help you target your audience more effectively, driving relevant traffic to your website on demand. If you are considering using a cost efficient marketing strategy, using paid search is highly worthwhile. With additional support form web analytics, e.g. Google analytics, you can setup a campaign with a ROI goal in mind and turn your business into a highly profitable one with a reasonable marketing budget.