SEM Marketing

SEM marketing (SEM) is a form of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) in that it increases the visibility of one's website on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) through paid advertising. Paid search can transform your business with a huge advantage of allowing you to focus your budgets nearer the time and capture an audience searching for specific keywords in a short period of time. Jumping ahead of the organic listings on the page allows your business to reach the audience that you would otherwise have a limited ability to reach. Only paying when a user clicks on your ad means that you are increasing the chance of converting that user into a paid customer as they are already showing an interest in your ad (business). 

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SEM is different from search engine optimisation and it’s important that every online business has a clear strategy for SEM in their digital marketing plan.

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In SEM, the business pays to enter what essentially is an auction for their ad to be shown in a specific placement on a website. Depending on how successful the business’ bid is for that advertising space on a website determines whether or not their ad is shown or not. As like any auction, whoever is willing to bid the highest will have their ad shown.

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Search engines limit the number of ad slots on a page, thus, an auction is required for the advertisers (your business) to appear. The winner of the auction will appear at the top of the page (usually), and the runners up will appear lower down the page depending on the relevance of the ads. Relevance is rated from 1 to 10 and it is often referred to as your ad quality score. A higher quality score means that your ad is more relevant to the user, for example, two businesses that have the same bid for a placement, the business which will appear on the top of the ad will be the one with the higher quality score ad. 

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Given that the purpose of the search engine is to provide users what they are looking for, a business with the higher bid on the same keyword does not necessarily mean that their ad placement will be placed above their competitor's ad. Even with a slightly lower bid, the ad of their competitor's may very well appear at the top of the page results if they have say, a 10 out of 10 quality score for their ad and the business with the higher bid's ad only has say, a 3 out of 10 quality score. This means that it is crucial for businesses to be constantly reviewing their ad headlines and descriptions in order to optimise their overall ad performance. 

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We can help you to set up and optimise a campaign that generates a higher visibility which will lead to more sales and brand exposure for customers who are searching for your products or services. Contact us to find out more.