Search Engine Marketing, SEM
Unlike organic SEO, search engine marketing(SEM) looks suspiciously like old-fashioned advertising. It is, but infinitely more accurate and perhaps a tad bit more affordable.
Search engine marketing is, quite simply, a way to focus your message on the internet. It is a cost effective method of promoting your brand to those searching a category. Since 2002 SEM dollars have grown nearly a thousand percent, a growth far surpassing more traditional advertising venues. Every kind of business, from mega-corporations to mom-and-pop start-ups have found success in the different types of search engine marketing.
In the "olden" days of marketing(10 to 15 years ago), if you wanted to target your customer you sort of smacked them with your media stick to get their attention and pushed them toward your business. If your business was mowing lawns your "stick" was maybe a simple little ad in the local newspaper. If you were a "MegaCorp" you bought the biggest stick(perhaps network television ads) and smacked us upside the head, repeatedly. Unfortunately this method is like cracking open the beehive to get at a little honey. You may get the sweet stuff but you will also tick off a lot of bees.
Today nearly all of us look to the internet for information, entertainment, shopping and research. Search engine marketing makes it much easier for a business and consumer to connect. Your message is seen by a viewer seeking your general product so you don't have to worry about annoying a huge segment of the market that is not interested. And you're not paying for the overkill advertising. There are quite a few ways to reach your customer on the web but here are the most popular and most reliable SEM methods.
Contextual Advertising
This type of internet advertising is pretty much like the name suggests. You pay the provider to have his sophisticated technology put you on search engine report pages and web sites that match your product. You've seen them a zillion times, usually box ads or text off to the side, or even pop-up ads, with a link to the advertiser's web site. If you do a search in google more often than not there will be two or three web sites at the top of the SERP, often shaded, with the words "sponsored link" up in the corner. Both the ads and the "sponsored links" are contextual advertising. The coolest thing about contextual advertising is you don't need to hire a firm full of media planners, and focus groups. Computers make the decision instantly and can place your advertisement across thousands of web sites and search pages.
Display Advertising
Want to make a bigger splash? Use display advertising. Display advertising can be done in several ways but generally these are the banners running across the top of the page or down the page, animated, blinking, often with audio and sometimes with both audio and video and becoming more common, interactive. These ads can be powered by the contextual advertising engines or space can be purchased on specific web sites.
Pay Per Click
Pay Per Click(PPC or Pay for Placement, P4P) is when your ad is placed on search engines, blogs, and advertising sites but you don't have to pay for it... until someone clicks on it. The Cost Per Click(CPC) varies widely, depending on the search engine and the popularity of the keyword. There are a plethora of PPC internet media moguls but Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter are the big guns.
There are basically two ways to arrive at a Cost per click: flat rate and bid-based. Without getting too technical publishers for some sites create a rate sheet for different content areas under their control and a flat rate is charged for advertising positions. The bid-based model is more common when using specific keywords to search the net. The advertiser agrees to pay a certain amount for a specific keyword or string and is liable when it is clicked. It's kind of like an incredibly quick auction that occurs at the moment of click. Like most things in life and advertising, flat rates are negotiable and there are excellent tools on-line to determine what the least amount might be to pay for a bid-based keyword.
Paid Inclusion
You've always been told, "You've got to pay to play.". Well that is pretty much what paid inclusion is about. Some search engines charge a fee and sometimes an additional click fee to include your web page on the search engine results page. This is not to be confused with contextual entries and PPC. Those are clearly marked as "advertising".
Now before we get all huffy and discard the whole idea of paid inclusion, you should know it can be a valuable tool for search engine optimization. Results can be gleaned in a matter of days instead of months and the research can be used to organically optimize a web site.
As part of your overall digital marketing campaign, Buzzdog Creative can map out and execute a cost effective internet marketing strategy. Buzzdog Creative will create the advertising that will get your brand looked at, plan the correct SEM buys, and place and manage the campaign.