Search engine marketing is a big deal. It’s how most customers begin their journey on the internet. A recent study found that 68% of all shoppers search for a product by using a search engine. Google alone comprises 91.94% of all searches.

Search engines provide access to previously unavailable amounts of information and offer outstanding opportunities for advertising, which is why SEO is so crucial for businesses to invest in. Hence, it’s ideal to seek the help of search engine marketing services for growing businesses.

Source: SEM Global Share

Search Engine Marketing-Set SMART Goals

This is a business fundamental, but it’s something that should always be at the forefront of your mind. You need to establish specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound (SMART).

• Specific: Be precise about what you want to achieve. For example, “increase sales” is too vague. How do you know when you’ve earned it? Instead, state something like: “generate 10% more clicks from organic search.”
• Measurable: How will you track and measure your progress? If it’s not measurable, it’s not smart. This could be an increase in organic traffic from Google or sales from organic search or paid ads on social media.
• Attainable: Make sure the goal is achievable and realistic. You can’t expect to get 10x more traffic overnight if you have a low authority website and have only invested in content for a few months.
• Relevant: The goal needs to tie into your overall marketing plan. Is this part of your larger business goals? Make sure that achieving this goal will help you get where you want to go.
• Time-based: When do you want to achieve this? Select a specific time frame and stick to it. Search engines take time to index new websites.

Top 7 SEM Tips for Business Growth

To make more profit, grow more, and get more visitors and customers to your business, use the below tips to market yourself online and get ahead of the competition in this ever-changing world of online marketing.

Source: SEM Tips

1. Understand Your Business Goals and Optimise for Them

Do you want to increase revenue or grow the number of customers you have? How many sales or new customers do you need to hit your goal?

Once you have this clarity, it’s much easier to optimise your SEM campaigns for success. For example, if you know that a 10 percent increase in leads will get you an extra $1 million in revenue, your primary goal should be a 10 percent increase in leads. Your objective is clear; thus, so should be your optimization strategy. With focused objectives and goals, it’s also easier to track performance and make adjustments as needed.

Most businesses consider a conversion to be any action a user takes on their website that results in a tangible benefit for the company. This can include filling out an online form, downloading an ebook, or purchasing.

As your business grows and evolves, your goals may change as well. It’s important to revisit these goals regularly and update your SEM strategy accordingly.

2. Create Campaigns for Specific Types of Customers

You may need to run different ads depending on what kind of customer you’re trying to reach. For example, if you’re selling a product that appeals to both men and women, you might want to run separate ads targeting each gender separately. This will allow you to test which ads perform best with each group and then double down on those efforts.

Source: Ad Campaigns

It’s important to know who your customers are and create separate SEM campaigns for them. For example, if you own a restaurant with two locations in different cities, use individual campaigns for each location. If you own an e-commerce site, create separate campaigns for additional products or services. This helps you better target potential customers and gives you more control over where your ads appear on search engines.

3. Use Different ad Types to Target Extra Visitors

Enhance your Google Ads with video, images and other formats to grab the attention of searchers looking at Google Shopping results, YouTube and the display network.

Successful SEM campaigns are the product of highly targeted ads, so make sure you’re actively taking advantage of all the different ad formats Google AdWords offers.

For example, text ads are great for increasing brand awareness and building your top-of-the-funnel strategy, but if you’re looking to target more qualified leads, consider using the image and video ads to engage users with a visual experience that’s tailored to their search query and needs.

Each type of ad serves a different purpose and targets a different stage in the customer journey. The trick is to use each one strategically to hit your audience at precisely the right time in their buyer’s journey with the most relevant message possible.

4. Don’t Forget About the Mobile Experience

These days, a vast majority of searches are done via mobile devices. You’re missing out on a massive opportunity if you’re not optimising your landing pages and ad copy for mobile.

Source: Mobile-first

Mobile is not a trend. Mobile is here to stay, and the number one platform customers use to research, shop and purchase products online. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to engage with customers who are researching online before they head in-store.

5. Test Your Ads With A/B Testing

A/B testing is a great way to test your SEM campaigns and see what’s working and what’s not. This allows you to make informed decisions on optimizing your ads to get the best results.

Source: A/B Testing

There are two kinds of testing methodologies for SEM: sequential and simultaneous. Sequential testing involves running one test at a time until you come up with the best results for each of your essential components. Simultaneous testing runs multiple tests at once, saving time; however, it makes it harder to determine which elements are responsible for the lift in performance.

If you haven’t tried A/B testing yet, it’s high time you do so that you can improve your SEM campaigns!

6. Improve Your Call-to-Actions

CTAs are the buttons, links and other interactive elements on a webpage that tell users what to do next. These are the “conversion points” where you turn traffic into leads and sales — if they’re done right. They should be clear and prominent, with accurate copy that lets users know exactly what will happen when they click. If you don’t have good CTAs on your website, fix that!

Source: CTA

A compelling CTA should be clear and direct so that users know exactly what they need to do next. It should also be compelling by using concise phrasing and appealing language to motivate users to complete the action.

7. Don’t Create an ad Just for Clicks. Create an ad for Conversions!

The main objective of your SEM campaign should be getting a conversion from each visitor who clicks on your ad. That’s precisely what you should do when creating your ads. To make this happen, you need to ensure that your ads contain appealing copy and visual elements like images or videos.

Also, think about a call-to-action button that will encourage users to make decisions. This means that you should be thinking about how to take your customer from point A (clicking on your ad) to point B (buying your product).

Conclusion

The tips above will help you begin your journey towards mastering search engine marketing for your business, which will help you start to see results that you couldn’t get from other marketing activities like Google pay-per-click advertising. We recommend working through them in numbered order since each step builds on the previous one. But if you’re jumping in without reading those steps first, don’t worry–they all can be learned independently and then combined.