Basics of Search Engine Marketing or Paid Digital Advertising

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Hello there!

Today, I will be covering the basics of search engine marketing (SEM) or paid digital advertising, as a digital channel. I will provide the best definition for SEM, and I will explain why SEM is important for you and the brand you represent. Additionally, I will be mentioning how and when to use search engine marketing, as well as the most popular tools to access this digital marketing channel. Finally, I will wrap up with my comments about paid advertising in the digital world.

What is SEM?

According to HubSpot, SEM, or “search engine marketing, is using paid advertising to ensure that your business's products or services are visible in search engine results pages (SERPs). When a user types in a certain keyword, SEM enables your business to appear as a result for that search query”.

It is important to keep in mind that if your ad is relevant and the bid is enough, your ad will be shown on the search engine result page (SERP). Notice that in Google search engine, you pay for your ad, only when a person clicks on it, which is the reason why SEM is also called Pay-per-click.

Why should you care about SEM, paid advertising or Pay-per-click?

Keep in mind that these 3 concepts are the same; SEM=Paid Advertising = Pay-per-click.

Now, as said by Caroline Forsey in her HubSpot article, "SEM, is one of the most effective ways to grow your business and reach new customers. While it's critical you employ organic strategies to attract traffic over the long-term, sometimes, you can't properly compete on the SERPs without putting money behind it -and that's where SEM comes into play".

Put another way, sometimes the competition for certain keywords is really high. This is because you might be competing for your SEO efforts against big companies, with huge budgets, trying to rank high for similar keywords. When the competition in organic search is really tight, another way to come up first on certain keywords is by using SEM.

Search engine marketing targets people actively looking for goods and services, like yours. With a good mix of targeting, quality content and proper bid, your products can easily be showing up in your target audience's SERP.

How does SEM work and when to access this digital marketing channel?

Here the answer to these two questions:

1-How does SEM work?

Simply put, SEM are ads that you create, supported by a platform (like Google, Bing and Yahoo). This platform is based on an auction system for the few paid SERP slots (usually 3 or 4). In order for you to successfully set your ads, not only your bid ($) but also the relevance of the content, like copy, images and CTA's, are important.

In other words, the paid SERP exposure equals the "size" of your bid, times (x), the relevance of your content.

Bid X Relevance = SERP Exposure

Bids are very much related to the maximum cost-per-click (Max CPC), while relevance boils down to the quality score.

As per Google, the quality score is measured from 1 to 10 according to the relevance of your ad in regards to the search query.

Tip: As you can notice, ideally you want to create a very relevant ad thought for relatively high traffic and low competition search queries. For this to happen, keep your keywords in mind at all times when making these decisions.

2-When to start using paid advertising?

You should start using pay-per-click advertising when you notice that it is the moment to increase the reach of your brand awareness, to enhance your targeting and/or to maximize your digital content. 

It is not only about noticing this, but also make sure other digital channels are not as well targeted, budget-wise and more logical than SEM at the moment for your company. What I mean with this is, before you step onto pay-per-click, evaluate other digital channels and decide which one brings the most value for your marketing goals.

What are the most popular Paid advertising platforms in 2020?

Some of the most popular platforms for paid advertising that you can access today are:

a) Google Ads

b) Microsoft Ads (Bing, Cortana, Siri & amazon devices)

c) Yahoo Gemini (Verizon media)

d) Xandr (advertising and analytics division of AT&T's WarnerMedia)

e) Others (Facebook search, LinkedInSearch, etc)

Now, in order for you to decide which is the best SEM platform for you, similarly to the rest of digital marketing channels available, you must understand your target market, specifically; where are they searching for goods or services like yours. 

Once you know your target's preferences, then you should choose among the platforms that they prefer.

If you decide that is time to start a Pay-per-click marketing campaign, make sure to be aware not only of the popular platforms but also, all the different options available for your company. 

What works best for a restaurant doesn't always match with the best platform for an AR company. Every company is unique and therefore it has unique problems and unique ways to find solutions.

Search Engine Marketing

Wrapping up

Search engine marketing is a powerful digital marketing channel, available for companies that have analyzed various channels, and are now looking to further increase the reach of their brand, goods and services, or for those companies trying to maximize the content use or to enhance the targeting efforts.

I mentioned that SEM is also known as pay-per-click or paid search, and that SEM is based on creating copy and other digital content, for your ads, which will be ruled by an auction system that considers bid and relevance as the main factors to appear in the few slots available for ads in the search engine SERP's.

The ads you create are based on your marketing plan and keywords. In order to make your ads stand out, you have to keep an eye on the relevance of your ad, your offer and the call to actions within these ads.

I also said that among the most popular platforms for paid advertising is Google Ads. I want to add that similarly to the other ad platforms mentioned above, you can create an account to manage your settings, billing and configuration for the company, but most importantly, to create ads organized within ad groups, and these into campaigns.

Finally, as I have mentioned before, I will keep on posting more about different Digital Marketing topics according to the basic topics digital marketer should know and the table of content for our digital marketing journey

I hope this blogpost was useful for you, and I hope you keep reading my new article releases about digital marketing here.

Please, comment down below. 

Every opinion on how to improve the content of this blog will allow me to make adjustments on the go, with the objective of providing better and more accurate information for you, my dear readers.

Sincerely, 

Alberto Salas