Search engine marketing (SEM) may be a new sounding term to many businessmen on the streets.
In a nutshell, SEM is about generating traffic from a search portal to a particular website, which you or your company owns.
A good majority of businesses may not have considered this alternative, but it is perhaps the most cost effective way to bring in new customers. Studies have indicated that search engines continue to rank as the foremost way in which consumers locate new sites on the internet.
Cost effective and efficient advertising
Compared to traditional advertising campaigns, which can cost thousands and even millions of dollars per month, an aggressive search engine marketing programme comes in at a real bargain.
It can be as low as a thousand dollars per month, depending on the strategies that you plan to adopt.
One recent study conducted by Forrester Research, a leading online marketing research firm, found that more than 80 per cent of internet users arrive at sites through search engines.
Furthermore, some 55 per cent of online purchases are made on sites discovered through search listings.
The conclusion is clear. Consumers use search engines when they are shopping to make a purchase.
SEO helps to improve the organic search result for your website, based on the keywords or key phrases you want your website to be targeted for. This is achieved through on-page and off-page strategies.
PPC is an advertising campaign which is keyword targeted. Among the PPC providers are Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter. This helps to generate targeted traffic to your websites.
While SEM comes in second to email marketing campaigns, many companies have yet to designate a specific budget for search engine marketing.
CyberAtlas, an online market research firm, found that nearly 60 per cent of companies surveyed allocate less than 1 per cent of their annual marketing budget to search engine marketing.
Surprisingly, 20 per cent of those same companies allocated at least one-quarter of their annual budget to other types of traditional marketing campaigns.
It should be noted that as with any other type of marketing, effective search engine marketing does require testing and persistence. This is generally due to the fact that search engine requirements and criteria used for ranking purposes can change on an almost daily basis.
The professionals from search engine marketing firms have the know-how to respond to such dynamism experienced with Search Engines.
Advantages of search engine marketing
More and more consumers who are internet savvy, tend to locate appropriate information of products or services through the search engines.
Shopping on the Internet has been increasing steadily, thus attracting more hits and sales.
Information and promotion on the internet is available 24/7 at any location (globally), working round the clock.
Search engine provides very targeted traffic, as individuals search the internet to seek solutions to certain issues that they are currently facing - a very cost effective and efficient way to market services and products to reach its target markets.
Companies that have never considered search engine marketing should start to consider apportioning a part of their advertising budget for SEM to start gaining more targeted traffic.
Jolly Tan is an SEO consultant at Finggle Pte Ltd (http://www.Finggle.com). Singapore-based Finggle offers training and consultancy in search engine optimisation and search engine marketing to improve website search engine ranking and visibility to increase targeted traffic.
