The world is going digital where almost every business has an online presence. All of them strive to get the highest visibility but with increasing competition, it is tough to stand out. This is where Search Engine Marketing (SEM) comes to your rescue. So, here is how search engine marketing helps to grow your business.

Search Engine Marketing is the practice of marketing or advertising your business website through search engines like Google and Bing. SEM produces quick results by targeting an audience that is already searching for the product, information or service your business has to offer. With its ability to give real, accurate, and tangible results, Search Engine Marketing helps you grow your business.

SEM comprises Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Local Search and paid advertising method like Pay Per Click (PPC). Your ideal online marketing plan should include a balanced amount of all three. A study suggests that approximately 74% of internet users perform local searches and 61% of local searches result in purchases. Thus, putting your efforts and money in SEM is surely going to be valuable for customer acquisition and business growth.

How Search Engine Marketing helps you grow your business?

Targeted Advertising

Who wants to spend a fortune of money on advertising with no specific target audience? This used to happen with offline adverting like billboards, print ads, etc. But with SEM, targeting a specific audience is more viable than ever before. You can target each campaign based on keywords, geography, gender, age, income levels, hobbies/interests, and even the devices, Operating Systems, etc. The depth of control you have on your SEM campaigns is truly incredible. You can even remarket to those who visited your site already.

Computable Results

SEM provides the real-time results of your campaigns. Once your campaign is live, you can get in-depth insights of how many people clicked on your ad, what pages of your website are they looking at, when and how many times did they visit your website, etc. With all this data in hand, you can see what works well for your campaign and what doesn’t. You can adjust your campaign accordingly and discover ways to optimize the website or landing page for better performance.

Result-based payment

Search Engine Marketing does not require a large investment on your part. You only pay when a specific action is taken on your ad. This means you only pay for the people who saw your ad and took the desired action and not for those who just scrolled past it. Google AdWords, for example, charges based on many criteria like click, impressions, view, etc. You can choose the criteria based on the type of ads you want to run, your goal, and your budget. By this, you know you are getting the worth of every penny spent.

Controlled Advertising

SEM gives you full control of your ad campaign. You can choose which ads to run and where and when to run them. You can decide the budget for each campaign. With targeted advertising and accurate results on your fingertip, you can tailor your campaign as per your business needs. SEM gives you the flexibility to start advertising even with a limited budget. So, whether yours is a large business or a small business, SEM can be a valuable option for online marketing.

Widespread exposure

A single SEM campaign can give you a wide and instant exposure. When you feed certain keywords in the campaign, the chances of your exposure for those keywords increase. As the PPC ads are placed mostly on the front page of Google or Bing, your brand awareness strengthens too. You might also enjoy a digital exposure in terms of visibility and visits even after your SEM campaign has run its course. This is because of cookies and caches.

Brand building and awareness

Some Search Engine Marketing campaigns are solely focused on increasing brand awareness. When your website has a greater visibility on search engines, it shows your brand authority. Also, as most PPC ads occupy the prime positions on SERPs, your business visibility, and appeal increases. Though sometimes searchers don’t want to make an instant purchase, greater brand awareness can land you with a future sales deal.

Lead Generation

SEM runs your campaign 24/7 or as per your scheduled time. This makes lead generation process easier and ensures targeted traffic every hour of every day. You can direct the visitors from the ads either to your website, social media page or a particular landing page for them to take a specific action. Measuring the number of leads you get from SEM is thus more straightforward and precise as you select the keywords, audience, and budget.

Read More: Social Media Content Ideas to Get Traffic and Engagement

In conclusion

The extent to which SEM helps in your business growth depends on what your goals are. Be it increasing the number of website visitors or increasing brand awareness, proper planning and execution is a must. Carefully entwining the different strategies of SEM will produce noticeable results. Be ready for experimenting and adopting constantly for the effective use of SEM. If carried out correctly, SEM will open new business opportunities and help your business grow extensively.

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