Search Engine Marketing, commonly referred to as SEM, refers to a specific type of marketing on search engines that mostly encompasses paid search. It helps to generate more web traffic and compliments content marketing and SEO efforts quite well to help get your brand on top of Google and other search engines.
The term was once used to refer to anything that dealt with online search marketing, including SEO. However, digital marketers have since come up with a clear distinction between search engine optimization (SEO) and SEM.
Today, the term is mostly used to refer to paid advertising on search engines. SEM leverages the power of Google and other search engines to reach prospective clients at the perfect time and place.
Here are some of the top reasons why search engine marketing is essential.
1. SEM Is Conversion-Focused
While the primary goal of search engine marketing is to drive sales and bring in more money, it doesn’t mean that it completely ignores other forms of conversion. You can still achieve other marketing objectives such as newsletter signups and getting more new subscribers by running SEM campaigns.
The reason why SEM is conversion-focused is that most SEM campaigns are usually linked to conversion-focused sales pages, and landing pages that move traffic through the sales funnel.
Unlike SEM, organic traffic focuses on top of the funnel activity that targets to increase brand awareness. While paid search is designed to focus on a specific marketing goal and bottom of the funnel conversions, it doesn’t always go that way.
2. SEM Is Incredible for Local Marketing
Search engine marketing Canada experts also believe that this is n incredible way of driving site traffic and getting more conversions from local markets. The primary objective of local marketing is to connect regional businesses with the local community it serves.
In simple terms, when people search for terms such as “family attorney near me” or “best Italian restaurant in Montreal”, it is local marketers who make such queries connect with relevant business listings and ads in Google.
In 2016, Google released a comprehensive advertising package known as Local3-Pack that gives local ads the top three positions in SERPs for location-based search terms or search terms with phrases such as “near me.”
3. SEM Is a Consistent Source of Traffic
Every digital marketer desires to have consistent web traffic that can help their businesses maintain visibility and sales. It also helps them to plan, budget, and forecast appropriately.
Unfortunately, sudden spikes and drops in web traffic are quite prevalent and unexplained at times. To mitigate some of the effects of such inconsistency in web traffic, paid search ads can be used to generate much more consistent traffic for specific keywords.
This plays a critical role in stabilizing the amount of traffic that comes to your site at any given time.
4. SEM Can Help with Brand Awareness
Although search engine marketing is considered a bottom-funnel marketing strategy, it can still play a critical role in your brand awareness effort.
Google says that paid ads can increase your brand awareness by up to 80%. Even if you don’t attract clicks, your brand name will still be clearly visible at the very top of SERPs.
It means that internet users can still read about your products, services, brand name, and recognize the URL to your business site.
