When business owners are asked if they can benefit from search engine marketing (SEM), the answer is almost always a resounding YES! At this point, it can be tempting to quickly jump into an SEM campaign. However, as with a traditional marketing campaign, it is necessary to do your research and establish goals and standards of measurement so that you can measure the success of your SEM campaign.
So, how do you go about setting your priorities and establishing tactics for a successful SEM campaign?
First, you need to know what you are trying to achieve through SEM. Your first step will be to establish what you are selling, either a product or service. Then you will need to determine how you know when a sale is the result of your SEM efforts. Answering these two questions will help you to know what to look for when measuring the success of your campaign. It is necessary to have a clear idea of how your SEM efforts contribute to a sale to know if the campaign has been a success.
Many successful SEM campaigns are based on brand awareness. Your marketing and SEM efforts should include brand awareness development for your product, service or category of business. In other words, know what sets you apart from your competition and play it up.
To ensure the success of your SEM campaign you will need to vigorously research your keywords. Once you have an established list of keywords, your next step is to create and test a variety of landing pages and ad content associated with those keywords. You will also need to successfully administer bid management tools to meet your predetermined spending limits. Using a robust tracking tool will help you to measure the success of your campaign. Your tracking tools should help you identify what leads to a sale and what the cost of that sale really is.
Setting the ground work, and evaluating results, is the key to any marketing campaign, including SEM.
