Online Marketing

SEM Approach

Search marketing is a combination of organic search (involving SEO, which we’ve already touched on) and paid search. Paid search, or search engine marketing (SEM), involves a business paying for text-based ads that appear in search results, and these will either be found at the top or to the side of the organic search results.

These ads operate on a pay-per-click basis and often involve you having to bid on the value of keywords that will bring up your ad in search results. “Search is the biggest category of online advertising in Australia,” explains Craig Wax, Australia–New Zealand managing director for Yahoo Search Marketing. “The reason for this, I believe, is it goes back to how people are finding businesses today. They’re going to the internet and they’re using search to find what they’re looking for.

“The reason why search works so well, particularly for small businesses, is the business doesn’t have to spend a lot of money to go out and find the person that might be interested in what they have to offer. The person is declaring their interest by what they type into a search bar, so that’s why it’s such an efficient way to market your business.”

That, combined with the fact you only have to pay when somebody clicks and goes to your website, means there’s very little, if any, wastage compared to other forms of advertising, adds Wax. “With search you’re only paying for the person who is actually reading your direct mail piece, and not only reads it but has raised their hand and said, ‘can you give me that, I’m interested, I want to read it’.”

Content marketing and search marketing go hand-in-hand, explains Nicholas. “That’s because your search marketing efforts are going to drive traffic to your killer content, which is building trust for you. And often online that’s one of the hardest things to do—you can get traffic and get attention, but how do you convert people to a sale?”

Wax says SEM doesn’t have to cost a lot of money to test, and the ability to have a campaign up and running quickly is an advantage. “You ultimately control how much you’re going to pay per customer lead, so you can work your spend to where you know you’re going to turn a profit.”

Overall, a big decision is whether to launch an online marketing campaign internally, or get the experts in to help. While there are certainly things you can do which can help improve the effectiveness of any online campaign, when it comes to the more technical aspects you’re probably better off outsourcing the job.

“The key thing is delivering the right information at the right time,” says Nicholas, and often a service provider will be able to do that for you in a more timely and cost-effective way. The other thing is, given there are so many options in the online marketing arena, Nicholas says it’s often not a matter of, ‘what is my strategy?’, but ‘what is the best strategy?’. “So if you can find someone to help you come up with the best strategy and help plan what to do, that’s one the of the hardest things to get right. That’s when you can DIY if you need to.”

It’s important, however, when choosing a service provider that you use one that’s suited to your business and goals. Don’t be afraid to ask for references and success rates for other campaigns they’ve done that are similar to yours.

The general consensus among our experts is that while all these online marketing channels can be used individually, they’re likely to achieve better results when used together in an all-encompassing online marketing strategy, which should also integrate with your offline marketing.