Recipe for Search Engine Marketing Success
If you ever wanted to find out something about your favourite actor, or the latest TV show, where do you go? When you want to find out which smartphones are releasing soon, what tool do you use? Yes, you guessed that right. Your likely favourite Google search engine is your trusted companion when it comes to finding out information about virtually anything and everything. As per GlobalWebIndex.com, 33.9% of internet users discover a brand through search engines, 25.3% via ads on websites and 24% via customer review websites.Click To Tweet
Now, even if these statistics were not available, we all know of our growing reliance on smartphones and search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. to find more information about any product or service. These days, even before we buy a product or service, we research the features, challenges, pros and cons of buying it, different players in the market, discounts available etc. This behaviour of searching online before purchase is no longer restricted to the urban population. It is also observed in tier-2 & tier-3 cities and to a large extent in rural areas as well. Combined with the capability of showing relevant results for any regional language, this target audience base is only going to grow bigger and stronger.
So, how does this message of search engines “Pooche koi bhi sawaal” translate into business opportunities for SMEs and Startups?
For starters, the queries that the people search on search engines like Google etc. are both informational and purchase-related.
If a business understands the intent behind these queries and the search engine marketing components (like the Google marketing platform), they can guide their target audience to discover their brand, build engagement, sell a product/service and even build loyalty and get referrals.
Let us walk you through the steps that we follow at Idecution while recommending and implementing paid search marketing or also commonly known search engine marketing (SEM) strategies for our clients:
● Understanding the type of ad formats available
Depending on the product/service, the industry and the budget available for marketing, we decide if a text, image or video ad will be relevant for the business.
● Understanding the various mediums or platforms available
As highlighted above, brand discovery can happen on various platforms, which is why we decide which of the platforms will be more relevant to our clients. It can be text ads in search engine result pages (SERPs), image or video ads on YouTube, image ads on Google-partnered websites or text/image ads on Gmail.
● Keywords research and analysis
Before setting up the ads, keyword research is done by taking into account the brand product/services, the competitors and the existing search queries available in the various keyword planner tools. Typically, this activity generates a few hundred keywords. After this, it is our job to understand the user’s intent behind each keyword, map it to our marketing objectives and prepare a final list of keywords. This is not a one-time activity and is repeated during the upcoming weeks/months depending upon the quality of leads that we receive. Though it is a frequent activity, getting it as right as possible the first time is very important.
● Audience targeting
Preparing a persona of your ideal customer and the kind of search behaviour that they might display is important in deciding your target audience. There are various targeting options available related to interests and demographics. The targeting can be set up depending on the ad formats.
Eg: For a business that conducts training in stock market investments, the relevant audience is someone searching about how to trade stock options, how to invest in the share market, how to trade stock options for dummies etc.
Another example would be: For a business dealing in cyber security products, the searches related to cyber threats, remote working, cloud computing etc. are relevant.
● Bidding strategies
The entire process of showing the ads to the relevant audience happens via an automated bidding process. Depending on the marketing objectives, there are various bidding strategies available. Here, based on what will benefit our clients and get us more quality leads, we decide whether to bid in a way that we outrank the competition for every search or do we work at getting our ads displayed for only the most relevant ones and not necessarily going after every search. The strategy can also be changed later depending on the results.
● Location targeting
The beauty of digital marketing is that you have the option to target customers both globally and locally. This is what we often do while doing Search Engine Marketing. You can define the postal codes or the specific locations that you want to include or exclude in your targeting.
● Negative keywords
While it is important to know which keywords to target, it is equally important to know which ones to put in the negative keywords so that the ads are not shown when a user searches for these keywords. Eg: For a coworking office space provider, someone searching for a space for commercial use can be a keyword but someone searching for a space for setting up a grocery store will not be relevant.
● Performance management
This is an ongoing process. Once the ads are live depending upon the budget, the competition, clicks and such other parameters, the ads go through phases like Learning, Learning Limited or Active. As a digital marketing agency, it is the job of our SEM specialist to understand what factors are affecting the phase of the ads and how we can optimise the performance to get better results for the clients.
Another important part of the SEM activity is the client’s feedback. The enquiries received can be via phone calls or via filling up the contact form on the website. It is important that the enquiries are captured correctly in the sales funnel and the feedback on the quality of these leads is provided by the client.
Thus, the recipe of success in SEM marketing consists of SEM + Idecution’s expertise + Client feedback from the client.