Mention Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and two words come to mind – Volume and Exposure. Something every business needs to create a steady stream of income.
Search Engine Marketing enables your business to reach thousands of potential customers for a lot less than traditional print media and direct mail marketing. Very good news for the smaller business owner whose marketing budget is much less than the bigger corporations.
The basics ideas behind SEM are simple. You need to build a site and the optimize the content around specific keywords that will be called should people use these words to search on search engines. The more effective your ability to optimize your content, the higher your placing in any search engine results. The internet advertises your products 24/7 but you can be waiting weeks or even months for search engines to index your site and of course there are no guarantees your site will show in any event.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Search Engine Marketing eliminates this waiting for search engine indexing and automatically secures your placing in the top search results positions when people do a search for your keywords. All you need to do is bid on the keywords you want referenced. The higher the amount that you bid, the higher your placing will be in the results. With PPC you only pay for results when someone clicks on your add in the placings.
You can build your opt-in list quicker, test product ideas and marketing campaigns, and reach potential customers faster. Of course to remain competitive, you must increase your bid to stay in the top results and for some keywords that can translate up to $5 or more per click.
Both SEM and PPC, share much in common. They effectively drive targeted traffic to your site. There is a learning curve for optimizing your site for higher places and how to effectively use keywords in PPC campaign. Constant monitoring and tweaking is necessary for ongoing successful results. A time consuming task for the webmaster/business owner.
Contextual marketing, the latest way to market online shows the same effectiveness as SEM and PPC but without all the hassles. Not only does it produce volume and exposure, it~s also fast and easy to use
The potential of contextual marketing is staggering and takes the best of both SEM and PPC to greater levels. Your ad appears within the web page content instead of appearing on the side or top sections of search engines.
People who click on your site have pre-qualified themselves because they looked up the keywords you had optimized. This will make it far easier to transform them from an enquiry into a potential sale. This translates into increased sales conversion rate and an increase in your profits.
If you need an effective way to find new customers then contextual marketing is probably your best option. Try it and compare the results – you might a bit surprised.
Tina Valiedi is the Chief Editor and contributing author of
MP Strategies Firm, a company whose breakthrough service
unleashes the power of the internet to drive hidden
potential clients to your site. Find out how at:
http://www.mpstrategiesfirm.com
