Search engine marketing (SEM) remains a vital contributor to a business’s growth. And the past year has proven its worth in the marketing industry. This strategy resonates with what modern consumers want.
For the longest time, brands have relied on traditional forms of marketing to get their products and services known to consumers. They often disseminated their messages through conventional channels, such as print media, radio, and television. The concept of traditional marketing tactics is that when the advertisements reach a wide enough audience, some of them might be interested in making a purchase.
In addition, since these were the only forms of media available before, marketers needed to maximize them to run effective marketing campaigns. From the consumers’ perspective, since they did not have other means to get information about a certain offer, they often needed to wait until they came across these advertisements again.
Moving forward, the advent of digital devices and the accessibility of the internet opened doors to vast opportunities in the marketing world. For businesses, this meant more means of getting their brand known to customers. Meanwhile, it signifies a more convenient way for consumers to learn about a product or service to determine their course of action.
In the digital age, people can simply use their internet-enabled devices like smartphones, tablets, personal computers (PCs), or laptops to search the web and learn about a particular commodity or service. These modern tools also allow them to find reviews about these offers to determine if they will be worthwhile.
Tech-savvy consumers’ changing behavior has disrupted the way businesses implement their marketing campaigns. While traditional marketing strategies are not likely to go away, it is undeniable that digital means of advertising are required if companies want to achieve their business goals. Relying solely on conventional marketing forms might cause the enterprise to trail behind competitors that invested early in digital marketing.
As mentioned before, online users depend on the internet to gain information about certain goods or services. This tendency has emphasized the role of search engines like Google or Yahoo in a prospect’s buying journey. Previously, companies needed to blast ads far and wide. But today, they can use targeted ads that appear as a result for an individual’s online query.
For example, if an individual inputs a specific keyword or key phrase into Google, the search engine will return a list of websites that potentially answers the online query. Organically, it ranks the sites according to their relevance to the search term.
This is why businesses employ search engine optimization or SEO when they want their websites to naturally appear in the top spots of search engine results pages (SERPs). SEO is a digital marketing strategy that mainly relies on organic traffic by optimizing an online site and its content to make them more attractive for search engines.
However, brands might not properly compete in this growing market if they relied solely on organic techniques. Meaning, they also need to put money behind their digital marketing efforts to achieve desired results. This is why many also implement SEM as part of their online marketing plan. Unlike SEO, SEM is principally driven by paid advertisements that harness search engines.
It uses search advertising, which places paid ads on prominent places in SERPs to increase a website’s online visibility. It also uses pay-per-click or PPC, wherein a marketer needs to pay a fee for each instance a visitor clicks on their ad.
With the growing numbers of online and mobile users, it becomes more imperative for marketers to integrate SEM into their digital marketing arsenal. Still, not all organizations have the adequate resources or time to run an SEM campaign by themselves. Therefore, working with a reputable agency that offers online marketing services is more practical.
These providers have the necessary tools, experience, knowledge, and skills to run an effective SEM campaign. Moreover, since such online marketing tactics may also require other activities like social media management and visual content creation, businesses can choose an outsourced company capable of doing these tasks effectively.
A reliable online marketing agency that also offers graphic design services can help enterprises create visually compelling media content to promote more engagements and attract additional customers. Visual content has dominated the marketing scene during the pandemic and will continue to do so in the following years.
Furthermore, a social media marketing company Philippines can aid businesses to maximize their social media accounts to amplify audience reach and encourage them to do business with the brand. With the right social media marketing strategy, enterprises can better connect and engage with their audience and convert them into loyal clients.
To learn more, keep reading this infographic provided by Digital Marketing Philippines that expounds on the different search engine marketing trends in 2021 that made it in the company’s mid-year report.
