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SEM: Using search engines in your marketing plan
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by Roger Plourde, President of NetMarketingSolution.
Should we speak of Search Engine Marketing or marketing by search engine?
We use the term Search Engine Marketing since it comes closest to what should in fact be search engine for marketing.
Search Engine Marketing is an activity that plays an integral part of your marketing plan, which is at the heart of your marketing mix. Search Engine Marketing can be part of the corporate strategy just as it can be limited to launching a particular product.
Search Engine Marketing is defined by the utilisation of search engines on the Web to meet marketing objectives. In broad terms, it’s about ensuring that your website comes up among the first results on search engines with the use of certain key words relating to your industry sector.
In marketing, it’s all about positioning
In Internet marketing, this positioning guarantees a minimum number of visitors on your website, or even, guarantees that there will always be a steady flow of new visitors.
In saying that, I have just identified two different things: there are those visitors who come to the site and then there are new visitors.
Indeed, just like a real store, a website has visitors who come because they know the site and then there are others who come because they think they will find what they’re looking for. Therefore you must ensure, just like in all businesses, that you have an influx of repeat customers and a stream of new customers.
In order to be successful with your Search Engine Marketing, it is important to consider your entire marketing activities; even prior to the Web, the internet and the non-virtual activities.
Establish the role
In your marketing planning, you must first establish the role that the internet will play. While it is not an end in itself, it is very important to give it the attention it deserves. The internet is a tool in your plan. In certain cases, it can play a proactive role – either as an avenue to acquire new clients or as a supporting means to sustain a product or service. An example of the first one is a car salesman who may position his site with words such as “used cars” to increase his customer base. In the other case, a funeral home will list its name to make its website more accessible.
Contrary to the car salesman who must absolutely attract new customers to his site (customers who are searching for cars as opposed to the site itself), the funeral home owner must ensure that his site is very accessible.
The first will use the Internet to sell, the second to support his service. Indeed, it is very unlikely that a person will use Google to find a mortician. On the other hand, it is very easy to imagine that a person will use a search engine to find the location or the date and times of visitation after the death of a loved one.
Two companies, two uses of the same resource, but two totally different objectives and two opposing results gained by the same means; namely, to obtain an accurate position in the various search engines.
It is important to remember that you must define the objective you wish to obtain with Search Engine Marketing. Certainly don’t completely reject this activity without giving it some thought. This is a tool that can play a very important role in your strategy on the condition it is given the required attention.
Selection of key words
Once you have decided on what you want to achieve with your Search Engine Marketing program, you must see if you have all the elements to succeed. A successful Search Engine Marketing program is linked to good preparation and the use of good techniques.
Getting the best results on search engines is about selecting the appropriate key words, obtaining a good position (being in the top 10 results is considered excellent; in the top 20 good and in the top 30 acceptable and anything below 30 is useless) and landing on the page of your site that provides information most relevant to the word the visitor is searching for.
Search Engine Marketing adds value when it takes into account your plan and your marketing objectives. Add to that a strong key word search which includes the validation of each word. Is the word selected as being the best one to bring traffic to your site also used in an industry that has nothing to do with yours? Is the chosen word a highly-searched word on the Internet, can it really create traffic?
After that, one must analyse the traffic on the search engines. Which words bring the anticipated traffic and of those, do they generate the desired results?
Like all marketing activities, Search Engine Marketing must be well prepared. Its success must be measured to increase efficiency. It’s not about a simple game of chance but about using a technology joined with the art of marketing.
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