Search Engine Marketing: The Complete Manual for Growing Your Company

Search engine marketing is an umbrella term referring to all activities utilized to generate visibility in search engine results in order to increase revenue. Common strategies and tactics include search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, link development, and pay-per-click (PPC) management

Unless your company is headquartered in a cave and your customers are other cavemen, it’s very likely that your company will benefit from some aspect of search engine marketing, whether search engine optimization (SEO) or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. No matter what you primarily hope to generate online—awareness, new recruits, strategic partners, investors, leads, or sales—search engine marketing services  offers an opportunity to improve your bottom line. A quick assessment by professionals like Anvil will help clarify the need and fit.

While SEM can help your business grow, it’s not suitable for all businesses, especially those that don’t have the resources to run their ads.

Many small businesses make the mistake of believing that SEM is a set-it-and-forget-it digital marketing strategy. However, if you don’t stay on top of your ads, you may be paying for low-quality traffic, ultimately wasting money if you don’t get any leads or conversions from your ads.

Here are a few things to consider to decide whether SEM is the right marketing strategy for you:

• Time: While SEM requires significantly less time than organic strategies to begin working and driving traffic back to your website, you must still dedicate your time to ensure your ads are effective. Low-quality advertisements that aren’t properly managed can lead to wasted ad budgets, and you could lose money if you’re not tracking them.
• Search volume: SEM relies on search volume. If there aren’t a lot of searches for your business or its products and services, you won’t get much out of SEM. Of course, you can still invest in SEM since you’ll only pay when someone takes action. However, since you’ll be using resources like time to confirm your ads are effective, you’ll need to ensure that enough people are searching for your keywords for it to be worthwhile.
• Budget: Any business can invest in SEM and start driving traffic to its website. However, if you’re operating in a highly competitive industry, you’ll likely have tons of competition also investing in search engine marketing. Competition drives up the cost per click, which can price some small businesses out of the running. Always do your keyword research to determine how much ads will cost you and decide whether it’s an effective strategy for your business.

The easiest way to get started with search engine marketing services efforts is to contact Anvil. If you prefer the do-it-yourself approach or would like more information before moving forward, we recommend downloading our free search engine optimization (SEO) white paper and reading our integrated marketing blog.

Search engine marketing efforts are highly measurable. If your objective is to generate awareness, you can track “impressions” and “clicks” on organic and paid search engine listings. If your objective is to measure brand preference or performance of text ad creative, you can measure “click-through” and “conversion” rates. If your objective is to generate qualified leads, you can track online registrations (for newsletters, events or white papers), downloads (trials or demos), or email inquiries. If your objective is sales, you can track eCommerce sales or offline sales via printable coupons or phone call tracking.