All online businesses can benefit from SEM. Any service or product related company must have a web site - that’s a given. But simply having that on-line presence is not enough. Your clients need to know where you are.
Picture a new retail premises opening up shop: They’ve spent a fortune on stock, fixtures, merchandising and systems. It’s opening time, they look for clients… And discover they’re in a tiny backstreet, 3 miles out of the city centre on the 4th floor, and the road outside is closed due to a diversion. What’s worse, they haven’t told anyone where they are. Can you see a fundamental flaw?
Nearly all commercial sites on the web are in exactly the same situation.
The shape of modern marketing has radically altered. Around the time of the millennium, it was thought that having a web site was everything. Getting a presence on-line became the be-all and end-all. Companies often spent a fortune on the latest features for their site. (To the great delight of web designers, of course). Then everyone started to notice that they weren’t getting any traffic to their site. The belief was that if you had a site on the web, people would find you. In fact, this wasn’t the case at all…
A traditional approach to marketing breaks down on the web. An expert in old-style marketing would compare your web presence with a catalogue. So to drive traffic to that web site, you’ll need to use the regular methods of marketing. They’ll recommend media advertising and promotions in the press. Basically keeping it within their frame of reference. First they make a nice looking catalogue. Then they utilise various marketing methods to get people to look at the catalogue. Completely missing the point of the web environment.
The internet itself is not just a viewing portal. It’s a huge dynamic environment with complex interactivity. Users drill down to investigate the services they’re interested in. We can find the sites we’re looking for because Google, Bing and Yahoo etc. have formulated huge site directories to simplify the task. Can you imagine trying to find something in Yellow Pages if there wasn’t an order and an index? You’d never find what you were looking for.
The Search Engines solve this dilemma. Which means businesses can no longer use traditional marketing. As the only thing that counts now is being indexed on Google or the other major Search Engines. Even that though isn’t enough. Research shows that only a tiny minority of people look beyond the fifth slot on page one. Which means you’ve got no chance if the best you can do is page six!
To solve this problem, and bring in a huge chunk of revenue for themselves, SE’s introduced paid advertising. And it has an interesting twist… The only time you pay the Search Engine is when someone clicks on your advert. In other words, you literally Pay-Per-Click (PPC). What a great idea… Essentially, you now only paid for someone who’d already decided they were interested in your service or product. This is an incredibly targeted way of advertising, and done properly, can yield some exceptional results.
However, most fields are completely overrun with PPC ads today. New online marketers have forced up the price per click, largely through over-the-top bidding. Now, in 2009, we’re seeing click prices that are so high, it can literally be unfeasible to make a profit. In particular where every sale requires a large number of clicks. This has brought Search Engine Optimisation to the fore, where driving a site to page one is the goal.
To illustrate the challenge: Enter some service or product keywords (relevant to your business) on Bing or Google. Does your site appear in the first 3 pages of results? It’s very doubtful. Which puts you in the exact situation detailed above. And if your site is listed, is it appearing for keywords that your customers will actually enter?
It’s possible you’ve already done some advertising in the paid listings - and maybe you’ve had some results. But are you professionally managing your campaign? Is your ROI satisfactory? Which are your most successful areas? Testing, measuring and split-testing are some of the most important factors with all PPC campaigns. You’ll never get the best results without correct figures.
Sales statistics are now clearly showing that both UK and worldwide commerce is undergoing a paradigm shift towards online sales and marketing. Companies must acknowledge this, to survive and flourish in today’s economy.