SEM Best Practices For 2019 and Beyond
SEM at times sound intimidating, but it just means promoting your business online. SEM top practices include keyword research and analysis, paid advertising, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and organic referrals from search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. That means, stretching to newer audiences, accomplishing new goals and to achieve all your SEM objectives. If you are into digital marketing, you know how the year encouraged to be unprecedented and unique in terms of the abundance and sheer sophistication of tools and technologies for the SEM endeavors.
Here are some of the top SEM trends to follow in 2019 and beyond that are anticipated to put the gas pedal on all of your campaigns.
The advertising AIs (artificial intelligence) and platforms are evolving swiftly, and most marketers are unfolding along with them. Choice of device use is shifting ever more towards voice search devices and mobiles. Video ads and Amazon ads are getting well-accepted almost on all platforms. While it can seem challenging to keep up with the pace, designers and developers have to try and be at par with the competitors who focus primarily in what pay per click marketers, and campaigners think they will be the dominant digital paid media trend of 2019.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
To start with, Search engine optimization (SEO) is the concept which helps to get your website to appear organically in the top of the search results on the search engines for the keywords and phrases you’re targeting. Once the keywords are recognized, the following step is the build the relevant content. In-depth and valuable content which relates to the keyword strategy will aid your business rise to the top of the search results and get noticed online.
SEO A/B split testing tops the list for 2019 as marketing is all about testing.
Search engine optimization A/B split testing, like all split testing techniques, allows you to confine the variables increasing traffic so one can take a targeted strategy to content changes.
Platforms like Clickflow recommend pages with untapped SEO potential, offering a high-impression count but low click-through rate (CTR) and can be upgraded to boost clicks and traffic.
Understanding the Main Strategies
So here we present to you the six best practices for a winning SEM strategy:
Delivering value over the decision journey, as the behaviour of the fragmented buyers evolves, the growth marketing plan also needs to expand. However, did you ever wonder who the patrons behind all those clicks are? New research from Bing Ads revealed to understand better the five discrete stages all customers partake:
- Initiation: Getting background information and buying aspect to become a more versed researcher.
- Research: Exploring the buying guides, suggestions, and products that meet the essential standards.
- Compare: Comparing a few of the products that satisfy the customer’s criteria, including reviews, ratings, features, and cost.
- Transaction: Finding where to buy, followed by viewing the pricing, availability, promotions, and local stores.
- Experience: Getting proper customer service, asking maintenance issues, and then making further purchases.
- Expanding the Marketing Funnel – As one of the constant companion, the search is no longer just a product but is considered a behaviour. Consumers turn to search at all times and in all places, irrespective of the device such as the desktops, tablets, laptops or smartphones. Recognising how buyers search at different points on their purchase journeys unlocks the opportunity to involve your brand with this new audience. Having become an engine of customer insights and behaviour, search now delivers impact throughout the five buying stages (initiation, research, compare, transaction, and experience). SEM also augments your conversion funnel and unifies diverse marketing activities.
Align the Campaign and Business Goals – Search can impact, as well as help you measure the business goals. Be sure to regulate your SEM strategy with your campaign objectives, which should be the following:
- Brand Awareness and Perception: Command competitively on your brand, non-brand, and competitors’ keywords. Non-brand searches are the answer to commencing a journey. It has been shown that 72 per cent of brand ad clicks had a non-brand or conquest course in the user journey heralding the brand click. Searchers were 30 per cent possible to carry a branded search after being presented to a brand advertisement on a generic search inquiry or a competitor’s branded query.
- Win New Customers: Buyers rely on search to notify them of the purchase decisions. SEM can help with every grade of the decision process. At the commencement of their journey, 49 per cent of consumers use a search engine to look for the products they want.
- Drive Sales: Search’s energy is forcing conversions. It outperforms different marketing channels over various devices in conversion rates.
- Enter New Markets: The ubiquity of search recognises you to initiate a cross-border marketing strategy that encourages foot traffic with Location Extensions, boost ad clicks with Sitelink Extensions and get more phone calls with Call Extensions.
Take Audience Targeting to the Next Level – Right-time, right-place action alone is no longer enough to constrain potential customers. It would help if you reached as many individual searchers as possible, utilizing audience targeting. Build more vibrant buyer personas that consider these factors:
- Behavioural: Past consuming behaviours are valuable for understanding buyers' interests and their probability to purchase. To better gauge user behaviour, investigate activities across websites, content and searches.
- Demographic: Buying decisions are guided by elementary but essential factors that include gender, age, and location.
- Contextual: Consumers frequently search at the moment. Analyzing where, when, and how the customers' search can provide valuable content for creating more impactful advertising campaigns.
- Choose Keywords which adjust with the crucial stages and mindsets of the aimed customers and this is done through Initiation, Research, Compare, Transaction and Experience.
Lift other Investments with Paid Search – Optimize the search efforts by merging organic search with any of the paid SEM strategy.
- Search and Social: Customers who click any brand's paid search and social ads are expected to buy and spend more. Strengthen your keyword coverage to perceive more impressions, and tailor your invitation strategy for commercial-related PPC campaigns.
- Search and TV: Search volume spikes for days soon after you can air a commercial. As per the Bing Ads study, one of the most significant commercial event of the year, the Super Bowl, saw a massive rise in branded search volume supported by the consistent pattern across industries.
- Search and Display: Conversion rates are seen to increase almost by 52 per cent while display and search are going simultaneously. Not only did conversion metrics improve, but campaign reach (impressions) are also augmented by about 45 per cent.
- Search and Other Channels: When Bing Ads is alone in the purchase path, purchases are shown to experience about 27 per cent higher-order average order value than purchases not including the Bing Ads, which also produce amount when paired with other channels.
Get to The Experts
There have been diverse upheavals on the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as well as in the Search Engine Marketing (SEM) aspects. While a lot has been spoken about improving the SEO strategies to align and adjust with the algorithmic variations of Google, paid marketing still tends to get lesser attention. However, this does not mean that things are not becoming different for paid ads as this facet of the digital market has also beheld some notable changes. The team of Anblik Web Development Company is always here to help to reach the zenith of the digital campaign. Reach out for our senior-level experts to get the best results!