Advantages And Disadvantages Of Search Engine Marketing
Are you looking for ways to increase sales or brand awareness for your business? Search engine marketing (SEM) is one of the best marketing strategies to improve your online presence and boost sales through online platforms. SEM is a way for business to improve their search engine visibility and uses pay-per-click advertising. Take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of search engine marketing below to gain a better understanding:
What is search engine marketing?
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a digital marketing strategy that is used to promote websites, boost sales and increase visibility on search engines. The ads will be displayed all across the search engines
What is the difference between search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM)?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) both refer to ensuring maximum visibility on search engines. However, there are several key differences such as:
- Main Focus: SEO involves increasing the organic rankings of a company whereas SEM provides immediate traffic to the campaigns.
- Strategies and Techniques: SEO requires on-page optimization, off-page optimization and content optimization. SEM involves ad optimization and bid strategies.
- Results: SEO takes a long time to show results such as 3 to 6 months while SEM shows results immediately.
- Placement in Search Engines: SEO is organic, so it will appear within the top 10 search results in each page. SEM will display ads either on the top or the bottom of search results and will have the word ‘sponsored’ or ‘ad.
- Credibility: Since SEO involves organic search results, it will be deemed as more credible and trustworthy as compared to SEM where it clearly displays that they are ads.
Advantages of search engine marketing
Here are the main advantages of search engine marketing and how it can help companies with business growth:
1. Able to measure results
One of the main advantages of search engine marketing is how you can easily measure the results real-time. For instance, digital marketing platforms such as Google Ads provide detailed information about the clicks, impressions, reach, conversions and cost per click of the campaigns. Companies get to extract data quickly and easily to make better decisions while running the campaign.
2. Able to make changes real-time
Unlike traditional marketing, SEM allows real-time changes and edits to be made. Once the changes are made, it will be effective instantly as well. This makes it easy and flexible to perform adjustments to ensure the campaigns are effective based on trends or changes in customer behaviours.
3. Pay only per click
Since SEM campaigns are based on the pay-per-click (PPC) model, companies only pay once users click on the ads. This leaves room for proper budgeting and reduce overall spending. It also shows that the user is interested in the service or product if they click on the ads.
4. Quick visibility and reach
SEM offers quick and instant visibility as the ads can appear on search engines once the ads get approved. Hence, it’s a good way for companies who wish to launch and promote their new products or services to spread the word quickly to their target audience.
5. Targeted advertising
With search engine marketing, companies can narrow down their target audience through various features such as device type, location, and demographics. The business can ensure that their ads will only be shown to users who are most likely to convert as they are interested in the services or products.
Disadvantages of search engine marketing
Here are the main disadvantages of search engine marketing that could negatively impact your business growth:
1. Higher cost
Compared to other digital marketing strategies, SEM can be quite costly as you’ll be paying based on the number of clicks. The users may not be interested in your service or product but they clicked on your ad anyway. That will result in money being wasted as the user did not convert.
2. Highly competitive
In most industries, it is highly competitive as there are many companies who are bidding for the same keywords. Therefore, companies need to continuously make efforts to ensure that they stay on top of the search results with consistent optimization of the SEM campaigns, which can be time-consuming.
3. Consistent monitoring and tracking is required
The SEM campaigns requires constant monitoring and tracking to achieve successful results and high return of investment (ROI). This includes daily monitoring to ensure the campaign is delivering results. Some of the tasks involve adjusting the bidding strategies or changing the ad copy.
4. Requires specific skills and knowledge
To ensure your SEM campaigns are successful and effective, a professional with the right skills and knowledge is required. This is because to run successful SEM campaigns with high return of investment (ROI), it requires a thorough understanding of the various bidding strategies, keyword research and analytics.
5. Ad blockers
As we all know, there are users who make use of ad blockers on their browsers. Thus, when ad blockers are activated, the ads will not be displayed. This reduces the overall target audience reach as well as the overall effectiveness of the SEM campaigns, making it a limitation. However, this only applies to Google Display Network (GDN).
Is search engine marketing suitable for me?
Well, it depends on your budget, business goals and objectives. If they are aligned with the benefits of search engine marketing, then you should consider implementing the SEM campaigns. However, it’s important to not set your expectations too high as it requires trial and error to know whether SEM is right for your business.
Conclusion
All in all, search engine marketing is one of the many effective ways to market a product or service. By understanding the advantages and disadvantages of search engine marketing, you can make better decisions and adjust your marketing strategies accordingly. Learn more about SEM from our handy guide about everything you need to know about SEM.