Search engine marketing (SEM)

Performance based inbound marketing

Search engine marketing is the revolution that changed online marketing. Because it’s pay-per-click (PPC), as an advertiser you only pay when consumers click your ad to learn more about your organization or service. And because your ads only show to people who are searching for relevant terms, you’re able to target interested consumers at the time of interest (known as inbound marketing).

Unlike traditional television, radio, or print media, where you pay regardless of how effective an ad is, with you only pay for performance. You’re also able to much more effectively target your audience based on their interests.

Increasingly, the first stop consumers make to find information about businesses like yours is a search engine such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing. Search engine marketing is one of the tools we use to make sure you’re found.

Google AdWords & Yahoo/Bing

Advertising programs like Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing allow us to have your appear above or next to the organic (non-paid) results of a search. With these two programs alone you can reach nearly 90% of all search engine users in the world.

SEM as a complement to search engine optimization (SEO)

Through SEO we modify and promote your website and content to ensure that it ranks highly in search results “naturally” (aka: “organically”). You don’t pay when people click on organic listings, so return on investment can be tremendous. That’s why a secondary benefit of SEM is that it gives us valuable insight into your consumers’ search habits, which we can in turn leverage in your SEO strategy [more about SEO].

SEM and SEO can be a powerful combination. The image below illustrates the basic difference between the two types of listings – paid vs. organic – on Google.