Why Search Engine Marketing Is Critical

How about this – let’s compare your marketing stratedgy to your mornings smoothie.

Outdated print advertising is like throwing rotten bananas into the  blender – yuck! They can cost more and tend to taste bad (unless your making banana bread of course…) Consider this; SEO is new, refreshing and it works. Take this and combine it with a powerful pay-per-click advertising (SEM) and a dash of social media marketing and you have yourself a new, tasty and powerful protein shake that is guaranteed to jump start your business for success. Ok, enough with the comparisons lets talk about why SEM is Critical…

Your online marketing efforts must generate results and conversions to justify the investment. Conversions can be a phone call that initiates a sales attempt, it can be a consumer filling out an online form for more information, or it can be a consumer buying your product or service on the spot but how can you measure these results to see if your marketing investment is panning out for you?

SEMPs (Search Engine Marketing Publishers) like ReachLocal & Yodle who have technology that allows you to quickly determine your return on investment and measure which keywords produce what results and what cost.

Is Hiring a SEMP or SEM Expert Necessary?

Sure it is especially for the time-crunched business owner. The  problem with doing it yourself is that it’s so incredibly time-consuming. There are many factors that come into play with your SEM efforts that will affect your cost-per-click like ad relevance and quality scores as well as various terminology most  business owners don’t know. Diving into your own pay-per-click without extensive knowledge of the technology would be like diving into a pool of quicksand – before you know it your experiments  will have you sunk with thousands of marketing investment dollars literally gone with nothing to show for it.

Who really uses the internet to find businesses?

EVERYONE!!! Ask all of your friends and find out who uses search engines vs. their local paper – the results and answers will speak for themselves.

Do you find yourself advertising more in the local paper then online… Oops, that’s your biggest mistake yet and it could be the determining factor to your businesses longevity.