Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or Pay per Click (PPC)

SEM is a form of online advertising that allows an advertiser to spend only when qualified prospects react to a “Call to Action” that exists within ad copy. In this case the ad copy is displayed on a search engine results page (SERP) located on search engines like Google, Yahoo or Live (Nine MSN). SEM campaigns can be extremely successful because it is possible to target ad placement and ad copy specifically to individuals that have identified themselves as potential customers by the keywords or phrases they used while performing a search on a search engine.

With SEM campaigns, benefit realisation reporting is made easy by utilising the advanced web analytics tools available today, which allow reports to be viewed within 20 minutes to 24 hours. Reports generated give feedback on identified measures of success and can be termed as, return on ad spend (ROAS), cost per action (CPA), return on investment (ROI), or in the case of online ecommerce sites, it can be simply termed as revenue generated.

SEM campaign development and execution involves:

• Consultation with the business to identify measures of success for their online marketing campaign.
• Research of the marketplace, competitors and initial bench marking.
• Keyword and key phrase research to identify the words and terms that best qualify the searcher as a potential client and match the content and purpose of the website.
• Development of ad copy that is tailored to the search engine environment, the keyword or phrase and the individual that performs the search.
• Recommendations regarding additional landing pages or changes to the website which will improve the conversion of visitors brought to the website.
• Creation of reporting utilising web analytics to provide a performance indicator for the SEM campaign.

Keys to a successful SEM campaign include:

• Targeted key phrases of two or more words.
• More ad variations matched to relevant keyword and key phrase sub sets.
• Search term present in ad copy.
• Pay less by creating a better click through rate with better targeting.

SEM pricing:

• Campaign setup ranges from $880 to $4400.
• Monthly account maintenance and reporting ranges from $330 to $1100.
• Monthly ad inventory costs are set based on customer budget and are subject to a 20% agency surcharge.