So you’ve heard the legends of 400% ROI in Search Marketing?
Good, because they’re all accurate, if you know what you’re doing! On this page, I’ll teach you all about what to expect from this tactic, known famously as Search Engine Marketing (or SEM).
How Hard Is SEM?
SEM advertising for small business is not as difficult as it sounds.
Like it sounds, it literally means marketing through a search engine. Many search engines exist, but most advertisers use Google Ads, which boasts around a 90% market share.
This is often confused with Search Engine Optimization (or SEO), which is very different. With SEO, you optimize your website directly to appeal to Google’s unpaid search engine results listings. Think of things like load speed, website structure and image size optimization. This usually takes months to show successful results.
With SEM, you run paid advertisements through the Google Ads self-serve advertising platform. You work with a budget to serve auction-style ads to users searching about your product. SEM usually shows results within the first week, and you can start receiving great conversions within the first month.
While Google boasts the highest share of online searches, Bing and Yahoo are also available for new advertisers, using the Microsoft Ads server.
While the costs-per-click can be higher than social media or display campaigns, the return on investment is extremely high and almost immediate.
Get Started In SEM
Focus on just three things when you first start to advertise through SEM tactics:
- Maintaining a low cost-per-click through bids
- Reviewing search terms for quality traffic
- Creating quality ads that reflect what your website offers
If you stay focused on these three things, the conversions should come naturally. If not, you can always review the history of the account and undo changes you’ve made within the previous month.
Some people try to dive into both Bing and Google. Trust me when I say Google will be overwhelming enough.
Three things affect the quality of your campaigns in Google Ads:
- Cost per click
- Search terms
- Budget
Every great campaign has great search terms at their lowest cost per click, and spends the full budget. Line up these three things and you’ll see it reflected in your ROI.
Google Ads Automated Bids
The number one question I get from clients is, “should I automate my campaign bids?”
This is a fair question: every instance of ad delivery is through an auction process, and auctions are not simple when it comes to managing bids. When you decide which is best for you, consider the positives for each.
Automated Bidding:
- Automated bids will probably be required at some point in the future. It is likely that Google will eventually remove all manual bidding capabilities.
- You have a campaign that is easily scalable, since you don’t have to constantly adjust bids
- You can choose from a variety of goals: maximizing clicks, maximizing conversions, maximizing return on ad spend, and maximizing impression share. You can also set a target CPA, or cost-per-acquisition, and you can set an “optimized” version of manual bids, called “Enhanced” cost-per-click.
Manual Bidding:
- You control which keywords spend more money
- You avoid cannibalizing budget on a single or a few single keywords.
- If you want keyword optimization, you are required to manage bids constantly.
Personally, I prefer manual bidding almost every time. The only times I use automated bidding is when I have a client who likes to make massive exterior adjustments (adding specific keywords, remove others, adjusting bids on windy days, etc.). When you have a needy client, automated bids are the only way to stay sane on those accounts.
Manual bids are great, however, for new campaigns and campaigns whose optimization you really want to max out.
With new campaigns, I’ll usually set two tiers of budget: the more targeted keywords will get a max CPC of around $5 (using phrase & exact match types, some broad match modified). The less targeted keywords will get a max CPC of around $2 (broad match keywords).
As I collect data and find out which keywords are performing well, I’ll work to reduce the CPCs of the entire ad group while still spending the entire budget (eventually, reducing the entire ad group CPC will result in NOT spending full budget- find the tipping point and stick to it).
Google Match Types: Broad, Phrase & Exact
When selecting match types for a new campaign, I’ll usually stick to broad and phrase match types. If I’ve worked in the industry before, or I know that a certain Google search will convert (think [schedule an eye exam]), I’ll add an exact match type. Otherwise, I’d rather get data first.
For the purpose of this article, we’ll assume we as the advertiser are targeting the keyword “pizza delivery.” Here are the four widely used match types in Google Ads, complete with search terms (searches typed in by the customer) that would trigger our keywords:
- Broad Match (pizza delivery): no punctuation when typing out the word into the keywords section. Extremely surprising results can come from these keywords. Bid low on these keywords and use mainly to get new keywords.
Search Terms: “pizza delivery,” “delivery truck drivers,” “Jeff Ruby’s carryout.” - Broad Match Modified (+pizza +delivery): add a “+” before each broad match keyword you want modified. This requires that the “modified” word, or a close variant, must be in the search.
Search Terms: “pizza delivery,” “delivery pizza,” “delivered pizza Cincinnati, OH,” “pizza can you deliver to me.” - Phrase Match (“pizza delivery”): add quotations around your keyword or set of keywords. This requires that all of those keywords (or close variants), in the order you’ve specified, are searched by the user. The searches can include words before and after the quotations.
Search Terms: “best pizza delivery Cincinnati,” “pizza delivery,” “pizza delivered 45202,” “order pizzas delivery.” - Exact Match ([pizza delivery]): add brackets around your keyword or set of keywords. This requires that only those keywords (or close variants) are searched in the order you’ve specified.
Search Terms: “pizza delivery,” “pizza delivered,” “pizzas delivered,” “pizza for delivery.”
The key to using match types effectively is bidding. Unfortunately, if you pursue an automated bid strategy, you really can’t control which match types get the majority of your budget. What usually happens is that broad match keywords spend the full budget (because there’s more opportunities to show than that same keyword as exact match), and your phrase & exact match types get no impressions because you run out of budget.
If you are using automated bids, I’d recommend pausing pure broad keywords (keywords with no “+” in front) as fast as possible. The sooner you can spend full budget on targeted match types, the less likely you are to run into the scenario in the previous paragraph.
When To Start SEM Advertising
Start immediately. This is part of your digital marketing foundation, and one of the few that capitalizes on your other marketing dollars spent with actual revenue. The cost of SEM can vary, but most smaller advertisers spend around $500-$700 per month on SEM alone. Rarely do those investments in SEM yield anything less than 100% ROI.
Picture this: you advertise with Facebook and Instagram for six months, promoting an eco-friendly deodorant. You’ve shown someone in your audience your ad six times, and they’re excited to buy and help save the planet. They do a search for “eco-friendly deodorant Cincinnati.”
Now, Mr. Old Spice or some other competitor serves them an ad that says:
“Eco-Friendly Deodorant – Save The Planet – Now 50% Off”
Woah! Not only does this other guy have the same exact product, but his is 50% off. Of course I’ll buy that one instead and beat the system! Hahaha!
Now, if you’d served an SEM ad too, you’d at least be in the running. You could make your own offer, or remind them that they saw and loved your product. If you don’t, however, you’ve just lost a sale! Facebook dollars are lost, because your competitor was able to close YOUR sale.
Sometimes, competitors will even bid on your brand name as a keyword, so even a user who remember and search your brand name directly can be stolen by competitors.
Because of this, it’s common practice for advertisers to set up a basic “branded” campaign using a small budget. When you bid on your own brand name, you rank much higher than your competitor, which enables you to show ads over competitors even at a low, low cost per click.
In some cases, you might pay $0.35 per click on your brand name while a competitor would have to pay $10 per click to beat you. This has to do with Google’s algorithm and how it rigs the auction system in favor of advertisers they deem more useful to the searcher.
SEM can be confusing, but it’s such a valuable tactic that it can’t be ignored. It’s the only tactic that gets you massive returns immediately upon deployment. You must have a presence on Google Search Results if you want to sell a product.
Each of the articles below help describe the various successes of the SEM strategy, which I utilize primarily through Google. If you have any further questions or just want to dive deeper into your SEM strategy, let’s get in touch!
If you’re in a good place with regards to your SEM strategy, feel free to browse the articles below, where I discuss everything from big-picture SEM strategy to specific techniques used to get massive results. Please leave a comment or share any that you like!
