Search Engine Marketing-6

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

• Search engines are used to build and sustain ads, support direct sales, and drive traffic to other websites and blogs.
• SEM helps strengthen brand awareness, gain deeper insight into customers' perception of the brand, and know customers better.

Search Engine Advertising

• Three types of search engine advertisements: Keyword Paid Inclusion (Sponsored links), Advertising Keywords (Google's AdWords), and Search Engine Context Ads (Google's AdSense).
• Advertising keywords: Merchants purchase keywords through a bidding process; their advertisement shows up when a consumer searches for that word.
• Publishers accept ads placed by Google's AdSense on their websites and receive a fee for click-throughs.

Organic Search

• Inclusion and ranking of sites depend on a more or less unbiased application of a set of rules imposed by the search engine.

Content Farms and Banner Ads

• Content farms: Companies that generate large volumes of textual content to attract viewers and search engines with the goal of exposing them to ads.
• Google refined its algorithm to avoid content farms.
• Banner ads: Display a promotional message in a rectangular box at the top or bottom of a computer screen; the least effective advertisement.

Rich Media Ads and Video Ads

• Rich media ads: Use animation, sound, and interactivity; more effective than banner ads but annoying for users.
• Video ads: TV-like advertisement that appears as an in-page video commercial or before, during, or after content; the fastest growing form of online advertisement.

Advertising Networks

• Advertising networks: Specialized marketing firms that sell marketing and advertising opportunities to companies.
• They connect online marketers with publishers by displaying ads to consumers based on detailed customer information.
• Advertising networks sell slots of advertising spaces to advertisers and pull up demographic information about users via cookies on the site that link to a profile database.

Email Marketing

• Direct email marketing: Primary cost is purchasing addresses, so it is practically free to send email marketing campaigns to existing addresses.
• Spam: Unsolicited commercial email; approximately 72% of all email.
• Email marketing works well for maintaining customer relationships but poorly for acquiring new customers.

Affiliate Marketing

• Affiliate marketing: Firm pays a commission to other websites (including blogs) for sending customers to theirs.
• Advertisers pay a fee to the site (either on a per-click basis or percentage of what the customer spent on the advertiser's site).

Social Marketing and Advertising

• Four features driving growth of Social Marketing and Advertising (SM&A): Social sign-on, Collaborative shopping, Network notification, and Social search (recommendation).
• Social sign-on: Signing on to various websites through social network pages like Facebook.
• Collaborative shopping: Consumers share their shopping experiences with one another about brands, products, and services.
• Network notification: An environment where consumers can share their approval or disapproval of products, services, or content.
• Social search (recommendation): Consumers ask friends for advice on purchases of products, services, and content to help evaluate them.

Search Engine Advertising

• Used to support direct sales to online customers, strengthen brand awareness, drive traffic to other websites and blogs, gain customer insights, and support customer engagement
• Focuses on making sales in response to advertisements

Types of Online Advertising

• Network keyword advertising or context advertising: Publishers accept ads placed by Google's AdSense on their websites and receive a fee for click-throughs
• Content farms: Companies generate large volumes of textual content for multiple websites to attract viewers and search engines with the goal of exposing them to ads
• Rich media ads: Use animation, sound, and interactivity; more effective than banner ads but can be annoying for users
• Video ads: TV-like advertisements that appear as in-page video commercials or before, during, or after a variety of content; fastest growing form of online advertisement with click rates 12x that of rich media and 27x banner ads

Advertising Networks

• Connect online marketers with publishers by displaying ads to consumers based on detailed customer information
• Sell slots of advertising spaces to advertisers and pull up demographic information about users via cookies on the site that link to a profile database
• Ad exchanges link advertising networks through Real-Time Bidding (e.g. Google's DoubleClick Ad Exchange)

Email Marketing

• Unsolicited commercial email; works well for maintaining customer relationships but poorly for acquiring new customers

Affiliate Marketing

• Firm pays a commission to other websites (including blogs) for sending customers to theirs
• Visitors to affiliate site click on ads, and advertisers pay a fee to the site (either on a per-click basis or percentage of what customer spent on advertiser's site)

Social Marketing and Advertising

• Use of online social networks and communities to build brands and drive sales
• Four features driving growth of SM&A: social search, blog advertising, viral marketing, and mobile marketing formats
• Social search (recommendation): consumers ask friends for advice on purchases to help evaluate the quality of potential purchases (e.g. Amazon's social recommender can use your Facebook social profile to recommend products)

Blog Advertising

• 43% of all US companies used blogs for marketing in 2012
• Blog readers and creators tend to be more educated, have higher incomes, and be opinion leaders
• Blogs are ideal platforms to start a viral marketing campaign

Mobile Marketing Formats

• Search: can be optimized based on user location
• Display ads: can be served as part of a mobile web site or inside apps and games
• Video, email, text messaging, in-store messaging, QR codes, couponing, and games

Online Marketing Metrics

• Hits are not a true measure of web traffic as they do not equal a page view
• Page views are also not a very useful metric as web frames divide pages into separate sections which are also considered pages