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

Learn about Search Engine Marketing (SEM), its applications in advertising and brand awareness, and how it supports customer engagement. Explore the different types of search engine marketing and its benefits.