SEM Campaigns – advantages over traditional advertising

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SEM Campaigns – advantages over traditional advertising

• SEM campaigns – advantages over traditional campaigns
• What is SEM?
• What SEM is composed of?
• Traditional advertising campaigns
• SEM campaigns – advantages

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SEM campaigns – advantages over traditional campaigns

SEM campaigns are becoming more and more popular with advertisers – let’s focus on the advantages of SEM campaigns over traditional marketing campaigns. Firstly, we should specify the range of actions under both types of advertising campaigns.

What is SEM?

SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing and is a form of online marketing related to Internet search engines. The website is promoted through strategies aimed at improving its visibility – in paid and free search results. SEM campaigns serve as a kind of promotion intended for any type of the company because they are financially flexible and highly measurable, which clearly shows their effectiveness.

What SEM is composed of?

SEM campaigns are basically composed of website positioning (e.g. via SEO) and Pay Per Click campaign – also called PPC. In order to see their role in the SEM campaign, let’s have a look at how they work.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a strategy intended to improve positioning of the website in search engine results. SEO strategy must not be understood as a one-time operation – it is a long-term process. The results of implementing SEO are long-term and assure traffic on the website for free. There are, however, negative aspects: a need to have a specific budget to implement SEO actions, it is impossible to manage the budget flexibly and move results of implementing SEO strategy is time (the period between activation and noticeable results may take a few months).  

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Pay Per Click (PPC) is a way more flexible form of promotion in relation to budget plan. PCC requires payment for advertisement in the search engines and display networks. The purpose of PPC is to increase traffic on the website by promoting links pointing to the website in the search engine or on other sites – links most often take the form of sponsored links or graphic banners. The owner of the promoted website pays for them when the Internet user clicks the advert and is redirected into his/her website. You can set a monthly budget per ad, and when the funds are used up, sponsored links cease to be active until you deposit new financial means. This allows controlling the advertising budget fully and increasing it at any time. This article will show you what the cost of such a campaign depends on!

Traditional advertising campaigns

Traditional advertising campaigns are very expensive and this is because, aside from the idea and implementation of the advertisement, you have to cover the cost of its carrier – leaflets, radio and TV broadcasting time, commercial modules in magazines or outdoor billboards. Apart from advertisements in specialist magazines, the company’s advert reaches a wide range of target recipients – anyone who has a direct contact with it.

The contact with a potential customer is a one-way model – the company shows things it wishes to advertise – everyone can see the same thing due to narrow knowledge about customers and limited personalization. As a rule traditional advertising campaigns strengthen brand perception. The access to information about the promoted product or service as well as the scope of activities is limited – the leaflet is thrown away and so is the newspaper – the advertisement vanishes.

Traditional marketing is a perfect place in which you can launch the product on the local market, e.g. a new store in a town may invest in the advertisement on several billboards or banners and it will surely boost its profits. Its target group of customers – residents of the town or housing estate will find out about the store in the first place. Whether customers remain attracted depends solely on the store’s offer, its price strategy and customer service. At the national or international level, traditional marketing has a number of disadvantages, the main problem is the fact that it is the most expensive advertising channel which does not bring profit corresponding to the expenditure incurred on advertising. Generally speaking – the broader the range of the advert, the poorer the targeting.     

SEM campaigns – advantages

There is no doubt that one of the most important advantages of SEM campaigns is the low entry threshold – you can activate a solid advertising campaign even if your budget is limited. This leads to growth of availability of this form of promotion for any kind of company, regardless of its business and size. SEM campaigns have a great marketing potential – the studies show that Internet users enter a few dozen million queries in search engines on a monthly basis. With this amount, there will surely be queries applicable to each kind of business.

The popularity of the Internet is constantly growing – information, social networking sites, mobile applications – all of these cause the SEM campaigns to bring more and more profits when compared to traditional forms of advertising. Additionally, SEM campaigns allow fast and unlimited access to information on the company and product, while their range and impact time is virtually unlimited.

The contact with the customer is based on a two-way model, it is interactive – it is the customer who searches for information about the company or product, so the information reaches a well-defined group of persons – persons interested in the company’s offer. The knowledge of the customer is much broader than in the case of a traditional advertising campaign in which leaflets reach everyone, which means 98% of them go to the bin. SEM campaigns are like distributing leaflets to people who ask for them – they have already shown their interest, now it is time for the company to prove it will respond to their needs related to the product in question. The potential customer decides for himself whether to see the advertisement presented in the SEM campaign, therefore the very perception of the advertisement takes place at a higher level of concentration. What is more, thanks to the traffic monitor software on the website, you can specify the number of people who have reacted to the advert positively, got familiar with the offer or made a purchase.