Search Engine Marketing

Google / Bing / Yahoo / ?

When most people think about pay-per-click (PPC), think think about Google Adwords.  This DOES make sense as Google owns about 70% of the search market, but there are other search engines like Microsoft Bing that can offer some great results and ROI for many people. 

Search Engine Marketing or more commonly called SEM is the type of PPC where your ad shows based on what is searched by the user.  So if a user searches for 'Emergency Room Near Me' and that is one of your keywords in your account, your ad will be shown to the user.  

For our clients that are doing SEM we recommend they start with Google, as it's 70% of the search and is where you are going to find most of your prospects.  Based on your ad budget and your impression share, using Bing or another search engine may make sense.   For example, if you are currently spending $5000 a month and your Search Impression Share is 90%,  rather than trying to add more keywords or expand your location, it may make sense to use the exact same campaigns you are running on Google on Bing.  This can pick up another 20% to 30% of quality clicks to your business.

Adwords and all SEM is very complex with 100s of moving parts, and going into detail is beyond the scope of this page, however there are a few options we'd like to share that will improved your results with SEM.

Landing Pages

A Landing page is a single page designed to go hand in hand with your ad.  It is almost always a good idea to use a custom landing page to send your clicks too instead of to your website.  A landing page has one purpose in mind,  to conver your click into a lead.  

A landing page always works better becuase it has a single Call to Action (CTA) and is directing the user to take one action and follow one path.  If a vistor goes to your website, they have 100s of options and most often will bounce off when they find any reason to do so.

Another benefit of a landing page is that Google will normally give you a better quality score for your ad becuase your landing page is relevant to the ad.  A bette quality score means your ad will be shown more often and be given favorable treatment by Google.

Niche creates high quality landing pages for all our PPC clients, and we reccomend you always use a Landing Page to maximize your ROI.

Remarketing / ReTargeting

Nearly all SEM platforms now support Remarketing.  Have you noticed that when you use Google to search for a new car, a new matress, or just about anything, all of a sudden you start seeing ads for this product everywhere?  This is Remarketing aka ReTargeting.

Remarketing works by allowing you to place a cookie (or marker) on a users computer when they visit your site and then continue to show relevant ads to that user as they are searching and using the web (normally with the Display Partner Networks).  

This is very effective because it allows you to present your offer to your prospect many times.  Often, especailly when the buying cycle is long (like for a car),  they may search for weeks to learn about cars before they are ready to buy.  This keeps your ad in front of them while they are in the buying mode.  

Note - Google does not let many business types to Remarketing for Privacy reasons. For this reason, many of our clients like ERs, Micro Hospitals, and Functional medicine doctors cannot use remarketing.