This blog will explore some fundamental principles of SEM, breaking them down into four essential truths that every marketer should know. By understanding and applying these truths, you'll be better equipped to navigate the complex landscape of paid search advertising, optimize your campaigns, and achieve your marketing goals.
What is SEM?
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a digital marketing strategy focused on increasing a website's visibility in search engine results through paid advertising. By selecting specific keywords to bid on, businesses can ensure their ads appear when users search for relevant terms, driving targeted traffic to their sites. SEM combines keyword selection, ad creation, and performance analysis to optimize campaigns and achieve better conversion rates.
Search intent
Picking Keywords is the foundation of SEM - they determine which search queries will trigger your ads, influencing both the relevance and quality of your traffic you are looking to attract. Before picking your keywords it’s worth taking a step back and considering users search intent – the ‘why’ behind the search query. Search intent can be broadly broken down into four categories that are not necessarily mutually exclusive in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
Informational – The searcher is looking for information, for example, “How do we know that cows moo with regional accents.”
Navigational – The intent is to find a specific website, for example, “youtube.”
Commercial – The user wants to purchase a specific product or service but needs to do more research, for example, “Acer laptop reviews.”
Transactional –the user knows exactly what they want and intend to purchase, e.g., “buy Samsung galaxy Z flip.”
Considering search intent and which area of your target market's customer journey you'd like to focus on before selecting keywords to bid on is crucial. Once you've distilled your extensive keyword analysis into your chosen target keywords, you're ready to launch your SEM campaign.
However, be sure to adhere to these four noble truths of SEM:
1. Incorporate Negative Keywords
Managing your PPC campaigns effectively involves not just monitoring the performance of your keywords but remembering to use Negative keywords. Negative keywords help filter out unwanted traffic and prevent your ads from appearing in irrelevant searches, therefore saving your ad spend and increasing your ROI. The three most commonly used negative keywords are:
Negative Broad Match
A negative broad match keyword prevents your ads from showing for any search that includes the negative keyword, regardless of the order or additional words.
Negative Phrase Match
A negative phrase match keyword prevents your ads from appearing for searches that include the exact phrase of the negative keyword, though additional words can be included before or after the phrase.
Negative Exact Match
A negative exact match keyword prevents your ads from appearing for searches that exactly match the negative keyword phrase.
It’s important to understand how to use broad, phrase, and exact match negative keywords. Many new advertisers overlook this, resulting in clicks from users who are unlikely to convert. To get the most out of your negative keywords, regularly update and manage them to fine-tune your targeting.
2. Tread carefully when using ‘Broad Match’ Keywords
One of the key PPC marketing tips is to avoid using ‘broad match’ for all your keywords. While broad match keywords may attract a lot of traffic, they often lead to irrelevant searches that drain your budget and reduce conversion rates. For example, if you were selling high-end mountain bikes and you used broad match for the word ‘bikes’, your ad would yield results for irrelevant searches like ‘bike rental services’, ‘cheap kids bikes’ or ‘bike repair tools’ which is of no value to your target audience.
Instead, a better approach would be to use “exact” or "phrase" match types for your keywords and bid on phrases like ‘high-end mountain bikes’, ‘premium mountain bikes’, ‘luxury mountain bikes’, ‘best mountain bikes 2024’. These options give you better control over what triggers your ads, leading to more qualified traffic. While this may reduce your total clicks and impressions, the users who do click are more likely to convert into customers.
3. Protect your Brand
Bidding on your own brand name in SEM is essential because it secures top visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs) and protects your brand from competitors who might bid on your company name. Competitors might also bid on variations of your brand name to divert traffic. By bidding on your own name & variations yourself, you safeguard your brand presence and reduce the chance of losing potential customers to competitors. This strategy helps maintain your brand's prominence, drive more traffic to your site, and prevent competitors from capturing your audience.
4. Let the data speak
Mastering analytics is crucial, as it provides the insights needed to fine-tune campaigns effectively. Google Ads Analytics provides a wealth of metrics, but it’s essential to focus on the key metrics listed below that will help you assess your SEM campaign’s performance and pivot accordingly to drive growth.
A. Impressions
Impressions indicate how frequently your ad is displayed. Each time your ad appears on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) or across sites within the Google Network, it is counted as one impression.
B. Clicks and Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Clicks indicate how many times your ad has been clicked. While the total number of clicks alone doesn’t measure ad effectiveness, the Click-Through Rate (CTR) provides insight into ad performance.
Click-Through Rate (CTR) = Number of Clicks/ Number of impression
This metric helps determine how well your ad is performing by comparing the number of clicks to the number of times the ad is shown.
C. Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS)
Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS) measures the cost-effectiveness of your advertising efforts. It’s a crucial metric for assessing campaign performance throughout the campaign. It will help you decide whether to adjust or rethink the whole ad campaign.
Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS) = Cost of Ads/ Revenue received from Ads
In Google Ads, it is called “Conversion value per cost (“Conv. value / cost”) “.
You can either increase revenue or lower cost so you can boost the ROAS of your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Campaigns. Some methods to increase your ROAS are:
Implement Geo-targeting to target specific locations
Optimize your site for Speed and Mobile
Focus on your highest performing keywords
D. Cost Per Action (CPA)
Cost Per Action (CPA), also known as Cost Per Conversion, measures the expense incurred to acquire a customer who completes a desired action. This action is defined based on the advertising goal and can include activities such as making a purchase, signing up for a service, or watching a video.
Cost Per Action = Total cost of Ads/Number of Actions
E. Cost Per Click (CPC)
Cost Per Click (CPC) outlines the amount you pay to Google for each user click on your ad. CPC is a key metric that reflects the financial performance of your SEM efforts. Lower CPC signifies better a more optimized ad campaign.
Cost Per Click = Total amount spend / Number of clicks
Finally, remember to compare the five data points outlined above across the different types of devices people are using. Device bid adjustments allow you to modify your bids based on the type of device users are using to access your ads, such as desktops, tablets, or mobile phones. This feature helps optimize your ad spend by adjusting bids according to device performance. For example, if you find that mobile users convert at a higher rate, you might increase your bid for mobile devices to capture more valuable traffic. Conversely, if desktop users perform better, you can adjust bids accordingly to maximize returns.
By implementing these four noble truths, you can optimize your PPC efforts, improve campaign performance and drive more qualified enquiries.
Whether you manage your SEM effort internally or outsource this to SEM specialists, as demonstrated above it's crucial to take an analytical approach & continuously take action based on the insight generated.
In God we trust. All others must bring data – Edward Deming
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