What Is a SEM Campaign? Definition, Advantages and Examples
May 2021
May 2021
SEM stands for search engine marketing. Though most marketers refer to it as a web positioning strategy, its more than that because it encompasses everything related to web positioning. There are even companies that refer to SEM as Search Engine Advertising (SEA).
SEM has gained importance over the years. In today's digital world, we all use search engines almost daily. because of this, search engine positioning is incredibly important in order to get more traffic and gain visibility. Two ways to reach the top positions are:
A SEM campaign is an advertising strategy that generates ads in search engines such as Google, to position brands among the top results.
Strategy and planning are fundamental to guarantee the results of your SEM campaign so let's take a look at the key aspects of launching a successful campaign in Google Ads.
When planning an SEM campaign, keyword research should always be one of the first steps. Keywords are the foundation on which the SEM account, ads, and even landing pages are built.
To carry out a keyword study for SEM campaigns, take note of the following steps.
Keywords should always be relevant to the product or service you are offering. Therefore, the first step is to draw up a list of two to ten main ideas that summarize the services or products you offer. In addition to studying your own offer, also take a look at your competitors' sites.
There are many keyword planning platforms on the market, such as SEMRush or Google's keyword tool. If you enter the basic ideas you defined in the previous section, the tool will provide a list of related keywords. To filter the results, you can segment by location and language.
One of the benefits of these tools is that they help with brainstorming and can give you a lot of suggestions that you would never have thought of. Of course, they can also offer suggestions that are not exactly related to the original search, which brings us to the next step.
From the list of keywords provided by the tool, you will have to filter out irrelevant words, group related keywords, and select those that have the highest number of searches and the lowest competition (meaning there aren't many advertisers bidding for the same word).
Once you do this, you will have the definitive list of keywords to optimize your SEM campaign. To get the best results, these keywords should be present both on your landing pages and in your ads.
Search engine marketing is a powerful tool that is suitable for almost all brands. In order for you to better evaluate when and how to include it, here are its main advantages:
As with any other type of digital marketing, in SEM you can only optimize what is measured. That's why, before launching your strategy, you need to know which KPIs to look at to evaluate the performance of your campaigns.
Here are four key metrics to measure the success of your SEM campaigns.
The quality score measures the user experience with the ads, so the higher the quality score, the better the user experience. This metric is essential because Google Ads uses it to determine the cost and placement of ads.
The quality score depends on three factors:
The quality of the landing page.
The quality of the advertisement.
The expected click-through rate.
The share of impressions tells you if users are seeing your ads. It is calculated based on the impressions obtained by an ad compared to the total number it could get.
A low impression share indicates that you are not taking full advantage of the ad. To remedy this, you need to raise the budget and bids, improve the quality score, or both.
The click-through rate indicates the frequency with which users who see an ad end up clicking on it. To calculate it, divide the number of clicks by the number of impressions. For example, if you have 5 clicks and 100 impressions, the CTR would be 5%.
Look at this metric for the different ads and keywords in your account. A low CTR indicates that the ad is not attractive enough for the user or that it is not really relevant to their search.
The number of conversions and the average value of each one allow you to measure the performance of your ads, as it indicates how many sales they have generated. This way, you will be able to correctly attribute the ROI of your SEM campaigns and measure their profitability.
To get the best results from your SEM campaigns, we recommend that you look for a Google Partner certified agency, like ours!
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