Steps to setup your Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

            In my previous post I talked about the various channels of Digital Marketing, in this post we are going to talk about SEM. What is SEM ? There are various definitions , in simple terms this is an online marketing mechanism with the objective of making your website more visible among SERP(Search Engine Result Page) by promoting your website through optimization and advertising. SEO(Search Engine Optimization) is a subset of SEM where the focus is more on Optimization (we will cover in detail about this in future post). The other part of SEM is advertising , this can be through unpaid and paid mechansism like PPC (Pay per click) and Paid Search Marketing. There are various steps to structure your SEM , below is the common steps :

1. Goal Setting : The first stage is setting goals and be clear on the objectives : Do you want to increase the Sales , or increase the traffic , or generate more leads ? No doubt  every marketer's main focus is increasing the Sales, traditionally the focus is more on increasing traffic, today the focus is shifting more towards building the brand reputation. So sit with your team and decide on the goals.

2. Selecting a bidding model : Next is selecting a bidding model , usually Google Adwords is used , two of the popular models are as follows - Portfolio theory -to setup to maximise volume of conversion within a the pre-defined budget or Margin maximization - to maximise your margin on a keyword, decide on which one is more suitable for you. If you are not sure you can A/B test and split your budget in both.

3. Deciding PPC (eg. Adwords) account structure : Various PPC models can be setup based on your search engine, Adwords from Google is the most popular one, to setup an account, there are various ways to do this but some common tips for doing this are: tightly controlling keywords and ads, designing the segments as much as possible, and controlling performance seamlessly so that the account is easy to manage.

4. Keyword planner and Key word research : Google's Keyword planner is mostly used, this allows to find various related products, brands , key search terms by phrases, also it provides statistical search volumes, so that it is easy to check the popularity of a keyword. You need to customize and decide on your needs suiting your product or service.

5. Campaign Setup : Here you configure your campaign by setting up your target geography, target language etc. You can split your campaign in multiple Ad Groups and configure CPC for Adgroups.

6. Adcopy creation : Adcopy are the letters in your advertisement created to attract the attention of the buyers. This is usually the second or third line from the advt. displayed.The goal of the adcopy to to get some action out of the visitor. Advertisers use various versions of adcopy they intend on using so that they can test which one has the highest conversion rate.

7. Iteration and analysis : Finally as we know this a continious process, we need to keep analysing and improving. Analysing SEM involves review and iteration using the following components:Analysis tools  like Google Analytics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) - The effectiveness measures, which companies often focus on, include CTR(Click Through Ratio), conversion rate and average cost per click. The value of interpreting CTR for your campaign is an indicator of overall account performance. Conversion rate is an indicator of the effectiveness of your website; and the value of average cost per click is as an indicator of the competitive context.