We’ve had many customers obtain SEM Services (Search Engine Marketing) and Display Advertising and have been burnt or they have blindly handed over a monthly fee without really knowing if they are getting a good return on investment.
I’ve seen that many ‘cheaper’ Adwords services just blindly set-up campaigns for maximum clicks (Great for Google – possibly not for you), without much regard or research into the business, the quality of keywords / Adverts, not taking into account that each business/market is different.
We take on a more direct roll when developing a program for your business. We work with you to work out the unique subtleties of your product/service and present you with a the best way to market it.
This type of marketing ‘does’ work. As long as you know what to expect and use the correct service for the appropriate objective.
There are 2 main markets that this service is marketed too.
1. SEM Services (Search Engine Marketing) People actively searching for your products or services.
2. DISPLAY Advertising Showing Banner Advertising to people browsing on sites that match your typical purchaser. This includes REMARKETING – People who have been to your site before and are shown display banners on other site later.
The way we market to these two groups differ slightly. SEM is by a text and/or product advert that appears on the search engine results page when matched with a search that matches you product or service. DISPLAY Advertising presents your banner to a prospective audience and is mainly used for awareness of the brand or new category/product being released. REMARKETING targets visitor how have been to the site or purchased (or even dropped out of the purchase cycle) and present banners to prompt return/purchase.
An SEM Service is like calling out attention to your business, directly to a person actively looking for your products or services in a store / business directory
DISPLAY ADVERTISING is like putting a poster in the shopping complex your business resides in, or promoting yourself in an industry event, or advertising generally in areas that match your target market
A REMARKETING Service is like showing posters to visitors to your shop or business after they have left at other locations.
SEM Services (Search Engine Marketing)
SEM is mainly based on CPC (Cost per Click) where you pay for a click to your advert. So your ad may be seen by 1000’s of people but you only pay for those that wish to find out more and click on your advert.
We split our SEM Service into two main sections.
– Result Text Advert based on Search keyword match
– Shopping product display based on Search keyword match.
Search is where a person ‘searches’ for your specific product and/or company within Google. Then a text advert is shown matching their search to you in the google search results page. Your maximum bid and Advert quality dictates your position against your competition.
Shopping is where a person ‘searches’ for a similar product to yours and your product is shown from the Google merchant shop with image and price against other shops on the google search results page.
In our experience Conversion rates are roughly .5-2% for ‘Search’ and up to 2-4% for ‘Shopping’. As an average based on sale or offers and that all products/services vary.
Some customers narrow down campaigns to products/services that have higher value, for maximum ROI, or to just specific products/services that people are actively searching for, rather than a generic topic search. This depends a little upon your objective. Is it to get traffic to your shop/site or is it convert sales.
DISPLAY – Banner Advertising
These campaigns work on larger volumes and generally use CPC for product sales or CPM (cost per 1000) to build awareness and branding.
The type of marketing leverages visual display image banners to present on third-party websites that match your interest group, topics or those that have visited or purchased on the site previously (Remarketing).
Although this type of campaign is mainly used to drive Awareness. You can still achieve conversation to sale.
For shopping related campaigns this isn’t mainly achieved by ‘direct’ interaction from banner to site to conversion. It achieves most of it’s return from returning customers or people who have seen the advert and visited the site to purchase at a later date (View-though Conversions).
View-through conversions seem to be higher for some campaigns where the viewer requires to discern the offer further. This occurs where a visitor sees the the advertisement, they then compare products/services with other sources online and off. They then come back and convert on your site (view-through conversion).
You could expect roughly an .8% return on offer adverts (inc. View-though). or .4% on non offer items.
As mentioned before these are rough rates and can change dramatically based on such things as site responsiveness, regional economic situation and time of year (ie Christmas drives shop sales, but services may fall)
SEM general usually runs continuously. But Awareness and Offer display advertising is done in bursts. So you can get some frequency of views for short periods (i.e. launch or sales offer). Remarketing is usually a continuous program.
If you would like any further information or to discuss how we can help you build or audit your current program call us on (02) 9959 5204 or sales@markus.com.au