Search engines. What comes into mind when you hear the term? To many of us, search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo are a mainstay of our everyday lives.

They are one of the most helpful sources of information we have out there. With search engines, you can gather information on all sorts of things: schedules of movie premieres, locations of the tastiest foods nearby, travel and vacation spots, the latest news, and so much more.

It’s not surprising that many businesses want to take advantage of this powerful platform in ways that might’ve been unimaginable just a decade ago. One of the most revolutionary advantages that search engines have given is SEM, also known as search engine marketing.

Now, what is search engine marketing?

The word SEM is what it says: it is marketing that involves search engines as your primary platform. It is one of two major marketing strategies that concern the use of search engines, with the other being SEO or search engine optimisation.

The difference between SEO and SEM is that the latter uses mostly paid strategies, while the former uses organic strategies to take advantage of Google. That means SEM has some similarities with traditional marketing because it also uses paid strategies.

In traditional forms of marketing, many businesses are familiar with the use of paid advertisements. For example billboard advertising or placing ads in newspapers or magazines, to generate interest in the company or the product or service.

SEM companies utilise a similar strategy with SEM in the sense that you pay for search engines to promote your website content. Your company’s website may be nice to look at, but if it doesn’t have enough exposure, you will not get any sort of traffic to your website.

To avoid this problem, you need people to click through to your website. One of the easiest ways to do this is through the help of search engines because people seek out important information to use every day. If your company’s content ranks highly on a search engine, people are more likely to click and visit your website. Because of this, you should be considering ways and strategies on how to get to the top of the search results.

There are many ways that you can rank highly in searches. Google has an algorithm that constantly sorts and searches for relevant content by way of analysing keywords. Usually, it can take a long time and a lot of effort to rank highly in a search. But with SEM services, this becomes a little easier. By far, the easier and faster way to achieve this method is through the use of paid advertising. Google allows businesses to promote themselves through rankings and promotions.

What do SEM companies even do?

Today, you can find countless SEM agencies in Singapore. But what are they, and what exactly do they do?

SEM agencies do a lot more than just tell you where and how to spend your budget. SEM specialists thrive on statistics and data analysis. They can track the performance of your advertising campaigns and know whether you’re doing well, what budget you should allot for advertising, how to create better content, and more. Think of them as the high-tech equivalent of traditional marketing firms.

SEM vendors are technical specialists. While many businesses can market on Google with money, it takes experience and a keen strategy to be successful. SEM has advantages over SEO because the results are more immediate, but you can quickly lose ground if you do not know how to sustain it.

Unlike other, flashier marketing campaigns, SEM is way more understated, so its effects may not be as noticeable. Many might think that the benefit that SEM can give you is not enough to make up for its costs.

As with many other marketing plans and strategies, the key to understanding SEM is that it’s still an investment. Investments are risks that you have to take, but you can be smart about them. That’s why many people look to third party SEM agencies to help with brainstorming strategies for ranking highly.

Does this really benefit my business?

Does SEM really benefit businesses, and in what tangible ways do they do that? Well, that’s a good question. Here are some of the ways that SEM directly influences and impacts your business:

1. Reaches your target market almost instantaneously

The big problem with SEO is that you probably won’t see the effects of your change instantly. Instead, you’ll see slow and gradual results over a long period of time. In some cases, this might even be costlier and could be ineffective. SEM eliminates that problem because when you pay for your promotion, your company will be promoted instantly.

2. The ability to target the right people.

There are a lot of choices available to you when you market. You can make your company appear at the top to select groups of users, or to people who search for specific keywords, or other people who check your products and services. This is called optimised advertising and can be highly effective.

3. Pay per action.

Ever heard of pay per click? In advertising, this is also a thing. The good thing about advertising on Google, or really, any website, is that you can monitor who’s interacting with your ad or not. This allows Google to create a fair pricing structure for your promotions.

Looking for search engine marketing services here in Singapore? Contact OOm, one of the best SEM agencies you can find in the country. Contact us now to find out more details about how we can help you enrich your online presence!

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