According to the US Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy, in 2020, 262,272 small businesses were operating in Mississippi. This is the second-largest increase over the past five years, demonstrating Mississippi’s strong and continually growing economy.
The state of Mississippi’s economy is good news for the state and its residents as a growing economy generates more tax, which can be used to provide public goods and services. But when seen from an entrepreneur’s point of view, not so much. A growing economy usually means a more competitive business landscape.
Search engine marketing services can be a powerful tool for businesses to stand out from the competition. By entrusting a search engine marketing company to create and implement your business’s search engine marketing campaign, you can gain online visibility, making it easier to engage with your target audience.
What Is Search Engine Marketing?
Search engine marketing (SEM) is a digital marketing strategy to help businesses’ content rank higher in the Search Engine Results Pages or SERPs. Similar to Search Engine Optimization or SEO, SEM campaigns help businesses improve the way major search engines rank their content.
Search engine marketing enables businesses to bring their products and services to the attention of their target audience by using paid search advertising. It’s an online advertising strategy where businesses pay for targeted ad space at the top of the Search Engines Results Pages. Search engine marketing campaigns are different from SEO as it optimizes relevant content for search engine algorithms to ensure that it ranks high on the search results.
SEO vs. SEM
Although similar in some ways, SEO and SEM also have differences. The biggest one is that search engine optimization focuses on optimizing a website to get more organic traffic from organic search results. Search engine marketing, on the other hand, is about getting traffic and visibility from both organic and paid search campaigns.
Additionally, the two vary in terms of speed. SEO efforts require time to deliver results, especially if the site is new and doesn’t have many backlinks yet. According to one analysis, it takes an average of two years for a website to rank on the first page of search engines.
On the other hand, if you focus your SEM efforts on PPC ads, you can start seeing results almost instantly. This means you can run paid ads in the morning and start to get traffic and more qualified leads in the afternoon. But that doesn’t mean you’ll immediately get your ROI on day 1. Most of the time, campaigns created and implemented by a search engine marketing agency require months of testing and tweaking to generate results.
We’ll continue comparing the two by identifying their key elements.
SEM
Search engine marketing is a paid search marketing strategy that primarily focuses on using paid ads to generate more qualified traffic. An SEM campaign is based on keyword analysis, which is why conducting keyword research is essential.
Search engine marketing agencies utilize keyword research analysis and tools to determine keyword phrases a specific target audience is searching for. Then they buy ad space on the results pages from the search engine provider (like Google ads or Bing ads) for the search terms they want to target.
SEO
SEO is all about embracing on- and off-page practices to improve or structure content, so it ranks high in organic search results, which are unpaid content listings found on a result page. The key aspects of an SEO campaign include the following:
- SEO methods are always changing in response to the evolving algorithms of different search engines.
- SEO-driven results rank below the paid searches in the SERPs.
- Effective SEO relies on crafting authoritative and trustworthy content. SEO companies achieve that goal by adding relevant keywords, ensuring the site provides an exceptional user experience, and many others.
Why Is Search Engine Marketing Important?
With an increasing number of customers engaging and shopping for products and services online, search engine marketing has become a crucial digital marketing strategy for businesses. Staying invisible on the Search Engines Results Pages means losing the opportunity of converting millions of prospects into paying customers.
Here are a few reasons why having a search engine marketing campaign is important:
Effective for Local Marketing
Working with an SEM agency allows businesses to drive website visits and get more conversions regardless of their ad budget, especially if you want to market locally. Local marketing connects regional businesses with their surrounding communities.
To put it simply, when people search for local businesses online and type “food delivery in Mississippi” or “dry cleaners in Mississippi,” search engine marketing connects those queries with business listings and ads in search engines.
In 2016, Google released an advertising package, the Local 3-Pack, which gives local ads the top three positions in the search results for location-based search terms, like region or city names, or phrases like “near me.”
Consistent Traffic Source
Businesses need consistent traffic to maintain sales and visibility online while being able to forecast and budget. But since online traffic fluctuates all the time because of unexplained reasons, doing all of these can be challenging.
Fortunately, search ads can minimize this issue and help generate consistent traffic for specific keywords. As a result, you’ll be able to control the amount of traffic that comes to your site at any time.
One study found that “incremental ad clicks comprise 89% of traffic generated by search ads but are not replaced by organic clicks when ads are inactive.” This means that search ads will continue to generate traffic to your website even when SEO and other marketing campaigns fluctuate.
Brings More Qualified Leads
Search engine marketing isn’t just about generating traffic — using search ads also gives you the ability to bring in the right traffic to your website. Traditionally, you can’t always control who sees your organic search results. Still, with SEM campaigns, you can establish a custom audience who are more likely to see and engage with your ads than the average searcher.
Paid ad campaigns allow you to target specific demographics and visitors at any point in the sales funnel. This means you’ll have better chances of receiving qualified leads from paid ads than from organic SEO.
Helps You Understand Search Intent
Want to gain a deeper understanding of digital marketing? Use search engine marketing. SEM can be a helpful tool for analyzing traffic and discovering search intent. Analyzing data from your PPC ads enables you to identify patterns in search terms, the ads that receive the most number of clicks, and the number of conversions for each. With this information, you can determine important trends and areas for improvement — both essential in creating effective search engine marketing campaigns moving forward.
Additionally, understanding keywords offers in-depth insights into what your target audience is looking for. Since the Not Provided era began, learning about search intent using paid search campaigns and bringing that data back into organic search results have become a frequent strategy. Search intent also helps optimize your CTAs and improves the quality of your landing pages.
It’s a Diverse Channel
Contrary to popular belief, SEM isn’t limited to ad campaigns and options. Text-based ads are always the go-to among many e-commerce businesses, but you can create and use other types of ads depending on your business’s goals, audience, and budget. Here are a few examples:
- Google Adwords and Bing
- Display ads: This uses banners at the top, footer, or sides of a website
- Retargeting ads: Ads displayed on other websites based on a user’s previous online activities or searches
- Call tracking: Ads are targeted or retargeted to online users who called a specific number in the past, often displayed on search ads
Why Hire a Search Engine Marketing Company?
You can learn a lot from the Internet, but search engine marketing isn’t one of them. Sure, you’ll find countless articles on everything you have to know about search engine marketing, but it’s not enough to guarantee an effective search engine marketing campaign.
Search engine marketing evolves like no other aspect of marketing as search engines constantly tweak their algorithms. Because of this, relying on online articles posted two years ago will make it challenging to create SEM campaigns that generate results.
Fortunately, there are now companies that offer search engine marketing consulting. Hiring them is a smart business move because of the following reasons:
Conduct A/B Testing
Your SEM campaign should undergo A/B testing to assess its effectiveness. Small details, like changing a punctuation mark, can impact your conversion rates and ROI.
Keeping an eye on all the details — no matter how small — is a crucial part of the services provided by a search engine marketing agency. They have SEM experts who will conduct A/B testing for easy comparison, helping your business develop a highly profitable and efficient SEM campaign based on data.
Generates Immediate Results
Search engine marketing delivers faster results than search engine optimization, but the former still requires time. And usually, you’ll end up spending more time if you take on this task without the necessary experience, background, or tools.
A search engine marketing company can get your ads up and running in one business day. Depending on the ads and the offers, you can see an increase in the number of clicks and visitors to your site within minutes of launching your SEM campaign.
Complete Expert Keyword Research
As mentioned, keyword research is a vital ingredient to search engine marketing. By hiring a search engine marketing agency, you’ll have professionals who can complete this task on your behalf. Competitive analysis tools are just one of the reasons why hiring an SEM company is worth the investment.
Using a combination of expert analysis and the latest tools, SEM experts can track and organize keywords necessary for your business. Keyword analysis provides valuable insights into customer behavior and helps businesses improve marketing campaigns.
Additionally, companies with tried-and-tested SEM services can also deliver insights about your competitors by making a side-by-side comparison of their target keywords and ads to yours. As a result, you can determine which keywords to use to rank higher than your competitors.
Work With the Best Search Engine Marketing Agency in Mississippi
A reputable and experienced search engine marketing company helps your business save time and money in many ways, from reducing wasted ad spending to avoiding having to train someone. An SEM agency has experts who will do everything possible to ensure that your campaign produces the best results possible.
To catapult your Mississippi-based businesses through search engine marketing, work with The Whit Group. Our team of SEM experts can deliver campaigns that are guaranteed to be effective and long-lasting.