Does Search Marketing Belong in Marketing or Sales?

There are different ways in which people perceive about search marketing. The major concept behind successful search marketing (and indeed all of Internet marketing) is direct marketing. And the more one knows about direct marketing, the better they will understand about search marketing.

Any person involved with direct marketing for a long period of time would tell that direct marketers don’t easily distinguish between sales and marketing. For instance, if a brochure is mailed to a person , he or she simply opens and fills out the order form and sends it back . Hence it is difficult to say where the marketing stop and sales began.

However, most companies can easily separate their sales from their marketing. This differentiation is done by having two separate departments and having a Chief Marketing Officer on one side and a VP of Sales on the other. Any communications that go to big groups of customers are called marketing, while interactions with individual customers are the sales.

Brand marketing, where the companies promote their brand is easily separable from sales. Now coming to Internet marketing and search marketing in particular, it is based on direct marketing where , it revolves around the concept of tying each individual sale back to the marketing that produced it.

Hence if the company has speculations and differences over weather search marketing belongs to marketing or sales, then this kind of argument is sorted out by simply bringing search marketing in tandem with marketing and sales.

Thus if it’s the question about selling things online, then direct marketing is the one that is completely involved. It is accepted that it is difficult to count offline sales than online sales, but it’s just as important. If one can’t tie the offline sales to how they started on the Web, then one will never figure out what he or she did right to get that sale. Once this aspect is understood clearly, one becomes a direct marketer and probably a successful search marketer, too. As mentioned earlier, search marketing belongs to marketing and sales. It’s all about aligning these together and makes it work successfully.

Web Search Engine Marketing

If newspaper reports and the research by the industry analysts are anything to go by, then the rate at which more and more businesses are providing their customers an opportunity to shop for their goods and avail their services online. And when they say ‘more’, they mean almost thousands of firms and companies trying to attract consumer attention in a particular commodity segment. So here as well, like in the physical world, it’s the level of web marketing search engine optimization that decides whether or not a search conducted by a consumer will lead him directly or indirectly to your website.

The search engine marketing business is currently at its zenith with more and more firms and companies not only registering their presence online through a website, but also inculcating best web search engine marketing techniques to be in the top rankings of the major search engines. These techniques help the firm to let consumers know of their products and services and also lead them to the firm’s site. And like in other media of marketing, in web search engine marketing as well, it’s the consumer who is the king. The shots are called by what keywords he desires to choose in order to narrow down his search.

The most important thing to do for effective web marketing search engine optimization is to think from the view point of the consumer as to what phrases can he used to define his search and also to guess the typical keywords a search engine’s algorithm might be using that is relevant to your or your client’s line of business. Because at the end of the day, all the tricks of the trade, which is search engine marketing optimization, rest upon a proper and judicious use of appropriate keywords, tags and titles.

A lot of tools are defined under web search engine marketing namely, search engine optimization (SEO), Article submission and syndication, Pay per click etc. a prudent mix of all the marketing strategies is required to be applied in order to achieve maximum traffic on the client’s site as well as conversion rate which could be even limited to a visitor’s comment on the blog posted, as a part of internet marketing search engine technique. But the ultimate aim is to finalise sales and for this the web search marketing techniques have to be complete. They shouldn’t lose out on any front or ignore any aspect of it.

For example, merely directing traffic to the client’s website isn’t enough. Proper attention has to be paid on the content included in the home page of the client’s web site and make sure that customers who visit the web site or the web page don’t choose to deviate from it without indulging in any activity there. In search engine marketing parlance, this is referred to as the bounce rate and the search engine marketing services provider has to make sure that the bounce rate for its client’s website is as low as possible else the entire purpose of devising strategies for web marketing search engine optimization is lost.

What is Search Engine Marketing (SEM)?

Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs). According to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, SEM methods include: Search Engine Optimization(SEO), paid placement, contextual advertising and paid inclusion.

As the number of sites on the Web increased in the mid-to-late 90s, search engines were formulated to help people find information they are seeking for, quickly. Search engines developed business models to finance their services, such as pay per click programs offered by Open Text and then Goto.com. Goto.com later changed its name to Overture, and was purchased by Yahoo. Now yahoo offers paid search opportunities for advertisers through Yahoo! Search Marketing. Google also began to offer advertisements on search results pages in 2000 through the Google AdWords program. By 2007, pay-per-click programs proved to be primary money-makers for search engines.

Search Engine Optimization consultants stretched their contributions to help businesses learn about online advertising and use the advertising opportunities offered by search engines. New agencies focusing mainly upon marketing and advertising through search engines emerged. The term “Search Engine Marketing” was proposed by Danny Sullivan in 2001 to cover the gamut of activities involved in performing SEO like managing paid listings at the search engines, submitting sites to directories, and developing online marketing strategies for businesses, organizations, and individuals.

Search Engine Marketing(SEM) and Search Engine Optimization(SEO) efficiently increases the website’s visibility on the Internet. The secret to search engine optimization is timing. Search Engine Marketing firm, simply knows what to optimize, when to optimize it, and how to optimize the things necessary to achieve high search engine rankings for the customers. Search Engine Optimization(SEO) involves many individual parts. First, there is the basic business of showing up in the middle of the page when someone searches for something and that is called: ‘Natural Search Engine Optimization’.

Search Engine Optimization(SEO) is the art of aligning a website’s traits to the algorithms of the search engines. In other words, Search engine optimization makes the website’s presence known to the engines as the most sensible and logical choice to the search of a query. This is done by reorganizing the site’s HTML (coding) and content.

Once the Optimization of the coding is completed, the website is made to appear the best by building inbound articles, blogs, and forum postings about the company that is launching the website , to establish a keen sense of popularity with the search engines. By doing this, there are two important aspects that are achieved .Firstly, it lets the search engines know about the company’s Ranking and secondly, it develops links all over the web in vantage points that will enable the viewers to visit the site, which is the Traffic.

Thus with Search Engine Marketing, it is very easy to enhance and promote any product or service in an efficient way that helps in the better understanding of the customers towards what they are seeking.

The Best Way To Gain Website Traffic

It is very important to gain traffic to the website as the more the people visiting the web site the more they turn into potential customers and thence more the revenue. The cycle is simple. One has to be vary of what he or she is going to market and promote on the website that is developed for the purpose. Creating a website without knowing the target audience’s frame of mind is as good as not creating one at all. So the most important aspect of creating a website is to gain as much of traffic as possible. There are many ways to attract the audience to the website however there are three most reliable and efficient ways that would boost the website’s traffic considerably.

Building a website is only half of the challenge for any online marketer, and gaining traffic was the next. The three main ways that potentially increases the traffic to a website would be: paying for traffic, sending emails to the mailing list and lastly to joint venture with another website owner. Joint venture means the other company sends traffic, and the profit will get split between the two companies.

By buying traffic, one can target the people already looking for the specific product or service that the online marketer caters to. The biggest player here is Google. What essentially Google does is, whenever a Google search is done, the listings that come up on the right side of the search page can be bought by anyone. Google implements the PPC service where by each click is being paid.

The next step after paying for traffic is to monitor results. One can track the number of hits from various sources to focus on those that are producing sales. Every type of advertising must have a tracking system with strong accuracy.

Emailing a list is the next method that becomes a greatest asset with time. There are no overheads and one can create a huge rush of sales every time an email is sent. The percentage of visitors that are expected to sign up to a mailing list can be determined. By having auto responders, one can attract these visitors to the website. There are chances where the people who didn’t buy the product or service the first time will do it the second time around. Even if they leave, one can send them another email to ask them to return and make them keep returning until they eventually buy.

Knowing the time frequency of sending emails to the list is also important. The key here is to add value and send regular free content. In the process, asking them to buy something, and sending something free that is of value. Generally, once a month is an appropriate time period between emails, or more often depending on the market.

Joint Venture is a simple; other websites send out emails and place strategic links on their website to attract visitors to the online marketer’s website. All the online marketer does is to pay them for the sales produced from the clicks. Here the profit is generally shared. The online marketer’s company provides the Joint Venture Company with emails, banner ads and other promotional materials. With this the Joint Venture firm creates a lot of traffic to the website in a short period of time.

Thus it is the traffic that an online marketer has to target to get high revenues and with the methods mentioned above and a lot more , one can achieve success in bringing the right kind of traffic to the website.

Benefits of Search Engine Marketing

With the increasing popularity of internet and web sites playing a vital role, search engine usage has become almost inevitable. Any online marketing through internet should include search engine marketing and blend the real competitive advantage that it offers to the business. There are many benefits associated with the search engine marketing. Below listed are a few:

It is the best way people find the websites

Numerous surveys have shown that search engines and directories are the most popular method used to find websites. More than 80% of Internet users rely on search engines & directories as their preferred method for locating websites. (GVU 10th WWW User Survey)

The most popular thing that is done online is to hit search engines

Most people search the web every day. The only thing done online more often than using search engines is checking email.

More of web pages and searches

The rapid growth of the Web means there are many web pages and consequently this has increased peoples reliability on search engines as a way of locating information online.

Qualified traffic ready to buy

Traffic search engines and directories deliver to websites is highly qualified because users are actively searching for the information. This is the major difference to traffic delivered by banner advertising.

Online marketing is more effective than banners

People’s purchase of products and services happen more through online search engines than made form banner advertising. The cost for online marketing is relatively cheaper to banner advertising. Not only are search engines highly effective online marketing tools – they’re also cost efficient.

Web marketers rate search engine marketing the top method

Web marketers rated search engine marketing as the top method for driving traffic to their web sites. Second was email marketing.

The experts say they work

Search engines target valuable, motivated, and ready customers. To capitalize on search as a marketing tool, marketers should shift to search engines.

Creating the best opportunity

In other words, search engines may be the top method for finding sites on the Web, but only a small percentage of businesses dedicate a portion of their marketing budget for building consistent search engine strategies. So it is advisable to concentrate and utilize the fullest of the search engine capacity.

There is a gap between the recognition of the benefits of the search engine marketing and actually using the opportunity. By fulfilling this gap, one can take a complete competitive advantage and indulge in online marketing and reap out of its benefits.