Search Engine Marketing
Search Engine Marketing or SEM is a type of internet marketing which is used to promote websites by enhancing their visibility in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) of search engines. SEM is mainly constituted by general SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Email marketing, Affiliate marketing, Web Analytics, Social Media Optimization (SMO), Pay Per Click, Paid Inclusion and some most up-to-date SEM and SMO techniques.
The name ‘Search Engine Marketing’ can be broken down into three parts namely ‘SEARCH’, ‘SEARCH ENGINE’ and ‘SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING’ which collectively describe the origin of SEM. Firstly it is necessary to understand that why do people perform ’SEARCH’? They do so because they are looking out for something specific on which they want to obtain detailed information. People can perform targeted search for millions of reasons which may include searching for purchasing something, for solving problems and queries, for educational information like results, courses, date sheet, etc., for business information, for knowing latest stock rates as well as for general information and news, product and software information, online games, songs, movies download, etc.
People can then opt for purchasing the targeted products or services for which they performed the search. This leads to conversion of the search into the acquisition of a service or product which follows the process listed below:
- A person’s need propels him to perform search to find out the best option.
- He then sets up his mind to carry out search for the desired product.
- The targeted search is finally performed.
- A person then browses through all the available options and reviews.
- He may decide to purchase the product or service depending on his requirements.
This conversion can be very well explained with a very simple example. Suppose there’s a man who daily boards a bus to reach his office. He spends more than enough on his bus fares each day. For this very reason he decides that he needs a bike. He plans his budgets and starts doing market research on internet instead of visiting each and every bike agency around the city. He then carries out the required search and obtains the list of all the available models, their specifications, reviews, prices, etc. After comparing all the options and making final decision he straightaway goes to that particular agency and purchases that bike. In brief, internet research helped that man to acquire all the desired information regarding bikes at one place without wasting his valuable time and money.
Now the term ‘SEARCH ENGINE’ creeps in which provides the required platform for searching information about anything that is needed. Search Engines are referred to as big storehouses of information which house information from the World Wide Web to their database. This information gets displayed when someone searches for it with the specific Keyword phrases. Some perfect examples of popular search engines are Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. which perform the same function as mentioned above and show results according to the result query.
Finally we need to know that why do we need “SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING”? Different search engines make use of different criteria for storing information from blogs, websites, online press centers, etc. In search engines, the rank of any particular search phrase depends upon the theme, quality, structure, information and many other factors of website. The websites which are effectively optimized and are highly informative, genuine and friendly always end up coming in top results. For maintaining such high standards of websites so that they stand at par in competition, “SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING” is needed.
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is a process of sending or distributing emails containing marketing messages. It is a type of direct marketing that uses electronic mails for communicating money making messages to a targeted audience. In the wisest sense, every email sent to the desired customer for a preferred purpose is considered as Email Marketing.
Term Email Marketing can be well defined as:
- Sending emails with the objective of promoting products and services of the company.
- Delivering emails with the intention of attracting new customers or persuading the existing ones to buy something straight away.
- Attaching advertisements to emails that are sent by other companies to attract their customers.
- Distributing emails to promote repeat business, enhance customer reliability and for improving merchant-customer relationship.
An email marketing campaign requires email addresses of potential customers which can be obtained by various methods like using subscription services, relying on referrals from current customers and paying a fixed fee to email brokers. In order to carry out a profitable email marketing campaign, make sure that it always contains relevant information to make the customers endear to that email marketing campaign. Besides this, one should keep the campaign short and simple and it should intrigue the audience, generating a curiosity in them to know more. The subject line should be interesting enough to draw the attention of readers.
Email marketing offers many advantages due to which it has become very popular with companies.
Some of the benefits of Email Marketing are:
- It is very cost effective and saves a lot of time and resources as compared to conventional marketing methods like printed newsletters or direct mail.
- An email is a faster communication method than mailed advertisements as it takes few seconds or minutes to get delivered as compared to several days taken by traditional mails.
- The facility of mailing list enables one to send information to a broad range of potential customers who might be interested in his offerings excluding those who might not be interested.
- One can send interactive emails containing games, graphics, music, videos, quizzes, etc. to the targeted audience to grab their attention.
- Emails offer 24X7 marketing which means that the customers can understand one’s products and services even when he is not in his office.
- Emails facilitate in establishing a special bond with customers as emails are extremely personalized.
- It is quite easy to track the sent emails, obtaining details on how many of them were opened, what was the conversion rate and click through rate, etc. This helps one to assess the success rate of the campaign and increases the scope of improvement.
- While websites use ‘pull’ strategy to divert the web traffic to their site, emails use ‘push’ strategies as the advertisers push the email messages to the targeted audience.
- Emails effectively help in generating the repeat business in an automatic and affordable way.
- Emails are very popular amongst digital marketers and above all email marketing is ‘green’ as it is paper free.
Email marketing has become a very opportunistic and responsive medium today for communicating with prospective customers. It can bring vast benefits to one’s business if the email marketing campaign is executed in a correct way.
