What are the most effective SEM budget allocation methods for businesses with a limited target audience?

1 Define your goals

Before you start spending money on SEM, you need to define your goals and how you will measure them. For example, do you want to increase traffic, conversions, leads, sales, or brand awareness? How will you track and evaluate your performance? Depending on your goals, you might use different metrics, such as click-through rate, cost per click, cost per acquisition, return on ad spend, or impression share. Having clear and realistic goals will help you allocate your budget more efficiently and optimize your campaigns.

2 Identify your keywords

Keywords are the words and phrases that your target audience uses to search for your products or services on search engines. Choosing the right keywords is crucial for your SEM success, as they determine when and how your ads will appear. To identify your keywords, you need to do some research and analysis. You can use tools like Google Keyword Planner, Moz Keyword Explorer, or SEMrush to find relevant keywords, their search volume, competition, and cost. You also need to consider the intent and stage of your audience in the buyer's journey. For example, you might use different keywords for people who are looking for information, comparison, or purchase.

3 Segment your campaigns

Segmenting your campaigns means creating separate groups of keywords and ads based on different criteria, such as location, device, language, or product category. Segmenting your campaigns allows you to target your audience more precisely and tailor your ads to their needs and preferences. It also helps you manage your budget more effectively, as you can allocate more funds to the segments that perform better and less to the ones that perform worse. You can use tools like Google Ads Editor or Bing Ads Editor to create and edit your campaigns in bulk.

4 Test and optimize your ads

Testing and optimizing your ads means experimenting with different elements of your ads, such as headlines, descriptions, extensions, images, or landing pages, and measuring their impact on your results. Testing and optimizing your ads helps you improve your quality score, which is a rating that search engines use to determine how relevant and useful your ads are for your audience. A higher quality score can lead to lower costs and higher rankings for your ads. You can use tools like Google Optimize, Unbounce, or VWO to create and run A/B tests or multivariate tests for your ads.

6 Review and report your results

Reviewing and reporting your results means analyzing and communicating your performance and achievements based on your goals and metrics. Reviewing and reporting your results helps you evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, identify opportunities and threats, and make informed decisions for future improvements. You can use tools like Google Data Studio, Microsoft Power BI, or Tableau to create and share interactive and visual reports for your SEM campaigns.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?