Here's how you can elevate your SEM skill set beyond the basics.

One thing I have found helpful to utilise the advanced tools when it comes to SEM. Spyfu is the best tool to spy your competitor Ad copies, budget and keywords selection. You can go with SEMRush tool as well to spy ads copies of your top competitors to get idea whats working and whats not. Recently Google Ads introduced AI tool to write an Ad copy that sells well. You can get assistance from this tool to write a good Ad copy to skyrocket leads.

Intent is the main ingredient currently for keyword research. Just as content has become king for SEO, we should create content and optimize SEM based on intent. At times intent is contrary to what we might believe. I find the best way to discover intent is by searching the keywords and clicking on the organic results. If the top page follows a comment theme that does not align to our content or goals, it is time to find another variant or long-tail word to focus on. There are plenty of tools out there to help with choosing keywords. Just like writing with AI, it often takes personal research to refine a winning strategy.

Google Ads has different type of bidding strategies to work with. You should experiment with different bidding strategies to get better results of your budget. If you find a sweet spot in bidding there are more chances for you to get more clients.

Tying your ad data back to CRM and sales systems allows you to see the full value of keywords. An ad might be deemed successful if it generates many clicks. You can go one step deeper to say it also created many conversions. However, if your conversion is not a final sale you may be wasting time and money. There is also a difference between keywords that generate small sales vs. others that generate larger, more profitable sales. Incorporating analytics between your systems allows you to focus on the higher ROI ads.

SEM are said to be data - driven. The more data you can get, the better it will perform. Using google analytics with SEM helps with - 1. Getting more sales data from organic, social and other paid channels. 2. Helps with creating advance audience to analyse the customers. 3. Importing the events helps with bidding optimization in campaigns 4. Helps with analysing custom events. 5. Helps with reporting The possibility is almost endless with analytics. So using analytics with SEM campaigns is a must have for me.

Learning how to run paid ads is not going to be sustainable for now. Where the world is moving to first party data, advance implementation of tracking to analyse user behavior has become mandatory. To get the best results out of paid ads such as ppc, one cannot but have learn 1. Enhance conversion tracking 2. Server side tagging 3. User behavior analysis with analytics 4. Conversion rate optimization 5. MER Mastering the basics of Paid ads are necessary, but one cannot go far without learning to be a T - shaped marketer in Paid ads industry.

When it comes to SEM, focus on these things, 1- Competitor Analysis 2- Bidding Strategies 3- Ad copies 4- Conversion Tracking 5- Automated bidding to outrank competitors 6- Have proper CTA on your pages for conversions.