SEM-thing Amazing for Your Business

Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is the ability for businesses to be at the right place and time for potential customers. It offers various methods of reaching out to the target audience while providing myriad analytic tools. Both Google AdWords and Bing Ads are resourceful in offering SEM, and optimizing your business's visibility. Let's check out the main attractions of each platform.

Google AdWords

What is Google AdWords? It might seem simple in the name, but there are so many other benefits to this tool than just using catchy keywords.

The platform allows you to target ads to the customers that you want. There are various ad formats that can be customized depending on the goals that your business has.

Some of the ways that you can focus your ad efforts include:

• Targeting ads with keywords: This allows you to create ads that are tailored for specific terms that people are looking for. This is customized to the point where it shows up at certain times, locations, and languages.
• Specify Target Audiences: Platforms that show Google ads like Google Display Network and YouTube can target specific demographics and interests within those groups.
• Pay for the Results: For your business, you make the choice about how much money you want to spend on ads. You can choose whether you want to pay when someone interacts with the ad, such as clicking or watching it, or something else that is relevant to your business.
• Measuring Ad Performance: Google helps show the results of the ad and how its improving, in order for your business to make the best judgement for next steps.
• Advertise on other Platforms: This tool allows for businesses to connect with customers on any device, whether it be computers, tablets, mobiles or apps.

Bing Ads

Bing Ads focuses their efforts around the SEM decision journey that customers take. There are six best practices that they talk about to delivering value to your business.

• Understanding the Customer Decision Journey: Customers often go through the marketing funnel and this is very important when interacting with them.

The five important stages that are key to the decision journey are initiation, research, comparison, transaction, and experience. Each stage allows the customer to further understand their problem, and how your business can be the solution.

• Setting Impactful Goals: If your business has specific goals, your ads are the best way to make sure you are achieving them. Using keywords can help and Bing Ads even suggests bidding competitively on non-brand, brand and competitor's keywords.
• Optimizing the Market Funnel: Understanding the five stages above and how customers are making their decisions allows your business to know how to best serve them at every point. Their searches at each point are where your business plays a big role in being present, in order to get the conversions.

• Growing your Audience: Bing Ads targeting focuses on the Contextual, Behavioral, and Demographic groups. These are essential in getting ideal customers to your business.

Through Bing Ad, you can reach 138 million unique searchers...who represent 5 billion monthly searchers

• Synergizing Channels: SEM is a great tool to to use on multiple platforms. One of the most active platforms is social media. Using Bing Ads, your business can also advertise on social media platforms and optimize your business strategies.
• Tracking Performances: The most important thing that businesses want to use Bing Ads for, is the performance metrics they can utilize. In order to get the best results, businesses need to use the correct metrics that will mean the most to them. Use SEM as a tool, and separate it from other things your business is using to measure.

What does this mean for your marketing campaign?

Bing Ads is a great way to optimize your marketing campaigns because it specializes in creating the best possible ads for your business. With tools like Bing Ads Editor and Bing Ads app, it makes it simpler to manage all of your campaigns in one platform.

Check out the Seattle Chocolate story of success through Bing Ads!

If that didn't convince you enough, try using Bing Ads on your website and see how helpful it is! It's low costs are very beneficial to small businesses too, with just as much results.

How can an MBA Program use SEM?

With MBA programs, there is a strong sense of community and greater expectation for growth and critical learning. Using SEM, MBA programs can leverage their curriculum and relationships to students and faculty to create a welcoming space for interested students.

As Bing Ads emphasizes in their SEM process, the customer journey decision is an essential time to reach out to customers. Using ads that can show emphasize the benefits of MBA programs in the Northwest could include the stories of past students. Being able to identify with many students and keep a transparent message will make it more clear, what the MBA program can offer. Targeting social media sites that are around the demographics of people would could be potential students will increase awareness, as well as insight into the program. Using business platforms and educational alumni pages would be the best way to push for conversions.