Alchemy Healthcare Services

Search Engine Marketing - the facts

Question: Does Search engine marketing have a role to play in brand advertising?
Answer: It's true that you can't build a brand using Search Engine Marketing alone, however, the reality is that people tend not to know what they are looking for when they start out: we see this in the searches they make and in campaign response and conversion rates. The role of Search Engine Marketing is to put a brand in front of a captive audience, to make them aware of it, to give them the opportunity to learn more about a brand and hopefully shift perception. Search Engine Marketing can ensure that a brand stays in a consumer's consideration set from the research stage right through to purchase.

Question: Why would I bother with Pay per Click (or Paid Placement) if natural listings are free?
First , Organic (free) listings or the practice of achieving organic listings doesn't come without any costs. Even if you have SEO expertise in-house you will need to pay for this resource to design and optimise your website in a search engine-friendly way. Secondly, targeting the natural search results and not the paid-for would be to run half a campaign or to ignore up to half of the opportunity available. Paying 10p (or sometimes less) for a highly qualified lead is hardly considered a poor investment.

Question: IS it true that organic search listings are much more powerful than paid search listings.
Answer: Word of mouth and organic search listings are both powerful marketing methods and feed off one another. Take "Googling" as an example: you hear a rumour, next day you head straight for Google to see the rumour is circulating the world wide web. And on Google, the organic results are the more popular and often the more powerful set of listings in terms of conversion. But on other engines fewer people realise the difference between what's advertising and what's organic. On Yahoo!, for example, some of the perceived "organic" results are paid for through their paid inclusion programme. Research shows that consumers increasingly care less where the listings come from. What they are looking for are relevant and appealing results - it's often easier to make a paid listing look more appealing and targeted than a natural result. Search Engine Marketing is still a non-intrusive media - paid-search works.

Question: Should Search Engine Marketing (SEM) be integrated with the rest of the marketing mix?
Answer: YES - SEM is integral to consumers' media consumption, so why should SEM be seperated out? SEM needs to be planned alongside all other marketing activity - any advertising that is creating interest and awareness in your brand or product. Digitally, there are many synergies, Affiliates and Search being one - both strategies can benefit from combined planning, implementation and learnings. And looking beyond media, Search informs and is informed by website design, customer experience and usability. Search therefore needs to be at the heart of the Marcoms mix.

Question: Is Pay per Click becoming increasingly more expensive medium
For some smaller companies this could be true, particularly those operating in very competitive sectors such as Mobile Phones or Travel. But we shouldn't forget why SEM is so fruitfull. As long as you offer a competitive price and product, and a clear path to purchase, the outcome will be a low acquisition cost and a potentially high lifetime value per customer. Time too for a reality check: when was the last time you benchmarked your SEM cost per customer against your TV ROI (if indeed you can measure such a tangible return)?

Question: Can high natural rankings be guaranteed if you know what you're doing in SEO terms?
Answer: NO. Even if you have the very best SEO expertise to hand, success cannot be guaranteed. There are too many external factors involved:

• Google (and other algorithmic engines such as MSN and Yahoo) go to great lengths to keep their refcipe for ranking top secret
• The algorithms are constantly being updated and manipulated

Advertisers should be wary of any SEO / SEM firm that guarantees high rankings (for "guaranteed" read "underhand SEO techniques" or "paid placement"). As with any supplier / agency, ensure you understand their methods and are assured that their approach is ethical. Even when you're in safe, expert hands, SEO is a two-way street and the best results are achieved when SEO is integrated into a website's ongoing development strategy.

Question: Is Google the most important search engine to get listings in?
It's true that Google holds the lions share in search engine usage terms. But if we look to the US market we've seen Google's market share decline, as Yahoo!, MSN and Ask Jeeves, to name only the top tier engines, have invested heavily in their products. Not just from a usage perspective but from an advertiser one, 2006 will bring more buying points into the Search engine market. It's the old addage: don't put all of your eggs in one basket. Plus, there's no such thing in business as achieving the volume that you need. Don't you want more customers?!