Have you ever thought about how search engines can help in boosting your business’s numbers? If not, then you probably are not too familiar with the term SEM, which means search engine marketing. To derive maximum benefits from SEM, several algorithms are studied, and marketing tactics are followed. Growth marketing is one of them.
What practices of growth marketing can help improve SEM profitability? Well, this answer can be best understood by going through the following points:
- What is growth marketing?
- What are the best growth marketing best practices?
What is Growth Marketing?
In simpler terms, growth marketing is a cognitive effort to draw the right audience to the business. Search engine funnels out the prospective customers for us. We have to take charge from here and focus efforts on those customers who are most likely to stick to our business for long. This whole process of identification and retention of loyal customers is covered by undergrowth marketing.
Best growth marketing practices for SEM profitability
It is your customers who are coming to you after finding you over the search engines. So, it would be quite helpful if you have followed the customer journey.
- Staying with customers throughout their journey.
It is one of the best growth in marketing practices. If you explore deeply, customers complete a single transaction with any business in the following steps:
- Search: Customers use specific search phrases to find information. So, as a growth marketer, you have to keep the keyword search game spot on.
- Research: Customers read the guides, refer to explainer videos, and read catalogs, brochures, or online product descriptions or service features to find the most suitable option.
- Compare: Then, all similar products or services available are compared with each other. The one that suits the needs and the pocket size is usually the customer’s pick.
- Buy/Subscribe: Finally, the customers complete their intended action after referring to pricing and the time by which the products or service can be accessed.
- Share experience: Customers, when exceptionally delighted or disappointed, share feedback, or spread the word about their experience through testimonials, posts, reviews, etc.
Growth marketing practice becomes more meaningful when the businesses register their presence at all these steps.
- Align campaign with business goals
Marketing is not a standalone activity. It is a collective outcome of different activities that comprise goal management, campaign management, reputation management, etc. When you have designed a search engine ad campaign, you need to align it with the business goals. So, as a good growth marketing practice, you must work towards:
- Creating brand awareness: People do not keep a brand in mind before starting a search usually. Thus, growth marketing does the job of converting this non-brand search into the one directed towards a brand. This happens when the business knows how to satisfy customers. The percentage of brand-specific search increases mostly when the first transaction turns out to be a delightful experience for both the business and its customers.
- Acquiring new customers: New customers reach the business in 49% of the cases by searching for the latter through search engines. So, alignment of business goals with the campaign helps create a win-win situation, which further translates into a long-lasting relationship.
- Increase in sales: With the alignment of business offerings with customer expectations, the business can find more buyers. Search engine marketing boosted by growth marketing practices helps increase numbers, eventually.
- Expanding the market reach
As explained above, growth marketing practices traverse a customer’s whole buying process. All the buying process stages can be used as points where growth marketing can be used to make a difference. Thus, the market reach is expanded when the growth marketer achieves sales by converting any search into a favorable action.
- Make the Audience targeting more extensive yet specific.
This practice compels the marketers to think beyond the cliched approach of being there where customers are. It asks you to create a rich buyer persona based on their demographic, behavioral, and contextual features. Further, the marketers work on keywords that align with all critical stages of the buying process. Search engine marketing combines various channels to create a more compelling marketing campaign.
- Measure the SEM impact
Just like reading without reflecting is the same as eating without digesting, not measuring SEM impact is a form of mindless marketing. Thus, it is essential to employ metrics to understand the SEM impact. Growth marketers can further improve, change, and optimize SEM strategies according to the reports received.
SEM impact is not focused solely on the quality of results obtained from online searches. The search engine has to be combined with all other channels like TV, radio, print, etc., to find the channel-wise impact. Consequently, marketers can create more compelling campaigns and get the desired results.
- Improve paid search budget share
The marketers find it challenging to convince businesses to increase the budget for search engine marketing. It is still an unsung hero that is brutally overlooked by its benefactors, that is, businesses. Growth marketing can help you with numbers that you need to share with businesses and show them the importance of investing in SEM. The more convincingly you represent results in a data-backed manner, the higher the chances that businesses think of bringing the change in their budget structure.
Conclusion
The marketing mix of present times is incomplete without SEM. We have seen how extensive the customer journey is. So, the challenge is to cut the journey in the businesses’ favor and make conversions quicker. It can happen only when the keyword research is updated with added intelligence. Also, the search engine is to be given equal footage as the other channels to not leave any loophole in their marketing structure. In a nutshell, the best practice is to follow an all-round approach, stay updated according to changing trends, and expand the reach of marketing efforts while enhancing their effectiveness. It is how growth marketing practices would help boost SEM profitability.
Related Guide: The Definitive Guide to PPC Marketing