SEM (paid search)

You can do a lot of keyword research prior to running any actual campaigns but, ultimately, seeing which keywords or buckets of keywords are converting and garnering the greatest interest is more helpful. Paid search can give you that kind of intelligence.

There is one thing to consider if you go the paid search route looking for conversions: long-tail search means someone is that much deeper into the sales cycle (and thus more open to your message.) So it’s great to go a little bit deeper using multiple words in the keyword phrase. The users searching with more detail will generally turn into more qualified traffic. Broad keyword searches will generally indicate people in the early stages of the sales process so you’ll need patience and may need to consider these keywords more of a branding method. Remember to invest in your branded keywords. Even though you should rank high for your branded phrases in the organic results you can block out competitors by buying up branded phrases.

Say you’re an auto manufacturer and you’re putting some advertising budget into Google AdWords to create excitement for a new hybrid car. You might not want to pay for search ads associated with the generic keywords “car” or “cars” because people searching on that kind of generic term are most likely not far into the sales cycle at all. But compare that to somebody searching for “crossover hybrid 270Z with a 4.2-liter” and you’re looking at someone much deeper in the cycle – someone who’s likely pretty close to finding a dealer and asking for a quote.

Another consideration with search marketing is balancing your efforts with both paid and organic tactics. There is a documented brand lift and increase in conversion rates when you appear both at the top of natural search results and in pay-per-click ads relevant to that search, but achieving that kind of mutual reinforcement depends on staying abreast of how the search engine algorithms evolve.

Do your research when you’re selecting niche keywords. Look into whether there’s high or low search volume on them. Also bear in mind that these search ads can act as standard display advertising. So you may decide to provide a message from a branding perspective without expecting conversion. If you can stay competitive and fairly high up in the ranking, you can get some brand exposure without necessarily paying for all the click-throughs on the page.

Paid search campaigns can often get better ROI by targeting many different, low-volume niche terms rather than just a few high-volume generic terms, because the higher volume terms can also be more expensive. This is still a very effective way to market for now, although there may soon be less opportunity as everyone catches on to this.

It should be noted that we’re talking mostly about Google here, because it’s got the lion’s share of the traffic right now. Again, that might change, but as of this writing, it’s still one of the main areas that you’ve got to consider, along with Yahoo, bing, Ask, and MSN.