Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a form of web advertising and it is quite different from traditional form of advertising. The purpose of SEM is global while traditional advertising is meant to address needs of particular region or local clan of customers. SEM is designed to get the business or product ranked on the higher echelons in the right hand side of the search results through the Google AdWords campaigns, or YSM in yahoo. SEM is a paid campaign where ultimate aim of the advertiser is to rank on the top by paying highest bid amount. The text ads of the advertisers on the right hand side are the sponsored ads for which the Google charges per click basis.
Traditional advertising reaches to the masses through expensive electronic media. Moreover, creating the very ad campaign for traditional advertising is also quite expensive. It is this expensive nature of traditional media over the SEM that makes small and medium sized business entities fall directly for the cost effective SEM strategies.
Pull Based Advertising/ Push Based Advertising
SEM is a pull based advertising whereas the traditional advertising is push based advertising. It means that when you go for the online advertising, you have real prospective traffic visiting you. The prospective traffic is interested in buying your products and services, and you don’t have to shout to them to buy your products or services. However, in case of traditional advertising, this is not the scenario, as it is the advertiser who has to approach the customers located in the target market and shout for product/service.
Track of Potential Customers/Visitors
Again under the innovative and smart SEM method, the advertiser can easily keep the track of potent customers/visitors through the use of user-friendly and easy web analytics software like Google analytics, clicktracks etc. In this manner, the advertiser can know about real ROI of the money spent in the market. Based on the ROI, the advertiser can smartly optimize the campaign. However, in the traditional advertising method, this is simply not possible. There’s no actual and appropriate method where you can really calculate the total number of target customers that will fall your products or hire your services.
Effect on Sales and Profits
An advertiser through SEM can reach to the maximum number of customers within a limited time frame, and this is simply not possible in case of traditional advertising. In case of traditional advertising, it might take even months before the real effect of advertising can be acknowledges. SEM provides long term sales and profits. Even if you have stopped SEM campaign, you can continue to achieve increased sales ever and ever after. However, in case of traditional advertising, the rise in sales and profits is only short term. The moment you have stopped advertising about your products or services, the sales and profits figure dips down.
Cost and Budgeting of Advertising
SEM is a fast track and cost effective form of advertising, whereas, traditional advertising is a slow process method and expensive form of advertising. Through the above comparison, one can easily reach to the conclusion, that if you really want to save money and reach globally in a fast way, then SEM is the only method to go with.
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