Are you looking for better strategies to market your brand online?
If so, you have probably considered using PPC or SEM strategies. PPC involves sharing an ad to attract potential customers to your brand. SEM involves you promoting your brand on search engines.
But which is the better strategy? Which strategy should you focus on to build your brand?
Here’s what you need to know about PPC vs SEM:
PPC
PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click. This is when you create an ad that gets saved on search engines and other websites. Each time someone clicks on your ad you’ll get charged for the click.
The major advantage of PPC is that it has a low barrier to entry. You can use PPC ads to assess the popularity of your brand.
It’s the ideal type of online advertising for small businesses. You should consider hiring a small business PPC agency to create these ads for you.
SEM
SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing. With this strategy, you’ll promote your website on popular search engines.
This strategy involves you putting money up front to publish your ad. As such, it’s got a higher barrier to entry when compared to PPC.
The major advantage of this approach is that search engines are the best way to attract potential customers.
Search engines are still the main method for internet users to come across a new website. As such, SEM is a great strategy for promoting your brand.
How PPC Works
With PPC, you want to focus on promoting a product or service that your company sells.
You can promote this ad on a search engine or another website. This is great if you want to target a specific audience. For example, if you run an online clothing store then you’re targeting a wide audience.
But what happens if you want to target a specific market? You can create a PPC ad that targets the latest winter clothing your website is selling. Or you can create an ad that promotes a particular brand of clothing.
These targeted ads are often more effective than creating a generic ad. PPC is often the best strategy for this type of ad.
It’s much easier to gain traffic using PPC ads. You don’t have to do the intensive keyword research required from SEM. The traffic will continue for as long as you run the ad. You’ll also likely see faster results if you choose PPC ads.
Overall, this is a great choice if you’ve run your business for a few years. If you’re ready to promote your latest product or service, this is the ideal option.
How SEM Works
SEM is when you create an ad that shows up on search engine results pages. You’ll have to increase your price to compete with other search engine ads. You’ll have to ensure that your ad shows up at the top of search results.
This requires a lot more work as you’ll have to research the right keywords for your niche. However, it lets you reach a wider audience as you can focus on promoting your brand as a whole.
This is a great option for startups. Combined with Search Engine Optimization (SEO), SEM is ideal for helping your brand reach a large audience online.
SEM is overall the better strategy for improving your website’s ranking on search engines. This is crucial for establishing your brand as an authority in its niche.
This type of online advertising brings more organic traffic to your website. However, it takes much longer for your audience to grow. It’ll take a while to convert visitors into paying customers with SEM.
Risks and Rewards
The final step is to determine the risk-reward strategy for your business.
For example, are you willing to pay for online advertising in advance knowing that you might not see immediate results? Or do you prefer to pay later knowing that you’ll have to focus on targeted ads?
With PPC, you’ll grow your traffic much faster. However, you’ll have to focus on creating a targeted ad that might only attract a small audience. This might not be ideal if you don’t already have a solid customer base.
With SEM, you can reach a much wider audience. However, it takes a lot longer to grow your traffic. The process is a lot more complex and requires you to make a payment in advance.
As a small business, you might lose a huge portion of your budget if you buy an ad in advance. This is a major disadvantage of SEM ads.
However, you’ll also struggle with showing up at the top of search engine results pages. This is much harder through PPC ads and is their main disadvantage.
It’s ideal to use both PPC and SEM ads to promote your brand. But if you can only focus on one, you want to see if the reward outweighs the risk. Make sure you assess if your budget can handle the financial risk associated with the ad strategy you choose.
PPC vs SEM: Which Do I Choose?
So now you’re wondering which is the best approach to choose for marketing your brand?
Let’s look a bit deeper at how these strategies work:
- PPC doesn’t allow for consistent traffic
- SEM lets you get more attention, but only if you pay more money for an ad
- Both strategies let you track your progress through analytics
- SEM isn’t affected by algorithms
- PPC lets you work with the algorithm to promote your brand
Both strategies have their pros and cons. As mentioned above, you have to consider the risk-reward strategy for your business.
Market Your Brand
Now that you know the difference between PPC vs SEM, you can decide which is the best strategy to market your brand.
With PPC, you can create an ad and then pay each time it attracts a new viewer. With SEM, you’ll pay in advance to promote your brand.
With both approaches, you can track your progress. This can help you determine which is the better option. Make sure you assess your risk-reward strategy to decide what’s best.
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