Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

What is SEM?

Search engine marketing (SEM), sometimes also called search engine advertising, typically involves bidding on a select group of keywords on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis on a search engine. The actual cost-per-click ranges from a few cents to a few dollars depending on the popularity and competition among other advertisers for specific keywords.

Paid search engine placement allows a website to quickly rank at the top of the “sponsored links” section on search engine results pages (usually in the right column). It also allows the placement of advertising on site networks or even specific websites that support an advertising network.

Attract Customers Fast

Search engine marketing offers a great tool for businesses to access customers or prospects searching online everyday. Most of these paid search providers, such as Google, Yahoo and MSN, also offer ad impression and click-through statistics, conversion tracking and other tools that allow advertisers to gauge the success of campaigns as they unfold. CPC advertising campaigns are easily monitored and adjusted to ensure the strongest results based on keyword performance and costs.

ISL Campaign Management

ISL has run a number of SEM campaigns on behalf of numerous clients in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries, the consumer goods, B2B services, education and other markets. We can create the text or banner ads for an SEM initiative, and special landing pages and tools that these ads lead to. We can set-up and manage campaigns and reporting on behalf of clients and help determine budgets and relevant conversion goals that measure campaign ROI. The beauty of search engine adveritising is that precise, quantifiable costs and results are at the fingertips of advertisers and service agencies.

We have also advised clients who prefer to run their own campaigns and done the necessary research to inform those campaigns. We are also adept at aligning SEM and SEO campaigns, using the former to complement and test strategies that may benefit the latter.