Search engine marketing (SEM) is a term that refers to paying for small ads displayed on search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. These are the ads you see at the top or along the sides of search engine results pages.
According to ASSOCHAM India, over 120 million Indian consumers are expected to shop online in 2018.
With millions of businesses out there all vying for the same customers, it’s important to advertise online to promote your products. This is where your customers are looking for products like yours.
3 things to consider before doing SEM
Whether you sell directly to consumers or cater to clothing manufacturers or retailers, search engine marketing can connect you with more of them. A few tips:
-
Keyword selection.
-
A PPC program works best.
-
Your quality score matters.
Before we list the important considerations when placing ads with Google, Bing or another search engine, let’s touch briefly on why SEM matters to leather goods industry.
An industry on the rise
India’s leather industry has grown, transforming from a mere raw material supplier to a value-added product exporter.
The growth in demand for leather is majorly driven by the fashion industry, which uses leather for garments, footwear, bags and belts, etc. Apart from this, other industries like furniture and interior design, as well as automotive also demand leather goods.
Photo: Alessandro Bogliari on Unsplash
Search engine marketing takes time, money and some careful thought. For example, suppose you make beautiful leather handbags and your target audience is young girls between 18 and 25 years of age in India.
More than 94 percent of India’s search traffic runs through Google, so start there.
You can advertise with a search platform like Google Ads by selecting your preferred keywords and categories such as age, gender and site. Google places your ad on relevant search results pages. Thus, SEM provides results that are workable for both the searcher and the advertiser.
Search engine marketing is crucial for the leather goods business but how to go about doing it? Let’s look at three aspects that can help one to understand SEM better.
1. Keyword selection
You should be very careful in picking keywords for your search ad. Don’t pick keywords that are too competitive or too broad, as you will end up with an extremely high bounce rate (i.e. the number of people who click on your ad but leave without purchasing).
The Google Ads Keyword Planner rates keywords as High, Medium or Low competition. Avoid High competition words.
For example, if you deal in “formal leather shoes for men,” you should not target a broad keyword such as “leather footwear” or “Men’s shoes.” These aren’t the specific keywords for men looking for formal leather shoes.
Come up with some specific phrases and words related to your business or product before creating your ad. In addition to Google’s keyword tool, SEMrush can be used to learn the keywords your competitors’ are using as well as the keywords relevant for your website and product. This will give you ideas for low or medium competition keywords to use for your ad.
Tip: Occasionally, search phrases that have nothing to do with your product will trigger your search ad. Thus, it’s important to add these phrases as negative keywords to stop your ad from appearing when someone searches such unrelated phrases.
2. A PPC program works best
There are a variety of paid search advertising programs, but the most common is called pay-per-click (PPC). In this scheme, you only pay the search engine when someone clicks on your ad.
PPC ads are short text ads with a title and a small description.
With PPC ads, when a person types a keyword related to your business in Google search box, your business advertisement appears at the top or bottom of the search results page.
One advantage of PPC ads is they’re controllable.
- You set the budget and then specify the words and phrases to target, which determines when your ad is displayed.
- You choose the exact product page you want your ads to link to.
- You can turn the ad off at any point of time to conserve expenditures for peak periods.
Since PPC advertising helps companies generate customers while improving their rankings in search engines, it is considered one of the more efficient types of marketing strategies.
3. Your quality score matters
Search engine marketing is about improving your chances for the best search results. For running an ad, you would have a fixed budget and you would want to have as many conversions (i.e. clicks that turn into sales) as possible in that budget.
Your quality score can help you with that. A search engine platform like Google always wants the most relevant results for their user and hence they reward those with a higher quality score.
The quality score ranks how relevant the keyword is to the ad text and landing page it links to.
A higher quality score will help increase your ranking on search engine results page and in turn, will help you to pay less per click. Paying less means you can use the same budget to fund more clicks.
Photo: Robbie Noble on Unsplash
What does this mean? Don’t use high-traffic keywords unrelated to your product just to increase visitors to your website. These people will likely not buy your product and Google will decrease your quality score.
If a person is searching for leather sofa set and he clicks your ad, then he should land at the page that has the description and pictures of leather sofa set — not fabric sofa set. If you send people to the incorrect page, your quality score will suffer, as leather and fabric sofas are two different product offerings.
A few search engine marketing tips
PPC advertising is equal parts art and science. Here are some things to keep in mind as you create your ad and the landing page it leads to:
Write an ad they’ll want to click
It’s vital to have relevant and catching headline and description. This will create interest in the searchers to click on your ad. Once the consumer clicks your ad, it will take him to your website or product page.
Make sure the destination is worth the journey
Whichever web page you send them to, it must provide quality information, easy navigation and attractive images. It’s always the first impression that makes the visitors stay on your site and view the details.
Keep refining your keywords
It is also very crucial to keep testing your keywords, landing pages, ad copy etc., to see if the current ad is performing well and if not, make changes. All PPC vendors provide a insight into how ads perform (clicks, bounce rate, etc). Sometimes even small changes can lead to enormous improvement in your bottom line.
Regardless of the size of your business or the competition you face, you can enrich your leather goods business with search engine marketing. Follow the guidance offered in this post and you can look forward to many years of clicks and sales.
