SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
Once your website “house” is in order through basic SEO techniques, you’ll be ready to drive more traffic to it through search engine marketing, or paid search. These are the paid ads on the right-hand side of a Google search result page. Because these ads are served up based on exactly what term the user is searching and when they are searching for it, these ads are orders of magnitude more relevant and timely than other forms of online ads – such as banner ads, which are served up next to content. Furthermore, because paid search ads are typically paid only when there are clicks (cost per click), the advertiser cuts out the 99 percent that would have been wasted; in other words, if click-through rates are 1 percent, that means the other 99 percent of the impressions are wasted. So by switching from paying for impressions to paying only for clicks, approximately 99 percent of the waste is eliminated (see “This is what happens when 99% of the inefficiencies are cut out of a system“).
SMO (Social Media Optimization)
In the new digital world where users ignore most forms of advertising as “noise,” what is an advertiser to do? Most are turning to social media and social networks like Facebook, Twitter, etc. But as we have seen before, many are still applying “old world” tactics and metrics to it; in other words, buying billions of banner ad impressions on a CPM basis on Facebook – to achieve branding through “reach and frequency.” At a minimum, advertisers should “click the radio button” on Facebook advertising and switch from paying by CPM to paying by CPC (paying only for the clicks they get). This will save tens of thousands of wasted ad dollars instantly (see Facebook Advertising Metrics and Benchmarks).
A more sophisticated way to use social media would be to empower users to pass along and amplify your message, or better yet, let them create their own “rave” about your product and pass that along in their own words. Their words can yield powerful insights about what they think are the key attributes of your product and why they think they are important enough to pass along. Finally, the phenomenon of social commerce occurs when “friends don’t let friends do just social media”; they are so passionate about a product they not only tell their friends about it but they help their friends all the way through a purchase.