Small businesses looking to increase their sales and customers can benefit from SEM and social advertising. Do you need help deciding whether to use one of these or both? Digital marketing is essential for the online growth of your small business. SEM and Paid Social are two powerful digital marketing tools. These two marketing techniques function differently and produce different results, but both are equally relevant for online success.
If you already understand the function and differences between search engine marketing and paid social media advertising, skip the next two paragraphs and move on to benefits. However, if you are still learning about sem and paid social, we have added a brief description below.
Search Engine Marketing Vs Paid Social Advertising
Paid social is regarded as proactive media, which means that the person who viewed the advertisement was not necessarily looking for that information. Ads on social media are a quick and efficient method to reach your target audience and expand your marketing initiatives. On the other hand, SEM is reactive media; when a user searches for something specific, the advertiser responds with a relevant ad. The goal of search engine marketing is to put your service or product in front of people who are looking for or are interested in products or services that are comparable to yours.
When used together, SEM and paid social media advertising engage different people at different stages of the buying cycle. Together, paid social advertising and SEM can assist your lead progress from early interest to purchase decision.
SEM Vs Social Ads Benefits
Search Engine Marketing Benefits
SEM increases a website’s visibility using paid search, targeted advertising, and organic search rankings. Small businesses often use Search Engine Marketing to improve online visibility, attract audiences through targeted ads and increase sales. Since in this marketing strategy, the consumer must click on the advertisement, paid search/SEM increases conversions/sales/leads more quickly.
Social Advertising Benefits
Paid social media ad campaigns effectively enhance brand awareness and increase re-engagement. Paid social helps you increase your followers. It further improves your organic social media efforts by driving your followers directly to your website. It engages audiences, collects specific information about them, and then tries to sell desirable products or services to potential customers based on their interests.
When To Use SEM Vs. Paid Social
SEM and Paid Social advertising are different from each other and produce different results. Which one you should use for your small business’s digital marketing campaigns depends on the final outcome of each.
Invest in SEM if your ultimate objective is to generate leads, sales, or website-based engagements directly from the site. You should use paid social advertising if your ultimate goal is to increase brand or product exposure or re-engage with previous users or visitors.
Nevertheless, there are many times when you should use these two strategies together for the best results. Several reasons small businesses should run both SEM and Paid social advertising simultaneously. The most common reasons to use these two marketing strategies together are the following:
Effective Remarketing: Using SEM and social ads helps re-engage previous website visitors. Paid social ads effectively hunt down online searchers that abandoned your site after the first visit. Through remarketing, it shows them your ad again to convince them to purchase.
Captures Mid to Low Funnel: When businesses or marketers use SEM and paid social ads together, they increase sales in two ways. By attracting people who can become potential clients and then convincing these potential clients to make a purchase.
Stacking the Remarketing Lists: SEM can drive more highly-qualified clients to the website. Then collect essential information about them and use this data to improve the targeted delivery of paid social ads.
How To Create the Right Mix of SEM and Paid Social Advertising?
Should you use SEM and paid social media marketing together or alone? The answer will depend on your business goals and objectives. If the primary goal of your marketing strategy is to gain direct conversions, use SEM. If your main goal is to enhance brand awareness and engagement, go for paid social ads. SEM and social ads work well together, given that the correct objective is set for each. Furthermore, using the two strategies together can benefit your small business with rapid growth and increased sales.
Work With Convex Studio
Convex Studio is a digital marketing agency in Vancouver, BC, known for its digital marketing services. We passionately help small and medium-sized businesses grow online by providing results-oriented SEO, SEM, Social media marketing and other services.