10 reasons why your company cannot do without search engine marketing

If all potential customers already knew your company, you would not need search engines. Yet even the largest and strongest brands in the world cannot rely entirely on that.

It is a waste to ignore a huge potential target audience by being absent from search engines. The search results show ten providers per page, for whom the search engine forms an important revenue channel. With search engine marketing, you become visible to potential customers searching for your products or services.

We have listed 10 reasons to generate leads with search engine marketing.

1. Do not fall behind competitors

Perhaps the most important reason: your competitors are doing it too. Just search for your own products or services in Google or another search engine. Review the search results and discover which competitors are currently capturing the new customers who are also searching for these terms.

You will likely see 4 advertisements at the top of the search results. These are followed by the organic results. If you are not visible on the first page of Google, it means that at least 10 other companies are more prominent than you. They are addressing new customers who, just like you, are looking for the products or services you offer. That is a missed opportunity, so you want to be positioned among them.

2. Discover and experience what customers truly want

Furthermore, with search engine marketing, you discover what customers truly want. If you already know this, you can advertise with maximum efficiency. If you do not know yet, it is the ideal way to find out what they are looking for from you.

The combination of advertising (SEA) and optimization (SEO) gradually makes it clearer what stands out, what customers respond to, and what generates more revenue for you. An initial broad approach helps to map out step-by-step which direction you should take. Search engine marketing provides insight into the motivation(s) of your target audience. You can then use that knowledge for better search engine advertisements, as well as for other advertising and communication channels you use. It is a waste not to use the data you can collect online to improve your marketing.

3. Combine channels that reinforce each other

Search engine marketing combines SEA and SEO. The two can reinforce each other excellently:

1. Use search engine advertisements (SEA) to measure which search terms convert best in a very short time.
2. Then use search engine optimization (SEO) to target those best-converting search terms.
3. This allows you to optimize for search terms that work in the long term, while the clicks from new visitors are subsequently free.

4. Utilize inbound marketing

Search engine marketing is inbound marketing. This means you respond to the needs that already exist within your target audience. Potential customers search for your products or services, even if they do not yet know that you offer them.

Inbound marketing is well-suited for the initial stages of a sales funnel:

• Awareness
  Potential customers experience a need, look for a solution to a problem, or orient themselves on possibilities. Use search engine marketing to provide information via paid search terms or organic search terms. Do not talk about your brand yet, but simply offer the information that visitors are looking for.
• Interest
  Make the solution concrete by offering information that leads to a product or service. Subtly show that you offer it, but do not become too commercial yet. The interest is there, but the focus is still on the product or service.
• Consideration
  The potential new customer is considering different providers. You are one of them, so this is the moment to push your brand forward. Use content to show that you are the cheapest, best, fastest, or most appealing option.
• Intent
  Combine the advantages of your company with those of the product or service you offer. The potential customer is almost ready to buy, so they now want to be sure it is a good choice. From this point on, the message becomes much more commercial.

For the evaluation and purchase phases, you can use (more) outbound marketing. Potential new customers are (almost) ready to purchase. That is the moment you want to be visible with your offer. If you used search engine marketing for the earlier phases, customers have already heard of you, making the threshold to purchase from you lower.

5. Collect high-quality leads

Search engine marketing is known for high-quality leads. You have various options for segmentation and personalization. This prevents you from taking a scattergun approach.

Use this form of marketing to filter out as many visitors as possible who fall outside the target audience. Consider demographic data, psychological search intent, and previously collected user data. Those who combine this well only advertise to potential new customers who have actually (shown) interest. The fewer people outside that core target audience see the advertisements and other content, the more valuable the leads you collect will be.

6. Advertise efficiently

Ultimately, it is all about conversion. You are thinking of new customers, more subscribers, newsletter sign-ups, or contest entries. Whatever the goal, at the end of the day, it must primarily yield as much as possible.

Search engine marketing maps this out excellently. Both with search engine optimization (SEO) and especially with search engine advertising (SEA), you can see exactly what the effort yields. In this way, you prove that the effort works and that it generates money instead of costing it. And if it doesn’t work? Perhaps the campaign needs to be adjusted, the effort should be greater, or something else is going on. Thanks to all the collected data, it is quite possible to analyze what is going well and what is not.

7. Generate more revenue online

Those who do not use search engine marketing miss out on the potential revenue available there. It is an additional revenue channel that competitors are likely already utilizing. So even if you manage to attract many customers through other channels, it is a waste not to make use of this.

Some industries are better suited for search engine marketing than others. However, in almost all cases, there are opportunities within the search results of Google and other search engines. The percentage of people searching for products and services via a search engine has been 90% or higher for years. Moreover, this applies to more and more industries, meaning the potential value of search engine marketing only increases.

8. Make your brand heard

Even for companies and brands active in B2B or offering larger products or services, search engines are very interesting. With search engine marketing, you might not generate a lead in one go. Nevertheless, it is still interesting to be visible online in those cases.

Search engine marketing is well-suited as a channel for Public Relations or to build your own authority. Compare it to advertisements in the local newspaper, on a regional scale, or nationally in the media. Those who are regularly visible naturally become a trusted name in the minds of customers. Additionally, you are immediately top-of-mind again, precisely at the moments when someone is looking for specific products or services.

9. Increase brand awareness

More specifically, you use search engine marketing to increase brand awareness. Improve the name recognition of your company by being present in the search results. Customers who encounter your company name multiple times will naturally become interested in what you have to offer. In this way, ensure you are visible to the target audience interested in your services and products.

Tip: take the different phases of the sales funnel into account. For B2B and larger purchases, for example, ensure you are visible early in the funnel when customers are in the awareness phase. If you are well-visible from that moment on, you will reap the benefits later. You will be a familiar name to them.

10. Attract new employees

Finally, use search engine marketing for your recruitment communications. Attract new employees by being visible on important themes they search for. Share relevant information and talk about specific trends. This shows that you are on top of things, for example, with cases and projects you are working on. This attracts new employees based on the same inbound marketing principles used for new customers.