Search Engine Marketing Defined: Search Engine Marketing (SEM) refers to the practice of advertising a Web site on specified search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing etc.). This is usually facilitated through an automated bidding process conducted by the search engine that the advertiser wishes to advertise with. Various advertisers will bid against one another for the best placement of their ad on the specified search engine. Ads can be either text or images.

Example: You own a sports apparel company in Los Angeles and are interested in targeting Los Angeles Internet users that are shopping for basketball equipment. Research has shown you that your target demographic uses the search query (keyword) “basketball” to find Web sites associated with sports apparel. You set up an ad campaign on various search engines and bid on the keyword term “basketball” to have your text ad (with your Web sites link) appear on the top or in the featured section of the search engine of interest.

Process: Anticipate Marketing first conducts research on a range of keywords for our clients and offer a preliminary presentation. In our presentation, we will show our clients which keywords are the most relevant for their products, in relation to specific search querys (keywords will be divided into different ad groups once specific keywords are defined).

Once our clients approve the keywords; ad groups (a list of keywords with a line or two of text advertising the product or service of our client) and ad campaigns (lists of ad groups that share something in common with one another) are set up for advertising in the Google AdWords, MSN Keywords Center and Yahoo Overture platforms. Ad text/texts will be brainstormed together with our client. (The amount of Ad groups, campaigns and revisions to the ad text will be determined based on the package that you choose).

We then help our clients determine an advertising budget that is right for them. Anticipate Marketing will then take the next steps to distribute the campaign dollars and utilize the budget in making the most of the different ad groups.

Finally after the campaigns are set into motion and ads are displayed, we create and process campaign reports for the performance of our clients campaigns (please ask us about our our different packages and how to determine the frequency of your campaign reports).