Rami Audi and Imad Karam, founders ofClouds Media, help local, regional and international clients reach excellence on the digital front. They are subject-matter experts in the field of digital marketing offering bespoke digital marketing strategies and implementation plans relevant to the needs of each of their clients.
Clouds Media reveals in this article the top 10 benefits of Search Engine Marketing – SEM and how this online advertising technique can help you build a strong presence on Google search, enabling you to fully reach your business objectives. Read about why Google Paid Search Ads are one of the most valuable tools for any business.
Reach Your Clients Instantly
Search Engine Marketing is used to describe Google paid search ads. This technique is often used as a short-term strategy bringing fast visibility to your products or services. Compared to Search Engine Optimization – SEO, paid search ads can give you quick results as they allow you to reach your target customers quasi instantly.
Increase Brand Awareness
Google Search Ads allow advertisers to expose their brand name either in the ad’s headlines, description, display URL or extension links. Therefore, these paid search ads contribute to high brand awareness especially that they often appear on top of Google search results.
Create Geo-Targeted Search Ads
SEM gives you the option to target people based on their location.You can create ads in different languages and decide where you want them to appear; you can specify the country, the city and even a specific region anywhere in the world.
Implement and Manage Ads Easily and Quickly
Paid search ads are easily and quickly created and managed. Google Ads allow you toset up a schedule for each of your campaigns – you canrun and stop yourads at any time you want.It is also easy to set up a budget and specify the performance speed of your campaigns. This can help you optimize your ads and bring more traffic to your business in a short period of time.
Target the Right Audience Through Optimized Ads
SEM is a very effective way for businesses to reach specific customers based on their search intentions. You can make your ads appear only to consumers who are searching using keywords closely related to your products or services. Choosing the right keywords for which your ads are triggered to appear helps you create highly optimized ads.
Increase Traffic Through Ad Visibility
Optimized Search Ads can drive relevant traffic to your website since they appear on top of the Search Engine Result Page – SERP, above the organic results. With the right advertising budget, optimized bidding and appealing ad message, you can increase the quality of your ads and therefore ensure high ads visibility and relevant website visits.
Target Audiences Through Keyword Match Types
Google’s keywords planner tool helps you determine the most popular keywords used to search for your business. By using these specific keywords in your campaigns, you can make sure that your ads reach the right audience. Google ads offer you multiple keywords matching types i.e. broad match, exact match, etc. based on which your ads will be served to users.
Pay Only Per Action
Once your paid search ads are created, your ads will appear for free and you will only pay when someone takes action – meaning, clicks on your ad. Therefore, you can get a free exposure and brand awareness on search engines and get charged only when somebody clicks on your ad hence visiting your landing page.
Appear on Competitors’ Related Keywords
As a best practice for SEM, it is recommended to create search ads that are triggered to appear on your competitors’ related keywords. This will secure your exposure on those keywords and ultimately the chance to convert clients from competitors to you.
Test and Measure Your Performance
Paid search ads give you the opportunity to test your ads’ performance and measure the results you’ve gathered for each campaign. Google Ads gives you access to in-depth data on the best performing ads in terms of: impressions, clicks, Click-Through-Rate (CTR), top performing keywords, etc. Depending on your campaign goals, you can evaluate your performance and identify what you ultimately need to optimize for better performance in the future.
About the authors
Rami Audi is a proficient digital marketing consultant with more than 8 years of experience in the field. He has helped many local and international clients reach excellence on the digital marketing front by devising targeted strategies, guaranteeing correct implementation and insuring effectiveness.
His marketing work has spanned across a number of diverse industries, such as media, publishing, utilities and the education sector.
Rami is a part time instructor of E-marketing at LAU – Lebanese American University. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Engineering from LAU, an MBA from École Supérieure des Affaires – and a Master of Management from Europe Business School.
Rami is the co-founder and managing director of Clouds Media, a leading digital marketing and advertising agency based in Lebanon and the UAE and serving the GCC market. He is also the co-founder, managing partner and a main trainer at CDA – Clouds Digital Academy – offering professional training courses in the digital marketing field including digital advertising, SEO – Search Engine Optimization – web and conversion optimization, social media as well as other related topics. Rami is also Google AdWords certified.
Previous work experience: Business Development Manager at an IBM Platinum Business Partner company – CBM – handling market development and revenue expansion. He also holds diverse IBM sales and technical certifications.
Imad Karamis an online marketing expert and digital consultant with over 10 years of experience in the field.
As a former Senior Industry Analyst at Google UK and as the current CEO at Clouds Media (a leading digital marketing agency based in Dubai and Beirut since 2010), Imad has advised, trained and helped hundreds of clients in Europe and the Middle East.
He has helped a large number of regional and multinational firms reach digital excellence including: Virgin Media, Times Online, The Daily Mail, MSN, Propertyfinder.ae, Balloonshop.ae, CBRE, Ray White, Mercedes Lebanon and many others.
Imad is a regular instructor at the Lebanese American University and teaches digital marketing to an audience of post-graduate students and EMBA students. He is also an instructor at Saint Joseph University in Beirut and teaches the course “online marketing in the healthcare sector” for bio-marketing degree students.
He has been featured many times in local media and TV programs as a digital marketing expert.
Imad is a graduate of HEC Paris (Master of Science in Marketing and Management) and ESIB (Master of Telecom Engineering). Previous experience includes working at Google UK, Merrill Lynch UK and General Electric.
