Whether your business needs more exposure or a stronger Return on Advertising Spend, an SEM consultant can help.
Do you want to grow your business exponentially? Being at the top of Google is one of the best ways to do that. Unlike Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which can take time to work, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is one of the fastest ways to put your business at the top of the list for almost any keyword you desire.
On this page, we’ll explain in more detail what SEM is and what it isn’t. We’ll provide you with best practices and share how we help businesses succeed with paid search campaigns using Google Adwords, Bing Ads and other emerging platforms.
What is an SEM consultant?
An SEM consultant specializes in helping businesses gain visibility on search engines through paid placements. Often, their work is combined with other digital marketing strategies. Whether it’s a local business or an e-commerce brand, you’ll usually see the work of an SEM consultant at the top of most searches you do on Google. SEM can sometimes be called paid search or pay-per-click advertising, but SEM encourages more than paid search ads to include video and display ads.
What is the best SEM process?
The best SEM process gets you the most results for the lowest cost. Let’s expand on this further.
Understanding your business
First, we need to understand your ideal customer. We do this by researching your business, asking critical questions about your customers and studying your competition. This allows us to build personas, a semi-fictional representation of your target customer.
Account and campaign planning
With our personas in hand, we move to account and campaign planning. This part of the process is where we map the structure of your ads account. This is critical as it ensures your ads are organized to maximize results while minimizing costs. A poorly structured account will also make it hard to improve your results over time.
Depending on your goals, we’ll use different strategies and tactics. For example, we love search ads for generating leads and sales, but the volume of people seeing those ads often needs to be higher to maximize your potential. We also want to ensure there is enough awareness of your business. We usually do this through display and video ads.
Lastly, we look at shopping ads if you’re an e-commerce brand.
Keyword and placement research
During the account structure phase, we complete keyword research for search ads using Google keyword planner and other tools. We’ll also develop placements and audience targets for display and video ads. Search ads also need negative keywords to ensure the quality of clicks on your website is high. For e-commerce, we’ll check your product feeds and make sure they are pristine.
Ad creative development
The last significant section of the setup process is creating your ads. We’ll work on the ad copy and create visuals for display and video campaigns. If you’re running e-commerce, we’ll provide you with best practices to ensure your product photos and descriptions are top-notch. Along with your ads, we also want to ensure your landing pages are set up for success. We’ll give them a thorough check and help you optimize them for conversions (this is known as conversion rate optimization or CRO).
Continuous improvement
Once your ads are set up and running, things get interesting. A good SEM process is heavily tuned to data and continuous improvement. It’s rare for an account to reach its true potential right out of the gates.
Your Google Ads account will be connected to Google Analytics. This will allow us to understand what happens to people on your website after clicking on an ad, and we can gain tremendous insights from your website data.
With the proper data in front of us, we’ll analyze it to determine what to do next. Sometimes, that means pausing some keywords; other times, it might mean updating the headlines for your ads. Regardless, we test our changes and update your ads based on the latest trends.
Regular reporting
As part of the continuous improvement process, we’ll provide detailed reports on the performance of your digital marketing ads. Regular communications help foster collaboration and offer critical two-way insights into your sales process beyond the clicks a digital marketing strategy can provide.
How long does it take to see results?
For most digital marketing campaigns, results will show in about six weeks. That’s not to say that you will have no sales or conversions during that period, but that it takes that long for your account to run smoothly. With that in mind, most clients start to see conversions within a few days of launching their ads.
If you’re curious about why the first six weeks are critical, reach out, and we’ll gladly explain.
Agency and direct client support
At Jordan Stevens Digital Marketing Consulting, we help agencies who want a white-label partner and clients who wish to work directly with us.
Agency partners: white labelled SEM consulting
Our agency partners appreciate our nimble approach and flexibility. We take care of all aspects of your clients’ relationships. In many cases, we are like an embedded member of the team. We’ll join your Slack or Teams account, use your slide decks and accompany you on client calls when you need an expert in the room. Our job is to reduce the burden of servicing clients while helping you grow your book of accounts,
Client collaborations: working directly with us
Whether you’re an ecommerce brand or multi-location service business, we work hand-in-hand with you to accelerate your business.
We take full ownership of the accounts we accept as clients. That means we don’t take on every opportunity that comes our way. We look for brands that have excellent reviews and a strong product. Although we love startups and entrepreneurs, companies that are discovering their product-market fit aren’t ideal for our service. Digital advertising can help expand a business exponentially, but when ad dollars are put behind a company that isn’t ready, it’s a surefire way to extinction. We want to see you succeed.
How much does SEM cost?
SEM programs generally start at $2,500 per month. This cost can be as low as $500 for self-managed, small accounts. If you’re serious about achieving success with paid advertising, we recommend you invest closer to our recommended starting point. This budget will allow you to test and learn—a key ingredient in a profitable long-term plan.
Digital advertising has two costs that you need to consider:
- Media fees – This is the amount you pay to a platform like Google, Bing or Meta
- Management fees – This is the cost of setting up and maintaining your accounts
As an advertiser, whether self-managed or not, you will need to pay both. While media fees are direct costs every business sees, if you’re self-managing your SEM program, management fees might be time and resources used by your internal team.
Audit only
Sometimes, you just want a second opinion on how your account is performing and whether there are any opportunities to extract. An account audit is the first step towards an optimized account.
Our SEM audits cover 92 checklist items and work through every aspect of your account. We leave no stone unturned to uncover every opportunity to maximize your results. We’ll provide you with a comprehensive report that details exactly what you need to do to improve your ROI.
For brands looking for an audit of their account, our service starts at $400. Please reach out for a quote, as the cost depends on the size and complexity of your account.
Managed services
For managed services where we plan, execute and manage your entire account, our monthly management fee starts at $500. Generally, as your media budget increases, so does the complexity of your account. Because of this, your management fees will also increase. However, as an account’s media budget gets larger, the percentage of your overall cost that goes to management fees is reduced. As your overall budget increases, more of your money will go toward your media budget.
Esteemed Clients
Client testimonials
Jordan is an exceptional digital marketing strategist. He is data-minded and his ability to extrapolate data into key insights is strong. He has helped me build content strategies that are customer-focused and geared to driving lead acquisition. I’d highly recommend Jordan and look forward to working with him on additional projects.
Kyle Gershbain, Vice President Content, Row 1 Marketing, Toronto, ON, Canada