Search Engine Marketing: Crucial Part of Marketing Strategy

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is vital for any mobile food business, however it can frequently be challenging to get positive results. Cost is an important concern and with the struggles of traditional media, many food trucks have turned to the Internet to find new clients and better results. Online search engine marketing allows you to reach local customers where they spend a great deal of their time.

Why Search Engine Marketing Needs To Be Part Of Your Marketing Strategy

The internet can be a clustered place, and any food truck vendor knows how crucial it is for people to be able to find your website.

What Is Search Engine Marketing?

Search engine marketing (SEM) is the process of gaining traffic and visibility from search engines through both paid and unpaid efforts. Originally called search engine marketing (SEM) , the shorter phrase search engine marketing,  is now often used as a term that covers both SEO and SEM. Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines have changed the way food trucks, advertise their services and products.

When people are looking for a product or service, the majority of them use search engines. The reality is that if you don’t show up for a qualified search, most likely one of your competitors is. Do you really want them having a competitive advantage over you with your food truck being left behind? Don’t miss out.

Paid & Free Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Now that you’ve made the decision to use search engine marketing, you need to know how. The key is to create a customized marketing plan to entice users to click and visit your food truck’s website. The first area we’ll look at is paid search engine marketing (SEM) .

Ad networks such as DoubleClick provide an opportunity to efficiently display your web ads across well known sites. Google’s AdWords program allows you to advertise on Google search. These are the 3 ads that appear at the top of each Google search that is made.

Advantages Of Paid Search Engine Marketing:

• It is an auction based environment. It allows you to adjust your bid on particular keywords or publisher web sites.
• You can target your ads  by country, region, metro area, state and even down to a specific zip code.
• Campaigns can be setup rapidly and live within fifteen minutes.
• Testing of advertisements, keywords, custom landing pages.
• Analytics and tracking results help optimize ad campaigns more profitable.

Understanding how people search is important so you can adjust your ad copy messaging, calls to action and landing pages accordingly. The latest stats mention over 30 billion searches performed on Google globally. Every single month. Many of the above advantages are not available through other advertising channels, which in our opinion gives the edge to paid search options.

Free Online Search Marketing

Whenever you look at listings on a search engine’s results page, you will notice that not all are sponsored ads. This is where free search engine marketing strategy comes into play.

According to search engines complicated algorithm, results are determined by several factors that aim to supply you with quality web sites related to your search. The higher your site appears in a search, the more likely consumers will click on it. A sound search engine optimization strategy can yield great results, but bear in mind, this takes some time. Email Marketing new prospects and re-marketing to existing customers via e-mail can be one of your most successful online marketing efforts.

Social media marketing is definitely a method used by many food truck vendors. It is critical to decide what social network are appropriate marketing channels for your truck. Driving Return on investment through social network is challenging, but possible. Social media can develop a strong community of loyal clients that praise you from the digital mountain top. Social media also offers additional paid options.

Monitoring Your Results

Once you’ve installed search engine marketing into your marketing plan, it’s time to determine how it’s worked. There’s an entire industry involved in monitoring marketing results and providing vision to what visitors are doing when on your food truck website. Web analytics has many major players but the best by far is Google Analytics. Why? Because it’s free and offers a wide range of analytical tracking options.

Tracking data also means you, as a food truck owner, know exactly what you get in return of your advertising spend. You can track just clicks, simple form completions, advanced eCommerce sales or catering requests.

The Bottom Line

Get serious about getting the maximum exposure for your food truck. Don’t overlook the power of the search engines. Search marketing is the entire set of techniques and strategies used to generate more visitors from search engines to your food truck website. Make search engine marketing an integral component of your food truck’s overall marketing strategy, not an after-thought.

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