Digital Marketing: SEM Practices, Simbound Game Analysis Report

This report delves into the realm of Search Engine Marketing (SEM), a crucial digital marketing strategy for enhancing brand visibility and driving traffic through search engines. It explores current industry practices, including the use of paid advertising, keyword targeting, and platforms like Google Ads and Bing. The report also analyzes the application of SEM within the Simbound digital marketing simulation game, highlighting how the game helps in understanding concepts like Pay-Per-Click (PPC), click-through rates, and conversion optimization. By examining the results of the Simbound simulation, the report illustrates the significance of campaign design, keyword selection, and budget allocation in achieving successful SEM outcomes. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of adapting strategies to different products and understanding the interplay of various metrics like clicks, impressions, and conversions to maximize the effectiveness of SEM campaigns.

DIGITAL MARKETING

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction......................................................................................................................................1
Survey of current Search Engine marketing practise which is being used by industry as a Digital
marketing tool..................................................................................................................................1
Discussion of Simbound helped in gaining understanding of Search Engine Marketing...............4
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

Introduction
Search engine optimization is a kind of digital marketing strategy that focuses upon
marketing or promotion of brands by increasing visibility of brands on search engine results
though paid advertising (Aswani and et. al., 2018). Search engine marketing strategy uses search
engine optimization technique though which higher search ranking can be achieved by brands in
search engine brands result pages. These ranking of brands can be enhanced with the help of pay
per click strategy as well. It is one of the most important digital marketing tool or strategy which
is used by most of the organizations today because it helps organizations to concert clicks into
potential customers that can further help organization increasing their overall profitability. It
helps the organization in targeting specific keywords that are used by users of search engine for
researching about a specific products and services (Nyagadza, 2020). These key words help
organizations to develop a proper and effective campaign so that thy can develop successful Sem
and enhance their overall sales and profitability. Today most of the industries are focusing upon
using search engine marketing for marketing of their brand name, products and services in order
to attract a greater number of customers. This report will be focusing upon discussing upon
current industry trend of using search engine optimization as a digital marketing tool or strategy
in a detailed manner. this report will further focus upon ways in which SEM strategy works, why
is it used what are its benefits. Other than this, in this report ways in which Search engine
marketing technique is used in Simbound digital marketing simulation game has also been
discussed in a proper and appropriate manner. in this report using results of this Simbound
simulation game, Search engine marketing strategy has been explained in detailed manner, ways
in which this game helped in understanding PPC, driving paid search results.
Survey of current Search Engine marketing practise which is being used by
industry as a Digital marketing tool
Digital marketing is most commonly focused strategy which is focused upon by
organizations (Clarke and et. al., 2018). Search engine marketing is one of the most effective
digital marketing tool or strategy that can help organizations to enhance or grow their business in
this increasingly competitive market place. It is an act of using paid strategies in order to
increase search visibility of business. Many organizations pay for advertisements so that their
brand or their website can appear on search Engine result page. Using this strategy organizations
select some keywords so that when users search for those key terms of search engine, results can
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show information of the brand, brand advertisement and a link that can direct them to their
website. Brands are charged only if user click on the advertisements. These paid advertisements
can appear on only search engine pages (Terrance, Shrivastava and Kumari, 2017). These paid
advertisements of search engine marketing are either located at the top of search results page or
at the bottom. These designations of paid ads are fixed so that user can get to know that those
advertisements are paid placements. These advertisements are bid as per the users of search
engine might enter when they are looking doe a particular product or a service because it
provides organizations or brands with an opportunity to advertise their brand in search results as
a result of search queries.
One of the main strengths of search engine marketing is that it provides an opportunity to
advertisers to put their ads in front of their motivated customers who will readily and willingly
make purchases and help brand to enhance their overall revenue and profitability. There are no
other advertisement mediums that can do this in much effective manner. it helps a company to
grow their business effectively and in much easier manner (Agarwal, Birajdarand Bolia, 2019). It
helps in increasing visibility of brands of search engine, bring improvement in search ranking,
and it can also help organizations to drive or increase more traffic on their website directly
through search. One of the most commonly used search engine marketing strategy is pay- per-
click which is most commonly used and known search engine marketing which is used by brands
to create awareness among users and direct users to their website. As the name suggest
organizations have to pay as per the click on advertisement.
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Figure 1 Example of search engine Marketing
Some of the most common platform or search engine which is used by organizations for
SEM are Google and Bing. Google Ads is one of the most commonly preferred SEM platforms
where billions of searches are performed in a day (Hassan and Dadwal, 2018). It is most
preferred search engine because this platform can directly help companies to get largest online
audience. On the other hand, Bing is another most preferred search engine for SEM. Bing claims
that in it approximately 3 million searches are done in a day that even Google can’t reach this is
because they serve advertisement of their partner sites as well like Yahoo, MSN, Bing Ads etc.
This search engines helps companies in connecting with their customers who do not specifically
use Google for any kind of search.
There are four main types of keywords that are selected by organizations for search
engine marketing. First type of category is broad match keywords that target variation of term
i.e. it focuses upon similar words or phrases: for example if a user search for virtual assistance,
inline assistance, virtual team etc. then it is related to target term (Wong, Collins and
Venkataraman, 2018). Second type of keywords are phrase match keywords in which any phase
that comes before or after main targeted keyword are shown. For example: find a virtual
assistant, hire a virtual assistant etc. Third type of keywords are exact match keywords in which
words that are similar to or close to target keywords are focused for example: virtual assistance,
virtual assistant etc. Last type of keyword is negative keywords that focuses upon excluding
keywords that organization do not want to focus upon.
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There are two main categories in which search engine marketing is done: organic search
and paid search. Organic search is a kind of search in which keywords are entered into search
engine like Google, Yahoo in which search results are displayed in main body of search results.
In this organizations focus upon enhancing their overall search rank so that their results are
shown on front page (Kelsey, 2017). Second type is paid search SEM in which in sponsored area
advertisements of organization on search engine results are displayed. Both the type of search
categories is used by organizations for generating new leads, selling products, building their own
brand, divert traffic from their competitors.
In order to use search engine marketing strategy in a proper and effective manner,
organizations should focus upon: brands should first of create their own search strategy so that
they can understand whether they want to focus upon organic searching or paid searching or
both. Then they should focus upon generating list of keywords so that list and traffic estimation
can be identified. Then organization should focus upon optimizing their website so that it is rich
with words they have chosen and content is organized in a best possible manner. After this
organization should focus upon generating inbound links will help companies to enhance their
overall ranking. Only after this organizations should focus upon implementing additional internet
campaign for improving search results though social media, creating RSS feeds, including blog
on own website etc. Lastly after all this, testing of paid search can be done (Zhang, Hill, and
Rothschild, 2018). It is important for organizations to understand ways in which they can use
search engine marketing technique for remain at the top rank in search engine, attract a greater
number of customers, enhance awareness about brands, their products and services in an accurate
and effective manner. This technique can help companies to concert their viewers into potential
customers.
Discussion of Simbound helped in gaining understanding of Search Engine
Marketing
Simbound is a digital marketing simulation game that helps a team in competing digital
marketing competition in order to gain highest score in different range of matrix for example on
return on adverting spend, impression, click though rate etc. It is a cloud- based simulation-
based program. Simbound has helped in monitoring search engine optimization progress of a
website as well as can also help in carrying out paid search campaign. Simbound has directly
helped in enhancing overall knowledge of e- Marketing operations especially Search Engine
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marketing. This simulation game as helped in understanding that there are various kinds of
Search Engine Marketing methods such as: click, impression, cost per click, click though rate,
conversion, average ad position and many more (Bhandariand Bansal, 2018). Simbound is one of
the best sources though which an individual can enhance their overall online marketing learning
experience and learn about different ways of digital marketing that can be opted by an
organization. It is an original and ethical marketing simulation game that has helped in learning
about search engine marketing in a much better ad appropriate manner. from this gain it was
identified that clicks, impression, CTR and conversion rate are four main aspects of SEM. Out of
which initially clicks are way more important than others. But after oud six it was identified that
all the four main aspects were equally important as all of them helped in converting clicks of
viewers into potential customers.
As it has already been known that in order to enhance results of search engine marketing
it is important for organizations to develop search engine marketing campaign in which all the
keywords are selected by them that will help them in enhancing overall results of their marketing
campaign. Simbound game operates in rounds and before each round campaign decision was
required to be used as input before deadline of each round. With the help of this game, it was
identified that campaign developed in Round 4 or 5 can be developed in less budget but
campaigns developed in round 6 has high budget. For example, as per results of this game four
campaigns of different products were developed in £600 whereas all the four campaigns were
different in different budget in approximately £1500. Default click per cost of each campaign
was different. This overall budget of all the campaign was completely dependent upon various
kinds of factors such as: default cost per click, number of clicks, impression, CTR rate,
conversion, average ad position and overall average quality score.
This game further helped in understanding that these search engine campaigns are not
effective for all the products. It is important to select proper keywords and then design
advertisements. Campaigns that were best working were designed for Tablet Samsung and
Tablet Surprise. Best working strategy for both of these campaigns were impression, clicks,
conversions, and CTR. Whereas worse designed and non- working campaigns were of Apple
Tablet, and Tablet Amazon. Both of them were lease working advertisements that got 0
conversion, 0 clicks, and 0 impression. This game helped in understanding that development of
effective and appropriate advertisement campaign for different products and companies was
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extremely important for brands success of SEM strategy only depends upon development of
successful campaign. For example as per the results of simulation game it was identified that
Tablet Samsung, was one of the most successful campaign that had maximum clicks,
impressions, CTR, and conversions. Other than Samsung, Tablet Surprise was another successful
campaign but other campaign like of Tablet Apple and Amazon were a failure and worse ad
campaigns that did not have a successful.
This simulation game also helped in identifying that whenever users search for a product
or service it is important for brands to catch keywords that they will be using for search (Comas-
Forgas, Sureda-Negre and Morey-López, 2020). This game helped in identifying that best
keywords that were used by customers for searching for tablets were Tablet Samsung, Samsung
Galaxy Tablet, Tablet Surprise, Tablet Amazon, and Cheap Android Tablet. Samsung tablet
campaign was a success ad campaign that helped in development of successful search engine
marketing strategy because they focused upon including broad match keywords like: Samsung
Tablets, amazon Tablet, Samsung galaxy tablets, tablet Surprise, and cheap android tablets. If
campaign is designed and developed in a proper and effective manner then it can directly help
brands to enhance their overall profitability as per compared to overall spending or budget. This
simulation game helped in understanding that if brands focus upon developing effective
campaign their cost can reduce and profit can increase. Like in in this Return On Advertising
Spend, (ROAS) of team was approximately 2.39 was good as compared to other teams. If
overall search engine marketing learning is compared then it has been observed that impression
in ads is more effective strategy, then number of clicks comes into picture. All the other
techniques were also effective but CTR rate remained the same. All the techniques helped in
increasing overall profitability in a proper and effective manner.
So, from the results of this overall simulation game it has been identified that brands
should focus upon developing effective campaigning strategy so that they can meet important
conditions for meeting overall budget of SEM and increase success chances of search engine
marketing (Xiang, Pan and Fesenmaier, 2016). With the help of Simbound, organizations can
also identify main and important keyworks that can be used or included by the brands within
their campaign. This dictionary of keywords is free of cost in Simbound which is extremely
useful to increase success chances of search engine Marketing. Simbound directly helps in
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driving paid search results to search engine landing pages and also helps in understanding pay
per click concept for Sem in a much better and appropriate manner.
Conclusion
From the above report it has been summarized that search engine marketing is one of the
most effective and commonly used digital marketing strategy which is used by most of industries
today as it helps them in reaching their targeted customers. This strategy helps organizations to
remain at the top of search engine results so that they can attract customers and direct them
towards their own website. This strategy also helps organizations to convert users of search
engine into potential customers of their products and services. It helps in providing an
opportunity to organizations so that they can put their advertisements in front of their motivated
customers who can willingly make purchases and enhance their revenue and profitability. From
the above report has also been analysed that simulation games like Simbound can helps in
understanding digital marketing in much more better manner. It has also helped in understanding
what in which correct usage of keyworks can help in developing an effective campaign for
ensuing success of SEM. There are various kinds of new technology that can be used by
organizations for much better digital marketing such as YouTube SEM is another one of the
most common and famous strategy which is being used by organizations for enhancing overall
brand awareness.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Agarwal, H., Birajdar, A. and Bolia, M., 2019. Search Engine Marketing Using Search Engine
Optimisation. Asian Journal For Convergence In Technology (AJCT).
Aswani, R., and et. al., 2018. Search engine marketing is not all gold: Insights from Twitter and
SEOClerks. International Journal of Information Management. 38(1). pp.107-116.
Bhandari, R.S. and Bansal, A., 2018. Impact of search engine optimization as a marketing
tool. Jindal Journal of Business Research. 7(1). pp.23-36.
Clarke, T.B., and et. al., 2018. Teaching search engine marketing through the google ad grants
program. Marketing education review. 28(2). pp.136-147.
Comas-Forgas, R., Sureda-Negre, J. and Morey-López, M., 2020. Spanish contract cheating
website marketing through search engine advertisements. Assessment & Evaluation in
Higher Education, pp.1-13.
Hassan, A. and Dadwal, S.S., 2018. Search Engine Marketing: An Outlining of
Conceptualization and Strategic Application. In Digital Marketing and Consumer
Engagement: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 843-858). IGI
Global.
Kelsey, T., 2017. Introduction to Search Engine Marketing and AdWords: A Guide for Absolute
Beginners. Apress.
Nyagadza, B., 2020. Search engine marketing and social media marketing predictive
trends. Journal of Digital Media & Policy.
Terrance, A.R., Shrivastava, S. and Kumari, A., 2017. Importance of Search Engine Marketing
in the Digital World. In ICITKM (pp. 155-158).
Wong, J., Collins, B. and Venkataraman, G., 2018, June. Large Scale Search Engine Marketing
(SEM) at Airbnb. In The 41st International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research &
Development in Information Retrieval (pp. 1357-1358).
Xiang, Z., Pan, B. and Fesenmaier, D.R., 2016. Benchmarking the visibility of websites in
Google: implications for search engine marketing of tourism destinations.
Zhang, Q., Hill, S. and Rothschild, D., 2018, April. Post Purchase Search Engine Marketing.
In Companion Proceedings of the The Web Conference 2018 (pp. 663-670).
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