Marketing Report: SEM, SEO, PPC, Social Media, and Business Strategies

This report delves into the realm of marketing, focusing on Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and Pay-per-Click (PPC) strategies within the context of social media. It highlights the importance of social media marketing for businesses of all sizes, emphasizing its role in reaching customers, building brand awareness, and driving sales. The report explores the potential of SEM and SEO in enhancing website traffic and visibility, contrasting them with PPC advertising. It provides real-world examples of how businesses like Ford, Pepsico, and Levi Strauss have successfully utilized social media for marketing campaigns. Furthermore, the report analyzes the relationship between SEO and PPC, illustrating how they can be used together to dominate search results. It also discusses reasons why some digital marketers are reluctant to use PPC, such as an overemphasis on cost per lead and keyword overload. The report concludes by emphasizing the necessity of social media marketing for business success and the challenges associated with PPC.

Running head: MARKETING
Marketing Management and Digital Communication
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................2
Question 1: SEM/ SEO....................................................................................................................2
Question 2: PPC/ SEO.....................................................................................................................4
Conclusion:......................................................................................................................................6
References:......................................................................................................................................7

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Introduction:
The essay provides an insight into two aspects, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Pay
per Click (PPC) with respect to marketing in social media. Social media marketing acts as
powerful means for business of all sizes in reaching the customers and prospects. Customers
have been found to interact with the brand through social media. Hence, it is vital for business to
directly speak to the audience via social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and
Instagram. Successful marketing on social media can bring in remarkable success to the business
through creation of dedicated brand advocates thereby driving sales and leads. Product or service
information found in the social media is believed to drive in 75 percent of the Americans. 33
percent of the consumer has been found to discover newer products, brands and services on the
social network. Close to 72 percent of the marketers have used social media for creating and
developing loyal fan while 92 percent of the marketers indicate that investment in the social
media results in immense exposure for their business.
Question 1: SEM/ SEO
Social media marketing is believed to have enormous potential and lead to brand
awareness and an increase in sales (Tuten & Solomon, 2017). However selling a service seems
to be difficult. Whenever, a product lacks tangibility then it becomes difficult in showcasing it
like product based business. It becomes hard to not only show off and talk regarding the value
that the customers can derive from the service. Businesses based on service needs to be creative
for planning out social media strategy for marketing in promoting the business. There are times
when certain level of encouragement is needed for getting creative sparks going.

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One of the branches of car maintenance shop of Midas located in Richmond can draw in
customers by posting online videos that would help in creating a buzz in the social media
(Hyder, 2016). Promoting a new service can both be exciting as well as nerve wracking where
the entire purpose revolves around selling the service to the prospective visible buyers. The
popularity of the social media makes it ideal for the new products for making an entry.
In this note, one can draw in the examples of Ford, Pepsico and Levis. As far as Ford is
concerned, eighteen months prior to its re-entry into the sub compact car market of US with the
Fiesta model, it undertook a massive marketing campaign. The key element of the campaign
involved providing social media influencers with European car model and asking them in sharing
the experience with different social channels. The videos in connection to Fiesta campaign was
able to generate close to 6.5 million views on the YouTube and the company received close to
50,000 request. When the product finally became available close to 10,000 cars were sold in the
first couple of days. PepsicCo on the other hand used the social networks for gathering the
customer insight via promotions that enabled the brand to learn from the customers and create
newer varieties of Mountain Dew. This helped the brand in selling over 36 million case. On the
other hand, Levi Strauss used social media for offering deals specific to the location targeting the
customers. The brand acted as an ideal example of word of mouth impact of social media when
at a particular instance, direct interaction with merely 400 clients led closer to 1600 people in
turning towards the company stores.
However, to draw in customers in one of its car maintenance shop at Richmond, Midas
must can launch a video across social media channel by describing the dangers of disregarding

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the auto maintenance and the cost it might incur. The video must also describe how the
maintenance shop will help the customers get their work done at a fair price through mention of
required service. Videos has been great means for capturing the customer attention that provides
useful, visual information for vehicle and service required (Gerloff, 2015). Posting video in
social media helps in creating bigger impact compared to the written content due to presence of
the visuals. Videos acts as mini advertisement that helps in explaining the service. Videos not
only keep the users aware but also excited about availing the service
Question 2: PPC/ SEO
Relationship between Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay per Click (PPC)
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to the process of enhancing the quantity and
quality of the website traffic through increasing visibility of either a web page or a website to the
users of the search engine (Patil et al. 2013). SEO leads to improvement of the unpaid results
thereby excluding the direct visitors or traffic along with purchase of the paid placement. Pay per
Click or PPC represents the advertisements that are visible on the top and the sides while
undertaking searches on Bing, Google and Yahoo. It is known as the pay-per-click since
companies which places them only pays for ads when they get clicked (Kritzinger & Weideman,
2013).
Improving the SEO of a website improves its chance of ranking on first page with
respect to specific keywords (Berman & Katona, 2013). Purchasing the PPC ads for a particular
keyword with a higher enough bid allows the ad in appearing close to top of a page whenever a
person initiates a search for that keyword. When both optimization of the website takes place
along with a purchase of PPC advertising then the brand is found to dominate search results and

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the person have a better chance of capturing the valuable click. Thus, reliance on PPC helps in
recovering the interest and clicks from the searches that has been missed (Nadaraja &
Yazdanifard, 2013). Even if the website does not have a ranking in first position, the PPC will
aid in drawing the traffic from users who has been looking for the particular product or service.
Thus,
A Real Situation Where Two Approaches Are Used In Business Facing Intense
Competition
The campaign carried out by Sky News brought the breaking news of ‘Queen Elizabeth
leaves hospital after a stomach bug’ into PPC space through targeting the users who primarily
searched for particular news updates. This automatically helped in generating the keywords that
seemed relevant to the specific news story that allowed in uploading the campaign to the search
engines. A central PPC budget initiated in place that allowed in reviewing the daily spend
provided a breaking of a new story. This strategy tapped into the possibility of breaking the news
for the generation of bigger search volumes and provided the keywords are immensely specific
this implies that the cost per click are priced competitively. The business witnessed a higher click
volume with close to over 100,000 clicks with the click per lead rated at 25 p. However, traffic
generate from campaign delivered close to over 400 percent inventory on the page impressions
compared to the average of the other PPC news ad campaigns.
Reasons Why Some Digital Marketers Are Reluctant To Use PPC Strategies
This is because maximum firms have a tough time in unlocking potential of the PPC
because of the mistakes. Some of the common mistakes includes (King, Abrahams & Ragsdale,
2015):

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 Being obsessed over cost per lead instead of profitability: Cost per lead represents a
measure for PPC and does not ensure profitability.
 Relying on PPC strategies results in keyword overload
 Higher bidding leads to higher cost
Conclusion:
On a concluding note, it can be said that social media marketing is need of the hour and
business must resort to it in order to derive maximum success. As far as SEO and PPC are
concerned, PPC helps in recovering the missed clicks for the search engine. However, marketers
are quite reluctant in using it due to the various challenges.

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References:
Berman, R., & Katona, Z. (2013). The role of search engine optimization in search
marketing. Marketing Science, 32(4), 644-651.
Gerloff, J. (2015). Erfolgreich auf YouTube: social-media-marketing mit online-videos. MITP-
Verlags GmbH & Co. KG.
Hyder, S. (2016). The zen of social media marketing: An easier way to build credibility, generate
buzz, and increase revenue. BenBella Books, Inc..
King, M. A., Abrahams, A. S., & Ragsdale, C. T. (2015). Ensemble learning methods for pay-
per-click campaign management. Expert Systems with Applications, 42(10), 4818-4829.
Kritzinger, W. T., & Weideman, M. (2013). Search engine optimization and pay-per-click
marketing strategies. Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic
Commerce, 23(3), 273-286.
Nadaraja, R., & Yazdanifard, R. (2013). Social media marketing: advantages and
disadvantages. Center of Southern New Hempshire University, 1-10.
Patil Swati, P., Pawar, B.V. and Patil Ajay, S., 2013. Search Engine Optimization: A
Study. Research Journal of Computer and Information Technology Sciences, 1(1), pp.10-
13.
Tuten, T. L., & Solomon, M. R. (2017). Social media marketing. Sage.

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