Dr. Sol Adoni
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The Pontifications of Dr. Sol Adoni
SEM Vs. SMM
Search Engine Marketing or Social Media Marketing
Founder of Page One an Internet Marketing Company
For almost 20 years Page One has specialized in SEM
This article is written mostly for the ‘local business owner’ but it applies to even National Companies.
The issue I will pontificate on is:
Is Search Engine Marketing or SEM better or worse than SMM Social Media Marketing.
First SEM is NEED based traffic, someone NEEDS something they go to basically 3 major search engines
Google 70% of SEM Traffic
Bing 20% of SEM Traffic
Yahoo 10% of SEM Traffic
Chew on this, if you are a NEED service company like auto repair or a lawyer, do you want your advertising to appear where people are looking for what you do or on social media where there is no way to steer your ads to people that NEED or WANT what you do.
Social Media is just a big cesspool of IMPULSE potential buyers in regards to potential clients and outside of maybe food businesses which is a daily NEED industry (EATING) such as Pizza or other types of restaurants, there is no way to find people that need SERVICE oriented business services in social media.
People just don’t SEARCH on those platforms when THEY NEED something to any large percentage. Sure you have some oddballs, they may search social media and see what their ‘friends’ are talking about in regards to whatever, but that is not how the vast majority of people search for info when they NEED something.
Now FOOD that is a daily NEED so yeah, social media and local restaurants is probably the only local businesses that should be on social media.
The fact is 20 years ago people went to the Yellow Pages for NEED items, today they GOOGLE IT, Google is now a damn VERB in this culture.
Now secondly, let me establish that SEM does not include SEO or Search Engine Optimization. Years ago I wrote an article about how Google KILLED Local Organic Search and my opinion is still the same, for small local companies SEO is a black hole and the reason is simple, the growth of mobile phones as I predicted years ago and first view on such devices is ALL PPC ADS today. Organic is irrelevant for 70% of traffic (the percentage of people using mobile devices today).
The fact is outside of a FEW MAJOR MARKETS there is not a plethora of people looking for anything in any major market and Google and other search engines LIE about that fact by creating FAKE INFO that is given to local companies that are simply too ignorant as to understanding that most traffic SE’s (Search Engines) show to local companies trying to do their own SEM or PPC (Pay Per Click) in PPC reports from a search giant such as Google, is showing over 90% of the data that they report as ‘PARTNER TRAFFIC’ which is garbage traffic exactly what SM (Social Media) traffic is.
Google HIDES that fact in very small print and since most local companies can’t afford a SEM guru like Page One, Google gets away with the biggest CON GAME going, having local businesses sign up to BUY GOOGLE and yet 90% of their budgets are spent on ‘Partners’.
Local Companies that try to do PPC by themselves end up buying 90% of their PPC ads from ‘Google Partners’ and that means ads show on major news and alternative media sites in their market that have traffic but the users are not NEED USERS which is people LOOKING for a service or product.
Over and over I meet local companies that say they are doing their own PPC and I laugh and say do you even know how to READ your data from Google. They say they do and I say you do not or you would be BEGGING ME TO HELP YOU. Want me to PROVE 90% of your money is going to ads NOT ON GOOGLE and the sheeple just refuse to believe they are being CONNED BY GOOGLE and yet time after time when I get their report and show them the BOTTOM LINES NUMBERS there is PARTNERS with over 90% of the spend. Over and over I see this FACT and every owner then asks me CAN I SUE GOOGLE FOR FRAUD. I say eventually a major class action will be brought against Google and the whole SCAM COMPANY will come crashing down.
When a local PPC account is setup probably with NO PARTNERS you see how tiny the real search data is, it’s not thousands of people looking for services in most markets, it’s usually not even 100 and often just low 100’s and yet all the local companies have reports that say 5000 people were looking at your ads today. Yeah on PARTNERS where they are shown to anyone.
As soon as you strip away the 90%+ crap Google is SELLING deceptively to business owners, you see how Google has a HARD TIME finding owners any real volume of traffic.
Yet the truth is, when a person goes to Google it is due to a NEED and that is the best type of potential user to visit any companies site and today the highest quality users on search engines are the folks that use Bing since Google results have become absolute CRAP so the more savvy and educated internet users are now using Bing for one reason GOOGLE SUCKS.
Now Google is KING of NEED based searches and they will get any company inferior clients who are the most uneducated people on the Net, that is who uses GOOGLE, the uneducated SHEEPLE.
The fact is 70% of SEM traffic or NEED TRAFFIC is still controlled by Google and the rest pretty much going to Bing and Yahoo with Bing having about 2 to 1 more users.
If your product is expensive and geared toward a higher earning person, then BING is IMO the best SEM buy going and it is CHEAPER than Google PPC by far.
When you buy Bing they bundle Yahoo with it usually if not always.
Now, while I am totally against BUYING SOCIAL MEDIA as far as SMM goes for local companies, the fact is, it is a powerful WORD OF MOUTH media. It’s great at NETWORKING so local companies should have the owner create a local business page and MAINTAIN IT. By having people that are already clients or new clients get a BENEFIT by liking your page or following you, you are developing a FREE NETWORK TOOL that is indeed very valuable today for FREE WORD OF MOUTH promotion.
If a locally popular person has lots of LOCAL FRIENDS and they like you or follow you then bang, your local network is greatly enhanced, the PROBLEM IS most people are misusing social media and their friends and almost all their followers are not known to them or even anywhere near where they live.
Girls with a pretty photo get swamped by ‘friends’ from all over the world and they sure get ‘followers’. So having them like you or follow you will not usually mean a flood of local people in that persons network. In fact, local businesses that have been organically growing a social media presence are the best resources for tons of LOCAL NETWORK ASSETS.
Sure a local business that is service oriented say a mechanic or criminal lawyer can BUY into local timelines now, but where is THE NEED, you are hitting people in your area who have NO NEED FOR YOUR SERVICE today and by the time they NEED what you do, they will have long forgotten you.
This is why local companies are in crazy bidding wars to get NEW CUSTOMERS from SEM not SMM. Many have tried to buy social media and it almost always fails.
Even most SEM fails due to many reasons, low response landing pages or slow servers and just bad design.
When most SEM can’t get a minor 5% response ratio, we rarely get less than 25% response and many industries we get 50% OR MORE.
So we know how to light up phones, the only problem is REAL GOOGLE LOOKERS are not in abundance for most terms.
