Still unwilling to take search engine marketing (SEM) seriously? Think it may be an option but only when you've got more time on your hands to look into it? Read on and you'll be convinced to make more time for it, as soon as possible.

1. Presold Customers

When someone searches on the Internet they search because they are already interested in something. All a search engine listing has to do is rank in the top 20 and then explain what your site/page contains. SEM is about making yourself easy to find for the products and services you sell - the audience is already looking for you, not the other way round. But as direct marketers would argue, copy sells - so your descriptions need to be good enough to bring on the clicks.

2. Size Doesn't Matter

You may be a small corner shop with a web site that sells blue widgets and your competition could be the huge 'Widgets R Us'. You don't stand a chance competing on TV, billboards, print, etc because of the cost. But you CAN compete and win on search engines. SEM is cost effective, with many companies offering SEM services for a wide selection of budgets. Search engines rank pages on their relevance, not on the size of last year's net profit or number of employees.

3. Measurable

From your web site statistics you can find out which search engine has provided the most visitors, the fewest visitors, what search terms were used, what country they visited from and a whole lot more. This provides valuable feedback on the performance of the SEM campaign and allows you to change approaches as necessary. For example, MSN.com may not be worth spending as much time on as FAST, 'uk blue widgets' may be your most successful phrase so you should set up a separate landing page on 'uk blue widgets' - there's no offline marketing medium that gives you this kind of precise data.

4. Multiple Product Promotion

If you're selling multiple products and services, putting together an offline promotional campaign for each one individually can be complex and expensive. Online, however, the breadth and depth of your website is not a limiting factor. If each product or service has its own page (which is highly recommended) then a comprehensive SEM campaign can actively promote every single item, at the same time.

5. People use search engines

60% of the UK population use the Internet (Jupiter MMXI August 2001). The web is increasingly becoming the search tool of choice - before the Yellow Pages, before looking in an encyclopedia, before going to the library. If people can't find you on the web, then you can bet that they'll find one of your competitors instead.

** The eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed a change of terminology from SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) to SEM (Search Engine Marketing). We think it's a better term, because it incorporates other activities such as PPC engines, directories, link building, Google AdWords, etc. SEM isn't just about changing a few tags on a page and submitting.