What are the benefits and drawbacks of Search Marketing?

Search Marketing = Search Engine Optimisation (organic) + Search Engine Marketing (paid)

Benefits:

1.  Amplify branding efforts:

Search Marketing helps amplify your branding efforts on digital media (e.g. website, Facebook page). Your brand may not be enjoying maximum visibility when you are not buying  related keywords on Search Engines like your competitor does. It helps protect your brand against competitors who may likely bid on your brand terms to increase their own brand visibility.

2. Maintenance of quality site for consumers:

Search Engine Optimisation forces you to think from the perspective of your target audience and guide us throughout a specific path on our website. E.g. using relevant keywords for site and hence maintaining a quality site for consumers. In addition, the constantly changing algorithms and criteria by search engines forces us to continuously improve and maintain a quality site that provides relevant information for consumers.

3.  Targeted marketing

Marketing dollars can be spent efficiently through Search Engine Marketing as it can be targeted at audiences with a specific set of demographics and behaviour. It is then only shown to captive audience who are actively searching for goods and services that your brand offers. E.g. A pregnant woman is more likely to see your product's ad on Google results page compared to a 15 year-old teenage boy as they search for different categories of information that are of interest to them.

Drawbacks:

1.   Reduced brand value:

Not all consumers fully understand how Search Marketing works and tend to assume that it is for companies with big marketing budgets (i.e. that there is no consideration of website quality). This reduces brand value in the perspective of consumers who don’t trust paid advertising and you're likely to lose this group of customers if your brand is not turning up also as an organic result.

2.   The Internet remembers everything:

Search Engine Optimisation produces truly organic results that can be contributed by other sources. This means that consumers can also easily find other sources of information through organic results that might be detrimental to your brand (i.e. past history).

3.   Challenge for Small Start Ups

Assuming that every brand in a reasonably competitive industry is on the same starting line for Search Engine Optimisation big companies with big marketing budgets are more likely to dominate advertising spaces on search engines through search engine marketing compared to smaller entrepreneurs.