Print media advertising used to be the king when it came to marketing a business. Almost every company big or small had a listing in the yellow pages at the very least, if not a full blown marketing campaign involving newspapers, magazines and billboards. But these days companies are slashing their traditional advertising budgets and spending those dollars online. Why? Because search engine marketing is far more effective.

Benefits of SEM

Search engine marketing, otherwise known as SEM, has many benefits over traditional forms of advertising like printed media. More importantly, the companies that realize its potential and take action are the ones that will continue to be successful in the future while their competitor’s businesses fade into obscurity.

Here are a few reasons why you should be spending your advertising dollars online:

1. Online marketing like SEM is far cheaper than print advertising, where even a tiny, single run ad may cost hundreds or thousands of dollars depending on the publication.

2. You can reach a much wider audience by marketing your business online. This is especially true now that subscription rates are down across the board for printed media, forcing many publications out of business.

3. Studies have shown that Internet users in general are well educated and affluent, which means they are the perfect target for your product or service.

4. Unlike printed media campaigns, you can edit online content on the fly, without being charged ridiculous fees for revisions and without waiting days, weeks or even months for those changes to go live.

5. Newspapers get thrown away, and that means your ad does too. The content you publish for your business online, however, is permanent (so long as the website stays up), which means that your message can continue to attract potential customers even years after it was published.

6. Search engine marketing also allows you to reach the market much faster, especially when you utilize pay-per-click services like Google Adwords. In fact, you can have a new marketing campaign up and running in a matter of hours, compared to days, weeks or months for printed media. That means you can get instant feedback on the effectiveness of your campaign and quickly adapt to changes in the market.

7. SEM is also far more targeted than print media advertising, which take a "shotgun" approach. With print media, you’re paying to reach many people that have no interest whatsoever in your product or service, all while hoping you reach a handful that do. Meanwhile, SEM allows you to run highly targeted campaigns so that you’re only paying to reach pre-qualified prospects, which means higher conversion rates and less wasteful spending. The bottom line is you will see a much greater return on your advertising dollars with SEM.