What is SEA and how can it help your business grow?

Search Engine Advertising (SEA): is an effective way to quickly make your company visible on search engines such as Google. Where organic search results take time to build up, SEA ensures that your ads appear immediately at the top of the search pages. This means that you are visible to people who are actively looking for your product or service.

How does SEA work?

SEA is based on a bidding system. As soon as someone uses a search term that is relevant to your offer, your ad can be displayed. You only pay when your ad is actually clicked on, a model we know as Pay-Per-Click (PPC). This makes SEA a cost-conscious way of advertising, because you only pay for the traffic you attract to your website.

Why is SEA essential?   

In a digital world where competition for attention is increasing, it can take months before you are organically easy to find. SEA speeds up this process by placing you immediately at the top of the search results. This is especially crucial for companies that want to grow quickly and reach more customers.

SEA offers you the opportunity to:

• Gain immediate visibility: By appearing at the top of search results, you’ll get in front of potential customers when they’re most interested.
• Target your advertising: You can target your ads to specific keywords, regions, audiences, and time periods, making the most of your budget.
• Be flexible with budgets: You decide how much you spend, with the freedom to adjust your budget as you gain insights.
• Measure precise results: SEA provides detailed reports on how much traffic and conversions your ads generate, giving you a clear picture of the return on your investment.

The Most Popular Platforms for SEA Advertising

SEA (Search Engine Advertising) biedt diverse platformopties, elk met unieke voordelen. Afhankelijk van je doelgroep en doelstellingen kun je advertenties plaatsen op de volgende platforms:

Google Ads

Google is the largest search engine in the world, with a market share of over 90%. Through Google Ads, you can display ads to millions of daily users actively searching for products or services you offer. You have different ad options, such as text and image ads, which appear on Google’s search results pages and partner websites. Google Ads offers highly detailed targeting options based on keywords, location, demographics, and user behavior, ensuring you reach the right people at the right time.

Bing (Microsoft Ads)

Although Google dominates, Bing, managed by Microsoft, is still relevant, particularly in the United States and Europe, where it reaches a smaller but often valuable audience. Bing attracts an older, wealthier demographic, and the cost per click is usually lower than Google Ads, making it attractive for businesses looking to maximize their advertising budget. Microsoft Ads also provide access to Yahoo and AOL, extending your reach further.

YouTube Ads

As the second-largest search engine globally, with billions of daily video views, YouTube is a powerful advertising platform. Through YouTube Ads, you can utilize video ads that appear before, during, or alongside video content. This provides a visually engaging way to promote your brand or products, especially to an audience that responds well to video. YouTube Ads offer targeting options based on interests, behavior, and search history, allowing you to precisely define who sees your ads.

Shopping Ads

For e-commerce businesses, Google Shopping Ads are a game-changer. These ads display products directly in search results, complete with images, prices, and short descriptions. This is especially effective as customers can quickly see what’s available, leading to faster decisions and more purchases. Shopping Ads appear at the top of search results, often before other text ads, giving them extra visibility.

Display Network

The Google Display Network consists of millions of websites, apps, and Google products like YouTube and Gmail. Here, you can place visual ads that reach users as they browse the web. This network is ideal for increasing brand awareness, showcasing your products to a broader audience, and reaching people who may not yet be actively searching for your product. With advanced targeting options, you can focus your ads on specific interests, topics, or even users who have previously visited your website through retargeting.

Why choose SEA?  

SEA can be a game changer for businesses that want to grow quickly, attract new customers or increase brand awareness. Here are a few reasons why SEA can be a good choice:

• Quick visibility: Unlike SEO, which takes time to generate organic traffic, SEA places your ads right at the top of the search results. This is crucial for businesses that want to see results quickly, for example during a product launch or a temporary promotion . Thanks to the ability to target advertising, SEA campaigns can ensure that you reach a large number of potential customers quickly.
• Targeted campaigns: SEA offers extensive possibilities to specifically target your ads to the right audience. You can choose keywords that closely match what people type into search engines, but also target campaigns to specific geographic locations, ages, income levels and times of day . This means that your advertising budget is used efficiently to reach the people who are most interested in your offer.
• Full control over budget and results: One of the biggest advantages of SEA is the flexibility in budget management. You decide how much you want to spend per click and can adjust the daily or monthly budget to your goals. In addition, you get detailed reports on the performance of your campaigns, giving you direct insight into your ROI (Return on Investment). This transparency allows you to continuously optimize campaigns to achieve maximum results.
• Brand awareness and retargeting: SEA is not only effective for direct sales, but also for building brand awareness. By showing your ads to a wide audience, people get to know your brand, even if they don’t make a purchase right away. In addition, retargeting allows you to show ads to people who have previously visited your website but have not yet taken action. This significantly increases the chance of conversions because you reconnect with potential customers who have already shown interest.

Why a SEA Specialist?

At Digital Increase, we understand better than anyone how important it is to have an effective Search Engine Advertising (SEA) strategy. Below, we explain why hiring a SEA specialist can be a valuable investment for your company:

• In-depth expertise: An SEA expert brings years of experience and extensive knowledge from various marketing environments. This enables them to set up and manage effective SEA campaigns with the most suitable strategies and techniques.
• High-level optimization: Professional SEA specialists continuously refine keywords, ad texts and bidding strategies using advanced analysis tools. This ensures more efficient use of your budget and better results for your campaigns.
• Time and cost savings: Outsourcing SEA campaigns to a specialist saves time and prevents waste. By outsourcing management, you can focus on other important business aspects, while the expert ensures optimal budget management and improved results.
• Access to Advanced Tools and Technology: SEA experts use advanced data analytics and competitive analysis tools. These technologies provide valuable insights that help you improve your campaigns and stay ahead of your competitors.
  Strategic Advice and Reporting: Specialists provide strategic advice and detailed reporting that helps you understand the performance of your campaigns and align them with your business goals.
• Experience and Recognition: An experienced SEA specialist often has a proven track record and recognition in the industry. This underlines their capabilities and strengthens their ability to optimize your SEA campaigns and achieve success.

As an extension of your organization, we ensure online growth

Now that you have a good understanding of what SEA entails, how it can be used, and why it is essential, we want to emphasize that Digital Increase is ready to support you. SEA can be complex and time-consuming; it is important to have a strategy specifically tailored to your business needs and goals.

Whether you are looking to develop an effective SEA strategy, optimize existing campaigns, or gain deep insights to improve your campaigns, we offer a customized plan that fits your situation perfectly. At Digital Increase, you not only gain access to extensive knowledge and advanced tools but also strategic advice to ensure that your online goals are achieved.

Since our inception, Digital Increase has focused on SEA. The roots of our specialists lie both in-house and at media agencies, allowing us to create the right approach for any challenge. Our founder, Mark Meijs, now has nearly 10 years of experience and has spoken at major Search & Shopping events such as Emerce Live, Search Marketing Expo (SMX), and HeroConf. When you work with Digital Increase, we offer:

Independent audits

Interim/ Freelance

We can also help with Freelance or Interim SEA specialists. Do you need temporary reinforcement for your online department due to, for example, maternity leave or a departed employee? We will find the right match with your company and effortlessly take over the work for you for a few months.

Independent Audits

Do you have doubts about whether every euro is being spent as efficiently as possible? Do you think it could be better? Then let our independent experts perform an account audit. Based on 15 different topics and more than 200 questions, we will examine all your campaigns. After this, you will know for sure whether and where there is still profit to be made.