In an ideal situation, your business would have an unlimited marketing budget to promote yourself. But we all know it doesn’t work like that.

I ghost wrote this thought leadership piece for a national retailer magazine to be useful to local business owners, explaining how online search (SEM) and display (banner) advertising work together to produce better marketing results.

The question you need to ask is, “How do I optimize my available marketing dollars to produce the best return on investment?”

Formula for online success

My mantra of online marketing success is this: With $5 to spend on marketing you should put $3 into search engine marketing and $2 into display advertising. These tactics will effectively drive your marketing messages in both text and graphical formats to smartphones and PCs.

The combination of search and display is the cornerstone of a successful integrated campaign, but you need to start with search. Search marketers average a 7:1 return on their marketing investment (McKinney 2012).

In general, purchasing specific local search terms is cheaper than launching right into buying display ads. The key is “local” since most general make and model terms have probably been purchased by the manufacturers. Terms like “luxury furniture” or “living room sofa” tend to be more expensive and broad, so start with more specific keyword phrases like “serta mattress Boulder,” “memory foam mattress” or “maytag oven Livonia.”

To make sure your store shows up in online searches that have purchase intent, bid on keywords based around your unique product, brand, and service lineup. With analytics, you can see what search terms your prospects are already using to find your competition and websites like yours. Leverage this information and be the smartest bidder for those specific and related long-tail search queries.

Display ads boost results 25%

After you’ve established a solid search campaign, next, layer on display ads. This is a tactic we've been using since 2009 to help clients beat their national and local competition online.

Our research at Netsertive shows that display boosts qualified clicks and foot traffic by more than 25% over just doing search alone.

Useful tactic (via RetailerNOW magazine):
Internet Search & Display Advertising