Qualities to Look for in a Search Engine Marketer at NADA

[megri]

Qualities to Look for in a Search Engine Marketer at NADA Written by Tom Knoop Monday, 01 February 2010 15:17 1 Comment

If you are looking for someone to help with your search engine marketing (SEM) at NADA, you will be bombarded by tons of people claiming to be the best. Maybe they are and maybe they aren’t, but how can you be sure if a search marketer is for real or just trying to get your elusive dollars? Here are some qualities to look for in a search marketer.

Prove it

After you are done listening to a search marketer’s pitch, the next two words out of your mouth need to be, “prove it.” A good search engine professional will have real life examples of how their services helped a specific dealership increase their business. This can be demonstrated by increased car sales, higher web traffic, or increased brand awareness in a specific area. Whatever the case, if a marketer cannot prove that his company has helped actual dealerships with their search engine marketing product, run away and don’t look back. Always ask for credentials and some user history to compare your situation with the examples they give. If it helped another dealer with a similar story to your own, then they might be able to help you.

Learn the lingo

The more you know about online advertising, the less likely it is that someone is going to pull a fast one on you. Some search guys will try to confuse or impress you by using a lot of SEM jargon, which really just makes the process of finding an effective SEM company more difficult than it needs to be. While I don’t expect there will be much shady marketing going on at NADA, it is still a good idea to know the basic gist of what the search marketers are talking about. Understand beforehand how an account is set up and what it takes to put an advertisement on the search engine results page. Take a few minutes to learn what a keyword is and how the bidding process works for pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. If you learn the basic fundamentals of search engine marketing, you will save yourself time and money later on.