Adapting is Survival Skill #1

    Things change in business, new technology enters the market place and brings along a whole new dictionary of terms. Either you adapt to the new reality or your business and/or job go to the ones that do adapt. The new reality for auto dealerships is that the big three of Print, Radio and TV are fading fast as dominant means of advertising. Digital, online advertising is gaining ground at their expense. If you’re not asking “Are we spending enough in Internet advertising?” at each budget meeting then you are not adapting. Most dealers are doing the website, SEM, SEO, ILM combo but that is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s mobile, contextual, and behavioral along with numerous others that are available to the dealer looking to move up the sales chart.

 The key to gaining an understanding new technology is coming to grips with the terms or lingo it uses. Let’s start with the one central to most dealers’ online marketing, SEM and SEO.

SEM – Search Engine Marketing: This one can vary in meaning depending on the author. The strictest meaning is paying for links at the top and right hand side of results page. SEM can also be used to describe a wider array of services which include the use of graphic ads in search engines that allow them, such as Google, and SEO.

SEO - Search Engine Optimization: This can be a stand alone service or once again as part of overall SEM. It goes more toward the design of the website. SEO uses certain techniques to make sure your site is at the top of the search engine results page (SERP), just below the paid ads at the top. The ideal situation is to have your paid ad and your natural/organic listing both at or the top of the first page.

Natural/Organic Search Results: These are the non-paid search results. If you go to your favorite search engine, type in some keywords and hit search. The results, other than paid ads, are called either natural or organic search results.

Keyword Campaign: The core of Google, Yahoo and MSN’s ad models. The advertiser selects a group of keywords, then bids to be displayed when people search for those keywords. The payment method for this PPC.

PPC- Pay-Per-Click: Payment model where the advertiser only pays when someone clicks on their ad.

Geo-Targeting: Geo-targeting lets you target your ads to specific countries, states, cities and languages. When you create a new campaign, you select the regions and that campaign's ads will appear only to users who live in the areas.

Landing Page:  An active webpage where customers will 'land' when they click your ad.

These are just an extremely small sampling of the terms involved in online marketing. If they seem basic to you, then congratulations, you are on your way to success. If these terms are new to you and you are worried about your survival, then here is a great place start increasing your odds for survival.