Are you most impressed by how your last shopping expedition went? You were probably impressed at how you stuck strictly to the list of items you needed to buy, or how you probably ended up spending way less than the sum you planned on parting ways with. Having a good shopping spree is gold but a shopping expedition would probably not happen at all or be enjoyable if you didn’t draw up that list of items. In the automotive dealership there is no other way to go shopping for automobiles or automobile parts than doing thorough research about the dealership, automobiles, staff, location of dealership, buying a car these days starts way before a visit to the dealership ensues.

Two of the most popular means prospective buyers employ when researching an automobile are done by seeing commercial videos or the conventional search via a search engine. Being able to draw a thorough versus between these two methods would require an inept knowledge of both concepts and their various processes.

SEARCH

Searching the search engines for a topic of interest doesn’t change across industries; it remains the same definition with similar processes. Here, a prospective buyer inputs keywords of interest about the automotive part or automobile in the search engine. A ton of blogs and web contents will pop up with a mountain of information on your interests; the automobile model, parts, and all of that. This is super reliable since the internet has grown faster than everything on earth even crime, meaning that the internet is a large archive, and with the world gearing towards the internet you will probably find whatever you search for. So if you are doing your research before hitting the fancy floors of an automobile showroom, doing a conventional search is one way to go.

VIDEO

A large percentage of people would rather see a video hence there is more likely to be more persons being converted by video commercials than any other means. Except for people who have a thing for arts if you ask the layman to choose between reading a book of say “Game of Thrones” or see the video of it we all know what majority will tend towards. Automobile video commercials are an absolute awesome means of doing research and finding automobiles before hitting the fancy dealership showroom. The videos will tend to be more direct than not, because they were created to explain the qualities of certain automobiles they represent.

In a comparison, the “search” and “video” options of doing research are very far apart but they aim at the same objective, which is to provide the prospective buyer with just enough information to build their confidence when they storm in an automobile showroom. The videos give the awesome benefit of getting more accurate facts about the automobile they represent, even more than a webpage from the searches. However, a search via a search engine will provide a ton of options to work with even around your main interests, and you should know the saying “diversity is the spice of life” (if you don’t credit it to me). Search engines get more awesome with engines like Google, LookSmart, etc. you can do a lot of precise researches and go on a happy automobile shopping spree.   

Majority of online advertising are built around pay per click ads. As the phrase implies, you pay for the ads on a per click basis. How much you pay for each click will depend on the competitiveness of the keywords in the ad. If there are more advertisers targeting the same keywords, per click cost will also be higher. It works like a bidding process. In some cases, however, the costs of ad clicks are fixed. Creating your own PPC ads is a great way to market your products, services, websites and blogs online. The great thing about it is that it's not too expensive. In fact, you can run a PPC campaign with just a few dollars, because of its tendency to run on autopilot mode after initial installation.

It is hard to draw a battle line between an automated PPC campaign and one driven manually by human. In the preliminary stages of the PPC campaign human efforts will definitely be required to:

1.    List down your goals. What are you planning to accomplish? Where do you want to go? It's very important that before you start your PPC campaign, you should make clear what your goals are. Is it more web traffic? Is it more profits? More sales? There are different types of pay per click ads, each of which has pros and cons depending on your goals. So think of what you want to achieve before you begin setting up your ads.

2.   Learn to do keyword research. This is the most important aspect of the ad creation process. The success of your ad campaign is hugely dependent from this step. If you get your keywords wrong, you will surely lose money. If you get them right, you have great chances in achieving your goals. There are several keyword tools online that you can use to find the appropriate keywords for your ads.

3.   Identify who your target market or audiences are. Put yourself in the shoes of your target market. If you are looking at your ad, will you click on it? So learn everything you can about your audience then create ads that should be appealing to them.

4.   Take into consideration your advertising budget. PPC ads have varying price points. For instance, image-based banner ads are usually more costly than simple text link ads.

5.   Test, track and measure your pay per click advertising campaigns. There is no other way to determine if you are getting positive results from your campaigns other than to track and measure your progress.

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After the preliminary stages the PPC campaign can take care of the following on autopilot mode:

1.    Ad Copy - Who is writing the ad titles and descriptions? Your agency should be looking at competitors' messaging, tailoring each ad group to the stage in the buying cycle, and constantly test new creative.

2.   Budget and Bidding Strategy - Are the strategies articulated and flexible? Budgets should be flexible enough to move between search engines/content networks/campaigns as necessary. Bid strategy for each campaign should be clear - maximum clicks, highest click-through rate, most conversions, highest cost per conversion, highest ROI, etc.

3.   Day to Day Management - What measures of performance will trigger day to day changes? Levers such as match types, dayparting, geo-targeting, accelerated delivery and more, should be evaluated on an ongoing basis. Keywords and negative keywords should continuously be added or paused based on their performance.

4.   Content Network - Is the content network available and who makes the creative decisions? The copy in content ads should be different - to grab the attention of someone reading an article rather than actively searching for a product.

5.   Landing Pages - Will the ads point to landing pages on the main site or custom landing pages? Ideally the landing pages should be targeted to each individual category of keywords and should be designed with usability best practices in mind.

6.   Lead Generation - If a company has a lead generation site, how will success be measured? In addition to online lead forms filled out, phone call leads should be tracked, recorded and evaluated for internal training purposes. PPC data should be synced with CRM data to calculate a true ROI.

7.   SEO Synergy - Will there be synergy with search engine optimization efforts? Keywords should be strategically targeted between paid and organic so the site dominates search engine results. Web analytics data from organic searches should be constantly reviewed to find keywords to be added to PPC campaigns.

8.   Account Structure - What level of service will be offered? Each account should have a dedicated account manager who is accessible and responsible for paid search. In this evolving market, on-going training should be a top priority.

9.   Reporting – An automated PPC campaign has the tendency to provide reports and feedbacks with actionable options to its user.

Creating and managing pay per click ads can be rather intimidating at first but once you get more experience with it, it gets easier and simpler. Sometimes, you can even fully automate the process. It's a very effective strategy in getting the word out about your business. Your business will be exposed to a wider audience, and a targeted audience at that. Provided, of course, that you used the appropriate keywords when you created your PPC ads. PPC advertising also has its risks. If you do it the wrong way, you might end up losing money instead of gaining it. So invest time in researching and setting up your ads to minimize the risks. Automated pay-per-click services certainly have their place in an expanding SEM market, and they may be the only option for small companies. But we believe that the human touch is crucial to manage PPC properly and maximize results, so no one wins really, they both win.

For those who don’t know how to work the search engines looking for any topic, service, or product could often be like searching for a needle in the bottom of the ocean. The likes of Google, Ask and Bing have been kind enough to make searching for numerous topics within the internet. How would you like a little technology that lets you perform a more meticulous search, like using a magnet to find a pin in a haystack? I’m guessing you’d very much like that. Then without further Ado I present to you Look Smart a search engine like none other and the largest you will find besides the major engines.

Look Smart was launched in 1995, then earned Initial Public offering (IPO) in 1999, since then Look Smart has powered Microsoft and Ask.com and by 2006 earned the largest independent search Ad network and at the moment Look Smart is the only tier 1.5” network. Look Smart is proving to be heads over the other search engines with the platinum services they have on offer including:

·      DEDICATED ACCOUNT MANAGER

·      FULL SERVICE CAMPAIGN OPTIMIZATION MANAGEMENT TEAM

·      DAILY CAMPAIGN OPTIMIZATION

·      DAILY CAMPAIGN REPORTING WITH DEEP INSIGHT TO PERFORMANCE DATA

·      LOOK SMART TEAM AVAILABLE 24/7

One of the goodies you get from search engines is the traffic it is able to summon to the engine which will largely benefit you if your topic or web content ranks on the engine. Look Smart drives new customers for the largest brands and their agencies with incremental search traffic to level the playing field for everyone trying to get some piece of traffic. Look Smart allows advertisers optimize search traffic resources the sort of diversity to live for.

Look Smart has “smart” in its name because of its tendency to perform smart actions like adjusting bids by traffic source focused only on search advertisement, device type targeting, bid adjust by keyword, CPC pricing, text creative and real-time reporting and analytics. These traits set Look Smart apart from other search engines.

Look Smart presents any user with a dedicated account manager who will do a thorough analysis of your current campaigns and identify the ones with the highest odds for success on the Look Smart Network. The dedication extends to the team of professionals who are eager to offer you full campaign optimization management to make sure success is not an option but a compulsory end result; they also take on the responsibility of your daily campaign optimization. This doesn’t come without a feedback section because that is how you measure your success, so there is the daily campaign reporting with deep insight to performance data. The Look Smart team is good enough to look out for with a 24/7 availability.

Here’s all you have to know about Look Smart, now you should be smart enough to make your choice. Every worry about traffic will be taken care of, and the deep archives of information is just glorious. Visit looksmart.com to get started with us.