We’re a 50 car per month Chevrolet point in North Carolina between two bigger markets.  In early 2007, we began losing confidence in/and pulling our traditional media campaigns (tv, tadio, newpaper etc).  The last straw would have been our ad agency recommending we make a TV commercial branding our website (which they built), and trying to drive wesbite hits to it.  This makes me laugh now!  We’ve used the same CRM since 2001, and multiple enhancements made it possible to better track Internet leads, advertising sources, and sales performance.  Stats showed we were selling internet customers and our growth opportunities were outside our market (towns population 12,000).

We’ve now developed our advertising strategy to only include internet advertising.  If 90% of customer shop online, why advertise anywhere else?  I’d admit we spent some internet dollars foolishly, but would expect this as our learning curve increases.  Shifts in traditional mindset were necessary to achieve our results.  One big one would be profit margin for used vehicle.  Consider them commodities, and your small losses on used are better than big profits.  The used car market is efficient with aid of internet - meaning buyers have just as much information as sellers.  To survive we must operate more efficiently than our competitors.   Or store has not laid off or cut employees pay.  In fact, we had a profitable 2008 and Q1 2009.  My outlook is confident this year as I know I can track my ad dollars and better allocate Internet spending to profitable vendors.

Technorati Tags: automotive online marketing, digital dealer, increased web visability

CarFolks.com Main Purpose

What is completely lost in this diatribe is the fact that networking is a great source of business, online or otherwise.

It leads to referrals, direct sales and staying in touch.  While I agree that people can go over board with networking online but what about the great networkers that sell cars to members at their church, the masons lodge or the golf course?  While these activities can take away from business time too they can be a huge marketing tool.

Businesses do not network online or otherwise.  People who work in them do.  Online is no different.  Our friends, old classmates and family are utilizing online networking sites to reconnect, stay in touch and to share memories.  Anyone who has been in auto sales for more than a month knows that people buy from people they like and staying in touch is the best way to insure repeat business.  Online has made that easier.

Nobody wants to connect with “Old School Dealer Group” they want to connect with the individuals who work there.  Everyone has a sphere of influence and by connecting with you online they are opening letting you into their circle where as they may be more hesitant to do so in real life.

• Will they want to follow you on twitter if the only thing you share is the deal of the day or hour?
• Do people want to really want to read your blog if it is nothing but a pitch?
• Would your brother 350 miles away be interested in your facebook wall if your message is to call for a great deal on a car?
• What would your grand ma say if all you did was try to get her to fill out a credit app because “Everybody Rides” from your myspace account?

Not only would it be counter productive to think that is the way to use networking sites it would be just as asinine as the Carfolks.com model.  If you took the time to make connections and become a part of the community and be a participant not just a marketing machine then these sites can work for you.

It is great to reconnect on facebook with an old high school buddy and to catch up on what has been going on in each others lives.  If  you really reconnected with that lost friend they would travel hundreds of mile to buy a car from you and to enjoy a dinner and a drink.  Two good things come from that interaction by not leading with the pitch.  Just by letting people know what you do.  (Personal Story)

The web today is about being connected with others and the applications that help bring everything together.  I get excited about finding applications that can help promote your business.  I was recently sent a press release by Wei at www.easyautosales.com that talks about how they developed an application where cars can be posted via facebook connect.

I see the application being a great tool if used properly in a networking environment.  Consumers can post a car they find and ask their friends for their opinion of it and a salesperson with a large network could feature a recent trade in and tell the cars story to their connections or use it to recommend cars to those that ask.

The line will have to be walked for dealership peronel using it as a marketing tool so not to appear spammy, there is already to much of that at every level in our industry.  Moderation is the key,but if your profile is strong enough you become the car expert in your circle and your friends will appreciate it.

People are going to Facebook not Carfolks.  With monthly visits topping 60 million and growing versus less than 1000 and falling where would you rather your people be? (I know a few blogs that get a lot more traffic than that)

Remember my motto: “Without Traffic Everything Fails”

Technorati Tags: automotive seo, automotive social networking, carfolks.com, facebook.com, myspace.com, online marketing

One of the biggest cool aide fueled concoctions to come along is dealer specific rating sites.  These sites provide an industry specific sounding board for consumers to vent frustrations and give praises of their sales and service experiences.  However they never give an accurate benchmark that consumers can rely on nor provide the marketing leverage they claim to deliver.

A few of these sites are www.dealerrater.com, www.carfolks.com and www.edmunds.com

Generally you have two extremes based on reviews given by consumers at these types of sites.  One is an exceptional number of positive experiences with more ratings than any other dealer in a specific market area or the only reviews the dealership have are negative.  Almost always these reviews are given anonymously or are crafted by dealers referring consumers to these locations to post reviews or even worse paying a marketing company to send consumers to these controlled environments.

Generally these sites steal traffic from the dealer from consumers who are already looking for them and used against dealers to validate their cost to encourage them, dealers, to pay for moderation and marketing perks.  They do this by stealing spots in the search engine results pages when consumers are searching for a dealer by name to deliver the consumer to a site where they see the dealerships ratings and encouraged to look at other dealers in their market area and be exposed, most of the time, to advertising not related to the dealer in question.

Much more reliable reviews can be found at sites like Yelp.com, Google Reviews, Yahoo Local and even Ripoffreport.com and are not subject by outside influences, as much, as auto industry specific review sites.  Also these industry neutral sites provide a platform for dealers and their employees to interact with consumers who have expressed a problem.  A dealer will have more credibility handling a problem in the open and having their consumers give freely of their opinion.

The reason dealers are suckered into the dealer review phenomenon is they are given a false sense of security in knowing that they have the ability to cut off a negative review before it is published.  Where as a true web savvy consumer realizes these review sites are more of a facade and a cash grab by their operators.

From www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com ……. And, since anything negative gets held back for 5 days and the store notified (the benefits of being certified!), there is plenty of time to respond to anything not so pretty before it shows up on the community site.  (Demonstrates why the reviews given are not reliable, a better way to handle it is let the negative review to stand and solve it in the open.  Much more transparency)

Consumers also do not give much weight to opinions given online, both negative and positive, published by unidentified people anywhere near the way they would if the consumer were willing to come forth with their face and name like could be done on a dealer owned testimonials page on the dealers site or blog.  Unless the negative reviews are overwhelming and demonstrate a common problem they really do not prevent consumers from engaging a dealership.  Where as unidentified individuals giving positive reviews do not give the consumer a way to identify with the consumer and look like a fabrication by the dealer or site operator and may do more harm than good as far as the individual dealer credibility.

Dealers, by encouraging consumers to review them at these sites, are giving away valuable web content that they could use to leverage on their own supporting properties thus not increasing search engine competition for their own name.  This is truly a waste of marketing budget and effort for the dealer.  However dealers are used to paying others to build up the authority of their sites as can be witnessed by cars.com and autotrader.com.

From Tactical Technique – If the primary goal is to rank well on page one, where is the logic in helping someone else’s website work towards that same goal?

When dealers have review sites poll their database of customers to solicit reviews they are also exposing their most important asset to compromise.  No amount of assurances by these companies can really guarantee that the dealers customer list is secure, nor does it show any consideration for the consumer.  Big companies have data breeches and dealerships are already prone to litigation by consumers, placing sensitive customer information in the hands of others to built their site with is like playing Russian Roulette.

While industry experts are stating that 81% of consumers use rating sites before buying a car from a dealership it would probably be safe to assume they are looking for ratings on the vehicles.  Dealer rating sites are not transparent enough for consumers to put any real faith in.

Consumers can see past the dealer rating sites, can the dealers?

Technorati Tags: car dealer ratings, carfolks.com, Consumer Reviews, dealerrater.com

Having listened to presentations, heard the education offered and heard the excuses from car dealership website vendors given to my clients and myself, it is time to bring some of the myths to the forefront.  Some of the things they do for dealer go against acceptable web practices. They are probably to wow the dealer and close a deal rather than concentrating on conversion and getting consumers to click deeper into the site.

Here are 10 Car Dealer Website Myths:

1. SEO Takes Ages and is a Waste of Money – Search engine optimization is a very quick process if you have both a platform and a technology provider who understands it.  SEO is the most cost effective way to get visitors to your website and provides a better demographic customer than pay per click.  Just because you do not own the platform your website is on does not make it a bad investment of money or time.  Not doing search engine optimization on a contracted platform would be like not servicing a leased car.  SEO delivers better value than Pay Per Click for car dealers.
2. Indexable inventory is important for SEO – Having individual cars indexed in a dealers website may provide small amounts of traffic but eventually it will frustrate shoppers and the search engines.  You, online shoppers and the search engines would be better served by having inventory search result pages indexed that way if the “long tail” they come in on is sold they are presented with other options.
3. Auto Played Audio “Welcome Messages” help increase conversion – Auto played audio on a dealers website will actually increase bounce rate, make your visitors leave.   Plus it is bad manners.  Do you like it when someone starts delivering a message to you that you have no desire to hear?  Give surfers the option to engage with the audio if you fee it is a must have.  Web vendors need to be advising clients to not use this if it is asked about, not using it as part of their presentation.  Sure, most dealers think it’s great to hear their own voice, but if visitors wanted to hear you, they’d turn on the radio.
4. SEM Certification means they are qualified – Being Adwords certified is a 90 day process that  require some testing done online, open book.  The 90 day part is relative to a spend amount of $1000 per month on average for three months.  It ain’t rocket science.  It is a badge of honor that Google gives to people to help them push Adwords spends.  It does not mean they have vast knowledge of the Google algorithm.
5. Breaking the back button will increase leads – Delivering surveys and pop-unders when a website visitor uses the back button or navigates to another page will increase bounce and is annoying.  Many times if they figure out how to leave the site you will never see them again as they search for a less frustrating experience.
6. Vendor analytics – Website traffic stats need to come from an independent third party, not the ones taking credit for the traffic.  A branded analytics program is just that.  They control the stats and it is subject to manipulation by them.  I have heard about a larger, well-known dealer website vendor doing just this and refusing to deliver server stats when requested.
7. Site changes requires tech support – It may require tech support from the vendor delivering the third party plugin or training on the car dealers website platform but it should not require tech support from the car dealer website vendor thus incurring more charges.  Simple things such as adding a landing page, url or site navigation should be easy for dealership personnel or consultants to do.  Requiring tech support to add third party analytics or make simple changes to meta information means that the technology the dealer website vendor is using is archaic.  Mention object based programming to them and if you get the dear in the head lights look, run, do not walk.
8. All these cool navigation options – One of the larger players in the automotive website niche uses “Mystery Meat Navigation” (also abbreviated MMN), a term coined and popularized by author, web designer, and usability analyst Vincent Flanders to describe user interfaces (especially in websites) in which it is inordinately difficult for users to discern the destinations of navigational hyperlinks — or, in severe cases, even to determine where the hyperlinks are. The typical form of MMN is represented by menus composed of unrevealing icons that are replaced with explicative text only when the mouse cursor hovers over them.”  You have seen this if you have looked at more than one dealer website.
9. Bigger is better – A huge organization with a huge marketing budget does not mean you are going to get better service it just means they can out-market the next guy with high powered presentations and claims.  What really matters more than anything is getting what you pay for.  Your website is not “set it and forget it” and you should not be either after the sale.
10. How conversions are defined – This does not just happen in the website vendor arena. It probably originated with classified vendors counting map views as “conversions”.  A conversion is how you define it, not how the website vendor does.  Using vendor supplied version metrics is part of their sales process and can actually be a shell game.  The only conversion that should be counted is a submitted lead, a direct phone call or a printed coupon brought into the dealership.  That is the only measure of effectiveness.  Map views, contact page views, inventory drill downs and specials page views are not actionable measurable conversions.  So when you hear high conversion ratio give them your definition of conversion and then determine how high it really is.

There are many website vendors in the car business today.  Some have been around for a long time and others are just getting started.  Most of the education provided in the industry by dealer website vendors is self serving to move their product.  One thing you have to ask though is what does this education really mean to you, the dealer or dealership employee.

Big web vendors should be able to provide you with endless case studies of how well their sites perform, not hand pick a few dealers who are doing well with their platform.  Where as a smaller vendor with just a handful of clients who have raving fans probably provides more value.  An automotive website provider with thousands of clients with only 5 or 6 success stories to share probably means they are not as successful as a vendor who has 20 clients with 18 happy campers.

Car Dealer Website Vendors

• Pure Dealer.com
• TK Carsites
• Dealer.com
• BZ Results
• ADP
• Cobalt
• AutoRevo
• Nexteppe

While this list is not all-inclusive of auto dealer website vendors and I did not intentionally alienate any vendor.  Please let us know of your platform if you are not listed in the comments below also please disagree with and add to the “Dealer Website Myth List”.

Technorati Tags: autorevo, bzresults, car dealer websites, cobalt, dealer web site, dealer.com, nexteppe, pure dealer.com, TK car sites

On the other side of the coin you could be using an old (insert website vendor name) site, not really work your leads that hard, rely on customers to secure their own financing and move more cars than those in the first example because you make it easy for people to find you and your staff online.

The key difference is you have traffic and understand that without traffic EVERYTHING fails.

Online traffic comes in many forms and using only one method to generate it is limiting,  like buying the back page of the phone book as your only advertising source. Just as you use many methods to deliver your message using antiquated methods of advertising, (print, radio, television, billboards, grocery store benches, you get the picture) you should explore all methods of generating online traffic.

It is not just about dealership website traffic, that is just one aspect of online traffic, even though in my opinion you should take care of home first and all online traffic generation sources should point back to your main website.

You must have a dealership website where all online roads end, even without all of the other necessities. A high dollar ILM/CRM, 200 tracking numbers, process training, email templates, phone scripts, online sales training, a huge properly priced inventory and the best converting website in the world are worthless without traffic.

There are many ways to generate online traffic for car dealerships:

Highest cost online traffic generation sources:

• Type in Traffic – Radio, television and print website mentions. Targeted customers are not using these methods to find cars on the web, however you can and should use these methods to brand your stores web address if you are still relying heavily on these mediums.
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM) / Pay Per Click (PPC) – While the cost of using this form of traffic generation is dropping in today’s economy it still is one of the most expensive ways to drive traffic to your stores website. While cost per click can be reduced with proper keyword research the offset to obtain these lower click cost is finding the proper long tails to target. You either have to find someone who will invest the time in your market to find these gems, cheap clicks, or use broad matching, expensive clicks, one offsets the other in the near term. Over the long term having a huge keyword base to work from with proper A/B testing, which generates more traffic and higher conversions at lower cost, improves ROI. Often used as a band aid for a poorly search engine optimized site or instant traffic for a fresh website.
• High Cost Used Car Classified Providers – They can and will provide more than one type of online traffic. Leads and phone calls directly from the source and referral traffic to your website. You may even experience walk in traffic from these sources, rarely properly tracked. Unless you have a large inventory or the right cars your ROI will probably be dismal.
• Purchased leads – While they do not normally generate traffic to your website without follow up they do provide instant online traffic. The leads are generated on another online property so they qualify as online traffic. ROI fluctuates from provider to provider and your process is critical in making the most of them.

referral traffic- Website traffic from other website via a link from one site to another.

Medium Cost Online Traffic Sources

Almost all of these traffic sources can be executed in house if you have the right people in place. For dealers to try to execute these strategies in house they need to be prepared.   A person who is paid only on sales, theirs or a departments, it places too many hats on their head and to hire someone who will perform these services properly from the store will require the dealer to write bigger checks as salary than most are comfortable with.  Where as having someone manage it for them is cheaper and more cost effective.

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – This is free traffic from the search engines if your site has intelligent design, regularly updated content and a proper linking strategy on site and off. A good SEO will continually study their art. With the search engines continually changing algorithms and ranking criteria it is an ongoing process. While winning some basic terms such as your store name and brand and market area is a good start it is just the beginning of a well optimized site.
• Dealer Micro Sites and Landing Pages – Having other properties to generate leads and referral traffic to your main website can effectively lead to huge online presence and make it impossible for online shoppers to not find you via the search engines. You can promote them just as you would a main online property and therein lie many points of debate on top of fair cost, value and diluted branding issues. They have huge value if executed properly.
• Intelligent Email Marketing – Reworking your database of leads and customers is a great traffic generation tool and does not really require outside vendors to execute, but does require software applications, usually leased, and can also open up legal issues if not properly executed. The legal aspects and bad publicity that a poor email campaign can generate is an area that is not well documented in the auto industry. I get spammed from vendors who sell these solutions to car dealers. Mass email marketing via rented lists is not intelligent email marketing if you do not understand the ramifications. Today I was approached from a vendor who offers these services and was interested in digging deeper into their product for my clients until they claimed 100% delivery rate. When you hear this from a vendor, compliance is not a concern and they are lying.
• Banner advertising buys – Almost all classified providers, local papers with websites, television stations, radio stations and local interest sites offer banner advertising at varying rates. The click through on banner advertising can vary from nil to around 5% depending on how targeted the traffic is. A banner on a car portal that caters to people looking for cars will be higher than people reading the obituary on your local papers website, which provides long term branding. You have to determine the real mission of the banner, the cost of the creative, market prices and the CPM (Cost Per 1,000 impressions) to make a judgment call on the value.

Free or extremely low cost online traffic sources

All of these items listed below can deliver traffic and SEO benefit to your main website.  Some require a lot of work to effectively use them and there are companies and individuals that can help you start leveraging them versus managing it in house.

• Directories – Some are very low cost and most are free. You have local directories, search engine directories, local search directories, yellow page directories, car dealer directories and general web directories.  Directory submissions to the major search engine directories is crucial.
• Free Classified Vendors – Many of your inventory solution providers post to various free classified sites like vast.com.  Many have applications that allow posting to places like craigslist.org and backpage.com but it is very time consuming.  I just started a service that gets car dealer inventory on craigslist and the traffic stats that have been seen so far exceed traffic from major classified vendors in leads and refferal traffic.
• Blogging – There are many free services that will allow you to set up a blog.  Blogger and WordPress are two.  You can set up a self hosted blog for less than $100 a year and you set your own terms of service.  A much better option than using free blogs for car dealers.  If any of your employees or vendors blog get them to link to you.
• User Generated Content – You can get traffic from hundreds of sites that allow you to create pages on them.  They also provide huge SEO benefit.  I love Squidoo.com
• Social Networking Sites – Does your dealership have a facebook group, do your sales people connect with customers on linkedin and plaxo, do you have a myspace page, have you checked out vox (blog and social network)?  You could also start your own dealership social network for your customers and dealership personel to interact, I have not seen a good example of this yet.
• Social Media – Using it to promote a dealership website may do more harm than good but they are great for landuring links to your main online marketing properties.  (A story for another day)  Subscribe to my blog to make sure you do not miss it.
• Forums – Visit and contribute to forums where your customers go.  Local forums, brand forums, enthusist forums, if you are daring create your own.  Also local forums may be good place to buy cheap banner advertising.  Make sure you make use of your forum signature with links to your website.
• Links from suppliers – Most OEM’s and inventory providers have portal sites that will link back to you but think beyond that.  Does your dent repair vendor, cleaning company, Chamber of Commerce, local BBB, Radio Station or anyone you do business have a website?  This will provide traffic and SEO benefit.
• More than one store – If you have more than one store you should have a group portal and create an intelligent linking scheme among all of the stores websites.
• Free or Cheap OEM Sites – Most OEMs give dealers free sites or very low cost sites for their dealers.  I have not found one yet that will not allow you to point your own domain to it.  For example if you are a Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep 5 Star Dealer you actually get four free sites from Chrysler that you can point domains to. Don’t ignore these free or low cost properties and brand them fully with custom top level domains, content and links back to your other site(s).

Having the tools in place for when the traffic arrives is noble.  Having the traffic then deciding which tools you need is better.  It is a matter of prioritizing your online marketing efforts then tweaking and adjusting to acheive maximum ROI.  The return on investment for a whiz bang website, high end crm and process are ZERO if you have no traffic

Paul Rushing
912-266-1629
www.ismintraining.com
“Believer in all things possible”

Contact Me: LinkedinFacebookTwitter

*if you wish to republish this posting you must contact me directly for terms and conditions. © Paul Rushing

Technorati Tags: car dealership traffic, dealership website traffic, online traffic

The automotive digital marketing space is now the wild west of the auto industry and represents the best opportunity for dealers, who have the ability to make informed decisions, to promote their dealerships and inventory online. Unfortunately for most dealers they rely on recommendations from individuals or companies that have a back end motive in recommending products and services to them. Like the scouting reports that General Custer had before “the Battle of Little Big Horn” and are being lead to the slaughter.

Carnival like atmospheres and gee whiz presentations with recommendations from people who have not changed their game plan in relation to digital marketing in several years is a recipe for disaster. In this space with enhanced consumer awareness and online trends changing at an alarming rate cookie cutter products with declarations of how well they did in 2005 should tell the dealer to be weary.

This problem is not only presented by consultants and agencies who are trying to carve out a space in a niche that they do not understand it is compounded by the fact vendors that operate in the digital space make recommendations that only serve them and not the dealer.

Today there are so many different flavors of cool aid that is being served up to decision makers it is easy for the dealer to become paralyzed and choose to do nothing. Another big mistake.

The list of terms, tools and disciplines in itself can be confusing to a lay person. Automotive digital marketing, online best practices, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, micro sites, landing pages, CRM, ILM, SEO, PPC, websites, process, conversion ratios, email templates, social media, social networking, dealer ratings, click to call, online chat, online classifieds, twitter, linkedin, plaxo, leads, online merchandising, pop ups, pop unders, text advertising, banner advertising, online directories, blogging, squidoo, consumer generated content, have you got lost yet?

Now you have vendors pitching these individual products or combinations of them in packages as the answer to the dealers online marketing effort. Not to mention the training that must be performed for the use and implementation and process development.

Here is the typical situation. A dealer attends a conference and hears buzz words such as social networking, web 2.0, blogging, seo and sem. Currently they have a website and are sending their inventory to classified sites such as cars.com and autotrader.com and realize that they are not getting the best return on their time and investment.

So they contact a SEO vendor and a SEM vendor to help deliver more traffic to their website and realize that their process is broke after examining their lead handling. In comes the process consultant that gets them signed up with a state of the art ILM and CRM system and buying every lead in a 200 mile radius of their store. However the dealer has set a budget for expanding her Internet presence and soon realizes that all the based are not covered so she starts exploring more options. The SEM vendor tells them how they are going to deliver traffic to the stores website through an intelligent PPC campaign and the traffic will be almost instant and the leads will pour in through the site and they don’t need to buy leads and give them more money to drive traffic that closes at a higher ratio.

Now the SEO vendor explains to her that SEM is not permanent traffic and gets is more expensive over the long haul and tells her that she can buy leads for half the price that most lead vendors charge by buying direct from the lead aggregators while they establish a permanent search engine presence.

Now the autotrader rep and cars.com rep are waiting in the showroom to discuss the cancellation letter that was sent in because the process consultant told her not to waste money there to free up more budget so she can access discount credit leads that have been sold to six dealers already in the last 90 days.

Finally after three weeks of this circle jerk she has decided that she has tried the Internet and it is not worth it because it is not working in her store. She can’t find the ball no matter how hard she searches for it.

All the time her inventory data feed has been down because the modem for her DMS is infected with cockroaches where the parts manager dropped a burrito behind it in the parts warehouse where he hides to take breaks during the day and every email from the store is going into a spam filter because they have a local mail server and the F&I manager and title clerk are sending porn and the email around that says microsoft is going to give them $286 for every time it is forwarded to their 800 person contact list putting all the email address in the to field and the person who did online sales two years ago has an autoresponder set up to send every person who has ever submitted a lead through the website a daily email to call him on his disconnected cell phone to get the best damned service and because they need a car today and it is time for them to step up.

And people wonder why dealers have such a hard time getting it.  It is not their process that is broke it all the processes going on around them inflicted by the vendors who ply their trade in the niche or people who are trying to figure out a way to stay in the car business in a consultave role when they do not even know how to set up an email client.

The good thing is for people who are serving the dealers with integrity and for the dealers that operate with integrity and own a franchise other that one of the big three there is hope.  Current market conditions are going to rid the industry of posers and carnies at all levels.  OEMs, Dealers, vendors, consultants and dealership employees who have been faking it for years.

Now is the time for the dealers to act to own their competitive markets and make rational choices.  This can be done through education or finding consultants that can guide them who do not have an interest in pushing a certain vendors products.

Transparency is a buzz word that vendors and consultants use in their pitches to dealers telling them they need to be transparent with their ionteractions with consumers now dealers need to hold them transparent as well.  If a consultant or vendor that is recomending other widgets for the dealer to use in their online marketing efforts will not provide full disclosure as to ther relationship with these other parties the best thing the dealer can do is tell them to play their shell game at down the road motors and seek education and non biased recomendations.

Now that you are ready to leave and go back about your day take a minute and leave a comment and let me know what you think.

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Technorati Tags: automotive internet sales, automotive vendors, online marketing

Benefits of a Car Dealer Blog

• Make it easier for potential customers to find you - Blogs properly optimized have almost instant search engine optimization.  Blogs can capture national traffic for brands and models you sell in addition to local traffic for competitive brands and market areas.
• Customer Testimonials - There is a lot of buzz about dealer review sites and sales person review sites in the automobile industry today.  The built in marketing that these sites offer may be negated by the fact that they people can visit your competition from these websites and deprive you of traffic when people are already looking for you.  A blog will allow you direct moderation of reviews and provide you with an online brag book that you control the content.  Video, pictures and audio of your satisfied customers can be added on the fly.
• Search engine reputation management – A blog on it’s own domain will at a minimum take up two entries in the search engine results pages for people looking for you buy name your stores name and push down entries from sites like www.ripoffreport.com or www.pissedconsumer.com
• Online promotion of your staff - Your staff can contribute and have their own page on your company blog.  That way when people are looking for them online will find them and who they work for.
• Free Branding on Local Events – Almost all local events will issue press releases.  These can be used in your blog to have online surfers looking for information about these event find it and deliver your branding message.  Whether you sponsor the event or not.
• Build a subscriber list - Many people will subscribe to a blog if it provides useful relevant information.  You can set up contest, polls and blog only promotions that will keep people coming back.
• Search engine optimization and traffic for your main site – You dealership blog will provide SEO benefit and referral traffic to you main site.
• Fresh content updates for your main site - Search engines love fresh content and you can add your blog’s rss feed to your site to keep the content fresh and keep the search engine spiders revisiting regularly.

How to start a dealership blog

Starting a blog is easy.  Over 175,000 are started a day according to www.technorati.com and there are many free and low cost ways to get started.  A word of caution do not host your company’s blog on a free hosting service such as www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com these platforms can be used, this blog uses wordpress, but not as the place where your blog lives.

WordPress blogging platform, in my opinion, offers the best CMS to use as it has a huge support network and is the easiest to adapt to offer different ways to present content.  You should set your blog on it’s own domain name and a subdomain of your main site should be avoided as well.  Blog hosting is cheap and can be bought for less than $50 per year.

Need Help Setting Up a Dealership Blog?

There is plenty of information online that will give you all of the information you need to set up your dealerships blog.  Or you can contact me and I can help get you going.  Give me a call at 912-266-1629.

Technorati Tags: blogs for car dealers, car dealership blog, setting up a dealership blog

I just thought I had a task before. Now I have a real rebuilding process to go through, the difference now is I have a defined budget and complete latitude to make all of the decisions on where the money is spent. My job is to produce ROI. All “paid” services were shut off when I arrived other than the crappy Reynold’s sites, which are not charged to my budget.

Here is what I have for Free:

• Two Reynolds Sites that will eventually be merged into a “Group” website by the end of this quarter. Already in place before I arrived. Will kick and scream to get a location only site back on it’s own domain after this takes place. Those cost will be charged to my budget then.
• Cobalt’s LMCC – For being a 5 Star Dealer. I personally don’t like it other than the price.
• Inventory inside of the 5 Star Site, new and used. It does generate some leads and the price is great.
• Hyundai is rolling out some new features which will be similar to the 5 Star deal it appears. I do not have full details yet, I was made aware of this late this afternoon and did not have time to look at it.

My budget for the next 30 days is only $3000.00 and here is how I am spending it:

• Secondary Finance Leads – $1050. I am not real fond of this but I need to breed some fast activity and this seems to be the best way right now. We have a strong F&I manager and we have some new secondary finance sources available, which I did not have before.
• Automotive classifieds with Cars.com – $900. If it were not for a co-op that we have in place I would not of done it.
• Regional Classifieds – $175 on a rollout package the price is right!!
• Vehix.com – $250 again a rollout. Comcast has a high penetration of the TV market here and they are advertising it like crazy. Being sandwiched between two major metros with Comcast as the main cable provider as well as my local market’s only provider it is another no brainer.

So in all I have spent $2375 in just three days in reworking this. While that does leave some room to take on another project or lead source chances are I will not utilize it unless it is the right opportunity, I may start a PPC campaign with a microsite or two.

Of course I have some blogs going that are delivering leads to affiliate programs and may change their direction in the near future. However since the returns on this are known it may benefit me better to leave those alone as they are not subsidized by my employer. This is a fine line I am walking I know but in the for what it is worth category those are mine and were not developed on their time or dime. Any benefit I receive from them is mine alone. This does not mean I will not create or outsource some user generated content in social networking/publishing platforms to benefit the store, but even then I will maintain control.

Technorati Tags: automotive, benefit, budget, Carl Gregory Chrysler, Cars, Cobalt's LMCC, Comcast, Free, Hyundai, Internet, Inventory, ISM My, leads, Now I, Ok I, PPC, Regional Classifieds, Reynold's, ROI All, Secondary Finance Leads, Sites, Star, Star Dealer, Star Site, TV, Two Reynolds Sites, Vehix, While I

I had turned off PPC campaigns, not worked sites such as craigslist and updating inventory comments to their fullest while optimizing a lead management system. This task was/is a huge task when the system that was in place had not been monitored or optimized in the past. I found over 1,000 leads sitting in our LMCC that had not been contacted ever! This is a huge waste of a resource that the dealership was not even aware that was available to them.

So for the last two week I have been working on work flows, email series and working customers. The short term benefits were low. The long term benefits will pay off in spades. Needless to say it generated some concern from management that the internet department was not doing its job as well as it could have been, because internet sales were slow for two weeks in the middle of the month and I was spending a lot of time on my machine.

After taking the time to explain the process and the net effect for future business it was like a light bulb went off with my boss. The comment I received was your “Gettin’ ready to get ready and you just keep getting ready”. Unfortunately I feel that this process is something that I must personally perform and the net short term effect is negative while the 60-90 day outcome will be highly positive.

After returning to the automotive industry after a nine year absence and taking a position as an ISM you forget about the the car mentality of what have you done for me today from management. As an online affiliate marketer I know that online projects can take up to 90 days to be fully optimized to generate maximum revenue. For example I am putting together properties for Christmas ’07 for maximum return during that period, when I am not working, the good thing is I have my spouse to help me with product research.

In retrospect I do think they are “Gettin’ It” at the dealership and the support has been there. That coupled with a strong close has generated a lot of support from upper management.

If you have a “product” that you think can help and feel that is the perfect answer for me based on this post please read the about tab. Any links dropped pitching a product in comments will be deleted.

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