Just today I received an email from a company that is competing with our upcoming social media and seo bootcamp prior to NADA and decided to do a little research.  Other than the email not being can spam compliant a few other points drew my attention in the bad pitch.

“How to use Twitter to find local people to add to your network.”

I found the persons twitter account whose name was on the spam email that was sent out.  They have 122 121 followers as of this post.

“The real ROI of social media and how to calculate it.”

How do you measure ROI on your phone line?  Your really can’t and I am not trying to start a tracking number debate, tracking numbers measure ROI of ad sources not the communication vessel.   Social media is a form of communication that has some quantifiable metrics that can be measured but other than traffic or direct inquiries can’t be measured on a ROI level.

“How to use LinkedIn to connect with the influencers in your market.”

91 Connections on Linkedin 4 Recomendations.  Of the thousands of car people on linkedin you would think a linked in pro would be connected with a more than 100 people?  Which also leads us to:

“How to get your customers to give you glowing testimonials that everybody in their OWN networks will see.”

Those 4 recommendations will surely sell out their workshop..

Just those four points in their pitch caused me really second guess what they could really deliver.

Due Diligence in Social Media Training

If a company or individual that you are considering hiring does not do the things well that they are going to teach you, how valuable is the training?  Sounds like a cash grab to me.

Before you consider hiring a company or trainer that has the “Magic Bullet” check out their cred, and it is real easy to do when it comes to social media.  Use Google to search for names and see how many entries there are in the search engines for their name and/or company name.

One thing that I have to remind my employees is everybody is watching us.  Now that I have brought my next generation, my son, into my dealer services company I remind him it’s not what we say we can do it is what we deliver.  Build your street cred and people will seek you out then you don’t have to rely on email spam to promote yourself.

Technorati Tags: dealer services, next generation, social media

Who put that there?

Using social media to promote your business and products you sell is the craze today.  Everybody is talking about it and a few are doing really well with it in the auto industry today.

I had to laugh when I saw the video and press release put out by Dealer.com announcing their version of “Share This” on dealer websites.  Not that it is a bad idea to give shoppers the opportunity to share a vehicle they are looking at with their friends on sites like Facebook, Myspace or Twitter, but some of the sites they included in this shiny new button do not make sense and could actually cause a dealers website and web presence more harm than good.

Hmm.. This may be ok

LinkedIn – Is a professional network where people come together to establish business relationships and to network in a business setting.   People on the ground at a store should use this site to establish connections with their customers and build an online brag book, but potential customers probably are not going to post links to the new Chevy Silverado they are considering buying to their professional network.

Delicious – Is a bookmarking site where people store urls for future reference and has been the target of spammers for quite sometime.  Links to cars will expire and if enough expired links from a domain name are discovered there the domain could fall victim to a silent ban, meaning that it will not show in the search results at delicious.

Digging Cars??

Digg is a news sharing site, but that is not the only type of content that goes “popular” there.  Digg is also habitually spammed.  Adding cars to digg.com is pure webspam and true users of digg.com would not do it.   It provides nothing relevant to the users of the site and could actually place a dealers website rankings in jeopardy.

Want see a dealers website banned from digg.com and possibly deindexed by google.com?

• Wait for some goofball ISM to digg all of their inventory because they thought that is how they should use those nifty new buttons on their website.
• Give them a bump and digg up some of their submissions so the “diggs” index in the search engines.
• Wait for the dealers inventory to turn so the links that were “dugg” have expired.  Thus reducing the quality of the index at digg.com and at google.com
• Report the domain and profile to digg.com via their contact form.
• Report the broken links and digg results to google.

Want to get a website providers name servers?

Wait til the phenomenon of 15 or 20 ISMs to digg all of their inventory with the shinny new buttons and use the reporting mechanisms above pointing out all of the spammers domains are on the same nameservers and reference the press release by the provider.

Link to list of urls that may have the new shiny button..

http://www.ismintraining.com/dealerswithbuttons.htm

This is not the first time that website providers have done things which could hurt their credibility or the credibility of their clients.  Izmocars got called out by Spinn.com for spam submissions.

Now dealer.com has made it easy for an overzealous dealership employee to destroy their and the dealer’s online credibility.  The new dealer.com buttons did not even have proper Q&A done on their fuctionality and could possibly fustrate a user who tried to use these buttons, so for now dealers may not have much to worry about and some of the locations in the shinny new button may be spared from spam in the near term.

Technorati Tags: automotive social media, dealer.com, izmocars

The topics discussed exceeded expectations and delved into a level of knowledge beyond that of basic seo offerings available to car dealers today.  While many website providers do offer basic services the discussions delved much deeper.

Some of the topics covered were:

• Changes in search that are becoming a reality such as universal search and the Google search wiki.
• Why tag and keyword stuffing are a waste of bandwidth and the negative implications to be expected from these practices.
• Website analytics and why independent third party site performance measurement trumps vendor provided tracking.
• Building search engine trust and the importance of outbound links and linking partners.
• Techniques for ranking for competitors names.
• Inbound linking strategies and internal linking strategies.
• The importance of updated content and the challenges dealers face.
• Pros and cons of website provider platforms.
• Blogging for car dealers and effective use to help build search engine relevance.
• Search engine saturation and how to eliminate third party lead providers from dealers “money term” searches.

Those in attendance were top level website providers, automotive marketing consultants, inventory distribution partners, micro site providers, analytic providers and search marketing providers and consultants.

This years conference was by invitation only and the next one is scheduled for September 18th-21st of this year in Las Vegas.  Make sure you subscribe to ISMinTraining.com to receive details on the next automotive seo conference and for tips and opinion of online automotive marketing.

Technorati Tags: auto industry events, automotive digital marketing, automotive seo

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

The time the sales manager spent with me was gratuitous but very discouraging as well.  It was almost like he was trying to dissuade me from being in the car business, nonetheless I survived, was put on the floor after being reminded continually to:

1. Meet and greet build rapport
2. Qualify – Find out about what they wanted to buy
3. Select a car
4. Walk around and test drive.
5. Get agreement to buy the car if the numbers were right.
6. Fill out a buyers order get the customer to agree in writing.
7. Get a manager and keep my mouth shut.

That system worked well for me.  My first month on the floor I sold 15 cars.   I started following up with my sold customers like I ws told to do and was off to the races.

Fast forward almost 20 years and my 20 year old son has started as a car sales person.  I asked the group over at ADM for new sales person advice everybody that responded gave some great tips.  Here are a few that stuck out to me.

Comment by Jim Vogel

To be a salesperson in the car business you must know a couple of things… It is your passion before you realize it is. Bell to bell takes on a new meaning. Success is when it is just you and the F&I guy left… and finally, THICK SKIN, SENSE OF HUMOR and SHORT-TERM MEMORY. Gotta have it!

I have literally taught hundreds this advice. Stay passionate. If you are a true “car guy”, you know what I am talking about. Good luck, my little brother in profit!

Comment by Ryan Lucia

1) focus on what you can control
2) know the flow of the store
3) set goals and write them down
4) work smarter not harder
5) sell yourself….tell people stories (people love stories) get personal with your people
6) listen….listen….listen….listen….to many sales people talk and never listen
7) Never be afraid to ask for the close (people want to be asked if they will buy)
if your funny be funny if your not don’t
9) don’t be afraid to ask for advice
10) have your dad build a website to help you generate leads

Comment by Phil Whitehead

Give your business card to everyone you meet – the guy making your sandwich at the sub shop, the lady behind the counter, etc. They may not be in the market but maybe they know someone who is. They certainly won’t come to your dealership and ask for you if they don’t know you sell cars!

Ask everyone you meet “What kind of car do you drive?” “Why did you pick that car?” “What do you like about it?” “What one thing would you change about it if you could?” You’ll learn a lot about what people do and don’t like about cars and why they decide to buy what they buy. When you ask these same qualifying questions on the lot, it will seem like a natural conversation and not a bunch of nosy questions.

Comment by Joe Webb

As a green pea in this market, I believe you must first
1) Learn the layout of the dealership like the back of your hand
2) Learn the product extremely well
3) Role play with managers and test drive as many vehicles as possible – thereby learning the sales process
4) Get on every single educational site possible – Edmunds, KBB, etc.

Bill Playford

….. I certainly remember my first days on the lot (and getting stuck with everyone’s leftovers), and I identify with all of the advice that’s been given so far. I’ve seen a lot of turnover in my day (after three years, I quit counting at 27, which is more than 300% turnover at the store I worked at!), so I feel compelled to share some advice. If one of my children were starting in the car business, here’s what I’d share with them:

1.) Spend time getting to know the dealer’s staff (Service Writers, Service Techs, Office Admins, Detailers, Porters, etc). Not only are they (usually) great people to know, but they will also make your life easier. The referrals are nice too!
2.) Show initiative. It doesn’t hurt to turn the lights on in the morning, and lock the door with the Dealer Principal on a Saturday.
3.) Don’t be afraid to call your old customers “out of the blue, just to chat.” Fanatically keep notes about what you learned about your customers during the selling process (Rick’s hot rod Nash, Jenny’s ballet classes, Mike’s youth ministry…). Follow-up is fun when you have a personal relationship with your clients.
4.) Make yourself irreplaceable. Find a niche that is not being filled, and make yourself the best at filling that niche. Whether it’s being a product guru, a walk-around pro, or an Internet selling machine, find an area of improvement, and make it your own.
5.) Don’t be afraid to say no to a client. Evaluate what the sale is worth, beyond the gross. (Are they ever going to refer friends, family, and/or coworkers to you? Will they ever buy another vehicle from you? Are they going to have their vehicles serviced at your store?) Constantly being demoralized by customers puts you on the fast track to a new job.
6.) Don’t give up. Although it’s difficult, don’t measure yourself by your paycheck: measure yourself by your peers. In a business of attrition, the longer you stick with it, the more successful you will be.

There were some other great responses and you can see them all here.  If you have anything you would like to add please do so in the comment there or here.

Technorati Tags: car salesman, new job selling cars

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

Dealers are being forced to compete not only with each other online but also lead generation sites, affiliate sites, Tier II Regional Marketing and Tier I OEM marketing.  This creates a virtual battle field for them to navigate especially when they are forced to make decisions about things they do not understand such as search engine optimization.  While in principal it is easy to understand even for the non tech savvy person, in about 30 minutes I could have someone that cannot check their email have a decent grasp of what it is.  It is the methods touted as gospel that makes the mine field tougher to navigate.

I have sat back and watched and laughed at things published by people in automotive marketing for the last two years and have rarely stepped up to the plate to cut through the BS unless I was personally involved but now that my livelihood is determined how my skill set is perceived it is time to help other consultants and dealers cut through the smoke.

Automotive Video Search Engine Optimization -

Is being touted as a marketing channel with used car photos bouncing around with a computerized voice over is garbage and spam and may even go as far as alienating a potential customer.  One industry guru even suggest optimizing video tags for competitive dealers names and calls this VSEO.  Video SEO is a waste of time and marketing dollars unless you are going to take the time to do professional videos and captivate your audience not bore the tears out of them.  A TV commercial uploaded to youtube.com is not what people going to that site want to see unless maybe it was really outstanding such as the Badger or Super Bowl Commercials.  A commercial about your midnight madness sale if it is even seen by a customer prior to the sale is a waste of time and effort in these environments unless you can find a way to drive some serious traffic to it.

What makes it attractive is it is almost instant and that makes it easy for snake oil salesmen to peddle.  Matt at Vinsolutions did a great post about why it is instant and it has nothing to do with the medium as much as it has to do with where it is published.  Any content on a high traffic, highly trusted site is going to have almost instant search engine optimization.  However we need to remember that sites like Youtube are social networks in of themselves so be prepared to be scolded if die hards see bouncing  .jpeg’s of your used car inventory as the only content you provide.

Google Base is an Automotive SEO Tool (HUH?)

Google base has ZERO Search Engine Optimization Benefit.  It is not a link from Google to your inventory item.  The only way to have google base listing show in the search engine results pages is for your site to be completely ecommerce enabled, meaning there is a way for people to buy it completely online with a shopping cart application and arrange shipping.  One consultant claims:

Google Base is an ideal SEO tool for selling cars, trucks and other vehicles. Cutting edge car dealers have started to use Google Base as part of their  Automotive SEO strategy.  Because of how Google Base can be setup,  an SEO consultant can use this system to create greater visibility for their car inventory on the Internet.

Any consultant who claims this really needs to be watched all the way around.  Google does not even index it’s own “base”.  (Googlebase Robot.txt file)  All results in their search parameters and index are an <iframe> of a Java Script and the links are google redirects which means none of it is picked up by the search engines.  A real SEO consultant knows this, ones selling smoke and mirrors know this too.

Having access to dealers web traffic statistics on a daily basis I have yet to see any referral traffic from Google Base.  Seeing how is is primarily a “doorway” page, thus not really meeting googles own guidelines, because listing are not displayed there it is just link to listings it really provides very little value unless you are completely ecommerce enabled, that does not mean lead submission and a credit app.

For the non tech savvy please trust me when I tell you that google base provides ZERO SEO benefit unless you have a full featured shopping cart and I do not think that I have heard of a dealer selling a car ever from googlebase since they stopped populating search results with the whole index.  You can contact me and I can explain it better if need be.  A saving grace is your cars will show up on Google Base not the shopping search if consumers go there and look, but why would they when there are a lot better sites to shop for cars on and they are not directed to them on search queries.

Links or Content for Automotive SEO? -  How about Both

I constantly debate with a good friend of mine, JD Rucker from TK Carsites, about the value of links and content.  It is no doubt that both are important.  Without links the search engines cannot find your content, unless you have a sitemap that pings and updates with new content, however with poor content you need more links.  With static content you need a ton of links.  With an .xml sitemap pinging the search engines with content updates you don’t need many links at all you just need a source of content.  Sounds like a double edged sword to me.

This is something we go ’round and ’round over.  Content is King, Traffic is Supreme and unless the links are from a trusted source they need to bring traffic.  However enough links will cause a brick to rise in the search engines.  Hiding content div tags that do not enhance the user experience is search engine manipulation not optimization.  I am of the opinion that sites would be deindexed if they were given a manual review.

Where is the Automotive SEO Trust Factor?

Establishing search engine trust is something I never hear or see discussed in automotive SEO forums or on blogs.  Sure some SEO consultants will pick up on what I am about to say and publish a case study and claim to be an authority on it.

You build search engine trust buy linking out to to other sites that are not your own.  This is the world wide web not the all roads lead to me to throw pop ups and auto played audio in your customers face.  I see in the very near future sites being penalized for not linking out to other sites, with the changes comming down the pipe.  If you have 500 links pointing to your site and have zero outbound links you are going to start looking pretty selfish in the eyes of the search engines and be penalized accordingly.

Directory Submissions have Little Value in Car Dealer SEO

Say what huh?  On of the most trusted sites on the web is the hand edited directory at www.dmoz.org another is www.dir.yahoo.com they both started from zero entries too.  Directory submissions can build hundreds of links in a short time and will help your site get out of the sandbox and start ranking instantly for some of your key terms money terms like the dealership name and brand and location.  The other more elusive terms are tougher to rank for such as model names and competitive market areas take a little more finesse than directory submissions.

Indexed inventory is good for dealer SEO

I did a post here a while back about indexed inventory and it looks like one of the bigger players changed how they handle phantom inventory.  Good thing they paid attention before all of their sites were thrown into the supplemental index.  Indexing inventory is a good thing if all of the items have accurate descriptions and the sold entries are handled properly.  If either one of those elements are missing you are better off to frame it in and build more site content.

Ok I have covered a lot of ground here and have other elements to cover in a later post.  Things like spamming social media, redundant content, social media optimization, linking strategies and blog search engine optimization I suggest you subscribe to my feed below or email updates up top.

I have also added two new features here.  One will help you with your own search engine optimization and the other will keep the troll comments off.

1. All comment links are now rel=”do_follow” which means if you comment you get a link to your site with SEO value.
2. Comments must use a real name and use the website field back to your business or a profile page.

If you value my content here please help support it give me a call and ask me about my craigslist service for car dealers or buy something from the sponsers.  912-266-1629

Paul Rushing
912-266-1629
www.ismintraining.com
SEGA Systems, LLC
“Without Traffic Everything Fails”

Chat: Google Talk: parushing Skype: parushing

Contact Me: LinkedinFacebookTwitter

Technorati Tags: automotive search engine optimization, automotive seo, car dealer linking strategies, car dealer seo

While many claim that indexed inventory brings in traffic on long tail searches and it does and will if the site is optimized properly.  Just having individual inventory items showing in the index really means nothing if search engine user cannot find it.  What matters more than anything is its actual position in the search engine results pages.  Having it indexed is one thing, where it shows on an actual consumer search query is another.

How can the long tail benefit in Automotive SEO?

I pulled traffic stats for one of my lead gen sites that has had traffic delivered on 31,222 keywords for 137,194 visitors via the search engines last month.

The top 10 keywords combined only delivered 1257 visitors around .9 of 1% of the traffic so it would be safe to say if I completely lost rankings for my top ten search terms the site would still perform well as far as search engine traffic goes.  The long tail is the biggest winner.

Here are the traffic stats for December 2008 for www.ismintraining.com with out the keywords obscured:

While search engine traffic accounts for less than 46% of the traffic here, which is more typical of a car dealers website, it still shows that the top search terms have less value than the combination of the aggregate of the long tail.  The reason the site here receives traffic on so many different terms is the type of targeted content specific to automotive SEO and other topics.

For a dealers site to pull in these long tail type searches it would require that the site have regularly updated content and not just be an online catalog of inventory.  Other types of content could be added beyond marketing pitches that others would link to freely with out sending out link request which would increase your sites overall value in the eyes of the search engines.  While at the same time your inventory can rise to the top in the search engines if the sites architecture is set up properly so every incoming link permeates throughout the site without bleeding page rank internally and redirecting traffic properly if the car is sold.

The days of having a static website maintain relevance in the search engines are fading fast unless you are targeting non competitive search engine terms, which most localized automotive search terms and limited time promotions are.  With properly optimized content dealers can pull in traffic from competitive markets and brands, however with the changes in the works for Google.com you better make sure you are delivering content that is highly relevant to to what the search engine users are looking for or you may never show up for that consumers search again.

The site here will be going through a redesign shortly to provide more value to the online automotive community with me providing more online marketing content and a new contributors providing content as it relates to people on the ground in the trenches.  If you would like to be a contributor or advertiser please contact me some big things are in store here.  Make sure you subscribe so you can stay upto date on Automotive SEO and other online automotive marketing tips.

Technorati Tags: automotive seo, long tail seo, search engine optimization

I recently opened a an account with Bank of America for my business banking and signed up for all of the free trials and discovered that I had payroll through them activated, it is not needed yet, and used the chat button to find out what I needed to do to cancel it.

Click on the images to see what outsourced customer chat can do for you.  If anything it will give your customers a good laugh.

Technorati Tags: online chat, outsourcing

Studies have shown that the heavy clickers of online display advertising fit into a certain demographic and if your dealerships objective it to drive this type of traffic to your offers it is a huge win.

From a study by Starcom USA - The study illustrates that heavy clickers represent just 6% of the online population yet account for 50% of all display ad clicks. While many online media companies use click-through rate as an ad negotiation currency, the study shows that heavy clickers are not representative of the general public. In fact, heavy clickers skew towards Internet users between the ages of 25-44 and households with an income under $40,000. Heavy clickers behave very differently online than the typical Internet user, and while they spend four times more time online than non-clickers, their spending does not proportionately reflect this very heavy Internet usage. Heavy clickers are also relatively more likely to visit auctions, gambling, and career services sites – a markedly different surfing pattern than non-clickers.

What this says is that 50% of your pay per click ad spend will attract a demographic who only account for 6% of people who use the internet who will probably need help with special financing. This also means that these clickers probably do not have a problem filling a lead form and are looking for online interaction. It does not necessarily mean they are the ideal customer for your dealership, unless you cater to this demographic.

All is not lost though as for other valid uses of paid ad placements. The study also shows paid display advertising can also deliver a branding message and that traffic should not be your only goal with search engine marketing

….Starcom data suggests no correlation between display ad clicks and brand metrics, and show no connection between measured attitude towards a brand and the number of times an ad for that brand was clicked. The research presentation suggests that when digital campaigns have a branding objective, optimizing for high click rates does not necessarily improve campaign performance.

If you are effectively trying to manage your brand online it has its place but should not be looked at as a primary traffic source. Unless of course you are trying to reach the heavy clicker demographic. Other studies have shown that pay per click advertising is nowhere as effective as organic search engine optimization as far as driving web traffic or lead volume. Typically SEO can be very low cost as compared to pay per click and be almost just as instant if you know or have someone who knows how to accomplish this and the traffic will continue to come even after the initial spend or time investment.

Here are some heat maps that show how much more traffic is delivered via search engine optimization compared to pay per click.

Images from Netmarketing101.info with proper attribution

Here are some take aways from the images and data they represent from Hubspot.

1) Organic results get 75%+ of the attention. People don’t click on the ads nearly as much as the organic results.

2) The first organic result gets over 25% of all clicks. Within the organic results, the first result gets the most clicks by far – more than double the second result.

3) Within the ads, the first ad also gets the most clicks. But, since you pay per click for the ads, you should care less about volume and more about if the traffic will actually convert and what your cost per lead and cost per sale will be.

4) There are a good number of clicks on all top 10 organic results. Even the last result gets about 3% of people to click on it – this is about the same rate as the second pay per click ad, and unlike the ad, its free!

What does this mean for car dealers?

If you are targeting the demographic mention before and wish to drive traffic from consumers who spend an exorbitant amount of time on the web, who will and knows how to do a ton of research online, pay per click and online display advertising is for you.

You will get better results, more traffic, from an aggressive search engine optimization campaign versus pay per click and reach a broader broader section of online users from all demographics.

Search engine marketing in most cases should be relied on as a tool for online branding and not as a top traffic generation source.Relevant well optimized pages or additional properties to reach consumers at different phases of the buying funnel can bring more value and be lower cost than pay per click. A mix of the two, search engine optimization and pay per click, can bring value, one to drive real traffic and the other to deliver a branding message or deliver offers targeted to the heavy clicker demo. This does not even take into account you can not deliver both message simultaneously using pay per click unless you have multiple properties and professional search marketing management or have someone on staff that really knows and understated search engine marketing.

Online marketing awareness must rise for car dealers if they are to be highly successful in their efforts. They also need to realize that marketing is not sales. Just like with other forms of marketing (print, radio and tv) it needs active hands on management and is not a set it and forget it process. Dealers have been lulled into a false perception of how Internet marketing is viewed, because online initiatives are easily tracked versus antiquated methods, and force people who manage these efforts to rely, most of the time, solely on Internet tracked sales or even worse be a one gal or guy show.

Are you really taking advantage of the web in the most efficient manner?

That is really only a question you can answer and what works for your dealership. Money today goes further online than it does offline and will deliver more buyers by far if you have an actively managed online marketing campaign in place. You cannot win online by just having a website and use misguided methods to drive traffic.

Vendors that offer Pay Per Click Management or Tools:

• Puredealer.com
• Dealer.com
• Reach Local
• TK Car Sites
• not listed leave a comment – More than one link and not using your real name gets your comment deleted

Technorati Tags: automotive SEM, pay per click, search engine marketing