Online Marketing For Car Dealers

I Love Technology and so Should Car Dealers

Brad Whitehead — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 23:46:00 +0000

Its is incredible just how many widgets and plug-ins have been designed to increase productivity and your visibility on social networks. Why should car dealers be interested? Well it is my experience that a car dealership can be a pretty busy place and it is difficult for most car dealers to commit time to something like social networking. Yet, most know that not only do they need to understand the internet, they must participate in it.

Creating a presence, publishing content, nurturing relationships with entire communities and building networks are the essentials of a Social Networking Strategy. Taking advantage of technology but not letting technology take advantage of you is a sound approach.

Choose you tools carefully, don’t feel that if you are not using the latest and greatest widget you will not be successful.

There is no one formula for Social Networking success. There are many. Pick 3 or 4 networks and generate as much quality content as you can. You will have your favorite productivity tools and share widgets from which you will develop a routine.

I just became familiar with Zemanta. A way cool tool that search the web for content related to your blog. You can spice up your blog by inserting images and content sourced by Zemanta.

Zemanta Helps Bloggers Gain Traffic (mwd.com)

Market Leaders Know the Value of Data Collection

Brad Whitehead — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:36:56 +0000

: Image by The Consumerist via Flickr

Online inventory is critical asset to car dealers with a market leading internet strategy. It is just as important to have vehicles on your website as it is to have them on your lot. A successful process will pay close attention on “Turn to Earn”. Market leaders process vehicles as soon as they hit the lot and post them immediately to their website. They do not wait for a service to come once a week. The sooner they get the car on their website the sooner it can be marketed online.

Market leaders pay close attention to the vehicles description because they know the impact a well written description will have on the conversion rate. Plenty of photos, a internet price, promo banners all contribute to increasing the conversion of traffic into leads.

There is no debate of who owns the data when you collect the data yourself. Market leaders are big into syndicating their inventory to as many portals as possible and don’t need to get into a debate with a supplier over who owns the data.

Car Dealers aspiring to become market leaders cannot ignore how important collecting data is.

Car Dealers Online Marketing Mix

Brad Whitehead — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 07:15:31 +0000

Developing a strong marketing mix that will give you an advantage over your competitors and alleviate any dependency on single suppliers is the approach used by most market leaders. The internet is no different. A car dealer with a strong online marketing mix will syndicate to a many portals as they can. The ability to track your ROI on leads generated by the internet is so effective that there can be no doubt about what is and is not working.

A strong back end that allows you to syndicate you inventory to a large selection of portals and to receive leads back into the system will take the guess work out you marketing decisions.

Car Dealer 12 Month Plan

All marketing plans require sales projections. The link provided here is to a online marketing planner that will help you visualize where your potential internet sales will come from. It includes the ability to make projections for two dealer websites and for leads generated by 3^rd party portals.

It is important to understand the impact of a certain metrics on your projections.

Conversion Rate:

This is the rate in which traffic (Unique Visitors) your website is converting to leads. A good conversion rate for prime leads is 2% a great conversion rate is 4%. I you website is converting at 2% it means that for every 100 visitors to your site you are receiving contact information from 2. If you are driving traffic to your website but your website is not converting your costs will be high.

Tip*

A well managed online inventory will increase your conversion rate. See Best Practices.

Closing Rate:

All Car Dealers are familiar with their closing rate. The closing rate for online lead may differ from walk-ins. The important thing to remember is that the sales cycle for an online lead can be much longer. If your sales process does not provide follow up for at least 14 days from the initial contact you could be leaving a lot of sales on the plate.

If you are spending a lot of resource getting visitors to your site and your site is converting but your closing rate is not what it should be then you would focus on you sales process.

Phone Calls

Conventional wisdom seems to vary on how many phone calls per lead are generated. This can be easily solved by incorporating the appropriate tracking technology. Most car dealers have a pretty good idea of what percentage of phone calls will be converted into appointments.

When does a Website become a Portal?

Brad Whitehead — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:29:56 +0000

The good news is that a lot of car dealers are beginning to understand that their site must appeal to the search engines if they are going to have any hope of appearing in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page). Many car dealers websites even show evidence of information architecture designed to convert.

Note: There are still a lot of Car Dealers who do not know what a SERP is.

The bad news is that once the website has been posted many car dealers forget about it. Your website is a an opportunity to engage your customer. A well built website will have plenty of tools to do just that. Even a website that is well equipped with tools to communicate with visitors to the site is only a online brochure if the tools are not used.

A website is a Portal to your customer allowing you to share with them information about what is going on at your dealership. A popular website will change every day. Visitor to the site will return because they will know that there will be something new for them to find.

The easiest way to communicate with your customers by effectively managing your online inventory. By featuring vehicles, providing a internet price, or placing a banner over an vehicle image. I can’t believe how many website provide vehicle listing with shabbily written descriptions.

A message on the home page is a great opportunity to inform visitor to your site of a great car you just received on trade that you know will not be around long. Tell visitors to your site about events, new shipments, today only special…. I’m just getting started.

There are sophisticated back-ends supporting website that allow the car dealer to change their messages, create promotional pages and graphic links to the pages and a overlay banner to promote a specific vehicle or vehicles.

Many dealers will remember when they spent much of their time writing copy for print ads. Market leading dealers are dedicating resources to make sure their website is not only getting their message out but engaging visitors and giving them a reason to come back.

Recommendations:

Become familiar with all the tools that come with your website
install Google Analytics on site
Develop Schedule of daily/ weekly/ monthly event
Develop process to communicate event on website with available tools
If you create a graphic link on you home page to promote an event make sure you create a page to link it to.
Coordinate AdWords campaign to promote event and link ads to landing page.
Use Best Practices to Manage your Online Inventory.Online Inventory Best_Practices

Car Dealers Overwhelmed with Internet Experts

Brad Whitehead — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:53:42 +0000

Have you ever noticed that when someone knows something you don’t know how much smarter they seem . I remember when I was in grade school how impressed I was by the big words a older boy showed me in his high school text book. I thought that boy was so much smarter then I. When I got to High School and was issued the exact same text book the words did not appear all that difficult and I realize that the older boy was not as smart as he had seemed.

Online marketing, social networking and all technology associated with the internet is a lot to learn. But you could be a weekend away from becoming an expert. A weekend workshop can make a neophyte in Search Engine Optimization an expert by Sunday night. Monday morning he is knocking on your door telling you how poorly your website is optimized. Of course if you are not the familiar with the basics of SEO this “expert” will impress you with everything they have learned over the weekend.

While there is much to be gained by engaging a genuine expert, make sure that you have not been sold by a good salesman. Experts are not necessarily good salesman their credentials are satisfied customers .

Beware of experts who rest their hat on a specific technology that your current supplier or consultant is not familiar with.

A expert cannot possibly be familiar with all the rapidly emerging technology. A good consultant who understands internet marketing will be able to evaluate and test new or unfamiliar technology. A real expert will develop a strategy the incorporates a online marketing mix that demonstrates an comprehensive understanding of the Digital Eco-System.

Execution and the Experts Tool Box

A expert will be have a collected existing technology to exploit the Digital Eco-system. All experts will agree on the essential tools and networks that are part of a online marketing strategy but most will has networks or tools they believe gives them a competitive advantage. While the tools that an expert uses are important what is more important is the experts ability to execute.

The expert you hire must be able to evaluate your organization and its resources and craft a strategy that fits your business. An amazing online marketing strategy is wasted if your company does not have the management or resources to execute it.

Tips for Successful Blogging

Brad Whitehead — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:56:22 +0000

: Image by inju via Flickr

I did not have to look far to find a good article on blogging. My colleague posted Tips for Successful Blogging an article he found in a book he is reading by Josh Bernoff ” Groundswell” . I as excited to discover that many of our customers (car dealers) are blogging and I know that these tips will be a great help to those who are just starting to blog.

This is a great article if you considering starting a blog http://wp.me/pH5We-7 .

Car Dealer’s Take Advantage of Existing Networks

Brad Whitehead — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:44:33 +0000

The Digital Eco-System

With all the hype the internet continues to enjoy its the buzzwords or phrases I have discovered that I find most interesting. I am not sure what I make of the current definition of the Digital Eco-System in Wikipedia but let me take a shot.

Technology has evolved into networks where related technology is developed and from which a technology community has emerged. Some technology adapts and grows as does related technology and the community. The community thrives. A community’s growth is limited by the technology that it is based on. Communities can split and form new communities and so on, and so on….

How does the Digital Eco-System impact on Businesses and how they communicate with their customers? The simplest answer is the ability to access an established networks. But what is more exciting are networks that allow your business to engage your customer and develop a following.

Example:

Blogging is technology that has developed into a large network of blog directories and Blog Aggregators. A car dealers sales staff who developed a strong following for their blogs have generated valuable traffic to their car dealership’s website.

Action Plan:

So what now? You can choose to be the head of the pack and get in the game or your can wait until you do not have a choice. We live in a age of change and the biggest change is how people interact with each other. Technology will continue to impact on our lives and businesses will learn how to engage consumers via the Digital Eco-System.

Make the Digital Eco-System a part of your marketing Mix.
Explore the Digital Eco-System
Identify existing networks and learn how to use the technology
Develop Performance Metrics*

Never before has it been easier to measure the results of your marketing efforts. Because we are describing a Digital network all activity can be measured (on most networks).