News

I just returned home from the 8th Digital Dealer Conference in Orlando. I was asked to speak on Reputation Management strategies for car dealers and I uploaded the PowerPoint Presentation for visitors to view on our website. If your dealership would like assistance implementing an effective Internet Reputation Management process, we have a great monthly service package for $595 a month.

 

PCG Digital Marketing Recognized By Andrew DiFeo

In a recent Auto Dealer Monthly article, ANdrew DiFeo the owner of Hyundai of St. Augustine shares his thoughts on online marketing, reviews and his success online.  PCG Digital Marketing is mentioned in the article as a part of his successful online strategy. Click on the image to read more about Andrew’s online success and our partnership with his dealership.

The article is on Pages 32  and 33 in the May 2010 Issue of Car Dealer Monthly.  You can read the online edition by visiting this link: http://autodealermonthly.epubxpress.com/

A recent survey  by Econsultancy and Bigmouthmedia found that majority of companies are planning to invest more in social media next year but are struggling to find the time and resources to manage their activity. According to the piece written on MC Charts:

“The biggest barrier to better social media engagement for companies surveyed is a lack of resources, with more than half of companies (54%) saying this is a significant problem, the report said. Nine out of 10 businesses (90%) say social media is taking up more time internally than a year ago.”

The data collected in the survey parallels my experience as I consult with car dealers seeking to create powerful Internet Marketing strategies for 2010. More than any time in the past, automotive budgets are being adjusted so that a majority of the funding is directed toward online advertising. This is reflected in increased spending for Google Adwords, banner advertising, SEO, blogging, video, social media and microsite designs.

The survey data documents a turning point in retail automotive operations. In years past, software and technology have reduced the staff hours needed to complete sales or marketing tasks. Some reading this article may remember hand typing sales contracts or a newsletter that now is produced with a few clicks of a mouse.

The turning point is that Internet Marketing and engaging customers online takes real people doing creative writing, videos and online customer service. It’s a labor intensive operational shift that requires increasing staff levels and dealerships need to recognize that shift.

How Much Should I Spend?

A common question I hear from dealership executives is; “How much should they be spending in each online strategy?” There is no easy simple answer to that question because each online advertising strategy will depend on local competition and your sales goals.

More importantly is the honest assessment of the commitment, skills, and availability of your staff and your ability to track the ROI on your online advertising spend. These two factors will be hallmarks of successful dealers in 2010.

An important change is on the horizon in 2010. With the increase in online spending and a decrease in monies spent on radio, TV and newspaper, dealers will have the opportunity to directly track a majority of their advertising investments. Let me emphasis that this is a major change and opportunity for car dealers. Automotive executives need to make the commitment to track their online media spending. Many dealerships will miss the rich information provided by implementing an online tracking strategy.

For example, do you have unique phone tracking numbers for Facebook, Review Websites, Press Releases, Microsites, Google Maps and Twitter? Is your website capturing the referring URL for every customer that submits a lead form? Are you creating consolidated sales reports by website and phone source? Do you know how many cars were sold off Facebook this month?

Media like radio, newspapers and billboards relied on either tracking phone numbers or sales staff surveys to related store traffic to a sale. It was an imperfect system. With many budgets going 75% or more to online spending, dealers must realize that the holy grail is getting closer; calculating the true ROI on your advertising strategies.

Do you have the right team in place?

I am currently interviewing candidates for dealership group in South California for position called Digital Media Specialist. This role will support the Internet Marketing needs of their 11 stores and also work with the PCG Digital Marketing marketing team to create a unified and competitive Internet Marketing strategy.

The job description requires the ability to write and communicate professionally online. Experience with social media, press releases and advertising is a must. The salary requirements of these candidates that have applied for this job ranges from $40,000 -$65,000.

The position will enable the dealership group to more effectively blog, write press releases and engage local consumers on Facebook and Twitter, to name a few targeted tasks.

I commend the decision of their Executive VP to create a blended model of internal staffing and outside expertise. This will give the GM’s immediate in-house resources for day to tactical marketing projects and the benefit of outside experts to direct the overall strategies for the dealership.

This is a model that will be replicated in 2010 across the country. The pace of change in the online marketplace will make it difficult to be competitive with only internal marketing resources.

As I have said many times before;

“The most important hire for car dealers in 2010 will be a content writer“.

For smaller automotive groups or stand alone stores, in may not be cost effective to hire a full-time staff position so dealers will need to look at consultancy models.

A shared resource for Internet Marketing implementation can cost dealers a fraction of what a full-time person would require. For example, the PCG Digital Marketing has an effective starting package for $995 a month which brings those functions listed above to under $12,000 a year.

The key point in regards to staffing is that doing nothing is not an option. Online marketing spending is on the increase so in 2010 you will have more competition online. With recent changes in Google which shows Twitter and Facebook activity in real-time, dealers more than ever, need to implement a smart comprehensive online marketing strategy that include social media, blogging, microsites, press releases, banner adverting, SEO, SEM, IRM, video, document publishing, photography, and link building.

Looking Toward 2010

I look forward to 2010 as the opportunities for online engagement and new technologies keep me busy testing new strategies for success. Executives submitting marketing budgets for 2010 need to reflect on the findings of the study from Econsultancy and Bigmouthmedia. It is a snapshot of what is happening to business owners all over the country.

With increased spending comes increased competition. With increased spending comes accountability. Dealers must have a rock solid tracking system in place to determine which online strategies are giving them the best results so that they can be nimble throughout 2010.

Since effective online marketing and social engagement are labor intensive, car dealers must have the staff in place to be effective. Dealership staff must be trained on how to leverage social media and online marketing tactics; it’s not intuitive for most people. At the pace of change in this industry, going it alone may not be the optimal choice.

Doing nothing will make your competitors smile.

Automotive Marketing Boot Camp

Car dealers looking to increase the skills of their staff should send them to the Automotive Marketing Boot Camp on February 12, 2010. It is schedule the day before the offcicial start of NADA so they can benefit from both educational experiences, back to back. Jarod Hamiltion, will be the keynote speaker with the opening night on February 11th.

About the Author

Brian Pasch is the CEO of the PCG Digital Marketing and can be found online at:

http://twitter.com/automotiveseo
http://facebook.com/paschconsulting.com
http://www.dealer-seo.com

As 2010 quickly approaches I would like to encourage automotive marketing professionals to carefully review their spending and budgets for the upcoming year.

In the past few months I have received an increase in calls from car dealer internet sales managers asking about how they can wisely increase their online spending. I am getting a feeling that many dealers believe that the worst is over and they want to have a strong Internet presence in 2010.

I agree that dealers who aggressively invest in Automotive SEO, Social Media and carefully designed PPC will have a strategic advantage in 2010. This is not a self-serving statement; it’s where the action is.

Internet Marketing in 2010

So I thought I would offer my 2010 Wish List for Internet Marketing ROI metrics and tools to help dealers. I welcome the dealership community as well as automotive solutions providers to add their own suggestions to help members who want to dominate their local PMA but also want to track the ROI of their online spending.

I hope that one day soon dealers can have near perfect 100% tracking for online lead and sales costs. Dealers will always have the problem with sales being properly accounted for but that is not the topic of this post.

As I speak with Internet sales managers across the country, many still have not even implemented tracking numbers across all of their advertising media. The automotive industry still has a great deal of education to complete at the dealership level in regards to tracking Internet Marketing ROI.

Let’s Get Started

Tracking numbers for all online lead funnels.

If you are not using a call tracking service like “Call Source” or “Who’s Calling” sign up immediately. Depending on the size of your dealership group, I suggest that each brand that you sell has UNIQUE tracking numbers for various online marketing lead funnels. Its easy to do and they provide excellent back-end metrics helping you fully analyze your ROI. These should include one unique tracking number each for:

a. Your Brand Specific Google Maps Listing

b. Review Websites (dealerrater.com, insiderpages.com, yelp.com, etc.)

c. Press Releases that you send out

d. Microsites

e. Blogs

f. Facebook

g. Third Party Lead Providers

h. Local Online Banner Ads / Google AdWords Campaigns

i. Customized Social Communities (ex: Ning.com, Vox)

j. Photos on free distributed inventory feeds

The goal is to track these different audio sources and to evaluate the call and sales volume that come in from each source. The automotive community should also require these call tracking companies to create an industry standardized set of categories for tracking these numbers, as follows:

• Press Releases
• Social Media
• Blogs
• Microsites
• 3^rd Party Leads
• Local TV
• Local Newspaper
• Local Websites

You will see why this is important as you read further.

Capture of the referring URL with all lead forms.

 This gets a bit tricky so stay with me on this. If you have an integrated single vendor solution for your website and CRM/ILM system then you have a shot at success in 2010.

You will want to demand a report of leads by all the sources listed above. It requires the website vendor to capture the exact URL that referred the visitor to your website and strip that down to the base URL and create a tallied report by source.

It would also be nice to require the website vendors to create a standardized set of categories for tracking these leads, as follows:

• Press Releases
• Social Media
• Blogs
• Microsites
• 3^rd Party Leads
• Local TV
• Local Newspaper
• Local Websites

Do you see the pattern? What happens when all leads and calls can be rolled up into one consolidated report?

Resolve Ala-Carte Modules and the ADF Issue

If your website platform sends form leads to a third party CRM/ILM system you may have a problem. This is because the data exchange is normally done using the ADF file format; an XML file.

The current ADF specification does not have a field for the referring URL so one platform cannot pass this information to another without a special data exchange partnership. This is SO IMPORTANT and vital for a dealer’s success in 2010. Somehow the ADF specification has to be revised so that dealers who are actively engaged in social media and offsite SEO can capture the true source of the lead.

 Clear Reports that Show Bounce Rate and Conversion by Keyword

 Dealers who are using Google Adwords to drive traffic to their websites do not have executive level reports that show the waste in the PPC spending. Keywords that have high bounce rates can be an indications that:

1. The landing page is not in line with the value proposition / ad the visitor clicked through from
2. Your call to action is weak / diluted by too many other items on the page
3. You are attracting the wrong visitors
4. Other

Most website platforms don’t make it easy to see the keywords with the highest bounce rates and lowest conversion. Dealers need tools to refine their SEM budgets in terms that a NON-PROGRAMMER can understand.

Clear reports that show the diversity of organic keyword traffic

If dealers took a look at their Google Analytics reports they will probably see the number one source of organic traffic to their website is their brand name. But after that, how many high-value keywords are bringing real traffic to your website?

If the list is very narrow, it is a good sign that your website is not broadly optimized for a larger set of keywords. A broad set of keywords can indicate that your website is actively blogging and adding content on a variety of topics. Keep in mind that service, parts and extended warranty sales have great profit margins and should not be ignored. If your top referring keywords in Google Analytics do NOT include these phrases you are missing a great opportunity for new revenue.

The Benefit

If all Leads submitted by forms could be tracked to a “category” of referring URL’s and if all calls were tracked, then you might be able to get a much closer estimate of your online advertising spending. A simple report could look like this:

Looking Ahead

The Automotive SEO world is rapidly changing and dealerships need to quickly adapt or perish. The newest topics to hit the news feed for SEM in 2010 are two-fold from Google. First, an announcement of integrating Social Media into Live search results and second, the implementation of Google Goggles for mobile devices.

As social media has grown, so has Google’s ability to track it, and in 2010 we’ll start to see Google’s attempt to simplify it all in a new, live search results, way. Just how this will effect the current SEM model is yet to be seen but it one thing is clear, Social Media marketing is here to stay and getting stronger.

Second, with the world of mobile-apps growing more integrated into our daily lives, Google “Goggles” will now start to give devices with cameras an “eye” for search. “Goggles” is reported to have the ability to identify pictures taken by a mobile phone and search throughout the web for price comparisons, reviews and more.

Do you have a FlickR account with pictures of your entire line of vehicles yet? If not, you need get moving, because when customers start snapping, you better be on Google Page One!

If you have questions,   call our staff at 732-450-8200 or you can email Brian Pasch at brian@paschconsulting.com.