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Join Brian Pasch on Thursday June 30th at 4:00 pm EST (TODAY) for a powerful webinar to help your dealership INCREASE sales this summer.

That’s right, when other dealers are fretting over supply shortages, lower margins, and the frail economy you will be increasing your market share.

The webinar will discuss 4 strategies that will help you increase sales by increasing the conversion rate of your existing customer traffic. That’s traffic to your website and traffic in your showroom. If your automotive advertising strategy is losing steam, this will stoke up the engine.

This webinar is free to all members of the automotive community and we encourage you to Tweet out this page and email it to other members of your dealership.

This is an important opportunity to increase your competitive edge this summer and for the years ahead. See what you can do on your existing budget to move the needle!

Click To Register For Automotive Marketing Webinar

Title: Increasing Sales Using Chat, Text Campaigns, Re-Targeting, and Leveraging Google +1

Date: Thursday, June 30, 2011 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM EDT

You can register for the free webinar on this GoToMeeting link:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/984952177 .

Get the latest strategies that will help you to convert more of your existing customers; web and showroom. This will be a very helpful webinar for dealers on tight budgets that are being asked to do MORE with LESS budgetary funding.

Snooze you lose on this one! Get ready to exceed your July and August sales goals if you implement these recommendations.

Register For Brian’s Weekly PODCAST channels

Looking for weekly tips and insights to run your digital marketing strategy more efficiently? Join these two PODCAST channels to stay ahead of the curve:

• Automotive SEO Channel – http://automotiveseo.podomatic.com
• Automotive Advertising Channel – http://automotiveadvertising.podomatic.com

Click on the linked called “Subscribe to This Podcast” on the right column and you will receive a note when a new PODCAST is loaded. You can listen to them on your mobile device, iTune, or on your PC.

Google met with top automotive dealers and manufacturers at the 2011 NADA Convention in San Francisco this week to introduce their new lead generation model for search, which one insider called “Dealer Preference”.  This is a new strategy for their popular Google Adwords software.

The new paid automotive advertising model by Google would create special automotive ads which are designed to generate calls or leads, which will be sold to the highest bidder.  This is a game changer in my mind but people at the meeting said that dealer response was very mild.

Google Automotive Leads

This model is new to the automotive industry but not new to other verticals like Mortgages. You can see from the screen shot above which is highlighted in red, Google has created a special new pink bar for ads that it creates for lead capture and places them ABOVE normal Adwords ads.  When you click on that link, this is what you will see:

The position of this page is sold to the highest bidder, I assume.  Details on the Dealer Preference advertising is forthcoming in a second post.

This is a game changer for the automotive advertising industry.  If Google starts to become a middle-man in automotive price advertising and comparisons, a whole new strategy will need to be considered.  It still will have to be seen if this increases clicks on paid ads.

Google Changes Automotive Advertising Again

This new features does a few things:

1. It pushes other paid ads lower on the right sidebar.
2. It pushes organic search results down so positions 1-3 become even more valuable
3. Dealers that have been ignoring Adwords will need to get in the game and test things.

The idea that Google has in mind is that if a consumer types in “Used Honda Miami” it will display its OWN lead collection ad and show cars or sales based on participating dealers.

What is your reaction?  Do you have some additional information from NADA to share?

I strongly believe in the long term ROI of SEO and the great “annuity” it offers car dealers to deliver low cost consumer direct leads year after year. I’m an advocate for organic search marketing but I’m often asked where Google Adwords (SEM) fits into my digital marketing strategy..

If I were asked to choose between SEO or SEM, I would choose SEO because of the long term benefits it offers and its higher ROI.  I’m also well aware that many General Managers are confused about what SEO really means so they often take the easy route and go with SEM

Despite my efforts to educate the car dealers on how to change the face of automotive digital marketing with some very simple SEO techniques, there are few early adopters. 

Frustrating? Yes.  Hopeless. No. There are many car dealers who have become believers in what PCG can offer with our SEO microsites and Google compliant automotive inventory modules. 

It’s All About Balance

That said, effective automotive lead generation strategies are not just about SEO.

I’m not about to drink the SEO “Kool-Aid” and tell dealers that PPC is a waste of time. Google Adwords is an important “tool” when used properly and car dealers should not avoid Adwords because of a perception that it is costly or has a lower ROI than SEO. Like many things in life, it is how the tool is used that makes it good or bad.

Consumer behavior dictates much of why PPC needs to be a part of car dealer marketing budgets. For this example, let’s see what a consumer may type into Google when looking for a Honda Civic in New Jersey.

When you look at data from Google searches, consumers are typing in search phrases WITHOUT a geo-locator. (state, county or town). They are typing in very short phrases like:

• “Honda”
• “Honda Civic”
• “Honda Civic Prices”
•  “Honda Civic Reviews”

Since these are national phrases, the third party lead collection sites like www.edmunds.com, Yahoo Autos and www.motortrend.com come up on Google page one. These third party lead collectors are optimized for every year make and model, unlike car dealer sites. They also have tremendous traffic which further supports their rankings.

Every day these third party lead collectors capture local buyer leads and sell them to dealers. The only practical short term way to get in front of consumers for broad phrases, without any geo-targets, is PPC. So, you can decide to buy leads or you can attempt to capture the local leads yourself.

It would take a significant investment in time and money to show on organically on Google page one for the search phrase “Honda Civic”. There are no Honda dealers shown in the first two pages (20 listings) of Google for that phrase. You will see all the major lead collector sites on those first two pages.

There are exceptions. I was able to get national Google Page 1 ranking for “Infiniti G37 Convertible” and “Infiniti G37” searches, but it would be very hard to get on Google page one for “Infiniti G35” or “Infiniti dealer”.

Google Adwords campaigns have a geo-based advertising radius so that if you decide to buy broad words, you can limit the radius to a practical driving area for potential buyers. If I only want to target Monmouth County residents,
because my dealership is in that county, I can advertise to local car shoppers typing in the phrase “Honda Civic” or “Honda Civic Prices”.

This is not to say that PPC works for all dealers and marketing strategies. Dealers have to evaluate the costs and ROI for all lead sources; SEO and SEM. They need to compare the conversion rates for “broad search” leads versus long-tail searches like “Monmouth County Honda dealer”. If both methods are profitable and sell cars, both should be continued.

SEO should have a better ROI but you cannot capture all of potential buyers via SEO. You have to have more than one tool in the chest. There is a limit at what SEO can do in any one month. Doubling a SEO budget in any given month does not significantly change the lead flow in the same month.

Since dealers are often rewarded on monthly or quarterly goals, SEM may be needed to hit short term sales targets. Also, if a car dealer is trying to boost extended warranty sales PPC is very effective since consumers normally just type
“Infiniti warranty” or “Infiniti extended warranty” into Google.

We can create a microsite to attract organic car warranty leads. We did that successfully with www.infinitiwarranty.net and it is ranked #2 in the USA for that phrase. My client also gets highly qualified leads from buying a few selected warranty keywords in Google Adwords. So, in this case, the balance of SEO and SEM is generating a steady flow of warranty leads.

In summary, car dealers need both SEO and SEM to effectively compete on the  Internet to catch the eye of local car shoppers. The PCG Digital Marketing has effective strategies to help car dealers implement competitive SEO campaigns as well as structure effective Google Adwords campaigns.

Call us to discuss your needs: 732-450-8200 or email sales@paschconsulting.com