News

The final 2009 issue of Auto Success magazine was just released and the cover story documents the Internet Marketing success at Marlboro Nissan in Massachusetts. 

According to the featured article, the success was due to the combined teamwork of TK Carsites website platforms and Automotive SEO solutions from the PCG Digital Marketing.

You can read the entire issue by clicking here: December 2009 Auto Success Magazine

Timothy Martell, Digital Marketing Director for the Albrecht Group, tells readers about his Internet Marketing strategies and success in the December 2009 issue of Auto Success magazine.  Marlboro Nissan a leading New England Nissan dealer located in the Boston suburbs and owned by the Albrecht Group.

Internet Marketing Success

According to Martell, “Our other key area for success is SEO, and this is where we truly stand alone. We own Google, and that is in no small part thanks to TK Carsites and PCG Digital Marketing. I’d been trying to find a way to combine the power of social media with content-based SEO, and these two companies were the weapons I needed to put it into action.”

Martell in the article speaks about the intense competition for online car shoppers and how he decided to dominate his local market for searches on new Nissan autos and Nissan used cars.  His perseverance and determination to increase first party online leads through SEO and social media has succeeded.   

Martell added, “All of this is possible because I have the two best minds in automotive SEO at my disposal, 24/7. JD Rucker, chief marketing officer of TK Carsites is nothing short of a true social media guru, and Brian Pasch, owner of Pasch Consulting, knows how to put a Web site on Page 1 of Google in days instead of months. “

Brian Pasch, CEO of the PCG Digital Marketing was pleased with the cover story and commented, “Timothy Martell is one of the top Internet Marketing minds in the retail automotive industry and it has been a pleasure working with him and the entire Albrecht Group on their SEO and Internet Marketing strategies.  Our success at Marlboro Nissan is a truly collaborative event and a model for how PCG can work within to industry to compliment the work of existing website platform providers.”

Automotive Marketing Boot Camp

Car dealers, who are looking for “the edge” in 2010, can learn winning marketing strategies from Brian Pasch directly. The PCG Digital Marketing is co-hosting the 2010 Automotive Marketing Boot Camp in Orlando Florida, on February 12^th; a day before the official start of the NADA Convention.

 The boot camp will give car dealers hand-on training to implement winning online marketing strategies.   The roster of speakers includes JD Rucker, Paul Rushing, Tim Jennings, Eric Mayhew and Brian Pasch, CEO of the PCG Digital Marketing.

Registration information and class schedules can be viewed at:  www.automotivemarketingbootcamp.com.  The event will be held at the Rosen Centre Hotel which is adjacent to the Orlando Convention facilities that will be utilized by NADA.

About The PCG Digital Marketing

The PCG Digital Marketing provides comprehensive Internet Marketing and SEO services to car dealers across the United States and Canada.  For additional information on their services and marketing packages, visit 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.

On November 1st the PCG Digital Marketing will release the 2009 Automotive Search Marketing Architecture (ASMA) report at the 7th Digital Dealer Conference. I am tallying the final scores from the 34 website platform providers in our study and some early results are very encouraging.

Last year we reviewed 16 website platforms and only 2 platforms scored perfectly on the basics of SEO architecture for car inventory listing modules. This year out of the 34 providers we reviewed, seven platforms had perfect scores on the SEO basics.

This is great news for the automotive industry as more choices become available to assist car dealers with increasing organic search traffic for the cars that they sell. A number of automotive website providers have made significant improvements from our 2008 report.

By the number of improvements that we can see this year it is obvious that companies are listening to automotive forums like ADM, DrivingSales and DealerRefresh.

Scoring Inventory Modules

Of the 34 platforms that we reviewed, the scores on the “inventory modules” section of the scoring process look like this:

• Perfect SEO Scores – 7 platforms
• Partial SEO Compliance – 18 platforms
• Failed All SEO Basics – 9 platforms

We will also be scoring other aspects of the website platforms in addition to their inventory modules. We will be looking at the overall ability of the platform to add user generated SEO complaint content and how well these website platforms appear in search results.

This year’s report will have a number of new categories that are design to help General Managers evaluate the many choices on the market for an automotive website.

Are You Shopping?

If you have a website contract that is coming up for renewal or if you are in the market to change your website platform, I would suggest that you wait until this report comes out on November 1st.