News

PCG Digital Marketing is pleased to recognize automotive industry leaders who will be educating dealers at the upcoming PCG Pit Stop Conference on July 16 and 17 at Hyatt Regency in Huntington Beach.

Industry thought leaders Ralph Paglia, Kathi Kruse, JD Rucker, Brian Pasch, and Paul Potratz are just some of the personalities that will share their insights into the latest opportunities for car dealers to grow their business online.

Paglia’s hands-on workshop, entitled “Digital Guerilla Marketing Strategies and Tactics,” will show dealers how to take advantage of emerging Internet marketing tools for guerilla marketers and how to recognize when their competitors are using these same tactics against them.

According to Paglia, “No dealer should try these techniques without knowing the risks and returns.”

Kathi Kruse will be addressing all conference attendees at the opening dinner reception on July 16^th with a keynote address titled: “How to Generate Through Social Media Integration.”

According to Kruse “Before they visit your store, internet savvy car shoppers spend up to 11 hours online researching you and your store. They bypass the Yellow Pages and cable ads to see what their Social network says about your reputation and inventory.”

JD Rucker, automotive social media pioneer, will be leading a popular workshop entitled “Facebook Marketing vs. Facebook Advertising.” With Facebook and Google + dominating discussions on new media strategies, Rucker brings to the table a proven tactical plan that dealers can implement to dominate your local markets.

The PCG Pit Stop Conference tour after Huntington Beach will continue its road trip to St. Louis, Seattle, Vancouver, and Toronto, delivering world-class education to car dealers on subjects they need to leverage new media opportunities.

12 Workshop Subjects Offered

The Pit Stop Conferences are open to any dealership employee but were created with Dealer Principals/GM, General Sales Managers/ISM, and Fixed Operations Managers in mind.

A total of 12 workshops will be presented in each city including strategies for Fixed Operations, Internet Lead Management, Video Search Marketing, Google Places, and Mobile Marketing.

To register for the PCG Pit Stop^® program or for more information, visit http://www.pcgpitstop.com . Dealers can also call 732.450.8200 ext 5 and ask for Renee McGowan to register via phone.

About Ralph Paglia

Ralph Paglia has 20+ years of leadership in information technology enabled automotive marketing strategies and tactical implementation. Widely known as the outspoken Director of Digital Marketing at ADP Dealer Services, Ralph is now the Vice President of Digital at Tier 10 Marketing.

About Kathi Kruse

Kathi Kruse is an Automotive Social Media Expert, Blogger, Coach, Author, and Founder of Kruse Control Inc. Born in the heart of Los Angeles to a family of “car people,” Kathi’s passion for the car business spans a 30-year career managing successful dealerships in Southern California. Kathi is co-author of the book “Next Up – Essential Social Media Strategies for Auto Dealerships.”

About JD Rucker

JD Rucker is Director of New Media at TK Carsites, responsible for research, development, and implementation of dealership marketing strategies on search engines and social media.

JD is also President of Hasai, Inc, a wholly owned subsidiary of TK Carsites that specializes in viral marketing campaigns in and out of the automotive industry. His works, strategies, and quotes have been seen in hundreds of publications and news outlets including NY Times, NPR, and Time.

As I conduct training seminars and webinars for the automotive industry, I often ask dealers what is their current mix between traditional automotive advertising and digital automotive advertising.

What is your mix?

In the traditional advertising category I would add radio, TV, print publications, newspaper, printed yellow pages, billboards, and direct mail costs.

In the digital advertising category I would add website costs, Google Adwords or similar Pay-Per-Click models, digital display advertising, re-marketing, social media, third party leads, OEM leads, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services, and inventory advertising platforms like Autotrader.com and the Automotive Advertising Network (AAN).

The responses I get from car dealers vary, but can range from 10% digital to 95% digital. This large swing reflects the tsunami of change that has engulfed the automotive industry in the last 10 years. These massive changes are not limited to the automotive sector. All business owners are being faced with the challenge of being open to reconsider if the yellow pages, radio, TV, and newspaper are connecting their brand with the majority of in market buyers.

The Need Education

Recently I spoke with a dealer who had just purchased an existing franchise store that need a complete renovation. He shared all the costs associated with the refit of the building and his upcoming opening. He wanted to turn around this store and make it profitable location.

The conversation we had was focused on how he could make the biggest impact on the market with this new point. Intermixed with the conversation was frequent reminders of how much he was investing in the store, how much this place needed a capital investment, and how much he wanted to make this work.

When I asked him on what portion of his budget was allocated to digital marketing, the answer surprising. Aside from his costs to setup his new website, he had not budgeted for any other digital marketing of the dealership. His advertising plans were solely radio, TV, and print, and I won’t share what he planned to spend. When I suggested an initial investment of $3,000 a month in digital marketing strategies, he said that he didn’t have that much to spend.

Welcome to 2011 and the wide gap in knowledge and confidence that digital marketing is a core strategy for automotive retailing.

Moving Toward The Middle

It is easy to say that a car dealer that is only spending 10% in digital marketing is spending too little on new media since over 90% of car buyers use the Internet to research a car. It may also be safe to say that a dealer who eliminates all radio, TV, newspaper, and direct mail are missing a segment of their local market that is influenced by these channels.

Ignoring the extremes, I would like to suggest that to bigger opportunity is to move the majority of car dealers that under utilize digital marketing to the middle. From a survey conducting by PCG Digital Marketing with dealers across the country, the current average “allocation” for digital investments is 20-25% of a dealers total advertising budget.

I would like to see the average dealer investment in digital marketing move to 50% in the next year.

Those that say 50% is still too little, I’ll be working on another industry move in 2012! We can’t parallel park the Titanic in Manhattan without some patience.

Moving digital spending to 50% would be considered a massive change but one that this industry needs to embrace. This reallocation of traditional marketing investments will not happen without a massive effort to reeducated the dealer community. Proper education on the strategies and opportunities that digital marketing can provide will help make those steps to 50% + with confidence. Today, dealers either are not moving because of fear or they just don’t know better. Neither position is attractive to an entrepreneur.

Automotive Advertising and Education

We can assume that dealers will make this move on their own but there will be a tremendous opportunity cost for those that take the slow path to 50%; an that still is not the end game. Since first responders are rewarded in search, the sooner dealers make this move, the more they will be rewarded. This move will need a coordinated effort by industry leaders, vendors, and educational agencies to educate dealers on all of the new media opportunities and marketing strategies for automotive advertising.

Dealer principals need to be able to clearly differentiate and measure the benefits of SEO, SEM, social media, display advertising, and inventory syndication. Every time I conduct a seminar at a 20 Group meeting or at an automotive conference, light bulbs go off in the audience. Dealers are truly thankful to be shown, in plain English, why their lack of digital marketing investments is hurting their brand.

Digital Marketing Conference

We need to coordinate more “light bulb” experiences at 20 Groups, conferences, and regional teaching events. One of those opportunities for education is the 2011 Automotive Marketing Boot Camp in Orlando, April 16th-18th. The Boot Camp will be held at the beautiful Hilton Orlando hotel and has attracted a wonderful team of industry leaders and dealership employees to teach.

Dealers spending less than 50% of your total advertising budget on digital marketing and new media, need to attend and find out what is working for dealers that have made that have crossed that line If dealers wants to increase their dominant market position, they should attend to learn that latest strategies for digital marketing and social media from industry leaders.

I would also like to suggest that at least 2 people from each dealership should attend. Why? Because the best opportunity for change occurs when the dealer principals or GM learns side by side with their eCommerce Director or Internet Sales manager. Too many things can get lost in translation when one of these two roles are missing.

The good news is that attendees and educators at the Boot Camp will be willing to share exactly what is working and how they are measuring the ROI of that investment. Dealers can register for the Boot Camp and make the decision to invest in education and the future of their dealership today. The event website is located at: http://www.automotivemarketingbootcamp.com

Wikipedia made popular the technology used on many “wiki” websites which allows for web pages to be created and edited without requiring HTML programming knowledge.

The largest “wiki” website for the automotive industry is http://www.CarDealerWiki.org. This website is a great resource for dealers embarking on a Automotive Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaign and also for dealers who want to syndicate their used car inventory.

CarDealerWiki.org is a free website that is for employees of car dealerships, vendors of the automotive industry, and related automotive service and news providers. Getting started with CarDealerWiki is as simple as creating an account and completing the sign-up form.

It is recommended that you register with an email account from your business and NOT from Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail. Once your registration is approved, normally within 24 hours, you can claim your dealership profile page and create powerful content and backlinks.  Email accounts not associated with a business website will not be approved to reduce spam.

Creating More Automotive Backlinks

One of the most powerful ways a car dealer can increase the search authority of their website is to build quality backlinks from well respected websites. The more links a dealer has pointing to his relevant website content, the higher that page will rank in the search engines. Think of links as “votes” to your website pages.

It is a challenge to find free websites that allow car dealers to post original content and create backlinks on a variety of keywords and phrases.

CarDealerWiki is one of the best websites to assist dealers with content publishing and backlink building.

In fact, the site has a number of automated features that make content generation and link building very easy, some which are shown below:

1. You can drop in your RSS feed from DealerRater.com (view example)
2. You can drop in your RSS feed of new car inventory (view example)
3. You can drop in your RSS feed of used car inventory (view example)
4. You can drop in customer testimonial videos from Youtube
5. You can drop in your RSS feed from your blog

Capital Ford Lincoln in Canada has a very detailed profile page and sub-pages that integrates their inventory, videos, and their blog posts.  Take a peek by visiting their page at:  http://www.cardealerwiki.org/Capital_Ford_Lincoln.

Marketing Used Cars on CarDealerWiki

CarDealerWiki.org also supports the Automotive Advertising Network (AAN) data feed so members have direct access to their inventory with searchable RSS parameters so they can create used car marketing pages for any make or model.

The architecture of CarDealerWiki.org really empowers car dealers to build links to their Vehicle Detail Pages.  This is a significant competitive edge that is little talked about in the industry. Not all website providers provide a properly formatted RSS feed of car inventory, for those that do, dealers can really leverage this website.

Midway Motors in Kansas created a Used Car marketing page for Hillsboro Kansas and the cars shown on this page http://www.cardealerwiki.org/Hillsboro_Used_Cars provide not only more visibility for their cars but also links back to their main dealership website and Vehicle Detail Pages (VDP)

CarDealerWiki Pages Index For Automotive Search Phrases

The key with any SEO campaign is to see if Google is respecting the content and links generated from a third party website and in this matter CarDealerWiki.org is a superstar.

Take a look at the screen capture below for a search on the phrase “Nissan Altima Marlboro“.  Marlboro Nissan operates a dealership in Marlboro Massachusetts and the content pages he created on CarDealerWiki is helping to defend his PMA.

You will see that CarDealerWiki has two listing on Google Page One. In fact, 90% of this page is filled with search results that Tim Martell, Internet Marketing Director and founder of WikiMotive has implemented for his store.

You can also search for a Fiat Dealers in the USA with a term like “Fiat Dealers USA” and you will see that CarDealerWiki.org is on Google Page One for this national search phrases.  Type into Google “Regina Ford Service” and you will see CarDealerWiki.org on Google Page One for a dealer created service page.

Dealers Can Be Creative

The power of CarDealerWiki.org is that car dealers can create pages for new cars, used cars, service, parts, and warranty repairs in their local markets.  Well formatted content pages can link back to the dealer’s primary website to enhance the search authority of their main website.

So if dealers need more search visibility and links and content are a part of that solution, I encourage all car dealers in the US and Canada to create an account and get started building out content on CarDealerWiki.org for their dealership.

If you are a website provider or an SEO Consultant working on behalf of a dealership, you can assist your clients on CarDealerWiki.org as well.  Register with your business email address and complete your profile and your one login can be used for all your clients.

Now get to work!