For example, if you are a Chevrolet dealer in Paramus New Jersey test out a few basic phrases:

• New Jersey Chevrolet Dealer
• Paramus Chevrolet Dealer
• Chevrolet Impala Paramus
• Chevrolet Service Paramus

There are differences in how the Microsoft technology and Google technology work and after you have studied this for a while, those differences become clearer. I would like to challenge all readers to take a moment to take 10 popular search phrases that are part of your SEO strategy and check your rankings in Yahoo.

You can place you name beside each listing to see which your business controls and the work to raise those positions over the next few months.

Practicing What We Preach

For PCG Digital Marketing, the new Yahoo is actually recognizing our leadership in content publishing. We practice what we preach.  Some of our top keyword targets are “Automotive SEO“, “Automotive Reputation Management”, “Automotive Social Media“, and “Automotive Microsites”. You can see that our focus on SEO has rewarded us with good placement in Yahoo.

If your Yahoo results and Bing results are not as strong as Google, or visa versa, it’s a good time to roll-up your SEO sleeves and make some investment in updating your Automotive SEO strategies.

In these snapshots taken on 8/30/2010, TK stands for www.tkcarsites, PR stands for Paul Rushing from www.dealerbytes.com and ADM stands for Ralph Paglia’s ADM Community.  These are companies that are active members of the automotive digital marketing forums.

Yahoo Search: Automotive SEO

Automotive Reputation Management

Yahoo Search: Automotive Microsites

Yahoo Search: Automotive Social Media

I would like to congratulate the team at VinSolutions for being recognized by Inc Magazine being named the 33rd fastest growing software company is America but I always want to recognize their team for the hard work that represented.

Automotive advertising is going through tremendous change and automotive website providers  have been scrambling to keep up with the demands of automotive retailers. 

At the upcoming Digital Dealer Conference in Las Vegas we will be recognizing the top website providers with the 2010 ASMA Awards.  This year 46 website providers will be included in the comprehensive SEO analysis and search marketing study.  Nine website companies were recognized last year and the competitive for the 2010 awards has gone red hot.

VinSolutions has been on a strong push to innovate and extend their technology platform and it looks like from this award, the fruits of their labor is paying off.  It’s nice to see passion rewarded with strong financial growth.  Here is the official press release that was sent out to media outlets.

VinSolutions Press Release

Inc. Magazine ranked VinSolutions as the 33^rd fastest growing software company in the US on its prestigious Inc. 500 list, an exclusive ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies. VinSolutions grew by 672% in the three year period and was ranked #447 overall. The list represents the most comprehensive look at the most important segment of the economy – America’s entrepreneurs. As an Inc. 5000 honoree, VinSolutions shares a prestigious pedigree with such notable alumni as Microsoft, Intuit, Zappos, Under Armor, Jamba Juice, Timberland, Visa, Cliff Bar, Patagonia, Oracle, and scores of other powerhouses. Other Automotive technology companies that were recognized on the Inc 5000 list were vAuto at #125 with 2044% growth, Dealer.com at #1056 with 286% growth and Dealer Socket at #1829 with 150% growth.

“The leaders of the companies on this year’s Inc. 5000 have figured out how to grow their businesses during the longest recession since the Great Depression,” said Inc. president Bob LaPointe. “This year’s list is a testament to the creativity, resilience, and tenacity of America’s top entrepreneurs,” said Jane Berentson, Editor of Inc. Magazine. 

“We are honored to make the Inc 500 list and we are proud of our dealers who have fought through these difficult times by using state of the art technology to improve their business,” said Mike Dullea, CEO of VinSolutions. “I am glad there were so many automotive companies on the list and I am proud of our employees who work so hard around the clock to serve our customers.”

VinSolutions dealership marketing system contributed to over 2.8 billion dollars in automotive sales and helped their dealer partners save an estimated $33 million in expenses during a difficult 2009.  VinSolutions dealership marketing system integrates all of the tools a dealership needs to run their business and their system makes it easier for consumers to shop, buy and maintain their vehicle on the internet or through their mobile phone.  “I was spending too much with 15 different companies that did not integrate and now I pay 75% less for one system that does it all and more,” said Todd Crossley, owner of #1 retailer in Kansas City.  “VinSolutions has revolutionized the automotive market the way Apple revolutionized the consumer market – by creating a completely integrated system that is easy to use and that helps me manage my business from my iPhone.”

Despite the fact that most of this year’s measuring period of 2006-2009 took place during the latest recession, aggregate revenue among the companies on the list actually increased to $321.6 billion, up more than 50 percent from last year. The effects of the recession are seen, however, in the median three-year growth rate, which dropped to 96 percent from last year’s 126 percent. This year’s Inc. 5000 employ a record 1.4 million people, up from one million on last year’s list. With unemployment remaining stubbornly high, policymakers and business leaders will do well to look to the Inc. 5000 companies for fresh ideas on achieving growth and creating jobs.

About VinSolutions

VinSolutions has the leading “Dealership Marketing System” that helps retailers attract, sell and retain more customers profitably. Their “all-in-one” sales and service marketing system includes digital marketing, search marketing, online advertising, social media marketing tools, mobile marketing, websites, internet lead management, CRM (Customer Relationship Management), Sales force automation, Sales Management and Desking, Appraisal, Finance, Used Vehicle Marketing and Market Pricing, Inventory Management and Distribution, Hand held inventory marketing tools, window stickers, automated video tours, Loyalty Management and Targeted marketing with email, text, direct mail and telemarketing services.

The “Dealership Marketing System” has complete mobile integration and is accessible from any mobile phone that has access to the internet including blackberry, Google DROID and iPhone. VinSolutions Dealership Marketing System is installed by their strategic consulting team who specializes in retail strategy and process training for large dealer groups and individual dealerships. VinSolutions is certified by Honda, GM, Ford, Chrysler, Subaru, Nissan and Audi and integrates with ADP, R&R, AutoSoft and Arkona. Vin also has alliances and integrations with Kelley Blue Book, CarFax, Autodata, RouteOne and DealerTrack. For more information visit www.VinSolutions.com

About Inc. Magazine

Founded in 1979 and acquired in 2005 by Mansueto Ventures LLC, Inc. (www.inc.com) is the only major business magazine dedicated exclusively to owners and managers of growing private companies that delivers real solutions for today’s innovative company builders. With a total paid circulation of 712,647, Inc. provides hands-on tools and market-tested strategies for managing people, finances, sales, marketing, and technology. Visit us online at www.inc.com.

Inc 500 List Methodology

The 2010 Inc. 500|5000 list is ranked according to percentage revenue growth when comparing 2006 to 2009. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by June 30, 2006. Additionally, they had to be U.S.-based, privately held, for profit, and independent — not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies — as of December 31, 2009. Revenue in 2006 must have been at least $80,000, and revenue in 2009 must have been at least $2 million. The top 10 percent of companies on the list comprise the Inc. 500, now in its 29th year.

Media Contact:

Jessie Tappel

786-9721351

According to a post on Google’s Webmaster blog, large websites that have strong consumer interest, can now have more than two organic search results. This is a big change because if website can get four organic listings, they will dominate the top places where consumers click above the fold.

 In the example on the Google blog, a museum can have four organic listings at the top of a SERP:

This change would seem to apply to larger website that have a well organized website structure.   You can always tell a large, well organized website because it has Google Sitelinks.  Sitelinks are helpers to get consumers to popular inside pages on your website.

Car dealers who have a number of sitelinks already under their main page would most likely be a candidate.  In the graphic below, Google created Sitelinks for Checkered Flag’s main website because it is well organized and there are a number of brands that they sell:

Sitelinks can not be added by a dealer but once Google decides to add these links, you can delete any that you don’t want to show using Google Webmaster Tools.

Is This a Good Change?

The reactions on the Google Webmaster Blog are mixed but for car dealers I like this change.  This will definitely help with Google Page One Management when car dealers have lead collectors and distractions showing on Google Page One for their dealership name.  It may also drive more traffic to relevant inside pages to facilitate a better consumer experience.

So this brings up another reason why all pages on your website need to be optimized for the best user experience because Sitelinks and their new SERP feature will be driving consumers to popular inside pages. 

What are your thoughts on this change in how organic search results will be displayed?

Pasch’s leadership message is entitled: “Car Dealers are Under Attack.”   

Brian will demonstrate to attendees of The Innovative Dealership Summit the unforeseen negative consequences of car dealers participating in some popular inventory advertising models that are actually hurting their own direct website traffic!  Pasch will also give examples of how car dealers can fight back against online attacks on their brand name.

Innovative Dealer Summit

Denver, The Mile High City, will host representatives of the automotive industry at the Marriott Denver South at Park Meadows for a day-long leadership program on the latest in innovative technologies, social media marketing, search engine optimization, reputation management, sales, service, customer satisfaction, profitability and more.

Summit attendees will include dealer principals/owners, general managers, senior dealership managers and directors, Internet sales managers, business development managers, F&I managers, key dealership leaders, sales leadership, advertising and marketing consultants, controllers and other key decision makers.

Tim Jackson, director of the Innovative Dealer Summit, said, “Brian’s presentation will be very timely and one of the most popular and interesting of the conference.”  The Summit will feature 30 emerging, compelling topics during the 12-hour conference.”

Brian Pasch Included In Program

Brian Pasch, CEO and Founder of PCG Digital Marketing is a popular speaker and writer on digital marketing strategies for the automotive industry.  He is an active blogger on the most visited social networks and forums for car dealers who seek to learn more about SEO, SEM, social media and leveraging the Internet to grow dealership sales.

Brian Pasch is also creator of the popular ASMA Awards (www.asmaawards.org) which recognizes the best digital marketing platforms in the automotive industry.  Pasch also recently announced the largest Automotive SEO Study for car dealers which will start on September 1, 2010.

The Innovative Dealer Summit was created as a directive and priority of the Colorado Automobile Dealers Association. For more information visit www.innovativedealersummit.com

About Innovative Dealer Summit

• Scheduled from 8am to 8pm, September 8, 2010 
• 36 action-packed hours of training during a 12-hour period
• Nationally recognized auto retail thought-leaders
• Top Internet marketing wizards will address dealers

For more information, please visit:

Twitter: www.twitter.com/dealersummit

You Tube: www.youtube.com/drivedenver

For example, if you search Google for “Arizona Honda Dealers” and click on the Maps tab, you get a list of dealers. If your dealership is not showing up in the first few listings, you can get frustrated. 

How does Tempe Honda get top organic billing?  The answers are fuzzy at times but it seems that there is a growing body of evidence that supports theories why some maps are shown more often than others.

Many companies and car dealers have asked me about how they can increase the “relevance” of their Google Maps listing. Keep in mind that the “address” of the Google Maps/Places is a dominant factor in which search results show a Google map.

Misguided SEO hackers have attempted to scam or influence Google Maps listings with fake addresses but Google is cracking down on this practice. In the example on the right, you can see one such scammer (Listing A) that created a listing called “Honda Dealers” with a bogus address as “Metro Area”. 

Google Maps has not yet got around to removing this listing which is pushing real Honda dealers off the top positions.  Google Maps spam is on the rise and I would report to Google any fake listings that do not represent authorized Honda dealers.

Authoritative Directory Verifications

From my testing on Google Maps, I have concluded that having a consistent name, address and phone numbers across “reference” websites can assist your Google Maps listing to be shown above those that have no external references.  That means that you should not use different tracking numbers for public business directory listsing that are different.

Google can see if the submitted “business name and address” can be found on other paid or free websites. If the submitted address is nowhere to be found, you can understand why Google may be reluctant to show that new Maps listing. I am leaning on a recommendation that car dealers “pay” to be included in some very highly ranked directories as well as making sure that they get a free listing on www.dmoz.org which is the undisputed king of organic search directories.

Using GetListed.org

One tool that can simply the process of seeing which directories have your listing correct is www.getlisted.org .  If you type in your business name and zip code, as shown below, it will search Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yelp and BOTW to see if your listing is there. 

The fact that BOTW is listed as a “top” directory is interesting because it is a paid directory if you want to get the most important parts of your business profile visible to consumers, at $30 a month.  That money making recommendation aside, the tool is a quick way to get a snapshot of where you are. 

When the search is done, you can click to get a report on those five top websites that looks like this:

Additional Directory Sites

I would also recommend these directories to ensure that a dealer is represented on multiple free authoritive websites:

• www.MerchantCircle.com
• www.InsiderPages.com
• www.Judysbook.com
• www.SuperPages.com
• www.BrownBook.net
• www.Switchboard.com
• www.InfoUsa.com

According to an InfoGraphic on GetListed.org, the network of business directory websites and facilitators is shown below:

Google Maps Visibility

The idea behind this graphic is to show that there are MANY websites in which you can register your business name, address, phone and website. The idea is that if your contact information can be validated in MANY places, it has a higher likelihood of being accurate. 

This begs the question… 

• Have you made an effort to synchronize your business directory information?
• Have you paid for a listing on Yahoo.com or Business.com?
• Do you need to?
• How have you validated Your Business address?

Let the questions start and I will answer them to the best of my ability….

The study is co-sponsored by PCG Digital Marketing and DrivingSales.com.

The Automotive SEO Study will be limited to 100 automotive dealers*. Registration ends on August 30, 2010.

There is no cost to participate however members should budget approximately $100 for domain purchases, blog hosting and/or fees paid to third part marketing sites, directories and related sites as needed.

Study members will be trained and coached how to use content publishing, link building, social media, video, PDF brochures, and automotive networks to improve their Google Page One results for popular consumer search phrases.   Members in the study will be required to dedicate 3-4 hours a week to complete the tasks required to deliver measurable results for their dealership.

The 100 dealers will have access winning digital marketing strategies, training videos, marketing outlines, tutorials, and websites managed by PCG Digital Marketing and DrivingSales that will enhance the results of their work. In return, members in the study will share the results of their work and be included in a whitepaper being prepared by PCG Digital Marketing and DrivingSales.com.

“The Automotive SEO Study will be the first of its kind”, according to Brian Pasch, CEO of PCG Digital Marketing.   “The partnership with DrivingSales.com, the leading automotive social media community, is consistent with founder Jared Hamilton’s goal to provide digital marketing curriculums and best practices to assist automotive retailers with online advertising and communications.”

Length Of Automotive SEO Study

The study will run from September 1, 2010 to January 1, 2011. In those four months, members in the study will document their work and record data on a number of search marketing factors which will include website link counts, Google ranking for specific keywords, unique visitor traffic, lead submissions, and changes in their Google Page One Management (GPOM) results.

The results will be published and presented at the 2011 NADA Convention in San Francisco. Monthly updates during the four month study, as well as the final results, will be shared with members of www.DrivingSales.com .

Car dealers interested in the results of this study should create a free account on Drivingsales.com and follow the progress of their peers through the interactive blogs and dealership forums.

Automotive SEO Study Requirements

 The requirements to participate in the study are:

1. Participants must be an employee of a car dealership, proof will be required.
2. Participants must have written permission to write about the dealership online; blogs, press releases, social media, etc.
3. Participants must have an email address from an active dealership domain.
4. Members in the study will be required to dedicate 4 hours a week to complete the tasks required for success.
5. Participants must be willing to share the results of their work via Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics data and allow the data to be summarized* in the final study whitepaper.

No confidential data or specific dealership website results will be published in the whitepaper or made public without written permission from participant.

Register For Study

Dealers interested in participating should register online at www.automotiveseostudy.com.  Inquiries can be sent to:  info@automotiveseostudy.com.  

* PCG Digital Marketing retains the right to decline dealer participation in the Automotive SEO Study based on conflicts of interest with current clients.

Webinar Registration Link

Reserve your Webinar seat now at:  https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/603596369.  Since this offer is only for 100 dealerships, we encourage you to register quickly while space is open.  There is no cost for the webinar.

Ever wonder what free tools are available for Search Engine Optimization for automotive dealers?

Find out from PCG Digital Marketing experts the best tools in the industry that are just a click away.  You’ll also get access to tools developed by PCG and for the first time, 100 dealers will get login accounts to utilize these tools.

This is a must see webinar for Automotive Internet Managers focusing on getting results from the little time available in your week to do research and development for expanding your brand online.

This webinar will be conducted by Brian Pasch, CEO of the PCG Digital Marketing. Brian has penned a series of white-papers to help automotive professionals understand the challenges and opportunities that exist with online marketing.

Details

Title: Free Automotive SEO Tools by PCG Digital Marketing
 
Date: Wednesday, August 18, 2010
  
Time: 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM EDT
 
After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.
 
This webinar is open only to employees of dealerships. The tools and logins are designed for internal employees of car dealers and not consultants and vendors.  Registrants must have valid car dealership email and no Google, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. email accounts.

Seven automobile dealership managers have been included in the first round of speakers:

• Broderick Alley, Internet Sales Director, Diehl Auto Group, on building an Internet department with a limited budget
• Todd Crossley, General Manager, Gary Crossley Ford, on how Crossley Ford became the #1 dealer in Kansas City
• Chris Fousek, e-commerce director for the Village Automotive Group in Massachusetts, on using business intelligence to sell more vehicles
• Tim Jennings, Tom Sparks Auto with YouTube video walk-around essentials
• Jim Flint, corporate director of Interactive Sales and Marketing for the John Eagle Dealerships, on building a team and processes so you can set up your own internet department
• Kevin Frye, e-commerce director, Jeff Wyler Automotive Family with real life dealership examples to become leaner and meaner in the market to drive money to the bottom line 
• Shaun Kniffin, Director of Internet Sales and eBusiness Development for the Germain Motor Company on migrating from having an Internet department to becoming an Internet group

All dealership personnel presenting at the 9^th Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition will focus their presentations on real world examples from their experience at the dealership and include new insights and practices that session attendees can take home and implement immediately.

Additional speakers will be announced in the coming weeks.

The 9^th Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition is the ideal learning and networking venue for general managers, dealer principals, internet sales managers, e-commerce directors, BDC managers, CRM managers, pre-owned managers, F&I managers and fixed operations managers. More than 550 dealership attendees are expected at the fall event along with as many as 90 exhibitors and sponsors. For more information about the 9^th Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition, go to www.digitaldealerconference.com or contact Susan Tyson at styson@dealer-communications.com, 312 558-1799.

The conference is owned and operated by Dealer Communications, the leading multi-media information source for the automotive retail industry. Connecting with franchised automotive dealers and managers over ten million times per year, Dealer Communications publishes the monthly print Dealer magazine, and online editions of Dealer, Digital Dealer and Dealer Fixed Operations magazines. Online weekly newsletters include Dealer; Digital Dealer; Dealer Fixed Operations, Dealer Pre-Owned; Dealer F&I, and Dealer Sales and Marketing. To see all that Dealer Communications offers, visit www.dealer-communications.

It’s Social Media Baby!

If you haven’t noticed car dealers are being pushed off of Google Page One for the cars that they sell. To throw salt in the wounds, it seems that every month another car dealer “review site” pops up.

This means when consumers type in a car dealership name, more sites are vying to capture and suck the equity out of the brand.

In reality, many of these sites are just Google Adwords and banner advertising sites that are making money from optimizing website pages on a car dealer’s name.

There is nothing illegal about this and over 60% of car dealers are allowing their name to be leveraged for other people to profit from.

In the area of car dealer reviews, have you take a minute to see just how many websites seek to be the “authority” for car dealer reviews?

Here is a quick sample of the sites that I have found that want to be found in Google, Yahoo and Bing search for the phrase “Car Dealer Reviews” or “Auto Dealer Reviews”:

Car Dealer Specific SItes

• www.mydealerreport.com
• www.cardealercheck.com
• www.dealerrater.com
• www.cardealerreviews.org
• www.prestoreviews.com
• www.dealerscene.com
• www.dealershipratings.com
• www.carsdealersreview.com
• www.autodealerreviews.com
• www.dealerreviewer.com
• www.autodealerreviews.com
• www.edmunds.com

General Review Sites

• www.my3cents.com
• www.insiderpages.com
• www.yelp.com
• www.citysearch.com
• www.judysbook.com
• www.merchantcircle.com
• www.yellowbot.com
• www.switchboard.com
• www.superpages.com

Automotive IRM Confusion

The reason I bring this trend up on this blog is because it can be confusing for a car dealer to know where to focus their Automotive Internet Reputation Management strategies. So let me give you some practical advice:

1. Look at your own Google Maps listing and see which review websites are being summarized on your Google Maps page. Focus on getting positive reviews posted on these sites first.
2. Of course, getting posts directly on Google Maps should be a car dealers #1 priority because the “star” ratings are directly counted if a consumer posts on Google Maps.
3. Once you have seen which review sites are being summarized on your Maps listing, focus on getting more reviews on those sites via email, calls and in store coaching.
4. To see if other sites are having an impact on your business, Google your exact business name and see which review sites are showing on Page One and Page Two.
5. Any sites on Page One or Page Two should get some attention to build positive reviews.

If a review website is not on Page One or Page Two, I would hold off investing any labor on these sites until the steps listed above are complete. Then, I would add positive reviews to the largest website vendors first and ignore the lesser sites that only have their own self interests in mind.

Summary: There are hundreds of websites trying to capitalize on your car dealership name. Don’t get overwhelmed and just focus on the most visible websites that appear for your car dealership name or the cars you sell in your PMA.

If you need help, call 732-450-8200.

Create a “Clean” Twitter Account

I created a new Twitter account for this demonstration at http://twitter.com/pcgdigital. This Twitter account was created to show how I could create my own social media magazine of my articles on digital marketing for car dealers.

In this example, I went to popular websites that I contribute content and Tweeted the links using this account. In effect, this account could be called “The Best of Pasch” because I have not following anyone else nor do I care if anyone follows it.

Then I connected the FlipBoard application to this new Twitter feed and in seconds, a beautiful social media magazine was created.

If you think about this application, you could do the same for a popular car that you sell. Create a Twitter feed and tweet all the third party reviews, photos, videos, etc for that ONE model. Then add that Twitter account to FlipBoard and you have a real-time, customized magazine with CONTENT YOU APPROVE.

If you kept up with this special “magazine” accounts, your FlipBoard magazines will grow in richness and information. If FlipBoard gets really popular, then you could advertising your Twitter Magazine Accounts for anyone to add to their FlipBoard.

Since Twitter feeds are often cluttered by outside commentary from those that you follow, creating a clean account for FlipBoard to use a sales magazine is a new way to use this technology.

Reputation Management Tool

You could also create a special Twitter account for Automotive Internet Reputation Management (IRM) which tweets third party reviews websites that are positive about your dealership, your blog posts featuring customer reviews, articles on your work in the community, etc. Add a button on your FlipBoard and customers can follow what their peers are saying about their experience at your dealership.

While customers are waiting in the service lounge, you could have a number of custom electronic magazines to read on FlipBoard that changes every time they come in. This is a very cool application and for me. Now I have a consolidated social media magazine of best ideas and practices in digital marketing.

This may be a great tool for sales and also for people who like my articles to add to their Flipboard dashboard. Since you can follow anyone’s twitter feed, these clean feeds will allow people to follow me on: http://twitter.com/pcgdigital and never get the chatter and distractions a normal feed would show on Flipboard.

So if you have Flipboard, please add a button for PCG!

Brian Pasch FlipBoard Video – Part II

If you like this application, please join this new community that will follow this new field of social media discovery tools:

Join Today: http://www.ipadsocialmagazine.com/

Applications received between August 3-6th will be assessed a late fee of $300.

Applications after August 6th will not be accepted.

If you work at car dealership and love your website platform, make sure your website vendor enters to be part of this annual award of excellence. We will be once again selecting the best website platforms to assist dealers with their search marketing needs.

Digital marketing is THE place for growth in spending in 2010 and 2011 and the 2010 ASMA report will assist car dealers in selecting a platform that will reward that increased investment with a stronger ROI.

ASMA Vendor Features Grid

Some questions have been asked by automotive website vendors about the extended list of website platform feature questions in this year’s application. In the 2010 ASMA report we will be creating for the first time a master grid of website features and applications offered by vendors.

For example, some vendors offer Video SEO and some do not. Some offer unlimited page building and other don’t. Some offer integrated chat and others do not. There is no master list that lines up platforms and features, but there will now, as a bonus in the 2010 ASMA report.

We also added some functionality questions that do not affect SEO like integrated CRM. We were asked why this question was included and our response is that it enhances the features grid. It is not being asked to add any weight in the award selection process for integrated CRM.

A few vendors offers their own CRM product and others use third parties. This does not impact the search visibility of a website but having that feature column will help dealers compare vendors for specific criteria they may be interested in.

ASMA Award Integrity

The 2010 ASMA report is unique in that it combines vendor provided data as well as independently verified data by our ASMA review staff. The report is funded by PCG Digital Marketing and is wholly managed and owned by PCG. Here are some additional points of clarification:

• If vendors do not submit an application for the awards it does not mean that the ASMA team will not perform an analysis from public information and our own testing. In this case, the vendor has chosen not to clearly answer the matrix of questions about their products.
• We will review ALL vendors again who were in the 2009 ASMA report regardless of their formal participation and application submission. Any vendors that did not feel that their platform was accurately represented in 2009 should participate in the formal application process.
• Without vendor particpation in the application process, the ASMA team may be reviewing old technology. This is because we will pick websites at random unless otherwise dictated from formal applications.
• If there is a question on the application you do not want to or cannot answer – leave them blank. If any question you feel would compromise your technological advantage, leave it blank.

Our independent analysis and honest reporting has won the respect of the automotive industry and this year will be no different. Each year the ASMA study and awards will seek to be relevant to the needs of car dealers and the changing landscape of the automotive industry. We encourage all members of the automotive community in website design to particpate.

ASMA Applications can be obtained by contacting Carrie Hemphill at: 732-450-8200

A press release was published announcing that WardsAuto.com, an industry leader in Automotive News and Data Analysis, has partnered with DrivingSales.com to promote the upcoming 2010 DrivingSales Executive Summit.

The annual automotive summit will be held at the Encore Hotel in Las Vegas from October 18-20th.  Car dealers now have two important “must attend” conference in October with the other being the 9th Digital Dealer Conference.  The two conferences are very different in format and target audience but members of your dealership should be attending both events.

The addition of Wards Auto as a automotive advertising and marketing engine behind the 2010 Driving Sales Executive Summit will greatly increase the visibability and awareness of the event.  Wards will be handling sponsorships for the event as well as advertising the event via banner ads on WardsAuto.,com and their email list.

The finalized speaker agenda for the 2010 Driving Sales Executive Summit will be posted on the event website located at www.drivingsalesexecutivesummit.com.  Some of the topics that will be covered at the 2010 DSES are listed below in the attached press release but I would check with the offcial website over the coming weeks to .

I recommend that dealer principals and General Managers consider adding the summit to their October calendar and register early.  You can get a glimpse at the 2010 agenda by reading the official press release below. You can also see last year’s agenda on my blog: 2009 Driving Sales Executive Summit. 

The 2010 event is two days instead of just one and will have more breakout sessions and industry experts and keynote speakers.

Wards Auto Official Press Release

WardsAuto.com is partnering with an automotive conference that has quickly established itself as a premier event for innovative dealer principals and managers. 

The DrivingSales Executive Summit presented with WardsAuto.com will be held Oct. 18-20 at the Encore luxury resort in Las Vegas. 

Attendees of the second annual event will include the nation’s most successful and forward-thinking dealer operators. The summit provides a setting for that advanced group to learn about and discuss new strategies for driving dealership sales.

The summit starts with a “30,000-ft. view” of the latest trends touching the auto industry, then drops down to a “15,000-ft. view” of how leading dealership innovators are using intelligence from these trends to develop new ways of doing business.

Completing the event are roundtable sessions at which participants discuss implementing specific aspects of cutting-edge plans to enhance their operations.

Registered attendees are welcome to submit some of the summit’s topics of discussion. Topics are voted on up to a few weeks before the summit to ensure relevance and timeliness.

Established conference topics include:

• Price compression. How are progressive dealers handling online pricing and still maintaining vehicle gross profits?
• Social Media. Despite the hype, what is the return on investment? The conference will look at real-life practices at dealerships, not just social-media marketing theories.
• The Evolving Finance Office. Top dealers will discuss and debate what they are doing to stay ahead of the curve in this profit center.
• Location-Based Media Applications. New technology allows users to share their location along with a real-time stream of data. How can dealers use this as a marketing opportunity?
• Fixed Operations and the Internet. Online marketing for fixed operations is one of the largest opportunities for dealers since the advent of their websites. The conference will explore this next frontier in digital marketing.

For more information and to register, go to http://WardsAuto.com/DrivingSales.

Source: http://wardsauto.com/ar/partners_drivingsales_100726/

Robert Scoble first broke the story on his Scobleizer.com and created the video below which sits down with the CEO and founder of Flipboard.  I watched the entire video and I am now going over to download the free application from the iTunes store.

The Flipboard concept is very exciting for me since  because I am an active social media user. I have many people I want to stay in touch with from the business world and also from my personal life. The Flipboard software is a social media aggregator and presents the social media streams in a magazine format.   I was very excited to see how the software takes small snippets of text and links to create the ultimate social media data experience.

It is mind-blowing how cool this application take an ugly stream of Twitter data and turns it into something very easy to read and with full content.  For example, Flipboard takes a 140 character tweet and follows the link and finds the related story and presents it in an attractive format.  It creates your own personsal social media magazine.

Take a moment to view the video and tell me if you agree that Flipboard is a really cool way to get rich data and stories from your social media streams.

Flipboard Video

Setting Up Flipboard

It tool two minutes to setup Flipboard on my iPad and look how cool my Twitter feed looks with articles shown from Eric Miltsch, Cobalt and also from my own posts.

When you setup your copy of the Flipboard app, make sure you add these streams:

• http://twitter.com/automotiveseo
• http://facebook.com/pcgdigitalmarketing

Send me a note about your experiences with Flipboard or add your comments below.

Brian Pasch
brian@pcgdigitalmarketing.com

When I am called into dealership meetings to review their online marketing strategy, rarely does a dealership ask about increasing service revenue through SEO and SEM.   Dealers seem to be content with service direct mail and email campaigns which work very well in most markets.

Over the past few months I have been working on an SEO strategy to increase the visibility of car dealers for common service searches in Google.  It is an eye opener to see just how I have been able to increase visibility for car dealers by targeting popular service keywords.

A good way to test the service visibility for any car dealer is to type in a common service for a brand that they sell in their own town.  So a BMW dealer in Virginia Beach would test their service SEO by searching Google for:

• BMW Oil Change Virginia Beach
• BMW Brakes Virginia Beach
• BMW Tires Virginia Beach

In the first case, PCG’s new Fixed Operations Microsite appears on Google Page One for Checkered Flag Auto Group ahead of all business offering a BMW Oil Change.  This added visibility for car dealers will over time, increase leads, calls and service revenue.

If you search Google Videos or YouTube videos for the Phrase “Virginia Beach Oil Change“, their service video is ranked #1.  Dealers who want to gain an edge in their markets should leverage service microsites and videos to communicate an effective message.

Dealers Becoming Price Competitive

In this challenging economy, many dealers have decided to become more price competitive for common automotive services like oil changes, tires, brakes and coolant flushes.  I wholeheartedly agree with this strategy.

If dealers have good service advisers, they can extend the dealership brand and customer service experience to owners of cars that dealers do not sell.  The service channel can be a more effective sales and lead strategy than any other channel because of the number of car owners they touch each month.  Busy dealer groups service thousands of cars a week and if they were also marketing to all car owners in their market, these numbers could grow significantly.

So I would like to cast a vote that Fixed Operations SEO and microsites be on dealership agendas for digital marketing spending.  Dealers should also create a budget to create videos for popular services that they offer which can light-up content pages.

Google rewards first responders so before your competitors take the lead for service microsites in your area, make the move.

Today one of my clients received a lead from Jennifer M. Sorrells who is a  PERS Marketing Executive.  Ms. Sorrells is a salesperson and somehow she thought it was a good idea to use a car dealer’s quote form to sell her goods.  The choice of using a car dealer website form for soliciting business is in bad taste and in my opinion, paints a very poor image her company: Preferred Call & Response LLC.

Jennifer Sorrells Email

Here is the message that Jennifer sent:

customerfirstname : Jennifer
customerlastname : Sorrells
customeraddress : 399 E. 29th St.
customercity : Buena Vista
customerstate : VA
customerzip : 24416
customerhomephone : 888-528-2331
preferredcontacttime : Morning
customeremail : jsorrells@pcr-va.com
timeframe : 1 Week
Year : 2010
Make : Nissan
Model : Xterra
Trim : 4WD 4dr Auto SE
Comments : Hello,

My name is Jennifer and I’m the PERS Marketing Executive for Preferred Call and Response.  We wanted to contact you with some information regarding our Safezone GPS system.  The Safezone works just like On-Star,  you would have GPS tracking, voice capabilities, and an SOS button.  This can be downloaded on their cell phone as an application.  As long as the customer has a data plan there is no cost for the sim card or other data charges.   We thought you may be interested in offering this as an extra feature.  We would be willing to pay commission for the system as well.  I would like to send you some information for you to review.  If you have any questions or comments please feel free to contact me.

Thank you,

Jennifer M. Sorrells
PERS Marketing Executive
Phone: 888-528-2331
Preferred Call and Response
399 E. 29th St.
Buena Vista, VA 24416

Why Spam When You Can Call?

I wonder why a company that on their website touts the importance of a live voice, would use email spam to market their business.   This is either a low class marketing strategy, a misguided marketing director or a “just a get the message out regardless of the cost”  tactic.  Companies that use these tactics should be called out and that is why I am writing about their marketing practice.

Notice, Jeniffer filled out the lead form to be able to submit the sales pitch so it was NOT an auto-generated email spam campaign but a deliberate plan.  This is best described as a doomed marketing strategy.  If their call center services were actually that good, they would have called.  Here is what their website claims:

“We offer call center services to businesses and government agencies that allow owners/operators to manage their core business while PCR attends to the sales, marketing, and fulfillment side. What a difference a live voice has on your potential customers!”

I guess they couldn’t afford to invest in telemarketing to do their own sales!

Is anyone else sick and tired of lead form abuse?

Your Dealership is Under Attack.  Learn How to Fight Back

July 22, 2010 – Hosted by DealersEdge.com – Presenter: Brian Pasch

 
Ever since consumers started using the Internet to find product pricing and information on cars, third party lead providers have outperformed car dealers in reaching local consumers on the Internet.  

Third party lead providers have been successful in getting their automotive advertising websites in front of consumers searching on the Internet and collecting their information and car buying preferences.

In recent years, lead collectors have branched into the car inventory advertising business.  Some of these models are free and others are paid services.  Car dealers were not fully told what would happen when they gave their inventory to these national websites to advertise. 

They were told that it was good for their business and they believed that.

Once third party websites collect consumer information, these leads are then sold to multiple car dealers.  The lead distribution process negatively affects the closing ratio of third party leads because multiple dealers are competing at the same time for the buyer’s attention.

As dealers have realized that their own websites are being pushed off Google Page One for popular searches, some dealers have decided to fight back. These dealers were looking to increase first party leads and exclusive leads that will increase their closing ratios and gross profit.

However, these same dealers have found that taking on third party lead collectors and automotive advertising websites is a difficult challenge.  Third party lead collectors have had a 10 year head start and their websites are highly ranked because of their age, traffic and the number of sites that link to their pages.  Dealers’ biggest challenge is to find ways to increase links and traffic to their primary website.

The Attacks On Your Dealership

Third party lead collectors also have clever tactics to increase the visibility of their websites and grab leads from local consumers that are searching for a local car dealer.  Some of these tactics include:

1. Creating a business directory page for every car dealer in the United States.  These optimized pages on the dealership name have lead collection forms which are sold to competitors.
2. Establishing car dealer review program that has a review page for every car dealer in the United States.  These optimized pages on the dealership name have lead collection forms and advertising from competitors.
3. Publishing blind inventory listing pages for every car dealer in the US which appear to list cars from the dealer but in fact it lists cars from competing local car dealers.
4. Creating website pages for every brand of car and every city in the United States which are optimized to appear when consumers type in broad searches for cars in the towns that surround a dealer’s location.
5. Purchasing OEM keywords using Google Adwords to make their website appear to be local when in fact they are choosing keywords to benefit from local dealers advertising budgets.
6. Advertising car dealer’s inventory and including ads from competitors and OEM’s to create multiple opportunities to capture leads and divert traffic using car dealer assets.

A car dealer’s most valuable asset is their brand name.  Their business name is being used against them by third parties using clever search engine optimization strategies.  For most car dealers, doing a search on their business name will reveal multiple third party lead collection websites on Google Page One. 

Dealers who search for their OEM brand (make and model) and the local city name will also be shocked to see how many Adwords campaigns are targeting their store. This occurrence is not by chance and is not illegal; it’s just an eye opener on those who seek to leverage a dealer’s name and OEM brand for profit.

The second most valuable asset is a car dealer’s inventory.  Dealers have been take advantage of by many so called “free” advertising websites that list car dealer inventory.  These free advertising models promised greater leads and visibility for car dealers. Most have fallen far short of that promise and in fact are just generating advertising revenue for the website owner.  By participating in some third party advertising models they have weakened their search dominance in their local markets.

Dealers Try To Fight Back

Dealers have resorted to Search Engine Marketing (Google Adwords) to fight back against third party lead collectors but this can be expensive in most markets.  As soon as spending stops so does the dealers visibility. 

Dealers have also attempted to use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to fight back but this is a long term strategy and third party lead collectors have a head start.  Dealers often abandon SEO investments because they have measured results based on changes in their rankings over 30, 60 and 90 days.   A strong Automotive SEO  strategy is best measured in years not months. Third party lead collectors another edge; they are counting on dealers to be inpatient with SEO because it’s their secret weapon built over the past 10 years.

What You Will Learn in the Webinar

Car dealers wanting to increase first party leads are not without hope.    Brian Pasch will guide car dealers on strategies that will allow them to increase first party leads and increase the search authority of their websites.

On July 22, 2010, DealersEdge.com attendees will learn:

1. How to identify the sources that are attacking your dealership brand and equity.
2. Establishing processes to resolve each source of attack.
3. How to measure the effectiveness of inventory advertising vendors that may be pushing your website off Google Page One.
4. How to create an offense strategy to regain Page One dominance for your local markets.
5. How to create a defensive strategy against future attacks on your brand name and the cars you sell.
6. How to increase high quality links to your primary website to increase its search authority.
7. How to create powerful local advertising websites for the cars that you sell to compliment sales from your primary website.

To register, click here:  Dealers Edge Webinar

Webinar Bonus

Dealers interested in have their websites reviewed by Brian Pasch prior to the webinar  can send their primary website names to brian@pcgdigitalmarketing.com with the subject DealersEdge Webinar Analysis.  Brian and his team will review some elements of your search marketing authority and include some direct feedback prior to the webinar. 

Deadline for submissions is July 19, 2010.

As you know,  PCG is an advocate for both strategies and we are passionate about the return on investment, not cost, that these services provide.

Benefits of A Strong Automotive SEO Strategy

In a nutshell with Automotive SEO, car dealers get:

• Search Relevance
  • Good Content
  • Good Website Architecture
  • New Content Added To Website
• External Links
  • From A Diverse Group Of Sites
  • From Authoritative Automotive Sites
  • With Quality Anchor Text
  • And Proper Page Positioning
• New Sources of Traffic
  • Social Media
  • Content Publishing
  • Automotive Forums
  • Advertising Portals

Car dealers are in the weakest position when it comes to building external links.  Links are the “votes” from other websites and the links authenticate your web site’s value for specific search phrases.  Over time dealers should have THOUSANDS of good links pointing to their websites.

When dealers realize that there are about 25 third party websites that I see on Google Page One every day pushing their website off Page One, the issue of links will become more apparent.  Dealers have given their inventory to free advertising portals that have created sites that rank above them in their OWN TOWN.

I estimate that less than 5% of dealers nationwide understand that if they only have ONE website to market their goods and they are not concerned about links, then they will be at a significant disadvantage.  The disadvantage is getting larger each day.

If you want to validate this claim, type in a year, make and model search for your town and brand of car you sell.  See just how many dealers vs. third party lead collectors/advertisers are on page one that are NOT dealer centric in their ad model.

The days of consumers going to one car advertising website because of a million dollar off-line branding campaign is being diminished by many new paths to searching and researching a car.  Consumers are getting more sophisticated in their search behavior and are more empowered to find their own “best” deal.

Search 2008 Toyota Corolla Downey

There is a Toyota dealership in Downey California. When you look at the Page One search results, the dealer’s website is no where to be found and its their own city.  80% of the page is occupied by third party lead collectors or third party advertising portals.

Check it out yourself:  View Search (shown in photo on right)

Automotive SEO strategies that include microsites, content writing, link building and social media do not make sales and visibility changes overnight.

Most dealers do not have the patience so in the end they spend 2x more on pay-per-click investments over the long-haul.

Automotive SEO is a long-term investment in your multi-million dollar franchise.

In the past 6 months we have seen a 200% increase in competitive search traffic for year, make and model searches and it’s not looking good for dealers who ignore SEO strategies.

AAN Members Can Fight Back

Do a similar search for a member of the Automotive Advertising Network (AAN) which is the first dealer centric advertising network.

Search: 2008 Toyota Camry Englewood

You will see their AAN local advertising page in the 3rd postion on Google Page One, shown in the image below:

Note: The dealer’s own Dealer.com website is not on Google Page One.  This is not a criticism about their DDC website but rather commonplace from what I can see.  Car dealer websites are under attack and they don’t yet see the problem.

Members of the AAN get both Automotive SEO and Social Media integration benefits that include:

• Inventory Plugin For Facebook
• Customer Testimonial Channel Plugin For Facebook
• Unlimited Blog Posting on the AAN’s Automotive News Network
• Inventory integration to their own blogs
• Cars listed on national, regional and local advertising pages
• Numerous links back to dealer’s primary website
• Unlimited leads from optimized SEO advertising pages

Social Media ROI

Social media is more than Facebook and Twitter and it includes tasks like Reputation Management, FourSquare, Social Communities and Blogging.  As dealers participate in online communities and social media platforms they can connect and engage with consumers in their marketplace.  As the video points out, if you compare everything in social media with outdated ROI standards you will be missing the point of social media.

PCG’s own advertising budget is primarily based on social media.  We participate in blogs, social networks and communities to get our services and expertise in front of business owners.  Our company’s growth is based on practicing our own SEO strategies and social media participation.

Dealers as a whole are impatient with the process. I understand that impatience but I would not stake my reputation and career on vaporware.

Someone said it best, “Don’t bet against Pasch”.

I took that as a great compliment but it reflects my passion.   I work around the clock testing new ways to assist car dealers increase their search relevance and authority.

The Automotive Advertising Network is a delivery on that passion (SEO and Social) and promise those that participate will be rewarded…just not overnight like a PPC campaign would deliver.

Automotive SEO and Social Media engagement is a critical investment that must be a part of all car dealer budgets.

Dealers are struggling to validate the benefits and implementation costs of social media, chat, streaming video, reputation management, SEO, SEM and a dozen other digital marketing pitches that come across their desk each month.  With little track records or case studies to help dealers with the education process, seasoned mangers are scratching their heads and looking for advice and support from the companies that they have leaned on in the past.

Unfortunately, these products are coming from more single source vendors and not their current automotive advertising agency.  Most traditional automotive advertising agencies that have delivered success with direct mail, radio, TV and print have stumbled to provide integrated digital marketing offerings.  Automotive advertising agencies clinging to traditional marketing expertise has created a disruption in the marketplace with no clear winners emerging from the chaos. 

Dealers who once had a single call to make for their advertising and marketing strategies now have to make multiple calls and are forced into becoming a General Contractor to build an integrated marketing strategy. Dealers have neither the training, desire nor the sustainable skills to act as a General Contractor.  

Next generation automotive advertising agencies must seamlessly merge the traditional and digital landscape to increase their value to car dealers.  The marketplace is screaming for integrated automotive advertising agencies that offload the burden currently on car dealers who seek to gain market share with the changing of advertising models.

Antiquated Data Exchange Standards and Protectionism

To complicate the integration of traditional marketing with digital marketing strategies, dealers are still tied to vendors that do not embrace open standards for data exchange and collaboration.  For example only two DMS providers serve all new car dealers in the United States.  For some dealers, the distribution of the dealer’s own data is restricted by antiquated data access policies. 

It’s hard to believe that in 2010 a car dealer cannot click on a menu to export a file of their own inventory into an ADF compliant XML file to send the third party advertising sources.   It is hard to believe that some vendors still use modems for data transmission.  Car dealers have allowed the confiscation of their own data and are held captive from creating truly innovating data reporting systems.

Since car dealers are using multiple single source software solutions, it is time to recognize that “lead lifecycle” reporting is one of the last barriers that car dealers need to measure true ROI.  When a dealer has a website provider that is different than their CRM vendor, significant data is lost due to the current way data is exchanged.  Commonly data is transmitted between two different software platforms using a file format call the ADF specification.

The automotive industry needs a revised ADF specification to allow an open source solution to end to end reporting across multiple software platforms.  The current specification is a 1.0 version that was last modified in 2000. A lack of leadership and protectionism is complicating a revised data exchange standard and costing dealers thousands of dollars a year.   

Where are the Leaders?

The automotive advertising agency of the future needs to shepherd vendor integration because it is what their clients truly need.  I truly believe that dealer Principals and General Managers are spending way too much time in the General Contractor role and if asked, they would give up that title in a heartbeat.

Automotive advertising agencies that seek to gain market share must invest in properly trained technical staff that understands SEO, SEM, website design, data communications, data analysis and third party data integration.

Automotive Advertising Agencies that fail to provide integrated traditional and digital marketing strategies are going to be asked an uncomfortable question by the dealer: “And remind me what I am actually paying you to do..”

When that question is asked, you can start the clock on when your account will be replaced by an agency that took the burden of the dealer and didn’t wait to let the market disruption be the last straw.

The event is by invitation only and the Top car dealers across the country will be receiving their invitations in the coming weeks.  The 2010 DrivingSales Executive Summit will be held at the Encore hotel, in Las Vegas Nevada. The organizaers have negotiated an excellent package for all attendees to enjoy the luxury of the Encore, at a very low rate.  When registering for the event, please notify DSES if you will be staying at the Encore and they will book your reservation for you.

2010 DSES Conference Format

The DrivingSales Executive Summit is an exclusive automotive event, laser focused on cutting edge dealership operations.  It features an invitation-only guest list of the most successful and innovative dealership operators in the country and world-renowned speakers to educate and inspire the collaborative process.  This years Executive Summit will be held at the beautiful Encore hotel in the electrifying city of Las Vegas, Nevada.

The event kicks off with a 30,000-foot view of the latest media and economic trends just starting to touch the industry.  These high level discussions are then translated down to the 15,000-foot view of how some of the leading dealership innovators are incorporating these trends into new strategies that drive sales at the dealership level. 

To complete the event are strategy collaboration sessions at the 10-foot dealership view where dealer operators participate with their peers in round table discussions about implementing specific aspects of these newly inspired strategies.  The program will inspire you and leave you with a strategic plan to drive measurable results at your store.

The topics and speakers presented are selected by group of dealer attendees. This insures the topics are timely, relevant and that the speakers are of the highest quality for the audience.  The agenda is not sponsor driven, it is dealer driven.

PCG Digital Marketing

Brian Pasch, CEO of PCG Digital Marketing will be attending the event and summiting a case study of their digital marketing work for the automotive industry.  If you would like to book a private consultation with Brian Pasch out in Vegas, give our office a call at 732.450.8200 x12.

Mr. Lambreth will be discussing his new book, Return to Greatness – Driving the American Dream, in which he reveals the secrets of Ford’s dramatic transformation from near-bankruptcy to profitability.

Mudd is a recognized leader in Automotive Advertising and Marketing making this venue a perfect fit for Lambreth.

Return to Greatness, which he co-wrote with Ford Executive Patrick Doyle and author Mary Calia, documents the strategies and principles that were used to bring about the historic turnaround at Ford and gives inspirational advice to readers on how to affect positive change in their own organization.

“Return to Greatness is a leadership book that compels you to examine yourself and your company,” said Lambreth, “and take a hard look at what you are willing to do to become a true leader that values integrity, perseverance, and accountability.”

Clifton Lambreth

Lambreth has worked for the Ford Motor Company for over 25 years in a variety of positions. In 2008 he was one of a very few people at Ford to receive the Ford Leadership award. His first book, Ford and the American Dream: Founded on Right Decisions, has recently been translated into Russian and is being made into a film later this year.

“Mudd Advertising is very excited to have Clifton come to our company to speak about one of the most remarkable turnarounds in automotive history,” said Jim Mudd, Jr., CEO of Mudd Advertising, “It is an inspirational story that will resonate with our employees and automotive clients.”

Lambreth will be speaking to Mudd Advertising employees and clients at the company’s bi-monthly Gung Ho! meeting, a company-wide event created to recognize employee achievements, communicate company successes, and to build a positive sense of community within the organization.

Car Dealer Advertising

Mudd Advertising is an award winning  Automotive Advertising Agency, with over 3000 customers in 50 states. The company‘s corporate headquarters is located in Cedar Falls, with affiliate offices in Chicago and Nashville. Mudd is highly regarded for its results-driven advertising – whether it is direct mail, online or on TV or radio.

The first thing I questioned was the relevance of the patent since so much has changed in the past 6 years in search.  The patent data include this text:

Ranking documents based on user behavior and/or feature data
Invented by Jeffrey A. Dean, Corin Anderson and Alexis Battle
Assigned to Google Inc.
United States Patent 7,716,225
Granted May 11, 2010
Filed: June 17, 2004

SEO pundits have differing opinions on the specific value of this patent but to save you the internal banter, I will try to distill what I think is most important.  This patent is focused on how Google will “weight” links on a web page.  The weighting may include predicting what a consumer would most likely click on a web page.  So a text link in the first paragraph of a blog article, with interesting anchor text, could have more “weight” than a link in the bottom page footer.

Links are critical in the overall visibility of any website and this patent is part of that discussion.  The discussion that has surfaced pertains to where is the best place for links on a page and how do different types of links “rate” with Google. 

For example, a link from the home page of Automotive News to any dealer’s website is a great link to have since that site is a recognized authority in the automotive industry.  This link would have more “weight” than a link from a brand new microsite or a friends landscaping website.

Building Inbound Links

Car dealers who have launched effective off-site SEO campaigns that produce high quality inbound links from well ranked websites normally have an edge over their competition with all other things considered equal. 

However, it is difficult for dealers to independently create hundreds or thousands of high quality links to their websites.   Dealers can obtain high quality links from press releases, social communities, car forums, article syndication, document publishing portals and business directories.  Increasing links is like an annuity of good will and create a digital marketing foundation.

If you have been considering increasing the links to your website, you should understand some of the basics of link building.  Some of the questions you may have are:

• How many links do I have directed to my website?
• What is a good link?
• Where can I find places to create links back to my site?
• Where should that link be located?
• Are image links better than text links?

To find the number of inbound links pointing to your website, and to make it easy for anyone to get a correct count, I recommend that you go to www.websitegrader.com .  Type in your domain name and then click on the “Create Report” button.  The free report and analysis includes the number of “inbound links”.

While you have the report, take a look at the data and one thing to spot is when your domain is going to expire.  If it’s less than two years, renew it today.  Also, if your score is under 70/100, it would be a good time to give PCG a call.

Dealers who want to be competitive in online search should seek to have a diverse set of high quality sites linking to their website.  I bring this up because often I see hundreds of links coming from only one website and so the number of links masks the problem of low diversity. The total recommended links will vary but I would like to see over 1,000 links to the dealer’s home page and hundreds of links to key inside web pages like service, parts, and used cars.

A good link is one that comes from a reputable website that has real content, real visitor activity and relevance to your business.  The site can also be unrelated to your business but one that has a high Google PageRank. There are many link building scams on the market, so be careful that you don’t waste your money.

 The Reasonable Surfer Patent   emphasizes what I have been recommending for years. Content based SEO strategies that include blogs, press releases, article publishing, posting articles on technical forums and social communities can deliver high quality links.  The key is to place that link in such a way that enhances the page and that links to the right page on your dealer website.

An example would be posting an article, outside of your website, about the different types of Nissan extended warranty plans available to a consumer.  In the article you would place links to the extended warranty page on your dealer website or even Nissan brochures on your website.  Car dealers who have been blogging for years or participating in automotive forums already know this. 

How Many Links Do You Have?

Do you know how many links are pointing to your website?  How about your competitor’s website?

You can see inbound links on any website by going to Yahoo and typing in your competitor’s domain name or your domain name with the “link” parameter.   For example, if you wanted to see where ABC Ford (www.abcford.com) was building links from you would go to Yahoo and type in the search box:

link:www.abcford.com 

No spaces. This will bring up the Yahoo Site Explorer  and it will show you the first 1,000 inbound links to any website. 

There is a debate whether a text link will not be as strong as an image that is linked because a “surfer” may be more likely to click on a photo or banner that is above the fold.  There is no uniform agreement on this matter.      Should you bold the text anchor?  Should you use larger fonts for the anchor text?  That is where the art of link building and testing comes into play.

What is most uniformly agreed is that a list of links in a sidebar or footer will not be as strong as links inside an article.  Of course I am talking about a well written article with links on anchor text that point to relevant pages on a dealer’s website.

If you want to target high value keywords that you want your website to appear on Google Page One, then a combination of good on-site content and a few hundred links from external sites may be just what you need.   The strategy for off-site links will be to use the keyword in content and hyperlink that keyword to an appropriate page on your website.   It’s a two part strategy that must be in place to win.

 If your keyword goal is very competitive you will most likely need thousands of links.  The point is that over time, you can compete and win against your local competitors if you have a strong content writing and off-site link building strategy.

Need help with link building?  Give us a call at 732-450-8200.

As PCG Digital Marketing has expanded its own offerings to car dealers, none are more apparent than Fixed Operations digital marketing and optimization. 

In this case, car dealers don’t have to go far to see that most car dealers are invisible on Google Page One for searches for tires, brakes, oil changes and parts in their own PMA.

Fixed Operations SEO is not widely discussed within online communities or at trade conferences and yet it is a true bread winner for car dealers.  I have been working with a number of car dealers that have decided to aggressively advertise that they offer competitive prices on the most common car repairs and service.  The key is to take that offline decision to the search engines for consumers to see online.

There are a few ways to attack generating more calls and leads for service so I will create a multi-part series on this topic and also schedule a webinar to help dealers with implementing effective Fixed Ops search strategies.

Before we talk about search strategies, it is vitally important that you do local market research on competing dealers and independent service center.  Use this data to establish your pricing and marketing message. Ask your digital advertising agency to create online and offline branding graphics and messages that can be used in print, television, banner ads and on your website. 

Once you have the graphics and message worked out, add service pages to your main website or dedicated service website that match your offline message.  I suggest that you have specific landing pages for oil changes, brakes, tires, transmission service, etc.  Each of these pages should have a lead capture form and a clear call to action button to schedule a service appointment.

Once your dedicated service landing pages are in place, you can start a Google Adwords campaign which buys keywords that can be directed to the appropriate service landing page.  For example, if you bought the words “oil change” or “Oil and Lube”, you should direct those clicks to the oil change landing page that you just created.  Do not send consumers to a generic service appointment form with no message about why they should have their next oil change done at your dealership.

In Google Adwords this is called setting up Ad Groups, so I suggest that each Ad Group be directed to the best landing page you created.

Fixed Operations Videos

On your service landing pages, I suggest that you consider creating videos that address the common consumer fear that getting a service done at your dealership is more expensive than at an independent service shop.  If you want to see two good examples of videos that talk to the consumer about dealership service benefits, click on the links below:

• Checkered Flag Service Video
• Mac Haik Service Video

In the case of Checkered Flag, their video team created a series of service videos that address specific services.  If you click on the oil change link on the Checkered Flag service site, you will see that Christine’s video is different than the home page and talks specifically about oil changes.

If you would like to create a video package of 10 service videos, drop me a line because there are a number of companies that can do this for your dealership at a very reasonable cost.  Fixed Ops videos will turn those boring pages on your website into selling tools.

It is wise to note that by creating a separate website optimized service website, car dealers can run TWO Adwords campaigns at the same time.  This means your normal new and used car sales Adwords campaign can be running at the same time as your service Adwords campaign. 

This has some added competitive advantages as well as addressing consumers behavior that clouds accurate assessment of sales campaigns. Consumers often click on car sales PPC ads when they really wanted service.  Next time you want to see this, just listen to the phone calls recorded from your PPC campaign.

Dealers can create a service ad group which buys your dealership name and in that ad group create ads that are service specific messages. This can reduce the contamination of your car marketing PPC results by reducing the number of service clicks out of the sales campaign.

Automotive SEO for Fixed Ops

In addition to Adwords SEM, I suggest that dealers create a stand-alone service website that is optimized for their PMA and the most common services they offer.  A service Microsite will create an annuity of high quality service leads once it is indexed every year without advertising costs.  The interesting fact is that most car dealers are NOT appearing in the organic search results for services like oil change, tires and brakes. 

The market is wide open for those who respond first.

The organic listings in Google for service searches are filled with franchises like Jiffy Lube, Meineke and Discount Tire stores.  It’s time for car dealers to fight back and give consumers a choice when they search online.  Search optimized websites for Fixed Operations actually index rather quickly because local dealers have ignored this aspect of Automotive SEO.

Also, buy creating a separate service website, you can choose a URL that will better match consumer search.   For example, if you purchased www.seattlejeepservice.com you would have a better change of appearing in service related searches in Seattle.

Fixed Operations Digital Marketing

If you have not been exploiting the profit and revenue associated with a dedicated Fixed Ops digital marketing campaign, there is no better time to start than today.  If you need assistance, drop me a line and we can coach you through the process.

PCG has a new Fixed Operations marketing package and stand-alone website that may be the right fit for your business for as little as $395 per month. Give us a call 732-450-8200

If you haven’t noticed lately, Google search results are showing less car dealer video “thumbnails” that are optimized for year, make and model. Last year, it was easy to load into YouTube a video with the title “2010 Toyota Sienna Chicago” and have the “thumbnail” it show up in the organic search results when consumers searched that “phrase” as long as the video was loaded with optimized description and tags.

Today, if you do a year, make and model search and add your local PMA towns, you will be hard to find a video “thumbnail” come up very often.  This is because Google has changed their algorithm about showing videos “thumbnails” in organic search results.   What you are more likely to see if just the text link to YouTube which blends in with the other links to text pages.

Why Are Thumbnail Views Being Reduced?

Video “thumbnails” and images have a much higher click through rate when compared to a text link.  The video thumbnails were hurting Google Adwords clicks and revenue so they turned the dial down on when thumbnails are presented in Google organic search results. 

We may very soon see a public version of paid videos as part of Google Adwords campaign so that dealer videos can be included in search results for a PPC fee.

In the meantime, the entire buzz about car video “thumbnails” showing up regularly in Google organic search results and selling cars should be understood in the context of this visible change.   This means that videos will have less click-through rates and will in turn drive less traffic to your video channel or websites.

Consumers do spend a lot of time inside of YouTube and so I’m not minimizing video as a part of a car dealer digital marketing strategy, I just want there to be an awareness of a shift that is underway.  If a consumer searches within YouTube, dealer videos will appear. 

Videos Are Important For Digital Marketing

Videos are also an important way of increasing conversion when video is added to a dealer website.   In 2010, the dealers that increase their website conversion will be using video testimonials and video marketing on their websites. It is my opinion that your landing pages for service, finance, used cars, new cars, warranty and parts should all have a welcome video with a call to action that defines why a consumer should do business with the dealer.

The change in frequency by which thumbnails are shown, presents a game changing strategy in organic search marketing for car dealers and something to watch in the coming months.

Brian Pasch, CEO
PCG Digital Marketing
732-450-8200

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After its debut during the 2010 NADA convention in Orlando, the AAN has caught the widespread attention of industry experts, digital marketing veterans and dealer professionals nationwide.

Developed by industry experts Brian Pasch, Sean Wolfington, David Boice and Ananth Godavari, the AAN is a comprehensive digital marketing and branding platform that utilizes proven practices in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), inventory advertising, social media and content publishing.

Using these proven SEO strategies, the AAN helps dealers establish high quality, exclusive leads for less money, translating into higher closing ratios and lower costs for the dealers.  Plus, unlike traditional third party lead collectors, the dealer’s own inventory-listing pages are free of competing ads.

According to Brian Pasch, CEO of PCG Digital Marketing and CO-Founder of the AAN, the Network gives member dealers a national, regional, and local footprint on the search engines so they appear on top of the search results for the vehicles they sell. “The Automotive Advertising Network leverages the power of consumer search and social media to present more opportunities for car shoppers to see their cars,” said Pasch.

The AAN has changed the playing field for dealers who have typically had to compete with national third- party lead providers who have long had an advantage on the search engines because of their national footprint and corresponding search authority.

To learn more about the AAN, it’s member benefits and features, please call Carrie Hemphill at 732-450-8200.

Brian Pasch to lead Google Anaytics and Webmaster Tools webinar on June 22, 2010 from 10:00 – 12:00 noon

Google provides a number of free tools that provide a wealth of information to anyone seeking to increase traffic, leads and sales to their website. Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics and Google Insights for Search are three tools that are under utilized for Internet Sales Managers.

If you haven’t looked at these tools in the past six months, you will be surprised at the number of new data points that are being collected and measured from your website.

If you are serious about learning more about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), traffic generation strategies, and improving website conversion you need to understand that great data that these tools provide.

This is the first time that Brian has offered to conduct a webinar workshop on these very important tools.

Once You Review The Data

The next step is to review what this data is “saying” about your website. The art of effective digital marketing is to know what the Google reporting data is telling you. During the webinar I will show you of number of strategies that can turn the data reported from these tools into actionable strategies to improve traffic to your website.

Register Before Space Fills Up

I will be doing a webinar on this topic in conjunction with www.DealerRefresh.com which was founded by Alex Snyder and Jeff Kershner. The webinar will be held on Tuesday June 22, 2010 from 10:00 am – 12:00 noon.

The cost is $25 per dealership rooftop login. This is a tremendous opportunity to unlock the mysteries of these tools and improve your digital marketing strategies.

If you are interested in attending, click on the button below:

Dealership name

Contact Name & Phone

If you Don’t have a PayPal account, you can pay with any credit card, just click on the link in the lower left corner of the payment screen after you click the button, as shown below:

Register Today

Since we expect this event to sell-out quickly, we encourage you to sign-up today. You can also send this page link to people in your 20 group and invite them to attend.

Once we receive your payment, you will be added to the list and your webinar link will be emailed 2 days before the event.

The information and training that you will obtain from this webinar will be priceless because it will show you how your website is “respected” by Google and how to create a more effective digital marketing strategy.

The power of the AAN is based on the national network of pure automotive websites that are dealer centric, brand enhancing and which promote the member dealers main website.  Every car detail page clearly indicates the name, address, phone number and website of the listing member.

The network lists new cars as well as used cars for one low monthly membership fee.  This fee also includes a customized Facebook inventory module, service optimized pages as well as access to our national automotive press release network.

Consumers can click right to their main website or even directly to their service, parts or social media pages. The AAN is the first dealer centric car advertising platform which will never place competing advertisements from competitors or OEM’s on their car listing pages.

Here is an example of the AAN in action, when a consumer searches for a Hyundai car in Jacksonville:

Local Advertising Pages For AAN Members

Here are just some of the dealer centric advertising pages and websites that drive more combined traffic, leads and links to dealer websites:

Car Dealer Marketing

Car dealers looking to increase the visibility for the cars they sell online turn to the AAN for  search, social media, blogs and news coverage.  For more information on the AAN and memebrship benefits, call 732-450-8200.

If you want more visibility for the cars you sell online, the Automotive Advertsing Network has the marketing solutions that are perfectly priced and deliver optimal results.

Brian Pasch Discusses the AAN with Phil Zelinger

Click on the player or the link below to listen to the “Automotive Advertising Experts” show- Interview With Brian Pasch Reviewing

The interesting fact is that most car dealers are not using Automotive Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies to increase service and parts sales. This means that the dealers who act quickly will have a long term strategic advantage in the coming years.

For many dealers, the prior emphasis for search engine optimization has been on sales of new and used cars. However, the real opportunity in 2010 is in an area that most dealers have ignored in their digital marketing strategy.

As dealers have diminished their ability to generate first party sales leads on their own websites by sending their inventory out to websites that produce no meaningful sales each month, dealer principals are looking for new ways to generate revenue.

Dealers are eager to find ways to take back control of their digital marketing footprint and PCG has the right tools to regain search authority for fixed operations; parts and service.

PCG Digital Marketing, on May 28th, 2010 announced a new Fixed Operations digital marketing platform for car dealers looking to increase direct consumer leads for common services such as oil changes, brakes, tires, radiator service, transmission, front end alignment, transmission repairs and dozens of popular Repairs orders.

The new Fixed Operations Marketing Platform (FOMP) creates hundreds of organic, search optimized pages for the most popular services in the dealer’s PMA and beyond. These pages can extend past the OEM brand that they represent to attract new customer that are driving competing brands.

The goal is for dealer service departments win over local car drivers to consider their dealership and the car that they sell when looking for their next car or truck. Dealers who want to be competitive for tires, oil changes and brakes will rejoice when they see just how effective the PCG Fixed Operations Marketing Platform (FOMP) is at delivering search visibility and leads for service and parts.

PCG also has innovative ways to market OEM parts online in conjunction with auto part shopping cart providers.

Pricing and Demos

For more information on the new marketing tools for Fixed Operations departments, contact PCG Digital Marketing.

Schedule an online demonstration with Carrie Hemphill at 732-450-8200.

The FOMP for service marketing is priced at $399 and $599 a month depending on the brands and area that dealers want to cover in their state. A small setup is required and contracts are month to month after an initial three month commitment.

Parts marketing websites are custom quoted based on certain market criteria.

The data screens have MANY digital marketing implications that can be utilized to refine your marketing investments.  That is best done on a one-to-one basis as I look at your Google Maps data.

It is vitally important that every business owner login to their Google Places (http://places.google.com)  account (formerly Local Business Center) and check out the new features and reports.  So, let’s get started.

Here is a basic Google Maps listing; more data shows on the page so this is just the top part of the listing.

Short Term Comments Added

You can now add comments to your Google Maps listing that will last 30-days.  This is a feature that is accessed when you view your Google Places report.   the comments can talk about your current sale or promotions so this should be added to your monthly digital marketing task list.

To view your report, login to your Google Places account, find your website listing and click on the “View Report” link as shown below:

Google Maps Analytics

When you login and click on View Report your screen will look like this:

Notice that you can add post comments on the upper right side of the screen.  These comments appear on your Google Maps listing page.

Do You Have A Perfect Score?

You can also see if you have completed all required information with your completeness score.  Most businesses will not be at 100% and that is due to a few factors that includes:

• No Videos Loaded
• No Photos Loaded
• Hours Not Specified
• Category Data Missing

Please make sure you get your Google Maps account to 100%.

If you scroll down the report, you get a great deal of useful information.  You can see why Google Maps is one of the highest FREE sources for calls and traffic to your website.

You should not be surprised that your map appears most often for your business name or the category you selected.

Google Maps – Today’s Version of The Yellow Pages

The visibility for your business address and phone number is one of the basic benefits of adding a Google Map, but there are other benefits.  Did you know you can add free coupons to your maps listings?  Did you realize how many calls and clicks you get every month so if that is the case, if your Maps listing updated each month?

Scroll down some more and you will see that you can also see which cities are requesting the most driving directions.  This data is perfect for refining your online marketing strategies.

Updating Your Service Area

One of the newest things you can do is to specify your service area.  Since many dealers will pickup cars for service miles away or deliver cars that are sold online, you should change the default radius and expand it to include more towns as shown below:

Wow…that’s the fastest overview to some of the new features of Google Maps.  This is more to say and especially how to leverage this data but first get past all these action items!

Questions?  Send me an email to:  info@pcgdigitalmarketing.com

Miami consumers are driving to local  Miami Mazda dealers in search of finding great deals on new and used cars.  The word is out! Buying a Mazda is a cool choice for a new car; imagine driving a 2010 Miata with the top down in Miami.  Mazda cars are fuel efficient and at the same time designed to deliver excellent handling and performance.

Miami Mazda Dealers

Are you looking for a new Mazda in Miami? Your local Miami Mazda dealership can help you with the selection of the right Mazda for you.  Check out the all new 2010 Mazda3 5-Door  which has a 167-hp (166 hp for PZEV),2.5L 4-cylinder engine with a choice of 6-speed manual or 5-speed Sport automatic transmission.  The 2010 Mazda3 is shown below:

All of the Mazdas offered by this Miami Mazda dealership are fuel efficient, with a focus on safety and are fun to drive. It you are looking for a fun Mazda in Miami look at the Mazda Miata, known for its precise steering and handling. With a low base price and a choice of soft-top or retractable hardtop configurations, the Mazda Miata is economical to operate for Miami drivers. The Miata is still unequaled when it comes to overall driving enjoyment and refinement.

2010 Mazda CX-7 Miami

If you need more room in your Mazda, check out the Mazda CX-7 which boasts V6-like power from the turbocharged four-cylinder engine. With its sleek lines and radically sloping front end, the 2009 Mazda CX-7 lends some sporty style to the small and midsize crossover SUV segments.

Do you want something in between check out the Mazda Tribute which is the perfect combination of power and fuel economy. With a rugged look and outstanding safety scores, the Mazda Tribute is the small SUV of choice for Miami Mazda drivers.

Mazda Cars for Sale in Miami

For more information on how to get behind the wheel of a new Mazda, visit your Miami Mazda dealer www.miamimazda.net.

Pamela & Wilfred Templeton - Ft. Myers Toyota

Buying a new or used Toyota in Ft. Myers couldn’t be easier thanks to “The Family Store”.  I recently visited Ft. Myers Toyota which is known to local residents as “The Family Store”.

I was was introduced to the founder, Wilfred Templeton and the members of the Templeton family.  I was impressed with the history of this Toyota dealership and I am very excited about their future. 

Ft. Myers Toyota in Fort Myers, Florida, has been serving Lee County residents since 1988.  Their Toyota car and truck campus was impressive.  

The selection of new and used Toyota cars would please any local car shopper in Fort Meyers.  The dealership also had their own collision center and car detailing facility on their campus.  This is a true full service car dealership.

With all of these services you would think that you couldn’t ask for more,  but indeed there was more.  Ft Myers Toyota also has a Hertz rental car facility on campus to assist local residents with short term car rentals.

Ft. Myers Toyota is a Sam’s Club, BJ’s, AAA and AARP Auto Buying Program dealer. They offer discounts to Chicos, Mary Kay, HEROCARE, Lee Memorial Health employees, and others. Call or email them for details.

Ft Myers Toyota Customer Speak Up

Contact Fort Myers Toyota

To start your Toyota car shopping process on the right path, contact Ft. Myers Toyota by phone, email or just drive up and be welcomed as one of the family.

Fort Myers Toyota
2555 Colonial Boulevard
Fort Myers, FL  33907-1466

New Vehicles  888-802-9401
Used Vehicles 888-802-9399
Parts 888-567-4361
Service 888-567-4362
Venta 888-872-1968

Dealership Hours:

Monday: 8:45AM-8:00PM
Tuesday: 8:45AM-8:00PM
Wednesday: 8:45AM-8:00PM
Thursday: 8:45AM-8:00PM
Friday: 8:45AM-8:00PM
Saturday: 8:45AM-7:00PM
Sunday: 12:00PM-5:00PM

Some of the most successful dealers in Rochester are reaching more customers for less cost through the Automotive Advertising Network. The Network gives member dealers a national, regional, and local footprint on the search engines so they appear on top of the search results for the vehicles they sell.

The Automotive Advertising Network promotes member dealers inventory nationally through websites like CarDealerSale.com in addition to hundreds of regional and local websites that are strategically positioned on top of the search engines for the most popular national, regional and local search phrases.  Example are: http://www.rochesterdealers.org and http://used-cars-for-sale.rochester.ny.cardealersale.com

Here is how the Automotive Advertising Network works in Rochester:

1. Rochester Dealerships pay a small membership fee to join the Automotive Advertising Network
2. Member Dealer’s inventory is promoted on search engines through CarDealerSale.com and hundreds of regional and local websites
3. Members use the networks tools to promote their inventory on the most popular search engines, social media sites like Facebook, blogs and social communities.
4. Rochester Members receive unlimited leads from ready-to-buy consumers who are actively searching for a vehicle in their market.
5. Members have access to our national automotive press release publishing network to advertise their sales, promotion and build brand awareness.

Rochester dealers are using the Automotive Advertising Network to generate more leads and sales for a lot less money and they can measure everything they spend. The AAN places your cars for sale in front of consumers on the most popular search engines, for national, regional and local search phrases.

If you are not sure if you can attend, please register for a future webinar since the demand for this top webinar will be strong.  Car dealers are looking for ways new ways to leverage their most valuable assets: their cars.

Presented by Brian Pasch, CEO of PCG Digital Marketing, “Supercharged Marketing For Your New and Used Cars Online” fill focus on the newest marketing strategies for new and used car dealers to get more traffic and sales from their internet-based media and advertising.

The webinar will also address recent research that shows how dealers must be selective when sending their inventory out to so called “free” advertising websites.  You can read Brian’s position paper on this link:  Warning About Free Advertising Websites.

PCG will be offering clients new webinar topics each month so that your team can keep ahead of your competition.

The PCG webinars will be 2 hours in length as is ideal for any stakeholders in the dealership who want to increase leads and traffic for new and used car inventory – and will include a Q&A session.

Questions can be sent directly to Brian at brian@pcgdigitalmarketing.com .

Learn more about the newest Digital Marketing Strategies and SEO Tips visit us online at http://www.pcgdigitalmarketing.com

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

Internet Sales Managers are also recommend that they join www.internetsalesmanager.org

If I had a dollar for every time a dealer principal said “I just don’t get social media”, I would have my poker money for DD9.  I’ll need that extra cash to play at Gary May’s poker event at the 9th Digital Dealer Conference in Las Vegas.

At the recent 8th Digital Dealer Conference in Orlando, Alex Snyder from Checkered Flag Group in Virginia Beach commented on DealerRefresh that many vendors were pitching social media “widgets”. Here is what Alex had to say:

“I just got back from Digital Dealer 8 and almost every presentation was on Social Media.  Many vendors were preaching why dealers should be doing something in Social Media, but there weren’t many telling their clients how to do it right.  That’s mostly because many of these vendors don’t understand how Social Media truly works themselves.”

The majority of vendors were indeed offering some type of social media services, from dedicated vendors like GoSo to integrated packages from TKCarsites, which also announced their Power SEO package.

Car Dealer Social Networks

With that backdrop, let’s take a look at the resources for car dealers can use to learn about social media from industry leaders who practice what they preach.  The best car dealer social networks and automotive blogs that I frequent include:

• Driving Sales.com
• DealerRefresh.com
• AutomotiveDigitalMarketing.com
• KainAutomotiveIdeaExchange.ning.com

I also maintain two social communities that are going through their initial growth spurt which includes:

• InternetSalesManager.org
• Automotive SEO

The first four websites are examples of industry leaders leveraging social mediums to share with car dealers how to build skills, strategies and the most important point: to build trust.   Industry leaders Jared Hamilton, Ralph Paglia, Jeff Kershner, Alex Snyder and David Kain practice social media; they are not posers.

Car dealers should learn to engage within their industry before assuming their knowledge on how to deal with consumers.  These forums are filled with professionals that will offer advice and even coaching tips.  Car dealers who want to engage in social media for their business should become active in these automotive social networks as a first step.

Vendors Participation in Automotive Social Networks

How many automotive vendors selling into car dealers have brand ambassadors that actively engage in automotive social networking communities.  My definition of a brand ambassadors is a vendor employee that engages in the automotive social networks by offering advice, case studies, and honest engagement which is not designed to sell something today.

These brand ambassadors raise the bar in our industry for excellence and at the same time raise their social media trust quotient. Of course, brand ambassadors at times mix in some self promotion but that should be a small portion of their online messaging.

A few people that come to mind, that I haven’t already listed, that are active brand ambassadors online are:

• Gary May
• Larry Bruce
• Philip Zelinger
• Todd Smith
• Joe Webb
• “VJ” Volker Jaeckel
• JD Rucker
• Arnold Tijerina

If I had a room of people selling “shiny social media widgets”, I think I would narrow the list to those who practice what they preach.  This article is not to advise on any one social media vendor or strategy but to encourage dealers to engage with their peers first.

Car dealer social networks not only provide guidance on social media but everything under the sun so it’s time for car dealer employees, managers and owners to be active in these fine online “universities” that have no tuition fees.

By the way, has anyone heard of these brand new sites?

PCG Team in Orlando Gets Ready To Head Back to New Jersey

The 9th Digital Dealer Conference will be held in Las Vegas from October 12-14 th at the Mirage Hotel.. For more information on the conference visit: http://www.digitaldealerconference.com which is the official website for the event.

As we just closed out the 8th Digital Dealer Conference in Orlando, I was reminded once again how important it is for growing car dealers to send their staff to the conference.

The Digital Dealer experience is unlike anything else and the combination of seminars and the very best vendors make the event a must attend educational experience.

From a survey conducted by PCG Digital Marketing, over 35 % of dealers surveyed had no budget allocated to send their staff to conferences Like the upcoming 9th Digital Dealer Conference.  It blows me away that this is the case and that General Managers and Internet Sales Mangers have to beg to attend which will only benefit the dealership 10x.

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/

• Value each lead type delivers to your dealership and what constitutes the ‘right’ mix
• How to measure performance and ROI for each lead source
• Lead handling tactics and best practices for optimal results
• And much more!

 The session will be moderated by Kevin Hunt, Vice President of Sales at Dealix and will feature the following panelists:

• David Kain, President of Kain Automotive, will focus on leads from OEM sites.
• Brian Pasch, Owner of Pasch Consulting, will argue the merits of leads from the Dealer Sites.
• Anna Zornosa, General Manager of Dealix – a Division of Cobalt – will advocate the contribution of leads from independent sites.

Join our live webinar on Monday, April 26th, 11am PST

Register Here

Monday, April 26th
11am PST / 1pm CST / 2pm EST

Event Summary

Topic: Dealix Presents: “Perfecting the Lead Mix: the Key to Growing Sales in Your Dealership ” Webinar
Date: Monday, April 26, 2010
Time: 11:00 am, PST
URL: https://intercall.webex.com/intercall/j.php?ED=137363072&RG=1&UID=0&RT=MiM0

The AAN, is compromised of national, regional and local advertising websites that offer car dealers unprecedented visibility for the cars that they sell.  The AAN includes both new and used cars that are for sale at reputable car dealers nationwide.  The Automotive Advertising Network does not list cars sold by individual consumers as a protection for car buyers.

The Automotive Advertising Network’s national car sales portal is located at www.cardealersale.com and lists all cars that are available for sale from member dealers.   The website is designed for the optimal consumer experience for Internet shoppers. The site has also been optimized for the new Apple iPad.

When the CarDealerSale.com website is accessed by iPad users, the car detail pages utilize the full screen capabilities of the iPad.  The AAN is the first optimized website for car dealer inventory advertising by eliminating distracting advertising banners on car detail pages and utilizing the iPad’s full screen capabilities.  Since car listing pages are free from ads, the details fit perfectly on the iPad’s attractive display.

In addition to the national exposure car dealers will have on www.cardealersale.com, their cars will also be listed on the Automotive Advertising Network’s brand specific and regional and local websites. The AAN allows member dealers to advertise their cars nationally as well as locally to match the search behavior of consumers in their primary market area.

In addition to advertising their cars, trucks or SUV’s in stock online, the AAN provides the CarPort App™ which allows dealers to post their inventory on Facebook and popular blog platforms that include WordPress, Blogger and  TypePad.  The CarPort App™ gives car dealers unprecedented advertising opportunities to leverage social media platforms to publish content and integrate the cars that they sell.

One member of the AAN, the Rairdon Auto Group in Seattle, utilizes the CarPort App™ on their popular blog located at http://www.seattlejeep.com .  Visitors can read the latest news and advice provided by Rairdon and in their news posts they can include a live, real-time samples of cars that they have in stock.  Rairdon Auto Group’s blog uses WordPress technology; a popular blogging platform.

The CarPort App™ seamlessly also integrates into Rairdon’s Facebook Fan Pages using a separate tab to research cars that are in stock for any member in the AAN.  The functionality allows dealers to place their inventory one-click away from consumers who visit their Fan Page without over-selling their cars in their Facebook Wall postings.  This is the perfect balance of becoming a Trust Agent by not pushing cars in daily updates on their Facebook Wall.   You can see CarPort App that Rairdon is utilizing on Facebook using this link:

http://www.facebook.com/RairdonGroup#!/RairdonGroup?v=app_371338639370

The Automotive Advertising Network is open to call new and used cars dealers in the United States and Canada and is offering special promotional pricing until June 1st.  For additional details contact PCG Digital Marketing at 732-450-8200.

As part of their new strategic digital marketing strategy, the Eden Prairie Chevrolet dealer will receive the most advanced automotive digital marketing strategies developed by PCG.   Enhancing Suburban Chevrolet’s online visibility will be accomplished through on-site and off-site SEO strategies, content development and the opportunity to be included in PCG’s exclusive Automotive Advertising Network (AAN).  The AAN combines PCG Digital Marketing’s proven strategies in Search Engine Optimization, content marketing, social media and blogging to provide dealers with an industry leading solution for lead generation and direct sales. 

Additional PCG services will include blogging, writing and publishing press releases, link building, posting customer reviews, Twitter, Facebook, Google SEO compliance, Analytics, Google Maps, and more.   The goal of Suburban Chevrolet’s new Internet Marketing campaign will be to increase the frequency that their vehicles appear in local and regional search results and to generate additional traffic and leads to their business.

To learn more about Suburban Chevrolet, please visit http://www.suburbanchev.com/HomePage

About The Pasch Consulting Group

The Pasch Consulting Group provides comprehensive Internet Marketing and SEO strategies to car dealers across the United States and Canada.  For additional information on their services and marketing packages, visit http://www.pcgdigitalmarketing.com or http://www.dealer-seo.com

As part of their new strategic digital marketing strategy, the Houston Chevrolet dealer will receive the most advanced digital marketing strategies developed by PCG.   Enhancing Munday’s online visibility will be accomplished through on-site and off-site SEO strategies, content development and the opportunity to be included in PCG’s exclusive Automotive Advertising Network (AAN).

Additional PCG services will include blogging, writing and publishing press releases, link building, posting customer reviews, Twitter, Facebook, Google SEO compliance, Analytics, Google Maps, and more.   The goal of Munday Chevrolet’s new Internet Marketing campaign will be to increase the frequency that their vehicles appear in local and regional search results and to generate additional traffic and leads to their business.

To learn more about Munday Chevrolet, please visit http://www.munday-chevrolet.com/

About The Pasch Consulting Group

The Pasch Consulting Group provides comprehensive Internet Marketing and SEO strategies to car dealers across the United States and Canada.  For additional information on their services and marketing packages, visit http://www.pcgdigitalmarketing.com or http://www.dealer-seo.com

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear – Frank Herbert  - Dune

I’m writing this post at 35,000 feet as I am approaching Sydney, Australia on United Flight 863 from San Francisco. I have been traveling 13 hours of the 15 hours flight, and with land not too far away I started to reflect on the flight because of how I felt earlier in the day.

This afternoon, while in San Francisco, I actually had a short period of anxiety about flying which is not normal for me. I couldn’t exactly figure out why. But as I reflected on this discomfort, I started to understand the root of the problem. When I had told friends and colleagues about my trip to Australia, almost all of them had commented on the length of the flight. They acted as if I announced that I was going to run across the country.

Many said that they would never travel 15 hours on a plane. Others were convinced that flying coach class would be miserable, but in fact it wasn’t at all. These and other excuses actually have no reality except in the mind of the fearful. So since I have regularly traveled eight hours back and forth from Europe, I never felt that fifteen hours would be a far leap

Unaware of the influence of my friends’ negative projections on my trip, I had started to have cautionary reservations about getting on my flight today, but until now I didn’t realize how their feelings affected me in subtle ways. I was beginning to doubt my proven instincts and my vision for a trip with my son Connor in the land down under.

But actually, I slept the first 7 hours of the trip, watched some movies and read a book and now with 2 hours left to go I’m laughing at how easy the trip has been.  I don’t feel any worse than any flight to Europe

What is Holding You Back?

I wonder how many people are held back from experiencing new adventures because of fear; internal or external.

My flight to Australia brought to mind what is happening in the auto industry.  I have participated in numerous executive strategy sessions that discuss digital marketing opportunities and budgeting.  Fear or panic is often dealers’ common reaction to the suggestion that they increase digital marketing spending.

The tried and true advertising models of TV, radio and newspaper have created a sense of security for automotive retailers, best compared to traveling domestically.  Not many dealers are afraid of a quick trip to Vegas or to place another ad in a local newspaper. It’s something that they understand and have experienced first had.

Digital marketing spending is just like traveling to Australia; dealers have heard it is beautiful and a “must” in their travel portfolio but can’t see themselves getting on the plane.  It is not uncommon for dealers to react with fear when I suggest that they increase their overall advertising budget dedicated to digital marketing from less than 15%  to 30-50% over the upcoming year. Their reaction is normally followed by:

“What will I have to cut in order to spend more on digital marketing?  My General Managers will freak out if I reduce their traditional advertising budget!”

This article is not meant to answer this specific question because it is different for each dealership location but let me ask you a question:

Is the reason why the average automotive retailer spends less than 15% of the advertising budget on digital marketing because of the fear or because they have carefully measured the ROI of all digital marketing strategies and have chosen wisely?

Related to that question, are sub-questions:

1. Have dealers become too comfortable with what was successful in the past?
2. Does engaging in discussions about digital marketing strategies make dealer principals feel awkward or even stupid?
3. Has the lack of historical ROI data and published case studies on digital media strategies prevented dealers from embracing new opportunities or is that just an excuse?

I know a few dealer principals that have admitted to feeling awkward about engaging in digital marketing discussions when they don’t understand it themselves.  They feel vulnerable.  In these cases, my participation in planning meetings is to act as a bridge, creating analogies from traditional advertising to introduce the new paradigms of the digital and social media era.

A rising number of dealers are pushing through fear and realizing that to reach new highs for their business they must let go of the past and embrace the future of automotive retail marketing. 

In many cases, the advertising team that brought dealers to their initial pinnacle of success will not be the team that brings them to their next mountaintop experience.

Since traditional media is difficult to measure true ROI, advertising agencies have had a free pass to continue dealer spending without fear of losing budget share but that is now changing.  Dealers are now developing models to hold all methods of advertising to a standard cost/reward model.  The agencies that can’t provide a fully integrated menu of traditional and digital marketing services will perish.

The Digital Compass

The automotive industry does need guidance for the constantly changing digital terrain. Dealers need a “Digital Compass” that directs their decisions and helps them “test the waters” for the new advertising opportunities that exist in the digital world.

A “Digital Compass” initiative should hold all methods of marketing to the same standard of excellence and ROI. The dealership of the future will have marketing budgets based on data and not fear of change.

Educational forums, social networks, digital conferences and reputable consultants can act as a dealer’s “Digital Compass” in the same way the pilot of US 863 knows how to take me to Sidney.

However, dealers have to make the first step and get on the plane so they are not left behind.  The transition will never happen until dealers let go of the past.  Dealer principals have to put aside their fears and excuses and embrace digital marketing, social media and reputation management with gusto.

The digital marketing plane is leaving the airport…will you be on it?

As part of the process, we will also take customer testimonial videos and load them in a custom YouTube Testimonial Channel for the RMP home page; see www.iloveprestigevolvo.com. We also load their testimonial videos on their Facebook Fan Page.  (If you haven’t purchased a FlipCam yet, do it immediately!)

As we were checking the Google Page One Management for a new client, Prestige Volvo we were surprised to see how many things are starting to appear in the Google stream for social media websites.  Take a look at the screen shot below:

Facebook Videos in Google SERP

In this case an actual customer testimonial video was indexed by Google from inside of Facebook.  You will also notice that it ranked well, page two for now, for a search on their business name.  As we have discussed in previous article, Google Page One Management (GPOM) is key to protect your brand and push lead collectors off page one and two.

This observation indicates the growing relevance that Facebook is having in search results.  I wonder if the custom TABS in Facebook will be indexing that include our new CarPort App which posts cars inside of Facebook.  You can see an example of CarPort in action on Marlboro Nissan’s Fan Page.

Four Square Tips Indexing

Facebook is not the only social media website that is indexing in Google.  From the screen shot below you can see that our “Tip” that was posted at Newark Airport is showing up in search results.

If you have any doubts on the potential of social media for additional benefits for IRM and Automotive SEO strategies, the proof is shown above.  The rules of digital marketing seem to be changing every week and new strategies need to be tested all the time.

It keeps me busy!

Are You Patient?

At the 8th Digital Dealer Conference in Orlando from April 20-22th, I will be conducting a seminar on Internet Reputation Management on April 21st at 4:30 pm.  As I started to prepare my thoughts for the seminar, I wanted to encourage dealers who start an IRM process to be patient.

Even your most satisfied customers may not take the time that they promise to post a positive review online.  IRM is a numbers game and there are ways to make those numbers work in your favor.  Keep in mind that reviews can come from sales and service, which means that hundreds of customers a week can be asked to participate.  Between sales and service, you only need 1-2% cooperation to make a big difference.

You only need a few people a week to make a difference over the course of this year.  I like to set a goal that dealers should get 3-5 reviews a week so that at the end of the year you have well over 200 positive votes on sites like Google Maps, InsiderPages, DealerRater, and Yelp.  With 200+ reviews, I would estimate you would be drawing over 100-200 additional calls a month to your dealership.

The key is to make it easy for your customers to post a review.  One way to make it easy is to send your customers an email requesting their help in posting their experience online and provide a link to the site you want them to post.    Start with the most importance place. Ask them to post a review on Google Maps for you so you just have to make sure your business listing in Google Maps is correct.

If you plan to send out emails, please make sure your emails are designed to pass through spam filters.   There are a number of free tools online that can test your email message and give it a spam score.  Tip: keep the number a hyperlinks in your email low so it does not trigger your message as spam.

Reputation Management Portal

PCG has been testing what we are calling Reputation Management Portals (RMP) which are placed on an easy to remember domain name like www.iloveharechevy.com  or www.ilovecheckeredflag.com.   The RMP has quick links to all the popular places that dealers should have positive reviews.  They are customized for each dealership.  We design a postcard which dealers print and give out to happy customers in the service lane or as part of the sales delivery process.

The RMP makes it easy to add the website address on business cards, email signatures or in the body of the email.  The RMP reduces the long links that are often associated with a review page like Google Maps.

If you are interested in learning more about how IRM can significantly improve your online sales strategy, come to DD8 and attend my seminar or give our offices a call and speak with Jessica Guida, our IRM specialist at 732-450-8200.

The Ford dealers listed below are our clients and have made a commitment to deliver outstanding customer service to local Ford owners.  We have unique digital marketing strategies for Ford dealers that include continuing with the great momentum created by Ford Fiesta social media campaign.

Ford Dealers

Of course, you should do your own research on website like DealerRater.com to see what your peers are saying about these fine Ford dealers.   These PCG clients have a great business in their local markets and we recommend that you patronize their businesses:

• Preston Ford
• Midway Ford
• West Herr Ford
• Don Chalmers Ford
• Rasmussen Stewart Ford

Ford Auto Dealers

If you operate a Ford Dealership in the United States and would like to be added to this page, please contact Carrie Valentine by emailing carrie@paschconsulting.com .  Our Ford dealers are also included in our new car advertising network CarDealerSale.com

Using CarPort App™, cars from car dealers near Newport News Virginia can be displayed on a blog post.  For example, here are some Newport BMW cars that are for sale in the area:

Newport News Virginia

No one knows for sure where Newport News got its name, but “Newportes Newes” first appears in the Virginia Company records in 1619, making it one of the oldest place names in the New World. The most widely accepted folktale is that our city is the namesake of Captain Christopher Newport, commander of Susan Constant, flagship of the three ship English fleet that landed on Jamestown Island in 1607. He made several voyages to Newport News in the early days of the Jamestown Colony, bringing “good news” of supplies and settlers.

Newport News, settled in 1621, is approximately 23 miles long and three miles wide. It is the fourth largest city in size in the state, with it’s boundaries encompassing 70.38 square miles. Newport News has a population of approximately 185,200 people.

One of the largest car dealer groups in Virginia Beach and Newport News Virginia is Checkered Flag.  The family owned and operated dealer group has 11 unique brands and hundreds of cars in stock. They have been selling cars to Newport News car shoppers since 1964.  Now back to the history….

Newport News played a major role in the Peninsula Campaign during the Civil War. Numerous earthen fortifications and attractions that relate to the Civil War can be experienced in Newport News. In addition, the famous “Battle of the Ironclads” took place off the shores of Newport News in 1862.

Collis P. Huntington, a Northern railroad tycoon from Connecticut, brought two magnet industries to Newport News: the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad and Newport News Shipbuilding.  Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, established in 1886, built many of the U.S. super aircraft carriers including the Enterprise, Kennedy, Washington, Vinson, and Roosevelt.

 Newport News was designated as a Port of Embarkation by the U.S. Army immediately after America’s entry into WWI. The final major military base during WWI was Camp Eustis, which later came to be known as Fort Eustis. Named after the founder of Fort Monroe’s Artillery School of Practice and War of 1812 veteran Brigadier General Abraham Eustis, the camp was created in 1918 to meet the need for an artillery firing range.   Hilton Village, the first government-subsidized “planned community” was constructed as a pilot program due to the shortage of housing related to the war effort. Hilton was dedicated on July 7, 1918.

The Conference will run from October 12-14 th at the Mirage Hotel.

Vendors who want to participate in the awards program should contact Carrie Valentine on May 1st for applications.  Vendors can contact Carrie by calling 732-450-8200.

This year PCG has improved the ASMA application process with additional data that will help make the ASMA report even more relevant for car dealers who are shopping for a website advertising platform.

In the 2010 ASMA questionnaire, additional information regarding mobile applications and geo-targeting search marketing features will be required for all applicants.

2010 ASMA Awards

The 2010 ASMA Awards will be presented at the 9th Digital Dealer Conference by Brian Pasch, CEO of PCG Digital Marketing.  To view a list of the 2009 ASMA winners, visit: http://www.asmaawards.org

Automotive Advertising Network Announced at the 8th Digital Dealer Conference

At the 8th Digital Dealer Conference, Brian Pasch, Sean Wolfington, David Boice and Ananth Godavari unveiled their partnership and new organization that is behind the Automotive Advertising Network (AAN).  The AAN is a new strategy for car dealers to advertising their cars for sale.

The AAN was warmly received at a VIP reception at the Digital Dealer Conference that includes auto industry digital marketing pioneers as well as the next generation of digital marketing leaders. The Automotive Advertising Network  is now accepting membership applications.

For a modest monthly membership fee, member dealers get unlimited leads for the cars that they sell. Dealers can also utilize the AAN press release publishing network and social media tools for Facebook, WordPress and other popular platforms.

Watch The Video

For additional information on dealer membership visit: www.automotiveadvertisingnetwork.com

As part of their new strategic digital marketing strategy, the Waterloo Chevrolet dealer will receive the most advanced digital marketing strategies developed by PCG.   Enhancing Rydell’s online visibility will be accomplished through on-site and off-site SEO strategies, content development and inclusion in the Automotive Advertising Network (AAN).

 Additional PCG services will include blogging, writing and publishing press releases, link building, posting customer reviews, Twitter, Facebook, Google SEO compliance, Analytics, Google Maps, and more.   To kick-start their new marketing effort, an additional website, with SEO enhanced capabilities, has been created for Rydell.  The new website can be seen at http://www.iowa-chevrolet.com . 

As part of their inclusion in the AAN, Rydell’s live inventory feeds and optimized content will be added to the regional and national advertising websites in the AAN that are targeting Iowa Chevy buyers. Video and photo optimization of Chevrolet cars for sale in Iowa will also be handled by PCG Digital Marketing.

The AAN combines PCG Digital Marketing’s proven strategies in Search Engine Optimization, content marketing, social media and blogging to provide dealers with an industry leading solution for lead generation and direct sales. 

 The Automotive Advertising Network includes the CarPort App™, which enables “live” selectable inventory to be added to a dealer’s social media portals. Every visit to the page refreshes the dealer’s inventory with the newest information being displayed in their inventory feed.  Dealers using PCG’s CarPort App™ also have the added benefit of leveraged advertising on the National car sales website, http://www.cardealersale.com

To learn more about Rydell Chevrolet, please visit http://www.iowa-chevrolet.com/new/

About The Pasch Consulting Group

The Pasch Consulting Group provides comprehensive Internet Marketing and SEO strategies to car dealers across the United States and Canada.  For additional information on their services and marketing packages, visit http://www.pcgdigitalmarketing.com or http://www.dealer-seo.com

PCG Digital Marketing will be exhibiting at the 8th Digital Dealer Conference in Orlando.

Brian Pasch, CEO of PCG Digital Marketing, will also be leading  a seminar on Automotive Internet Reputation Management on April 21, 2010 at 4:30 pm.  If you are on the fence about attending the Conference, get serious about your digital marketing success in 2010 and get yourself registered today.

AAN To Be Showcased at PCG Booth

PCG gave a sneak peek of their Automotive Advertising Network (AAN) at the 2010 National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) Convention in Orlando which expands the opportunities for car dealers to advertise their cars for sale online.

The AAN consists of a network of car inventory advertising websites that target local car shoppers and the unique search phrases that they use to research new and used cars for sale.

The AAN will have over 300 websites to assist consumers in its network by the end of April 2010.  The sites will contain automotive buying news, tips, resources and local dealer inventory.

The AAN platform will be formerly launched at the 8^th Digital Dealer Conference in Orlando on April 20, 2010.

In addition to the network of over 300 websites dealers can leverage to advertise their cars, the AAN also includes PCG’s CarPort App™, a software application that allows cars dealers to post their cars on social media websites and popular blogs.  With CarPort App™ car dealers can leverage the search engine power of blogs to write about the cars they sell and include sample inventory in the blog post.

Dealers who don’t want to maintain a blog can subscribe to PCG’s digital marketing package which includes content development, blogging and social media services in a turnkey package.  The AAN and CarPort App™ give dealers the opportunity to create strong local online marketing campaigns internally or in partnership with PCG Digital Marketing.

CarPort Offers Wide Compatibility For Social Media and Blogs

CarPort App™ is compatible with popular blogging tools that include WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, NING, Squidoo and Vox.  PCG Digital Marketing also enhanced CarPort App™ to display car dealer inventory on a tab on a Facebook Fan Page and well as a NING social networking website.   The software application empowers car dealers with unlimited advertising possibilities for the cars that they stock or sell.

To view CarPort in action on a Facebook tab, check out these popular car dealers:

• Checkered Flag Facebook
• Marlboro Nissan Facebook
• West Herr Facebook

Brian Pasch, CEO of PCG Digital Marketing, commented on the AAN;  “Car dealers are looking for incremental sales and leads to supplement their current marketing strategies.  The Automotive Advertising Network leverages the power of consumer search and social media to present more opportunities for car shoppers to see their cars.  With free blogging tools and CarPort App™ combined, car dealers can create unlimited local advertising strategies that can appear on Google Page One for popular search phrases.”

Introductory Pricing

PCG Digital Marketing is offering car dealer’s special pricing for inaugural members of the AAN through June 1, 2010.   Early adopters will have strategic advantages for marketing in the local communities so according to PCG, “the early bird will get the worm”.

The AAN and CarPort App™ is being offered to car dealers for $495 a month and includes the custom setup of the dealer’s Facebook Fan Page inventory tab and training on how to create effect blog content with CarPort App™.

For more information on the Automotive Advertising Network and CarPort App™ contact PCG Digital Marketing at 732-450-8200.  Dealers can also read up on the technology at www.automotiveadvertisingnetwork.com and www.carportapp.com

Military families and staff at the Norfolk Naval Base will benefit from a new program announced by Checkered Flag;  the largest family owned car dealership group in Virginia.

Checkered Flag, which accepts new and used car financing from the Navy Federal Credit Union and USAA has created additional benefits for the men and women in the Armed Services.

Checkered Flag has 11 new car franchises and one of the largest inventory of used cars in the Norfolk area.  That gives the families and service personnel stationed at NSA Norfolk Naval Base the largest choice of brands.

Checkered Flag carries new Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, Audi, VW, MINI, Jaguar, Smart Car, BMW, Scion, Audi, and Porsche automobiles.

Norfolk Naval Base Discounts

Any staff member or personnel stationed at Norfolk Naval Base that purchases a new or used car at Checkered Flag will receive these benefits:

1. Checkered Flag will advise NOB car buyers of all manufacturer discounts offered to qualified military personnel without asking.
2. Checkered Flag will work with all affiliated credit union financing programs to unsure a smooth transaction.
3. Checkered Flag’s has created their own Military Personnel guaranteed credit approval for military personnel at Norfolk.
4. Checkered Flag is also an authorized MILES dealer; the national largest Military buying service.
5. Checkered Flag will provide full online negotiation services for personnel deployed overseas or at sea to make sure that their car or truck is ready when the hit the Norfolk Naval Base.

Checkered Flag’s Norfolk Naval Base Concierge

Dionne Cunningham is Checkered Flag’s sales and service concierge for Norfolk Naval Base.  When you you visit www.checkeredflag.com and submit your information on any car that you want to purchase, Dionne will respond promptly to assist you.

NSA Norfolk Naval

NSA Norfolk has the largest concentration of fleet headquarters administrative and communication facilities outside of Washington, D.C.  We are home to over 6,000 personnel that includes major tenant commands:  U.S. Fleet Forces Command, U.S. Joint Forces Command, U.S. Marine Corps Forces Command, Naval Submarine Forces, Atlantic; and Naval Surface Forces, Atlantic.

Consumers looking to purchase a Fisker Karma car in Orange County California can pre-order their car from Fisker of Orange County at 888-238-5280. The new showroom for Fisker of Orange County will be completed by September of 2010.

Consumers who want to pre-order a Fisker Karma need to place a $5,000 down payment to get on the list. Demand has been very strong for the Fisker Karma so California residents need to act fast to get on the priority pre-order list.

2011 Fisker Karma

Luxury leads the way for the driver – and the environment – with the world’s first eco-chic cars created in equally eco-friendly facilities. The Karma’s dramatic proportions and sumptuous design offer smile-inducing performance. And the interior lets four adults and luggage travel in comfort. With zero emissions. Zero compromise. And a cleaner conscience than ever before.

The 2011 Fisker Karma uses Q-DRIVE plug-in hybrid technology, developed exclusively for Fisker Automotive by Quantum Technologies. A fully-charged Karma burns no fuel for the first 50 miles. Venture further and the gasoline engine turns a generator to charge the lithium ion battery. Once the 50-mile electric range has been exceeded, the car operates as a normal hybrid vehicle. This balance of electric and gas range makes it entirely possible that Karma drivers who charge their car overnight and commute less than 50 miles a day will achieve an average fuel economy of 100 mpg (2.4L/100km) per year.

Environmentalism has never been more beautifully infused with elegance and style. Designer Henrik Fisker has taken the automotive hybrid to a new level of performance and style. With zero compromise in either category.

About Fisker

Fisker Automotive is a green American premium sports car company with a mission to create a range of beautiful environmentally friendly cars that make environmental sense without compromise.

The concept was created between two independent companies who clearly wanted to make a difference in not only the automotive industry, but to the environment as well. Fisker Coachbuild, LLC and Quantum Technologies announced this joint venture partnership in September 2007. Fisker Coachbuild will provide exclusive design services for Fisker Automotive while Quantum Technologies (QTWW – a publicly traded company) will provide the latest technological advancements. Each car will feature cutting-edge plug-in hybrid penned as Q DRIVE exclusively for all Fisker Automotive vehicles.

A new segment is being created within the auto industry where people can really use their power of choice. They can choose to be environmentally friendly with their car purchase without compromising on the style and luxury that they are used to. We believe in less compromise and more efficiency.

Fisker Automotive strives to be a serious environmental alternative to other premium performance luxury cars on the road today. Fisker Automotive will be the first company in the world to have this type of a car on the road – a beautiful fast car that makes environmental sense.

Initial production is anticipated to be 15,000 vehicles annually with pricing to start at $87,900.

The Checkered Flag Toyota automotive team has a strong and committed sales staff that is focused on satisfying the need of our customers’ living in Chesapeake, Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Portsmouth and other fine communities in and around Virginia.

Feel free to browse our Checkered Flag Toyota new car inventory online, request more information about vehicles, set up a test drive or inquire about financing!

If you are looking for a specific car and it is not listed on this site, call us and we’ll help you find it at a great price.

Checkered Flag has many used makes and models including Honda, Toyota, Kia, Lexus, Dodge, Chrysler, Jeep, Hyundai, Chevrolet, Ford, BMW, Nissan and Infiniti used cars.

While many automotive professionals and vendors are just catching up from NADA, my sights are set for another Orlando convention: the 8th Digital Dealer Conference.  The event will be held at the Rosen Shingle Creek Resort, April 20th-22nd and I predict it will be a record setting event.

The vendor space for the event sold out quickly as many companies have found that the Digital Dealer conference attracts decision makers seeking to enhance their online sales and marketing strategies.  The event is held twice a year and the previous conference in Nashville was a great success for PCG.  For additional information about the event, visit the  8th Digital Dealer Conference website.

8th Digital Dealer Conference Schedule

PCG has reserved a booth again this year so we look forward to taking with automotive professionals about digital marketing, internet reputation management, microsites and our new automotive advertising network.  If you would like a free one-on-one digital marketing evaluation of your website, please call Carrie Hemphill at 732-450-8200 to schedule a time with the PCG marketing specialists.

At the PCG Digital Marketing booth we will be showing at latest strategies that include:

• Reputation Management Portals
• CarPort App
• Automotive Advertising Network
• Regional Microsite Marketing

Digital Dealer Speaking Schedule

Brian has submitted two seminar topics to share with conference attendees.  If the courses are confirmed in the coming weeks, we will post the class times and Brian’s class descriptions.  In Nashville, the class that Brian conducted was standing room only, so get to the class early to get a seat.

I strongly encourage all automotive marketing executives, owners and partners to attend DD8 in Orlando.  With many dealers moving the needle towards an increase in digital marketing spending, you can not afford to miss the latest strategies to stay competitive.

If You Are Coming, Tell Us Below

If you are in the automotive industry and want to establish a strong game plan for your   Digital Marketing goals that you can implement for your dealership in 2010, be one of the first 50 people to register for a webinar lead by Brian Pasch, CEO and founder of PCG Digital Marketing.

This is a limited registration event. Seats are offered on a first come basis.

Normally, this webinar would cost a dealership $500 dollars.  In a special limited time offer, the webinar is being offered without cost for the first 50 automotive professionals that register and attend the webinar.  After the first 50 spots are taken, the cost of the webinar will be $300 per dealership.

The demand for effective digital marketing strategies has never been greater than today.  Brian Pasch will guide attendees during his three hourwebinar on the 10 most effective digital marketing strategies that car dealers should implement in 2010.

Marketing Professionals Should Apply

If you are looking for clear direction and a gameplan on how to:

• increase unique visitor traffic
• increase first party leads
• improve your online reputation
• implement a Google Page One Management (GPOM) strategy
• advertise your car inventory in new ways
• reduce your spending on car inventory advertising

then you should register for this upcoming webinar.  The first 50 people are free. If you don’t show for your free webinar, you will be charged $100.  Slackers are not tolerated. No shows will be charged $100 so don’t register if you can’t make a firm commitment to attend.

If you would like to receive to login credentials for the webinar, please follow the instructions listed below.

Registration For Webinar

1. Make sure that you can attend the webinar on March 9, 2010 at 1:00 EST.
2. Call 732-450-8200 and ask for Carrie Hemphill, event coordinator.
3. Provide Carrie with your name, company name, address, title and email address.
4. Provide Carrie with a credit card number to use for the webinar:
   1. First 50 people are free, but if you are a no-show you will be charged $100.
   2. Registrants after the first 50 people will be charged $300
5. Once you register, you will receive login instructions no later than March 8, 2010.

Webinar Materials

At the close of the webinar, all paid attendees will get a copy of the Powerpoint materials provided in the webinar.     This will faciliate your ability to take the knowledge and advice from the webinar and implement change in your dealership.

If you are ready to embrace digital marketing, reputation management and SEO head on, sign up for this webinar.

PCG Digital Marketing (formerly Pasch Consulting Group) was recognized as a Top Rated SEO Company for the automotive industry at the 2010 NADA Convention by DrivingSales.com.

We Practice What We Preach

Do we practice the same strategies that we preach?   Type into Google:

• Automotive SEO – and we are #1 in the USA
• Automotive Reputation Management – and we are #1 in the USA
• Car Dealer Microsites – and we are #1 in the USA
• Automotive WordPress Microsites – and we are #1 in the USA
• Google Page One Management – and we are #1 in the USA
• Automotove Digital Consultants – and we are #1 in the USA

If you want straight talk and a chance to ask your questions about your next steps for 2010 in digital marketing, signup for this webinar.

Automotive Digital Marketing Boot Camp

The next Automotive Digital Marketing Boot Camp will be held in Chicago from June 10-12th.  If you would like to be invited, let Carrie know when you call.

One Stop Motors, the web’s most reliable new and used car marketplace, isn’t just great for their automotive offerings.  Their expertise runs deep with knowledge on the “how to’s” and “do nots’” of selling a car online.  

Alan Gill, the customer service manager for OSM, states that “consumers who want to sell their car online need to ensure they provide as much information as possible about the vehicle and themselves.  The firsts element that needs to be established between the buyer and the seller is trust, if information is sparse or missing, you can be sure that the consumer will be wary.”

To make sure that consumers are doing all they can to successfully sell their car on the One Stop Motors website, Gill recommends the following tips for building consumer trust and optimizing a seller’s listing:

• Use an Enhanced VIN decoder for every vehicle manufactured after 1981 that ensure an effective posting of all vehicle standard & optional features.
• Upload a current photos and a video of the car to be sold. Narrate a virtual tour of the car . Ads with videos currently sell at a rate 5 times as those without.
• Use ‘Or Best Offer’ in pricing strategy; include a competitive price as well as an acknowledgement to accept the buyer’s best offer.
• Offer a complimentary Autocheck report; Autocheck is one of the most reputable and trusted names in the used car business.
• List at least 2 forms of communication; some consumers prefer phone, some prefer email, list both if possible

These tips are more geared towards consumers selling their cars on a Craigslist type of website.  One Stop Motors offers sellers a broad spectrum of online sales tools, and OSM will not only build a complete vehicle profile, but they will maximize its visibility by using SEO techniques and promote through their affiliate websites.  They also handle all buyers in a quick and efficient manner ensuring that they take the hassle out of the consumer’s hands.

For more information on how One Stop Motors can make the process of selling a car online a little bit easier, check out their online sales tools and offerings here:  http://www.onestopmotors.com/plat.aspx

About One Stop Motors

One Stop Motors specializes in the sale of used cars online.   The company offers value added tools such as shipping, financing, extended warranties, insurance, marketing and advertising support for sellers and fraud protection for buyers.   

http://www.onestopmotors.org  

Contact: 

Alan L. Gill
Customer Service Manager
877-566-6686 (office)
alang@onestopmotors.com
http://www.onestopmotors.com
http://onestopmotors.blogspot.com/

Brian Pasch, CEO of PCG Digital Marketing remarked on the significance of the award. “This is one of the highest forms of recognition any company could receive in the automotive industry.  Our clients gave us this honor and we will continue to work to win their trust and business with outstanding digital marketing and Automotive SEO  strategies.”

Automotive SEO Leadership

In fact, when you search in Google for the phrase “Automotive SEO“, PCG’s website is in the #1 organic position for the United States.

Page one results for this important industry search phrase also contains other PCG web assets which demonstrates that the company practices what it preaches to its clients.

The PCG Digital Marketing offers strategic digital marketing services that enhance all major automotive website platforms as they providing Internet marketing services to car dealers across the nation.  PCG focuses on off-site SEO strategies, geo-targeted lead generation, search engine marketing and Internet reputation management.

The 2009 DrivingSales Vendor Ratings Awards, presented at the 2010 NADA Convention and Expo, measure satisfaction with vendors by allowing dealers to rate and review their vendors online at DrivingSales.com. Only vendors who achieved top rankings in dealer satisfaction in each category, as determined by the thousands of dealers who are part of the DrivingSales.com community, received awards.

“We are proud to present this award to PCG Digital Marketing which has achieved a standard of excellence that is clearly resonating with dealers,” said DrivingSales CEO and Founder Jared Hamilton.

“This year’s award winners have won recognition in one of the most challenging years on record for our industry.  We salute them for their ongoing commitment to provide value to their dealer clients.”

Rydell Auto has the largest inventory of new Chevrolet vehicles in Waterloo, proudly serving Iowa drivers in Cedar Falls, Jesup and Dubuque. In order to expand their Cedar Falls Chevrolet family, Rydell Auto is working with PCG Digital Marketing to reach out to Chevrolet fans on the web. The PCG Digital Marketing team is excited to announce Rydell Auto as, the most trusted Chevrolet dealer in Waterloo, as a new client.

Rydell Chevrolet promises every Cedar Falls driver a relaxed shopping experience and a customer-friendly consulting process that helps the driver identify their wants and needs for their new Chevrolet.

If you’re looking for a new Chevrolet in Waterloo, call Rydell Auto at 877-256-4950.

Here is a brief profile of their company:

Rydell Chevrolet

Ready to cruise the streets of Cedar Falls behind the wheel of the powerful Chevrolet Avalanche? How about owning a set of keys to the legendary Chevy Camar for all of your adventures in Jesup and Dubuque? Waterloo Chevrolet fans can get the vehicle they have been looking for at a price you won’t find anywhere else at Rydell Chevrolet.

Rydell Chevrolet has been helping Des Moines Chevrolet drivers get behind the wheel of a new Chevy vehicles for years, building up a solid reputation for delivering on the highest quality vehicles.

The reason why Chevrolet customers from Des Moines to Jesup keep coming back to Rydell is because of the Rydell Chevrolet philosophy. The Rydell Chevrolet team in Waterloo believe in customer enthusiasm, market penetration and ongoing improvement. Adhering to these philosophies and standing by their mission, Rydell Chevrolet has become the leading Chevrolet dealer in Cedar Falls.

Call 877-256-4950 to speak with a Chevrolet expert at Rydell Auto for the best deals on Chevrolet vehicles in Waterloo.

 PCG Digital Marketing has expanded their monthly Internet Marketing Package to include a creation of an Internet Reputation Management Portal.  The portal simplifies the process of influencing customers to write about their positive experiences online.  The RMP is a customized URL that contains quick links to popular review sites like Google Maps, Yahoo Local and Yelp, as well as testimonial videos recorded by the dealership. 

 Instead of emailing a satisfied customer a lengthy string of URL addresses, businesses can now distribute brand enhancing post cards with the single Reputation Management Portal URL address.

 The importance of proactive Internet Reputation Management in 2010 has been confirmed by numerous studies which show that dealers with positive online reviews experience increased opportunities for website traffic and sales conversions.  

 PCG Digital Marketing has already begun creating RMP sites for many of their clients. One example can be seen at http://www.iloveprestigevolvo.com .  The catchy URL is easy to remember and is promoted by Prestige Volvo on a postcard that is given to all satisfied service clients. 

 According to Brian Pasch, CEO of PCG Digital Marketing, “The RMP not only simplifies increasing positive online reviews but it also helps build a brand of positive customer interaction.”

 Businesses who would like to learn more about creating an RMP for their brand can contact Carrie Valentine at carrie@PCGDigitalMarketing.com or call 732-450-8200.

 About the Brian Pasch and PCG Digital Marketing

Brian Pasch is a veteran marketing expert and a noted expert in the field of Automotive SEO and Internet marketing. His career has spanned both management and technology roles.

 He continues to lead research into Digital Marketing platforms. PCG Digital Marketing continually tests new digital marketing strategies which can provide a cost effective channels for business advertising and lead generation.

 PCG Digital Marketing works for and with an ever-growing number of auto dealers and dealer groups from all over the country to maximize results of their digital marketing efforts.

 Links:

http://www.pcgdigitalmarketing.com

The new 2011 Honda Odyssey mini-van introduces a sleek and distinctive exterior styling direction for the next generation of the industry’s best-selling minivan. 

Florida Honda buyers will be please to know that the vehicle will debut this fall.  Brickell Honda will be a strong supply to meet the anticipated demand from Miami resident.

The Odyssey Concept dramatically departs from conventional minivan styling with its low and wide stance, highlighted by a “lightning-bolt” beltline that further distinguishes the vehicle’s profile. Compared to the current Odyssey, the Concept’s slightly lower roofline (-1.0 inch) and wider stance (+1.4 inch) contribute to a sleeker, stronger and more dynamic presence with improved aerodynamics that help increase fuel economy. Forthcoming improvements to the production Odyssey’s interior are designed to further enhance the current model’s accommodating space for people and cargo.

“The Odyssey established its reputation by providing families with what they most want in a minivan – great functionality, an emphasis on safety and good fuel economy,” said Vicki Poponi, assistant vice president of American Honda product planning. “Odyssey then further delighted customers with its surprisingly engaging, fun-to-drive and dynamic nature. The next-generation Odyssey promises to take these strengths to a higher level while adding more style and personality.”

Alex Andreus, COO of Brickell Honda added “We expect the new Honda Odyssey to be a strong seller in Southern Florida.  In fact, Consumer Reports has named the Honda Odyssey as the #1 rated and top selling mini-van in its class.  Florida Honda Odyssey owners just love this car.”

The steeply raked front and rear roof pillars, unique side-glass profile, chamfered roof line, and tapered rear cabin shape combine to create a dynamic and distinctive appearance from any perspective. The lightning-bolt beltline dives toward the rear of the vehicle emphasizing the new Odyssey’s sporty appearance while enhancing outward visibility for third-row passengers. Aggressive body-to-wheel proportions reduce the perception of vertical height common to most minivan designs. Fender flares further accent the vehicle’s securely planted and stylish persona. The concept vehicle’s projector beam headlights, LED taillights and form-fit fog lights further heighten the sophisticated quality of the design.

Enhanced aerodynamics and advanced powertrain technologies will contribute to the next-generation Odyssey’s increased fuel efficiency. The all-new 2011 Odyssey is expected to achieve an EPA-estimated fuel economy rating¹ of 19 city/28 highway miles-per gallon on select models (preliminary estimate determined by Honda).

The Odyssey has won numerous awards and critical acclaim. Recent accolades include the Edmunds.com 2010 “Top Recommended” minivan award, U.S. News and World Report 2010 “Best Minivan for the Money” award, Automotive Lease Guide 2010 “Best Minivan for the Money,” the Kelley Blue Book award as one of the ten “Best New Family Vehicles of 2009″ and “2009 Best Resale Value Award” in the van category, which recognizes vehicles that are expected to have segment-leading resale value after five years of ownership.

In you would like to pre-order the all new Honda Odyssey or if you have additional questions about this vehicle, please contact Brickell Honda at 305-856-3000

 PCG Digital Marketing will unveil the details on their new Automotive Advertising Network™ (AAN) and Car Port App™ publishing tools, for the first time at the NADA conference in Orlando.  The CarPort App™ will allow car dealers to publish a live listing of their cars for sale on popular sites like Facebook, WordPress, Blogger, NING, TypePad and other digital websites. 

 The dealer’s cars that are for sale will be advertised on a large network of websites included in PCG’s Automotive Advertising Network (AAN) as well as any blogs or social media websites owned by car dealers.  A click on any advertised car listing will take interested consumers to customized inventory pages on CarDealerSale.com or the dealer’s custom website.

 According to Brian Pasch, CEO of PCG Digital Marketing, the Car Port App allows dealers to easily and organically advertise their inventory using their proven digital marketing and SEO expertise and can reduce their PPC costs as well. “This is a proprietary car listing technology that can be added to any social media or blog site,” explains Pasch.  “Car Port App gives dealers the freedom to place their inventory in front of consumers in any place they feel is brand enhancing.”

 In addition to viral live inventory feeds, car dealer inventory will also be published on PCG Digital Marketing’s national car sales website, http://www.cardealersale.com , which will be free of distractions and competitor’s advertising, as well as hundreds of Regional PCG car sales website that make up the AAN. “Car Port App combined with the CarDealerSale.com’s landing page technology will produce high converting car dealer traffic and more first party car dealer leads,” says Pasch.

 The PCG Digital Marketing is also co-sponsoring an Automotive Marketing Boot Camp on February 12^th in Orlando, one day prior to the official start of the 2010 NADA Convention.  The one day hands-on skills based training will include classes in social media, search engine optimization, video marketing, pay-per-click marketing and microsites. 

 Automotive professionals looking to enhance their 2010 digital marketing strategies and learn more about the Car Port App are encouraged to fly into Orlando a day early and attend the Boot Camp.  The event will be held at the Rosen Centre Hotel adjacent to the Convention hall.

 Boot Camp classes will be lead by the industry’s leading experts in all categories, including Brian Pasch, JD Rucker, Eric Mayhew, Paul Rushing and Tim Jennings.  Pasch is also taking appointments from dealer professionals who want to meet with him to discuss digital marketing strategy development for 2010. 

 Complete information on the Automotive Marketing Boot Camp can be found online at: http://www.automotivemarketingbootcamp.com

The AAN combines PCG Digital Marketing’s proven strategies in Search Engine Optimization, content marketing, social media and blogging to provide dealers with an industry leading solution for lead generation and direct sales. 

The new technology will lead to many industry firsts, giving dealers the unique ability to advertise their inventory of cars for sale using popular blogging and social media websites helping car sales to go viral.

The Automotive Advertising Network created by PCG Digital Marketing will first be introduced at NADA in Orlando, where Brian Pasch, CEO of PCG Digital Marketing is co-hosting an Automotive Marketing Boot Camp seminar on February 12^th, one day prior to the official start of NADA.  Special ‘show’ pricing will be offered at NADA and interested parties can set up a meeting to discuss the AAN with Brian Pasch by contacting Carrie Valentine at carrie@PCGDigitalmarketing.com

 About the Brian Pasch and the PCG Digital Marketing

Brian Pasch is a veteran marketing expert and a noted expert in the field of Automotive SEO and Internet marketing. His career has spanned both management and technology roles.

He continues to lead research into Digital Marketing platforms. PCG continually tests new digital marketing strategies which can provide a cost effective channels for business advertising and lead generation.

PCG works for and with an ever-growing number of auto dealers and dealer groups from all over the country to maximize results of their digital marketing efforts.

Links:

http://www.pcgdigitalmarketing.com

http://www.dealer-seo.com

According to CEO Brian Pasch, the rebranding of his formerly self-titled company reflects their rapid growth in the marketplace as well as their ability to provide a comprehensive team approach to digital marketing solutions for a very diverse range of clients.

“When we reviewed our business growth over the past four years, Search Engine Optimization and Website Design were just two of the services we’ve been providing. The term ‘digital marketing’ better reflects the scope of services and strategies we can implement for our clients which includes social media, paid advertising, branding and marketing strategies,” adds Pasch. 

The digital marketing strategies provided by the PCG Digital Marketing Team includes leveraging social networking, blogging, Internet PR, Reputation Management, and microsite marketing, to name a few.  According to Pasch, each strategy is custom tailored to the client’s goals and budgets.  “We are a partner at the marketing planning table to see which digital strategies can bring the most benefit to the client.”

Brian Pasch has long been the public face and name behind the company’s remarkable success. He in an active writer on blogs and forums dedicated to digital marketing best practices, and is a nationwide speaker and educator at many of the automotive industry’s foremost conferences.  Nevertheless, Pasch insists his company’s success is the result of a team effort complemented by his expanding team of professionals and industry experts. 

PCG Digital Marketing will continue to serve varying industries including the auto community, legal, medical, manufacturing and retail.  Their ability to provide strategic digital solutions to a number of diverse industries demonstrates the depth and breadth of their digital marketing knowledge.

Coinciding with the name company’s rebranding is the promotion of Matthew O’Such to VP of Sales and also the addition of Tom Cowell as VP of Business Operations.  The name change and shift in staff is consistent with CEO Brian Pasch’s commitment to providing excellent customer service and support as their clients leverage the ever-changing opportunities that exist in digital marketing.

More information can be found online http://www.pcgdigitalmarketing.com

This year, the theme of the Convention will be “Voice of the Dealer…Vision for Tomorrow” and according to Brian Hamilton, the Convention Chairman, “You will have no doubt that this is the convention you MUST attend! We have such an exciting line up for you and have great confidence you will be thrilled too.”

“I am looking forward to attending and hearing the issues that face dealerships and their customer’s experience.” said Glenn Pasch, President and Founder of Improved Performance Solutions. “People are more selective in their choice of who they buy their autos from and they expect sales and customer service representatives to be knowledgeable and efficient and they will take their business elsewhere if they’re not treated well.”

In discussing the current state of employee development and training, Pasch said, “It is very common for dealers to focus on how to better market their products and services but cut back on employee training during these times of concern. In my opinion, that is very shortsighted and it will place a dealership at a competitive disadvantage in the future. It is not about cutting employee training, but making sure that the training you invest in is effective.”

Improved Performance Solutions is a consulting firm that specializes in developing management professionals, business teams and training structures for BDC, sales teams, call centers and customer service teams, no matter how small or large.  Their focus is to provide the tools necessary for an organization’s employees to be effective and adaptable in these changing times.

Information on the NADA and this year’s convention can be found at http://expo.nada.org/nada2010/public/enter.aspx

About Improved Performance Solutions

Glenn Pasch founded Improved Performance Solutions because he deeply understands the day-to-day issues that affect an organization’s performance. He has more than 16 years of experience in the direct marketing industry, including hands-on sales training, project management, human performance improvement as well as organizational development and management consultant services. For more information, please visit http://www.ipsforyou.com .

 Contact:

Glenn Pasch

President and Founder

Improved Performance Solutions

732-261-5472

glenn@ipsforyou.com

Toyota announced that letters will be mailed for the sticky accelerator pedal recall but not all Toyota car owners will have mailing address information that is correct is Toyota’s database.

In a separate announcement on February 8th, Toyota tells Prius owners included in the 2010 Prius recall to wait for their recall letter. Does Toyota believe that they will get a 100% delivery rate?

As Toyota has starting fixing cars that are part of the massive Toyota recall program, some Toyota owners are at risk of falling through the cracks.

In an exerpt from Toyota’s February 5th press release:

“The company also announced that it has begun mailing letters to owners of recalled vehicles to let them know when to bring their vehicles into a dealership. Owners will only receive a letter if their vehicle is involved in the recall. Upon receipt of a notification letter, owners will be asked to contact a local Toyota dealership to schedule an appointment to have their vehicle fixed.”

As part of the 2010 Toyota Prius recall press release dated February 8, 2010, Toyota says:

Toyota will begin mailing letters to Prius owners included in this recall next week and HS 250h owners within the next few weeks, to let them know when to bring their vehicles into a dealership. Owners will only receive a letter if their vehicle is involved in the recall.

The press release did not address the very practical problem that Toyota’s database can not contain accurate mailing information for all Toyota owners affected by the recall.

Car sales between private owners as well as mailing address changes as consumers move within the country will impact the effectiveness of a Toyota national recall notification mailing.

Toyota Owners Will be Missed

According to the US Postal Service website:

• 17% of Americans change addresses annually.
• 43 million people move each year.
• One out of every six families move each year.

The ability for any company to maintain an accurate mailing address of their customers has always been a challenge in the direct mail industry. With over 8 million cars included in the floor mat recall and the sticky accelerator pedal recall, when you apply a conservative mailing address error rate of 8%, it can be estimated that over 500,000 Toyota owners will not receive their recall letters.

Since Toyota’s press release says that mailed recall letters as the trigger for consumers to call their local dealer, consumers who don’t get recall letters in the coming days are advised to call their local Toyota dealer to check and see if their VIN# and mailing address is correct in the Toyota database. The Toyota press release did not cover what consumers are to do who own cars included in the recall and that do not receive a letter.

Toyota Recall Owners Have a National Podium

Consumers can also particpate in forums and discussions to share their experiences during the recall process on an independant website at www.toyotarercall.org.  The website will allow consumers to freely express their recall service experience and the effect the recall has on their confidence in the Toyota brand. Consumers can also request a local Toyota dealer contact them about a recall service appointment or to confirm that their car in included in the recall.

This independent website which is not affiliated with Toyota, is a popular destination for Toyota car owners to express the questions comments and reactions to the Toyota recall process. The PCG Digital Marketing chose the .org domain extension because the website is designed for public information, education and commentary.

The website www.toyotarecall.org was recently recognized by the Public Interest Registry (PIR.ORG) as a fine example of the effectiveness and application of a .org domain name. You can read their post at: http://blog.pir.org/?p=541

Official Toyota Hot Line

Consumers who are concerned about the safety of their Toyota models not included in the current recall are advised to call the official Toyota Customer Experience Center at 1-800-331-4331.

The presentation by Pasch and Rucker will shine the spotlight on auto dealers who have excelled at harnessing the full power of digital advertising.  The presentation will go into detail about specific dealer marketing programs that have been able to drive organic traffic to their website, dominate search terms for their PMA and generate as much as 20,000-30,000 unique visitors each month. The presentation will be Sunday, February 14^th from 3:30-5:00pm at the KPA/TK Conference Room. 

A full schedule of workshops hosted by KPA and TK Carsites at NADA can be found at http://www.kpaonline.com/nada2010

Brian Pasch is a respected member of the automotive digital marketing community and works collaboratively with a number of auto suppliers and vendors of digital marketing products and solutions.  PCG Digital Marketing is also one of the co-organizers of the industry’s first Automotive Boot Camp, which is being held on February 12th; the day before the official start of NADA in Orlando.  The Boot Camp will cover important elements of automotive digital marketing strategies: social media, blogging, video, microsites, link building, content creation, SEO and pay-per-click marketing.    

For additional information on the Automotive Marketing Boot Camp, visit http://www.automotivemarketingbootcamp.com

All dealer professionals attending the conference who are unable to attend the TK Car Sites’ presentation featuring Brian Pasch can schedule a time to meet with Brian for private consultation to discuss the latest   automotive digital marketing strategies designed by PCG.  Appointments can be made by contacting Carrie Valentine at carrie@paschconsulting.com

About TK Carsites:

TK Carsites, Inc. is a marketing and technology services company providing online solutions to automotive retailers.  Currently they offer their 1,000+ automotive dealer clients consumer friendly websites, email and search engine marketing programs plus numerous interactive and rich media campaigns and lead generating tools.  

http://www.tkcarsites.com

About the Brian Pasch and the PCG Digital Marketing

Brian Pasch is a veteran marketing expert and a noted expert in the field of Automotive SEO and Internet marketing. His career has spanned both management and technology roles.

He continues to lead research into Digital Marketing platforms. PCG continually tests new digital marketing strategies which can provide a cost effective channels for business advertising and lead generation.

PCG works for and with an ever-growing number of auto dealers and dealer groups from all over the country to maximize results of their digital marketing efforts.

http://www.dealer-seo.com

Add Another Headache to Toyota Motors!

According to a report on February 4th by  MSNBC.com, a Toyota spokesperson admitted on Thursday that problems exist with the brakes on Prius vehicles sold prior to January.

Toyota Motor Corp. spokeswoman Ririko Takeuchi said Thursday that Toyota discovered there were design problems with the anti-lock brake system and corrected them for Prius models sold since late January, including those being shipped overseas.

We first covered this story six weeks ago and posted a question to Prius owners about reported problems with the Prius braking system. If you are a Toyota Prius owner, add your comments to the emerging conversation: Toyota Prius Brake Forum

Toyota Prius Owners Action Plan

If you own a Toyota Prius and have experienced problems with the braking system, you should contact a local Toyota dealer right away. You can use  our Toyota dealer directory.  As additional information on the Toyota Prius anti-lock brakes comes out, we will be covering the news on this www.toyotarecall.org

If you have friends and family who own a Toyota Prius, please send them a link to this page and encourage them to keep connected with the latest news on this serious matter. You can also follow our news updates on Twitter. http://twitter.com/RecallCars

One consumer wrote in to say:

My 2010 toyota prius purchased in Nov 09 also hit a problem during last week when there were heavy rains. Slippery Road, ABS and BRAKE (red in Color) were the signs that all appeared together. Even after the roads were much drier, these signs won’t go away. I took them to dealer and they said that they will have to replace “brake accelerator” which is the heart of braking system. Never imagined that I would run with this problem in a new vehicle.

Recently, BMW veered out of the restrictive lane of digital marketing and has embraced a “controlled” roll-out of service microsites for their dealers.

BMW, through a joint venture with Dealer Product Services, will offer their dealers co-op money to build a single landing page on a domain that follows a specific pattern. This pattern could very well be the same for all BMW dealers in the county.

I use the word “microsite” to reflect what some people would call this design but it is only a landing page with links back to the dealer’s primary website. You can check out a sample of the design by visiting: http://www.allentownbmwservice.com . The URL pattern looks like it will be the term “BMW service” and the city of their dealership or the reverse.

The landing page has very little text and the coding suggests a quick and dirty single page design. From this pre-launch site, it looks like no one is thinking about how to maintain these landing pages over time because there are no centralized CSS files and everything is hard coded in a single page.

Using Pay Per Click To Drive Service Revenue

The BMW service marketing program includes a pay-per-click management campaign which BMW will co-op to drive traffic to this landing page for service related terms. The creation of this landing page will enable BMW dealers to run two pay-per-click campaigns at the same time for their PMA.

This will increase the visibility of their brand through paid advertising and is a positive step in using digital advertising to drive fixed operations business. They just may be paying a lot more than they should to increase service revenue by ignoring SEO and relying only on PPC.

In the program, the PPC campaigns will be targeted using zip codes to ensure that the ads don’t cross PMA lines. This is an imperfect design because depending on where a consumer’s ISP hub is located, the IP address of a consumer’s PC at home could very well appear in a town a few miles away. In California, New York, New Jersey, Chicago, and other metro areas where PMA maps are not large, the BMW service marketing program will be showing ads in densely populated areas that violate their own PMA marketing restrictions.

Since the SEO architecture of the landing page is weak on text and the website is only one page, some additional issues will come into play. The Google PPC quality score for these landing pages will be low because the words they will be buying will not be backed up with enough on-page text. For example, if a dealer is buying “BMW Brakes”, “BMW Transmission”, etc. there is no text on the page to match those terms they want to buy.

This will make their Pay-Per-Click spending increase compared to if they actually created a microsite with text pages on brakes, transmissions, tires, etc. Yes, I just gave away how to fix that problem and I would hope that the architects of this program add more value and insight for BMW marketing dollars.

SEO Scorecard For BMW Service Microsites

In regards to the Automotive SEO power of this design, it violates my guidelines for creating effective microsites because it has no real quality content but it seems that BMW has some other goals. From the architecture, it seems that BMW wants to try to limit or “geo-target” only the town that the dealer is located in so that their landing pages don’t start showing up in organic searches in other dealer’s PMA. So they limit the text on this one page to include only the city where the service center is located.

There is no way to geo-target a website organically to match a PMA map; regardless of any claims someone would make to satisfy BMW marketing executives. My guess is that by putting up a single, low text landing page, they are hoping that it doesn’t show up organically for search except for the town name in the URL. Of course, this to me is a silly concept so if they only want a pay-per-click landing page they should add a “robots.txt” file in the root directory and tell Google not to index the site organically at all.

Microsites Roles in Google Page One Management

This toe in the microsite waters by BMW sparked a number of related thoughts regarding microsites and Google Page One Management (GPOM). The top organic search phrase that drives traffic to a car dealer’s website is their own name. I have stated my opinion in previous articles that enhancing what is displayed on Google Page One for a search on a dealer’s name is very important.

BMW misses the mark for this microsite naming model because they are using the town name for the microsite and not the actual business name. Instead of using “bmwserviceallentown.com” it would benefit the dealer more if they used “danielsbmwservice.com”, especially if you have negative press showing up on page one when you search a dealer’s name.

Google keyword traffic estimator tools also supports a microsite model that includes the dealer’s name would be much stronger than the town that they are located in.

What Shows Up On Google Page One

If a dealer engages in social media and is able to secure a matching name in Twitter and Facebook for their business, there is a good chance that when they type in their dealership name, they will own four out of the 10 organic listings.

This is normally achieved because a dealer’s primary website will show two listings, which leaves six organic listings to control. Regardless of the website platform that you use, any single website will not show more than two pages for a search on a dealer’s name.

If a dealership was able to control 80%, 90% or 100% of the organic listings for a search on their business name, first party leads will increase. The leads would increase because they would push off Google Page One the third party lead collectors that are using their multi-million dollar brand to collect free leads.

In the case of John Marazzi Nissan, shown to the right, they have done a great job of controlling 9 out of the 10 organic listings when you search for their business name.

Optimizing pages for a dealer’s name, called “brand leakage”, is a multi-million dollar business. Dealers are just realizing they need to fight back against this practice. For many dealers, Edmunds.com appears on page one for searches on their dealership name. The website collects consumer leads and will resell them to multiple dealers in their state.

For example, if you search “BMW Macon” in Google you will see that Edmunds has an optimized page on this URL:

http://www.edmunds.com/dealerships/BMW/Georgia/Macon.html .

At the top of this page, a message gives consumers the option to find other dealers in the state and to get a price quote. This is a perfect example of how a dealers name and their brand can be used by lead collectors.

A dealer cannot control the organic listings for all related search terms in their PMA but they should work on their #1 digital asset; searches on their business name. You can read a previous article on this topic called; “Is Your Brand Leaking” that goes into greater detail on this issue.

BMW was on the right track, but did not understand the benefits of GPOM. If a dealer wanted to increase the consumer awareness and ease by which they could engage with their business, they could purchase a domain for service, parts and even tires and build real microsites that Google will respect.

These sites could be done in WordPress and have real content pages on parts, service, tires and other fixed operations phrases that could drive additional revenue to their dealership. An additional advantage of using WordPress is that dealers could add their own local sales, specials and testimonials to further increase the local search relevance of these sites.

Enterprise Microsite Management

The PCG Digital Marketing has developed WordPress management tools that can update hundreds or thousands of WordPress microsites simultaneously with customized, locally optimized content from a central control panel.

These tools eliminate the problem of maintaining content for hundreds or thousands of dealer microsites which would change throughout the year. It would allow local WordPress sites to maintain their local keyword targets and links while being updated centrally. It would also leverage OEM marketing dollars since WordPress is open-source software and costly CMS licensing fees for their dealership microsites would be avoided.

Any OEM who wants to increase first party leads to their dealerships should strongly consider a GPOM microsite model that can be centrally managed and create unique localized content for each dealership. If car manufacturers implement a microsite framework like discussed in this article to enhance the GPOM concerns of their dealers, then they can implement a similar model using the dealership’s primary city. The point is that they could implement both strategies and provide their dealers with a significant bump in first party leads.

If the BMW Service program is successful, what would stop a third landing page to be created called “bmwpartsallentown“. The answer is nothing. I just hope that BMW is not fearful about creating too many microsites, which would be a shame for the dealers. They are heading in the right direction but just have not to worry about marketing costs and first party organic lead generation.

I applaud BMW for breaking out of their outdated thinking on microsites and I hope that it evolves into great strategic assets for their dealers. When done properly, a microsite model implemented at the OEM level could be a game changing strategy for OEM’s in 2010. Some aggressive local dealers have already found this model to work but imagine the impact if it was done for all dealers in a brand franchise.

Did you hear that sound? I think I heard third party lead collectors choking on that concept.

If any OEM wants a winning microsite strategy that will both dominate organic search results and provide a platform for pay-per-click marketing and branding, that solution has been delivered on a silver platter.

I have always wondered why OEM’s would allow third party lead collectors to poach consumer leads off a search on their dealer’s name. I have recently learned that it is not because they are in bed with these companies, but rather they needed a cost effective strategy to fight back. Now they have one.

About The Author

Brian Pasch is the CEO of the PCG Digital Marketing and an active writer for the automotive community. You can also reach Brian in his New Jersey offices at 732-450-8200 or by visiting http://www.dealer-seo.com .

If you are attending the 2010 NADA Convention in Orlando, make sure you meet up with Brian if you have questions on using microsites to enhance your online visibility.

 Other Articles by Brian Pasch

• Google Page One Management
• Is Your Brand Leaking
• Has Your Brand Been Vandalized

The dedicated Toyota recall website, http://www.toyotarecall.org, is an independent, consumer to consumer website that is not affiliated with Toyota or the government. It was launched as a way to collect the massive amount of questions and answers that exist online and bring it all to one simple destination for consumers.

The website provides an outlet for Toyota owners through various forums through which consumers can share their comments, opinions and experiences. Current forums being discussed now include:

• Confusion About Toyota Recall Letters
• How Will This Recall Impact Toyota’s Reputation?
• Share Your Experience with Toyota Recall Repairs

One of the most active areas of the Toyota recall website is the Q&A section where an outpouring of emotions and frustration has been seen.

One consumer wrote in, “Me and my family’s lives are not worth it. In the interest of public safety, none of these cars should even be on the road. The question is whether Toyota is going to do the right thing and allow people out of their contract or is it still going to stonewall everyone and claim that they’re going to work it out.”

Another consumer posed the question, “What is a consumer to do when the dealerships tells me that a letter will be sent out sometime next week/next month to address this problem? Do we keep driving this death trap?”

The website demonstrates visible anger and frustration on the parts of millions of Toyota owners.  Toyota owners who would like to share any information they have received can take part in the online forums by visiting http://www.toyotarecall.org/

Consumers who would like information from Toyota directly can call the official Toyota Customer Care phone number at 1-800-331-4331.

Tim Jennings on the cover of Digital Dealer Magazine

Jennings has sold over 3800 cars in his career, with a very high percentage of these sales coming from the Internet.  According to Jennings, “Nothing I have done in my 18 years of selling cars has had a faster return on my time and effort than video marketing.”

Jennings will be among 5 Automotive Marketing experts who will be sharing best practices and hands-on skills training.  The roster of speakers also includes JD Rucker, a leading automotive social media expert and CMO of TK Carsites, Paul Rushing and Brian Pasch, respected leaders in Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization, and Eric Mayhew, Manager of Advertising Products at Dealer.com who will lead a class on managing and leveraging Google Adwords to increase sales for a dealership.

The full roster of speakers and class descriptions can be found online at http://www.automotivemarketingbootcamp.com/instructors/

The Automotive Marketing Boot Camp will be 2 hours in length and offers attendees 10 hands-on classes which will deliver the abilities dealers need to understand, manage and catapult their online marketing strategy to the next level.  Every participant will be required to bring a laptop since the boot camp will feature hands on skills training.  This will enable participants to take back to their dealership and implement what they learned in class.

Registration is limited to 75 seats per class and is filling up quickly.  Automotive Principals, General Managers, General Sales Managers or Internet Sales Managers are encouraged to register online at http://www.automotivemarketingbootcamp.com/paypal

Classic Chevy will make a lump sum donation to the Red Cross’s Haiti relief efforts on February 1^st. Until then, the Texas Chevy dealer urges Facebook users to become a fan of the Classic Chevy page and add to the donation.  This can be done by visiting: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Grapevine-TX/Classic-Chevrolet/105587021517?ref=nf and choosing ‘become a fan’.

Facebook has become an infectious way for businesses to disseminate information to large amounts of people in a short period of time.  According to Hagen Durant, General Manager for Classic Chevy, “We wanted to rally our fans to try and help bring relief to Haiti.  We are excited to see how much money we will be able to donate to the Red Cross, and we are grateful for our Facebook fans for aiding in our efforts.”

Classic Chevy hopes other dealers and businesses do the same thing.  “We all can do something to help, we don’t have to be celebrities…we just have to have fans,” added Durant. 

For more information on Classic Chevy in Texas, visit http://www.classicchevytexas.com

About Classic Chevy

Chevy offer a wide selection of fuel efficient cars and trucks that are as equally stylish as they are fuel efficient.  Classic Chevy in Texas has the largest selection of Chevy cars, including the complete line up of hybrids like the Malibu, Silverado, and Tahoe.    Classic Chevy is the nation’s #1 volume Chevy dealership.

Follow Classic Chevy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/classic_chevy

Classic Chevy on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Grapevine-TX/Classic-Chevrolet/105587021517?ref=nf

Contact Information:

Justin Norwood

Classic Chevrolet
Yourway@classicchevytexas.com
817-421-7290

In some markets, the recall will create a flood of service appointments at local dealers that will exceed 5,000 vehicles.  Whether local Toyota dealers be able to handle the tsunami of calls and appointments that will be needed to repair all  of the cars in a timely manner will have to be seen. In the past year car dealers have trimmed staff, reduced service hours and pulled back on spending.

Toyota dealers may also be hit with calls from consumers who don’t have a model included in the recall.  If the Cash for Clunkers program is any parallel, consumers owning a Toyota car will rather call a local Toyota dealer to get the verbal assurances that their car is excluded rather than reading the specifics in a Toyota press release or letter.

Toyota dealers must be able to complete the recall repairs in a timely manner.  Many consumers are scared to wait for the recall repairs to take place.  One Toyota owner wrote in on an independent  website which provides information and consumer feedback on the recall:

My car is a 2010 Camry, and I just got it about 3 weeks ago. I know it’s on the recall list. I’m scared to drive it now, especially that I have two children under the age of 5. I wanted to know if the dealership where I bought my car can give me a temporary car (that is not on the recall list), while they fix my Camry. Can that be done?

You can read more consumer comments on  http://www.toyotarecall.org

Toyota dealers will need to extend service hours, add staff and implement new procedures to handle the service work associated with the Toyota recall.  Some dealers have  expanded their loaner fleets to provide a loaner cars during recall service appointments and others are offering shuttle service for their customers who work locally.

If this recall is handled properly, local Toyota dealers can embrace Toyota owners and demonstrate Toyota’s commitment to safety. Dealers can restore confidence in Toyota car ownership and reassure owners of Toyota of the value of the brand.  AN extra measure of customer service will go a long way with Toyota owners at this critical time.

If handled poorly this could be a disaster for Toyota.  Specific coaching on the recall service process must be implemented by Toyota for their service consultants.   Dealership service staff must be able to reassure consumers that  the components affected by the recall were serviced or replaced properly.

If the recall service is handled like a fast-food cafeteria line,  it will leave a bad taste in Toyota owners mouths.

The DealerRater.com Dealer of the Year awards are given each January to car dealerships located in the United States that have the highest PowerScore in their brand category. The dealership that’s awarded DealerRater.com’s overall Dealer of the Year is recognized for having a PowerScore that outranks other brand-specific Dealer of the Year winners.

Alex Snyder, eCommerce Director for Checkered Flag, says that the recognition from DealerRater.com cements their position as a premier provider of excellent customer service and sales.  “Being that we are a family owned and operated dealership since 1964, our connection to the community, our extended family, is what we believe to be the thriving force behind our continued success.  The DealerRater.com award confirms our beliefs.”

Virginia Porsche shoppers can learn more about Checkered Flag Porsche online at http://www.checkeredflag.com/makes/porsche.htm

About Checkered Flag Porsche

Checkered Flag Porsche serves Virginia Porsche shoppers with exceptional selections of new and used Porsche cars and SUVs.   Checkered Flag Porsche is part of the Checkered Motor Car Corporation.   Since 1964, the family owned corporation has offered the largest selection of new and pre owned vehicles to Virginia residents.

Contact:

Checkered Flag Toyota
5301 Virginia Beach Blvd.
Virginia Beach, VA 23462
866-490-FLAG
http://www.checkeredflag.com/

We welcome Arbogast Conversion Vans into the PCG family of automotive retailers.  Their conversion van sales and service facility in Ohio has grown to make them one of the largest conversion van dealers in the United States.  Since they deliver new and used Conversion Vans across the United States, you truly have a national customer base.

We will be displaying Arbogast banner ads on our new national ad network which will create an additional stream of high quality consumer leads.  When our ad network is completed in 2010, we will have over 400 websites in the largest metropolitan area.  This means that all PCG clients will benefit from additional brand visibility.

Conversion Van Dealers

Arbogast conversion vans is proud to offer a huge selection of conversion vans by Explorer Van Company. Explorer Van Company has been the leader in van conversions since day one. Both Dave Arbogast and Explorer have been close partners since the van company was created in 1980. Dave Arbogast was nicknamed the “Van Man” due to his success as a conversion van dealer.

Explorer Conversion Vans are practical for everyday use, reasonably priced, and of the highest quality. You will find that conversion vans on average are price lower than most SUV’s! It is transportation and luxurious comfort at its best! And Explorer Conversion Vans are custom vans, so you will have no problem finding one the suits your every need and desire.

Contact Arbogast Conversion Vans

Dave Arbogast Conversion Vans
3540 South Co. Road. 25A
Troy, OH 45373

http://www.conversionvansale.com

Sales: 1.866.975.3287
Service: 937.335.0068
Parts: 937.335.0068

During the last month of 2009, calls to the PCG Digital Marketing researching Automotive Internet Marketing strategies was at an all time high.  According to Brian Pasch, over 50 car dealer store locations contracted with his company in the past 30 days looking for assistance with social media, automotive SEO, blogging, press releases, microsites and pay-per-click marketing.

Among the dealerships welcomed by Pasch Consulting are Checkered Flag Auto Group in Virginia Beach, Miller Automotive Group of California, a division of Group 1 Automotive, Jerry Durant Auto Group of Texas, the Rairdon Automotive Group in Washington and Park Avenue Motors in New Jersey.

Furthermore, a recent study commissioned by the PCG Digital Marketing revealed that over 50% of US auto dealers have less than 20% of their total ad spending allocated towards Internet Marketing.   According to Pasch, car dealers could shift 20-30% of their non-digital marketing to online digital services by the end of the year.

Based on this study and dealers’ rising interests in online marketing, Pasch predicts that 2010 will see one of the largest budget shifts towards the Internet.  “We predict that over the next two years, tens of millions of dollars will be pumped into digital marketing strategies and social media marketing by car dealers.” says Pasch.  “Dealers want to be in front of the growing number of consumers researching cars online before making a purchasing decision.  Getting their brand in front of consumers using social media tools and platforms like Facebook is also a hot topic for car dealers.”

To meet this growing demand for online marketing strategies and advice on digital spending, the PCG Digital Marketing is co-sponsoring an Automotive Marketing Boot Camp.  The one-day hands-on skills based training will include classes in social media, search engine optimization, video marketing, pay-per-click marketing and microsites.

The Boot Camp is schedule for February 12, 2010 and is one day prior to the official start of the 2010 NADA Convention in Orlando Florida.  Automotive professionals looking to enhance their 2010 digital marketing strategies are encourage to fly into Orlando a day early and attend the Boot Camp.  The event will be held at the Rosen Centre Hotel adjacent to the Convention hall.

Boot Camp classes will be lead by the industry’s leading experts in all categories, including Brian Pasch, JD Rucker, Eric Mayhew, Paul Rushing and Tim Jennings.  Pasch is also taking appointments from dealer professionals who want to meet with him to discuss digital marketing strategy development for 2010. 

Complete information on the Automotive Marketing Boot Camp can be found online at: http://www.automotivemarketingbootcamp.com

The letters will be send out in batches at staged intervals to help dealers with the staggering number of calls that will be coming into their switchboards.

According to dealers we spoke with, Toyota will start by sending recall letters to Toyota Camry owners next week and inform them of the recall repair process.

Toyota dealers have been allocated 2 hours of service time to fix the accelerator pedal problem involved in the massive recall according to their training phone call this past week.  It is unclear if the repair process will take a full 2 hours once the technicians are used to the factory outlined procedure.    Parts for the recall are in the process of being shipped to car dealers.

According to local dealers, once the parts arrive in the coming week, they will be able to start scheduling service appointments.

USA Today interviewed Yoshimi Inaba, president of Toyota Motors North America, in an article today which he said:

“Toyota has learned a lot and learned its lessons” from the recent safety trouble, which is resulting in its largest recall ever of about four million vehicles, Inaba told reporters this week at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. “We have widened our antenna so we can react more quickly.”

It is very clear that Toyota is taking this recall seriously.

Accelerator Recall Repair Time: 2 hours

The two hours allocated for fixing the millions of cars affected by the recall will mean that consumers will have a choice to wait for the repairs to be completed.  Local dealers will be trying to accommodate local consumers with shuttle van service, loaner cars and extended service hours.

One dealer we spoke to said that loaner cars for the accelerator recall will not be as plentiful because of the high volume of cars and appointments that will be scheduled.  Consumers are encouraged to ask their local dealer on their loaner car policy in advance before assuming that a loaner will be available.

Many Toyota dealers will be partnering with shuttle services to allow local customers to drop off their call and taken back home or to the office while the repairs are being completed.

Schedule Your Recall Appointment Today

Did you receive your recall notice in the mail? If you didn’t, don’t worry.  Just confirm that your car is a model that has been part of the recall.  The list of qualifying cars can be found here:  Toyota Recall List.

You can also visit www.toyotarecall.org , a leading consumer website designed to help consumers affected by the 4 million car recall.

The website has a form which will connect consumers with a local Toyota dealer that can confirm if your car is involved in the recall as well as to schedule a recall service appointment.

I also wrote last week about the fact that dealers in their Dealer Rater Certified program can add live inventory to their Facebook Fan Pages. If you didn’t have a chance to read that article, look in the latest news section.

World Toyota Overall Dealer of the Year

According to a press release issued by DealerRater.com the 2010 overall DealerRater Dealer of the Year winner is World Toyota of Atlanta, Georgia, managed by Mike Balog. This dealer is also the recipient of the DealerRater Toyota Dealer of the Year award. They have received more than 250 reviews and have a 24-month score of 4.9 out of 5.0. Congratulations Mike!

Additional 2010 DealerRater Dealer of the Year award winners for their respective brand category are:

• Precision Acura of Princeton of Lawrenceville, New Jersey and managed by Drew Sciaulino
• Bernardi Audi of Natick, Massachusetts and managed by Bob Grelotti
• MileOne Tischer BMW of Silver Spring, Maryland and managed by Larry Sevrin
• Jeff Wyler Florence Buick Pontiac GMC of Florence, Kentucky and managed by Paul Rini
• Mountain View Chevrolet of Chattanooga, Tennessee and managed by Jason Whittle
• Hall Chrysler Jeep Dodge of Virginia Beach, Virginia and managed by Chris Colbert
• Irwin Ford Lincoln Mercury of Laconia, New Hampshire and managed by Al Faro
• DCH Academy Honda of Old Bridge, New Jersey and managed by Peter Ghaw
• Hyundai of St. Augustine, Florida and managed by Andrew Difeo
• Infiniti of Scottsdale, Arizona and managed by Ken Schatzberg
• Jaguar Houston North of Houston, Texas and managed by Jason Lacher
• Jeff Wyler Springfield Automall of Springfield, Ohio and managed by Jay Lawrence
• Land Rover Houston North of North Houston, Texas and managed by Jason Lacher
• Ira Mazda of Danvers, Massachusetts and managed by Chris Gannett
• MileOne Mercedes-Benz of Annapolis, Maryland and managed by John Dunphy
• Checkered Flag BMW MINI of Virginia Beach, Virginia and managed by John Hall
• MileOne Herb Gordon Nissan of Silver Spring, Maryland and managed by Van Westerlund
• Checkered Flag Audi Porsche Jaguar of Virginia Beach and managed by Richard Hutsko
• Cityside Subaru of Belmont, Massachusetts and managed by Rick White
• Volkswagen of Freehold, New Jersey and managed by Mark Giovanni
• Hassel Volvo of Glen Cove, New York and managed by Frank Mastrovito
• Harbro Sales & Service, Inc of Linwood, Massachusetts managed by Tim Hare

Congratulations everyone on the list and our clients highlighted in yellow. Internet Reputation Management is continuing to play an important role in car dealership online sales and marketing strategies. These dealers understand that and have setup strong IRM processes.

Of course not everyone could make the list and many deserve to be…so anyone focused on a great customer experience and has great review scores..keep up the great work.

A strong IRM process will continue to pay off with more calls and direct sales. If you need assistance creating a strong IRM program for your dealership, give us a call at 732-450-8200.

The PCG Digital Marketing just released their latest comprehensive Internet marketing package that includes their proven techniques to maximize a dealer’s online presence using effective Internet marketing and social media strategies. 

The PCG marketing package implements online marketing and brand messaging through social media platforms, websites, microsites, blogging, banner advertisements, pay per click advertising, video marketing and more. 

The PCG Automotive Digital Marketing package is attractively priced at $1,195 per month for a single dealership.  PCG marketing services are designed to enhance the existing digital marketing efforts within a dealership instead of hiring a full time marketing specialist.  PCG works seamlessly with traditional advertising agencies that service dealers since they do not offer offline media marketing solutions.

Dealers who seek to employ a qualified full time Internet Marketing Manager specialist can plan to spend upwards of $50,000 a year.  The PCG automotive digital marketing packages can help cut costs for dealers who can’t justify a full-time employee or who cannot find qualified automotive digital marketing professionals.  For a fraction of the price of a full time digital marketing specialist, car dealers gain the knowledge and expertise of working with PCG’s automotive marketing professionals.

According to Brian Pasch, CEO of Pasch Consulting, working with PCG specialists, dealers increase their bottom line by allowing their employees to focus on the day-to-day sales operations at the dealership.  “Critical tasks needed to maximize a dealer’s presence online are often put to side by employees who are too busy,” says Pasch.  “We can help them get a jump on the competition by performing these tasks while they focus on operations, sales, and in-house marketing.”

Brian Pasch, CEO of the PCG Digital Marketing, is a respected leader in Automotive Digital Marketing.  He is a noted speaker on the subject of Automotive SEO and digital marketing.

Brian will be one of the instructors at the 2010 Automotive Marketing Boot Camp scheduled for February 12, 2010 in Orlando.  The boot camp is scheduled conveniently one day prior to the official start of the2010 NADA convention so dealership employees can attend both events.

Car dealers interested in strengthening their internet marketing visibility should set up an appointment to speak with Brian Pasch if they are attending the NADA Convention in Orlando in February and cannot attend the Boot Camp.  Interested dealers can contact carrie@paschconsulting.com to schedule an appointment.

To learn more about the Automotive Marketing Boot Camp prior to 2010 NADA, visit http://www.automotivemarketingbootcamp.com/instructors/

About the Brian Pasch and the PCG Digital Marketing

Brian Pasch is a veteran marketing expert and a noted expert in the field of Automotive SEO and Internet marketing. His career has spanned both management and technology roles.

He continues to lead research into Digital Marketing platforms. PCG continually tests new digital marketing strategies which can provide a cost effective channels for business advertising and lead generation.

PCG works for and with an ever-growing number of auto dealers and dealer groups from all over the country to maximize results of their digital marketing efforts.

www.dealer-seo.com

We hope to increase the number of dealerships participating in the survey with your help.  Pass this survey link to dealer staff within your organization, in your 20 groups and friends in the business to grow the number of dealers involved.

If you have not yet participated in the survey, take a minute to do so. We will be posting the results of the full study prior to NADA.

Take The Survey

Participate in the survey by clicking on this link:  http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/automotive-digital-marketing

Adoption of Digital Marketing Strategies

The chart shown above is from 130 dealers to date.  Some of the responses may jump out to you like they did for us. For example, if you add the “not using” and the “ready to start” columns, you can see that in many area of digital marketing 30-40% of dealers have not yet engaged in their use.

This great digital divide will allow early adopters to gain a significant advantage on their peers.

Automotive retailers who redirect more of their marketing dollars to online spending in 2010 will be rewarded with increased market share.

Our data is skewed slightly because the survey is being done online. That means that the dealers participating in the survey are already engage in online discussion and communities. So, the numbers of dealers “not using” or “ready to start” is actually higher.

Internet Marketing Training

Thirty-four percent of car dealers surveyed are not budgeting for their staff to attend Internet marketing seminars or training. This is a discouraging fact. Regardless of a dealers’ level of engagement with digital marketing, they should at least understand the value of collecting best practices from their peers and face to face events are often a place for accelerated learning.

Dealers who do not budget for Internet Marketing skills development in 2010 will not be rewarded by many proven engagement strategies discussed on this forum. With NADA coming up in 30 days as well as the Automotive Marketing Boot Camp the prior day in Orlando, dealers would be best served to send their key marketing and sales staff for the latest strategies that can improve their 2010 results.

Digital Marketing Spending Still Small

With 39% of  car dealers surveyed having less than 20% of their overall marketing budget focused to digital marketing, dealers need to wake up and educate themselves on how to move that needle closer to 50% in 2010. Making decisions in a vacuum doesn’t work.

We Can Help

If you need assistance mapping out your 2010 Internet Marketing budgets and strategies, give us a call at 732-450-8200.

I love to share great ideas with the automotive community as I find them. Since Facebook is a hot topic I thought I would write about ways to make your Facebook page more interesting.

In the past few months I have been testing and implementing some of the free tools that come from DealerRater when a dealer is signs up for the Certified Dealer program. There are many benefits to the program but I would like to discuss one of the new recent ways their dealer platform can be leveraged.

Facebook Car Inventory Pages

Dealers can now add their car inventory to a Facebook Fan Page tab using tools from DealerRater.com. You can see an example of this technology on the Infiniti of Norwood Facebook Fan Page below.

There is a tab called “Classified Ads” on their Fan Page which when you click on the tab it shows their inventory. This is a tasteful way to add additional functionality to Facebook withoput posting cars in the main Facebook news stream. This feed is free to dealers on the Certified Dealer program and it is easy to add to your fan page.

The trick is to add graphics or call to action messages to make your fans aware of the tab. Then if they want to look at cars they can and you can keep your news stream more meaningful and a value to your followers.

Facebook Tabs Customized

If you didn’t know it, you can add HTML code pages to your Facebook Fan Pages that can look just like your website. It can also have active buttons that bring people to your website.

You can see another example from ABC Motor Credit’s Facebook Page shown below. They are a Buy Here Pay Here dealership in Ohio and they have a contest running which they wanted to leverage on Facebook as well as getting clicks to their website. So this custom tab was created: http://www.facebook.com/ABCMotorCredit

If you are not handy with HTML coding, find someone to help. It only took a few minutes of our team’s time to take the HTML code from ABC Motor Credit’s website and created this tab. Once these TABS are created, you can add graphics to the Fan Page to encourage people to click on the tabs.

There is a number of creative ways to enhance Facebook. Inventory feeds, video channels, website forms, specials pages or something completely crazy can now be implemented to super-charge your Facebook page.

2010 Internet Marketing Education

Do you like these ideas? You can super-charge your 2010 Internet Marketing Strategies by attending the Automotive Marketing Boot Camp in Orlando. It is being held on February 12th, one day before the NADA Convention in Orlando.

Get the edge on your competitors regarding social media, SEO, microsites, pay-per-click and video marketing strategies from industry leaders.

Jared Hamilton will be the opening night keynote speaker on Thursday evening February 11th. Sign-up today.

Learn more about this limited engagement event at: www.internetmarketingbootcamp.com

This popped up when we tried to run a Google Adwords campaign to a dealer microsite that had the word Toyota in the URL name.  Google blocked the ad because it was not a registered dealer domain name.  It appears  that Toyota gave Google a list of approved primary dealer domains and locked down anyone using Toyota in the domain that was not a primary dealer.

Sub-domains are OK for now

This crackdown will reduce Toyota dealers to having one website with the option of having multiple sub-domains.  Blogs hosted outside the dealer’s primary domain will be forced to be taken down.

A sub-domain example is http://service.woburntoyota.com and dealers can create as many sub-domains as they want. They will not be able to create a website at www.toyotaservicewoburn.com or www.bostontoyotaservice.com. It is not clear if the sub-domain names will be limited in terms of city names that can be used.

Regardless of Toyota’s motives or an attempt to keep the “brand” consistent and to limit the use of their “mark” in domain names, dealers will be hurt in many ways. Dealers will have no choice but to forfeit all non-primary domains.

Since Toyota dealers will be knocked out of the box for their current web marketing investments, I will also talk about third party companies  and private individuals that own domains that include the word “Toyota”.

I will also discuss what alternatives dealers have for replacement Internet Marketing strategies.

While Toyota dealers can take out TV, radio and print advertising that crosses official PMA lines, this move by Toyota is not about protecting dealer ‘s primary market areas .

If it’s a move to cut down on third party lead collector’s that will also fail because of sub-domains.   Just type into Google “Toyota Cars” and you’ll see some of the largest lead collectors on Page One.

Lead Collectors will Smile

This crackdown will be welcome news for third party lead collectors and automotive listing websites that have been blocked from Google Page One from multiple dealer owned microsites. Many companies will be popping champagne when they will have easier access to get on Google Page One since dealers will not be able to own multiple versions of their own domain names.

Toyota’s decision to limit their dealers to one domain for their branded marketing will impact their ability to compete; dealers in larger cities where franchises are close together will be hurt even more.

Toyota could be planning on taking domains like www.chicagotoyota.com from individual dealers and turning it into a local lead generation website for their dealers, but that will have to be seen. For now, they will force all dealers to forfeit their domains to Toyota and then go after third parties.

If a third party takes down the domain and just parks it or converts it into a consumer blog with no money making purpose, Toyota may not be able to recover these domain names because they will fail the three basic criteria listed by the WIPO, shown later in this article.

Some Third Party Lead Collectors Will Be Shutdown

Their decision will also affect smaller lead collection companies that have purchased domains like:

• http://www.toyotacarsforsale.com
• http://www.toyotatrucksbonusbucks.com
• http://www.toyota-camry.com

Some of these websites are secretly operated by Toyota dealers and others are just selling the leads to resellers. Both will be impacted by this crackdown.

Are User Forums in Jeopardy?

I don’t know if Toyota plans to go after popular user group forums that generate revenue from ads sales and Google Adwords like:

• http://www.toyotanation.com
• http://www.toyotaforums.net/
• http://www.toyota-4runner.org/

As you read the rules set by the WIPO a sticking point for these sites are that they are generating revenue off the Toyota name and that may give Toyota a case against them.  Forum owners will say that this is freedom of speech but the WIPO might use their advertising revenue against them.

If Toyota chooses to leave forum websites up, they may be creating a double standard for dealer and third party compliance.

Let me say that I do not believe that these Toyota forum sites confuse the public, but that is not the standard that Toyota appears to be using. If dealer brand microsites are being taken down that are clearly marked as a local dealer and not corporate, then a larger agenda is at play.

WIPO Official Rules Pertaining to Domain Names

The official rules regarding domain names that include a trademarked word like “Toyota” are not cut and dry. I have tried to simplify my interpretation but here is the official wording from the governing body pertaining to domain disputes.

(i) the domain name registered by the Respondent is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the Complainant has rights; and

(ii) the Respondent has no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name in question; and

(iii) the domain name has been registered and is being used in bad faith.

If a non-Toyota dealer, like an independent used car dealer, who operates a website like www.bostonusedtoyotacars.com, that provides information on Toyota cars and the website doesn’t look like a Toyota branded site, do they violate all three of the guidelines above? Would any consumer think this is the corporate Toyota site?  I do not think so.  Since the used car store can legally sell Toyota used cars in Boston, did the owner purchase the domain in bad faith?  I don’t think so.

Examples of Other Domain Disputes

There are a number of cases where upset consumers have created a website to express their dissatisfaction with a company or person. The domain they posted content on included a trademarked, incorporated or individual’s name.

In recent news was a case filed by Fox TV anchor Glen Beck against the owner of the domain:

www.glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com

The WIPO (http://www.wipo.int) dismissed Beck’s claim, you can read this blog post: Glen Beck Dispute

What May Be Safe

When challenged in domain name disputes, some individuals were victorious based on a few conditions and freedom of speech laws. If we applied past WIPO domain dispute decisions to Toyota’s current efforts to collect many Toyota domains in use, they would most likely lose in all cases where:

1. The site did not confuse the consumer in thinking that they are on a Toyota Corporate website.
   1. Shouldn’t copy the layout of Toyota.com or related properties
   2. Shouldn’t attempt to make visitors think they are on a Toyota site
2. It should not contain the Toyota logo.
3. It clearly identifies itself as an independent website.
4. The site should not be created to divert customers from the primary trademark holder.
   1. Examples: Toyota.net or ToyotaCorp.com could not be used
5. It is not for profit and informational in nature.

I’m not pretending to provide legal advice here, so you can read the rules yourself or hire an attorney for legal advice if you want to fight the letter that will soon arrive at your door.

From my interpretation of past cases from the WIPO, creating a blog at www.toyotacartalk.com and allowing consumers to express their opinions would be allowed by teh WIPO. Toyota would most likely lose a case if they wanted to take down a blog with this name as long as it is not making money or using the Toyota logo.  It is a matter of freedom of speech.

Case in Point: Freedom of Speech

A famous freedom of speech case was over a Web site www.chelwest.com, operated by Frank Redmond, which expresses inflammatory opinions about a public hospital — Chelsea and Westminster in London. Redmond was not happy with the hospital’s treatment of his daughter.

The hospital claimed that the site’s name is too similar to its own site, and that “Chelwest” is part of the hospital’s branding and therefore its intellectual property.

The hospital’s Web site is www.chelwest.nhs.uk.

The single person panel ruled in favor of Redmond. The reasons were: Redmond is not using the site for any commercial gain and it is immediately apparent to Internet users who visit the site that it is not the official site; Redmond, according to the panel is simply criticizing the hospital with opinions which he believes to be true; it is not obvious that Chelwest is branding of the hospital.

This case is interesting because the panelist deciding the case had tried to draw up a set of criteria that could be used to judge whether a freedom of speech site should be permissible or not.

What CAN Toyota Dealers Do?

From what I have been told Toyota dealers can NOT create blogs or marketing websites outside of their primary domain.  If you have a free VOX, WordPress or NING community website that will have to be taken down.   If Toyota dealers scream loud enough that might change but for now dealers will buckle because Toyota holds the purse strings.

So could Miller Toyota create a website called “www.ilovemillercars.com”? 

From what I know, the answer is No

What Toyota dealers can do is push their inventory out to highly optimized local website properties that do not contain Toyota in the domain name but in the sub-domain. There are a number of related solutions that will allow Toyota dealers to post their cars, stories and sales on third party websites that have high rankings.

Any Toyota dealer that needs help, can call or ask questions on this forum.

Before Toyota started this crack down, it was clearly cheaper for Toyota dealers to own their own marketing microsites, but now Toyota will increase their advertising spending costs several fold.

Does Pasch Consulting Have A Solution? Yes…

The ruling will be good for PCG because we have many automotive domain names that do not include Toyota in the URL that we can optimize for local Toyota dealers.  We will move any microsite content with the now prohibited domains to their primary websites.  We also have a few new strategies that will be compliant so no Toyota dealer will be left behind.

Since we will only work for one Toyota dealer in a marketing region, those that act quickly will have a solution that can be implemented quickly.

In the end, it’s bad for Toyota dealers and will be a costly decision to limit free market thinking on the Internet.  As I stated before. Toyota dealers can take out TV, radio and print advertising that crosses official PMA lines so this is not about protecting dealer franchise marketing.

Again, this is good for some businesses but NOT local Toyota dealers who were smart enough to be entrepreneurial in their Internet Marketing plans.

I’ll have more to report as this story unfolds…

This blog post is not intended to give any legal advice.  If you are involved in a domain dispute, contact your lawyer or a domain litigation attorney.

Classic Chevrolet in Texas has been crowned the #1 Chevy dealer for four consecutive years.  After a neck-to-neck battle, Classic Chevy outperformed its closest competitor, Paddock Chevy of NY, by a margin of 368 vehicles, but it wasn’t an easy race to win. In October, Classic Chevrolet was actually trailing Paddock Chevrolet by 86 units. By November, the gap narrowed to 11 units, until Classic Chevy overtook the lead in December to outperform the NY dealer.      

The friendly competition between the two dealers was fueled by Paddock’s promotional advertising which made references to ‘beating the guy in Dallas’ and showed two football helmets, one for Paddock and one for Classic (with a Dallas Cowboys star on it) head to head with the numbers for each ‘team’ written on top.   The final score showed Classic in the lead by 368, a margin that Paddock just couldn’t close.

According to Hagen Durant, General Manager of Classic Chevy, “Historically, Classic Chevrolet has always outperformed against Paddock Chevrolet in the last quarter of every year that we have competed.  Even though we began November with an 11 unit deficit, there was no doubt in my mind that we would be able to close the gap and take the lead in December.”

Durant was correct in his prediction, and his Texas Chevy dealer now has the distinct honor of being the #1 Chevy dealership in the world, for the fourth consecutive year. 

To learn more about Classic Chevy, visit http://www.classicchevytexas.com

About Classic Chevy

 Chevy offer a wide selection of fuel efficient cars and trucks that are as equally stylish as they are fuel efficient.  Classic Chevy in Texas has the largest selection of Chevy cars, including the complete line up of hybrids like the Malibu, Silverado, and Tahoe.    Classic Chevy is the nation’s #1 volume Chevy dealership.

Follow Classic Chevy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/classic_chevy

Toyota first addressed this problem in September of 2009.  Toyota then issued a press release  on November 25, 2009 detailing the next steps for Toyota car owners affected by the issue.

Toyota Repairs Start January

Toyota dealers are now making their final preparations to fix the thousands of cars involved in the recall.  The initial flood of Toyota recall service requests will be overwhelming for most dealers so consumers are encouraged to set appointment as soon as possible.

Toyota owners will be getting notification on the official start of the recall repair process this month.

To locate a local Toyota Dealer you can visit the Toyota Motors website at www.toyota.com.  You can also get additional information on the Toyota Recall from an independent website with recall program Q&A pages and support forums answered by volunteers from Toyota dealers across the USA.

Consumer who would like to request a local Toyota dealer to contact them about a recall service can simply go to:  www.toyotarecall.org and request a call from a local dealer.  This simplifies the process of confirming that your car is part of the recall and to schedule a convenient service appointment.

I hope to see you in Las Vegas in the fall!

The 8^TH Digital Dealer conference is set for April 20 – 22 at the Rosen Shingle Creek.  If you need specifics on the conference, you can visit the official Digital Dealer Conference website at: www.digitaldealerconference.com.

I am expecting this year’s conference to be the largest to date, as more dealers are seeking education and collaboration on their digital marketing strategies.

I will be submitting a new set of seminar topics for consideration this year.  If you have appreciated my seminars in the past, please send a note to the DD8 team and tell them to invite me back this year.

8th Digital Dealer Conference

According to the announcement I received about the conference:

The 8th Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition will be held at the Rosen Shingle Creek, April 20-22, 2010. The last conference in Nashville in November drew more than 540 dealership attendees, and featured 46 exhibitors in more than 60 booths spaces.

Combined, the last two Digital Dealer Conferences drew just under 1,000 registered dealers, GMs, Internet Sale Managers, e-Commerce Directors and BDC/CRM Managers – every one of them there to learn more about Internet and technology-related issues from both speakers and exhibitors.

We expect 50 to 60 exhibitors and more than1,000 attendees in Orlando this spring, with more than 500 attendees coming from dealerships. We’ve done seven of these now, and continue to balance both attendees’ and exhibitors/sponsors’ goals. For value and marketing impact, there simply is no better event marketing opportunity for your tight budget.

Automotive Digital Marketing

Since the Conference will be scheduled for April, if dealers need assistance planning their 2010 Internet Marketing budgets and strategies, please give us a call.  We have been getting more calls than ever to have Brian sit down with dealership executive teams to plot out the best way to grow their business on the Internet.

Brian Pasch, CEO

If you need some references to the benefits that Brian can give to your digital marketing strategies in 2010, give us a call and we’ll give you a list of your peers that have sat through a planning session with Brian.

As dealers move more of the Advertising and Marketing budgets to the Internet, dealers need to have a comprehensive strategy for spending and measuring their investment.  Give us a call at 732-450-8200 to ensure that your direction and budgets for 2010 are on the mark!

Automotive Marketing Boot Camp

Don’t forget to join Brian Pasch and other experts at the Automotive Marketing Boot Camp in Orlando in February, the day before the official start of the NADA convention.  Details can be found at:  http://www.automotivemarketingbootcamp.com and you can register online.

February 11-13th - Orlando

A recent post on an automotive social networking forum brought up the question about back links to their dealer website.  Having high quality automotive website linking to your dealership website is an important part of an Automotive SEO strategy.  However, getting links from other automotive websites is not an easy task.

Before I make some suggestions on how to build links, it is important to stay away from offers that sound too good to be true.  Every week I get email solicitations from companies from India, Russia and the UK offering one-way links for a low fee.  Most of these services create links from websites that will add no real value to your Automotive SEO strategy.

Automotive User Groups

In the automotive space, consider becoming a sponsor of popular automotive user group forums for your specific brand.  Many offer links building opportunities and banner advertising at a very reasonable cost.  For example, if you are a Nissan dealership you may consider becoming a supporting member of www.nicoclub.com  or www.nissanforums.com.

There are dedicated user groups and forums for every brand of cars.  These sites have high keyword density and relevance for the dealer brand they represent.  Articles posted on these sites, posting your cars for sale, or just advice to forum members can produce high quality links back to your website.

A word of advice; become a supporter and clearly identify yourself as a vendor. Also, take it slowly and build up your reputation and trust in the forum or you will be thrown out on your ass.

Outside of well ranked automotive user groups websites, look for automotive blogs that offer advertising space; many exist.  An alternative is to look for automotive blogs or communities that will allow you to post articles in a field of your expertise for free.  This is perfect for automotive professionals that like to write and share ideas.

If you don’t have the time or the motivation to write, considering hiring a firm to write articles on automotive topics and post these articles on “ezine” websites like http://ezinearticles.com or article directory websites like http://www.articledashboard.com .

The articles you write must be informative and not sales pitches. When done properly they can create powerful links and attract organic search traffic.  For example, writing an article on the benefits of purchasing a Toyota ExtraCare warranty over a third party warranty would be a good article to gain link relevance on extended warranty keywords. You can link to charts or warranty information on your website  and pickup a good back link.

Local Business Directories

Outside of these two strategies, look for ways to also establish local relevance for OEM car sales in your state.  These opportunities are normally found on reputable statewide business directory websites. Make sure that the website has a Google PageRank of 3 or higher. Banner ads or sidebar articles can often generate hundreds of links to your website from one advertising sponsorship.   The optimal advertisement will include some text that you can hyperlink with a strong anchor tag. An example is: http://www.newjerseyvisitorsnetwork.com

Press releases are another great way to build quality links and there are about a dozen great websites that you can utilize for PR and back links.  The key is to use press release websites that allow hyperlinked text in the body of the press release.  This allows for you to create “votes” for important keywords surrounded by relevant text. Try www.prlog.org and www.webwire.com .

If you donate to local charities, schools, colleges and churches ask for them to create a sponsors page and add a short note about your support with a link back to your website.  Links from these websites can be very valuable to establish credibility.

Free Linking Exists

Other opportunities like Yahoo Answers, Merchant Circle Blogs, Fast Company and SlideShare are just a few of the dozens of free sites that can provide a good back link that will raise your relevance for the keywords you are targeting.  Try to build links from blog articles that are about automotive topics.

You can also look for blog posts that you can reply to that allow links to be followed.  Firefox has a nice plug-in that will show you which website forms have a “no-follow” tag and those that do not.  Reply boxes that have a no-follow tag will not build back links.

In the end, link building is very important but it takes time and experience to know how to build the most effective links. Car dealers often do not have the time or expertise to build a consistent monthly link building campaign.

In the ideal situation, link building and other Internet Marketing tasks should be a shared responsibility between car dealer and outside consultant.  Techniques and strategies are constantly changing and someone who builds links all day is normally finding new sites every week which can be an advantage over your competitors.

If you have questions, drop me a line or an email.

Brian Pasch, CEO

Google Insights for Search will allow car dealers to create a better local keyword strategy to increase the visibility of their brand.   Google Insights will allow car dealers to refine their Automotive SEO keyword list and to be more proactive in their content writing.

From a high level perspective, search engines like Google query “best matching” assets in their database of web pages, videos, images, and social media feeds when consumers type in a search phrase. When it determines what the best items to show, it creates the infamous “Google Page One” search result. (SERP)

A big question has always been: “What search phrases are consumers using in my area?”

The questions that should follow are:

• What assets can I upload and tag with text that will be a good match? (SEO)
• What am I willing to pay per click for that search phrase? (SEM)
• How will I track if clicks from that search phrase results in a conversion or sale? (GBP )

Diversity of Best Matching Assets Increases

Most recently “best matching’ includes real-time Twitter tweets and Facebook posts; this is an Internet Marketing strategy game changer. I’ll be posting an article on real-time search results and the effect on Automotive SEO strategies shortly. So now, Google Page One Management (GPOM) and IRM strategies have to deal with social media feeds, videos, static images, press releases, ecommerce images, Google Maps and text links.

It’s a good reminder to state that localized search is a part of the equation of what search engines will serve on Page One in addition to best matching keyword assets. When a consumer types in “Nissan Sentra” from their home, the search engines have to decide how to balance local content and national content when they display a search engine results page (SERP).

If you type in “Nissan dealers” from a PC in Irvine, California, Google will show you local California Nissan dealers on Google Maps. That fact that you did not type in “Irvine” or “California” does not matter since Google knows the geo-location of your IP address roughly. The same query from a PC in Preston Maryland should show a different result, as shown below.

As a side note, please make sure that your dealership’s Google Maps listing is correct and that it is showing for broad searches like the ones given above. Google Maps normally pops up with a city, county or state is included in a search phrase. If your Google Maps listing is not tagged properly, you may be missing hundreds of free advertising views per month.

Google Adwords Keyword Research Tool

Many dealers have come to know that Google provides a free tool called the Google Adwords Keyword Tool which can show them how popular search phrases are on a monthly basis based on total USA data. The Google keyword tool can be used to help select domain names as well as keyword strategies that have a broader target. A screen shot below shows how you can track national use and global use of certain search phrases.

A new tool that I would like to discuss is called Google Insights and this tool has a different spin on Google search data that will help car dealers with localized content development in 2010. The tool is designed to help online marketers research seasonal and regional trends in search phrases.

Google Insights will also show which search phrases are picking up in volume; I like this feature the best. This insight can help car dealers decide what they should be targeting in terms of their blog posts and the wording of their press releases, tweets and online ads.

Using  Google Insights

Automotive retailers approaching the end of the year may want to know which search phrases local consumers are typing in that are looking for an “end of year” car sale. In your area, Google Insights could tell you which phrase was on the rise; “Nissan Year End Sale” or “Nissan Clearance Sale” or some other variant. Once you have that data in hand, you could create a blog post with those search words in the title to increase your chances for a “best matching” asset in your local market.

The tool can also help refine local vocabulary and terms that might be unique to a market. Some areas of the country use the word “pop” to describe a soda so regional differences that can be exposed with Google Insight. Dealers should research the top search phrases for their brand, in their local market, so they do not base their strategy on national data or worse yet, a guess.

“Honda Civic” Keyword Research

Below is a screen shot of research done in Google Insight for the search phrase “Honda Civic” for the State of Arizona. Notice how Google Insights gives you other phrases that are increasing in volume; see bottom right of charts. This is good data to have and it allows proactive content writing.

Google Insights also maps areas of search interests on your state which can also show further localized trends in your PMA and beyond. There is so much that can be done with this data, but there is a limit to what you’ll read in one sitting.

Google Insights is another tool that should be in your Internet Marketing toolbox for 2010. Since content and asset matching is so important for search visibility, this tool can help your hard work go even further. If you have questions, just ask.

Brian Pasch
http://twitter.com/automotiveseo
http://facebook.com/paschconsulting
732-450-8200

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.

From what I can see, the integration in real-time data into Google has started a tweet and Facebook posting frenzy with subjects that are clearly designed for Automotive SEO positioning.  This is a big mistake for businesses thinking that their social media posts will catapult them to the top of search rankings.

Car dealers have to remember that social media platforms when used properly, should provide value and engagement to those that follow you.  They should be humanized and not sound like a sales pitch.  This has been repeated thousands of times but still the new “gold rush” with Google real time feeds seems to have gotten folks off track.

 Nissan Twitter Examples

I did a simple search in Google “Twitter Nissan Dealer”  and found  dealers on opposite coasts that were actively using Twitter.

• http://twitter.com/newjerseynissan 
• http://twitter.com/msage

In the first case, East Cast Nissan in New Jersey, my impression of these tweets is a 100% sales push and little customer interaction.  This pattern of tweets does not look like engagement at all.  This strategy will backfire.

In the second case, Universal Nissan in California, you can see Mike Sage engaging the followers and adding a human element to the conversation.   Yes, there are some product and sales posts but they are balanced. 

These are just two random examples from a quick search.  There are probably many good and bad examples that can be documented.  The key is to not let the Google integration of real-time search skew your writing to become and SEO tool.  You will lose followers faster than Tiger is losing sponsors.

Losing Steam Isn’t Good Either

If you have created a Twitter account, it is important that you keep up with it.  In that same search for “Twitter Nissan Dealer” there was a third company that showed in the SERP; Abeloff Nissan in Pennsylvania. 

http://twitter.com/pimpmycube

When you take a look at this Twitter account, you can see that they just ran out of gas.  The last post on this account was August 2, 2009.   To just cover all bases, I did a search for “Abeloff Nissan  Twitter ” and this was indeed the only account for the dealership.

In this case, a stale Twitter account is not a positive for the dealership.  If you are not going to maintain a blog or a Twitter account, it would be best just to take them down.

With Twitter and Facebook integration into search results, this makes these tools a powerful tool for IRM, SEO and customer engagement if done properly.  Dealers need to use these tools.  Dealers need to create value and  engage consumers with good content.  

If you have some examples of Dealers that are using Facebook and Twitter well, post some links. 

Google Search results

“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

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 a