News

Change once again is rocking the automotive digital marketing world as Google today drops the third party review counts from its yellow stars. ONLY 22 reviews directly posted on Google Places are showing.

This screen shot of BMW of Scherville showed all the DealerRater reviews last week in their star counts but not today.

This is what their Google Places account looked like last week:

This change is impacting all BMW dealers in Chicago, see below:

You Must Have An In-Store IRM Process

I’ve been coaching dealers to start using the Google Places App on their iPhones and iPads to increase directly posted reviews. The benefit? The dealer can use Google Boost to spice up their PPC strategy.  Boost is an up and coming strategic advantage which we have been discussing with clients.

I also warned dealers that if Google every dropped the review “counts” from the stars from 3rd parties, they would be better protected by having a direct Google Places posting strategy.

Now keep in mind, Google is still showing the counts from third parties in brackets, but the keep metric is that the yellow stars are what always show and not always do the consolidated reviews show.

I am not saying that 3rd party review sites are not IMPORTANT, they are.  It is just that the MOST visible aspect of Google Places and SERP results is the yellow stars.  Secondly, there is not way to predict which 3rd party sites will show up in the brackets underneath the listing.

A Tsunami of Change

Action Toyota has over 1,227 reviews posted on DealerRater but they only have 10 reviews directly posted on Google Places. A few weeks ago I saw their Google listing and it showed over 1,000 reviews with their stars. That is now history!

In fact, Google is not even showing all of their reviews from Dealerrater.com as shown below:

In-Store IRM Processes and Training

Dealers looking for direction on how to best adapt to these changes should start an in store reputation management process that include using 3G iPads and iPhone devices.

Dealers must set processes to identify consumers with Google accounts while they are in the dealership. 550,000 Android devices are activated a DAY and all have Google Accounts. Google empowered consumers can post reviews directly on Google Places, with their account, from a mobile device.

I told dealers this day would come and today is that day. If you need help with in store training, processes, and strategy on reputation management, give me a call. I’m here to help. We have the strategy and solutions.

Brian Pasch, CEO
PCG Digital Marketing
732-672-2356
About Brian Pasch

Today is November 1 and for car dealers this means that the monthly clock has been reset and new sales goals will be made for the next 30 days.  For readers that are responsible for car sales, it’s time to make a November 1 resolution to apply what you may have learned at recent conferences or what has been shared on automotive communities.

Stu Mittleman Inspired Me

I had the opportunity to spend the weekend with World Record Holding Ultra Marathoner Stu Mittleman who has World and National records in ultra marathon races (6 days) and won a very special 1,000 mile race as part of his hall of fame accomplishments.  We ran 10 miles together, which was the longest I have run since re-starting my training back in April.

Stu told me a story about how he was hired to train 27 employees of a New York hotel for the New York City Marathon in 9 weeks.  The farthest distance 26 of these 27 people ever ran was 3.1 miles, which is a 5K race.  Some would have thought this would be impossible but all 26 “newbies” completed the race.  The one experienced runner did not make it.

He succeeded by training the runners to look at the race as a New York City street fair with 26 stands, which corresponds to the 26 aide stations that are along the course for water.  By looking at the race as 26 one-mile runs, he was able to achieve the goal of getting these runners to finish the race.  The details of this story and Stu’s philosophy on running can be found in his book “Slow Burn,” a recommended read for anyone who wants to understand how to best utilize the power of your body.

Many car dealers came back from Vegas conferences trying to figure out how they are going to implement the 26+ things that they learned and if they do that, they will fail.  So, let’s look at all the digital marketing opportunities for your dealership and execute them one at a time so we can move forward and not stay fixated at the starting line.

My suggestion is that you start small and make THREE RESOLUTIONS for Digital Marketing today.

Resolution #1

Many people have written about the changes in Google Search results with Google Places taking a much larger portion of Page One Results.  (Read my latest post)  If you haven’t seen this for yourself, search for “Baltimore Honda Dealers” and see how different Page One looks.

Heritage Honda has 152 reviews, Norris Honda has 41 reviews and Brown’s Honda City has 14 reviews plus a rating of less than 2 stars.   Google Places and car dealer reviews are now front and center in Google search.  When presented with this page of results, whose dealership will most likely get an increase of clicks?

It is TIME to start your Reputation Management process in November – Make That Commitment.  You need to have a process by which customers can post their reviews on the 5-6 primary websites that are consolidated in Google Places.  Those sites vary from market to market, but a process is needed.  If you don’t have a high star count on Page One, your traditional advertising dollars will be assisting your competitors in attracting more in market shoppers.

Resolution #2

Invest in tracking phone numbers for your off-site content publishing, blogs, and social media engagement.  It’s time to stop making excuses that tracking numbers are expensive.  Actually the data that these numbers provide can shed light on where you are wasting money.  Tracking numbers can also prevent you from terminating services that are working very well.

At DrivingSales Executive Summit Matt Murray from Dealer.com showed that for every LEAD that was submitted on a dealer’s website from a Google Adwords campaign, the dealer received FIVE phone calls.  The point is that IF you are measuring the success of Google Adwords on lead form submissions alone, you would be missing the majority of consumer response generated by PPC.

This applies to so many other digital marketing strategies as well however I don’t have the calls to lead ratio.  By placing tracking numbers on microsites, PDF brochures, and social media profiles you can start to see what marketing channels are attracting consumer calls.  If Matt Murray’s data does not inspire you to start tracking your calls, you have bigger issues at hand.

Resolution #3

Many dealers are using Google Adwords (PPC) to generate traffic to their website and this is a good strategy as long as you are inspecting where these clicks are going and measuring what is happening when they land on those pages.  Secondly, we all can agree that designing the perfect landing page design is not a one time design task.

You’ll never know if you have a good design until you set-up A/B testing.

So I would like to encourage all dealers for their third November resolution to inspect their PPC landing pages and to start an A/B testing program to track and measure results based on different designs.  For example, dealers know that the model car a consumer calls about or discusses when they first walk into a dealership is not always the car they purchase.

In the same way, give your landing pages a design that provide alternatives to consumers.  If you design a 2010 Nissan Altima lease special page, you may want to provide button that also show your current Nissan Sentra lease specials or a button that shows used Nissan Altimas.  They key is to recognize that you have no idea what will work until you test different variations over time.

Many dealers are spending 3K, 5K, 10K and even 25K a month on Google Adwords yet they have never tested whether their landing pages are achieving the optimal results.  The testing processes takes time, but it is time well spent.  The knowledge that you will gain from the experiment will revolutionize your PPC strategies.

Start Your Digital Marketing Marathon

So will you start the process of your Digital Marketing Marathon this month?  Digital marketing is not a sprint.  Take it slow and get comfortable but you have to make the commitment to start.  If you need help with any of these three resolutions, please give us a call and we can go over our digital marketing services that can help you achieve greater success in 2011.

The PCG Digital Marketing started collecting data for our Automotive Digital Marketing Awareness and Budgeting Survey after the start of the New Year.   Today we wanted to share with our readers preliminary data from three survey questions.

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.