Automotive SEO - Pasch Consulting Group

In the past few months, I have been fielding calls from dealers who are looking for ways to increase revenue to offset declining car sales.

Car part sales and extended warranty sales seen to be the hot topic among the dealers that I communicate with. I’ve started a number of great projects to generate revenue from these two sources but part sales are so ripe, I just had to write about it.

For genuine manufacturer car part sales, it seems that only a few choices exist for car dealers who want to compete for online dollars. The car parts website platforms that are the most popular actually score very poorly from an SEO perspective.

When I compare these website platforms to what matters in Google they fail miserably in my opinion. This creates an amazing opportunity for dealers who create their own SEO compliant parts website pages or find a work around to these flawed databases.

One of the leading website platforms for car dealer parts websites is Trade Motion who creates “skins” for dealers and then drives parts searches to their own website database. I don’t think dealers understand that buying into this model will always require them to use Google Adwords or SEM to drive traffic and sales. The offsite hosted inventory pages in Trade Motion will never generate natural search rankings for their own main parts website let alone allow them to compete nationally via organic search.

A case in point is a site called www.directhondaparts.com which uses the Trade Motion parts database. This site was chosen at random. As soon as you start searching for parts, you leave the site called www.directhondaparts.com and move to the Trade Motion website. For example, the page that lists 2005 Honda Accord Brake Pads is:

http://www.trademotion.com/partlocator/index.cfm?action=getLocator&siteid=214308&chapter=APG646&appSectionid=18&groupid=10006&subgroupid=62206&make=12&model=Accord&year=2005&catalogid=1

If you look at this long and convoluted URL it obviously is not associated with the sponsoring domain. It also does not comply with Google recommendations about simplifying dynamic URL strings or to utilize a clear set of sub-directory structures. You can read Google’s recommendations in this PDF document:

http://www.paschconsulting.com/PDF/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

The reality is that all the page views associated with paying for a consumer via SEM to shop the parts database will never be associated with the car dealer’s parts website domain. Only www.trademotion.com gets credit for the page views and time on site.

Better But Not Effective

Another example is www.infinitipartsonline.com which uses another version of Trade Motion’s database platform, which is better but not ideal. The Infiniti 2007 FX35 brake pads come up as:

http://www.infinitipartsonline.com/partlocator/index.cfm?action=getJointLocator&siteid=214952&chapter=&sectionids=18,0&groupid=10006&subgroupid=62206&make=14&model=Fx35&year=2007&catalogid=1&displayCatalogid=0

In this example, the database pages are tied to the main URL but the length and composition of the URL is not designed to compete for organic search listings. In addition, the META description and HTML title for this page has nothing to do with 2007 FX35 brake parts. This is in violation of Google’s SEO guidelines.

Here are the HTML tags that are on the page for 2007 Infiniti FX35 front brake pads, which are obviously just a generic tagging system:

<META name=”description” content=”A complete line of Infiniti parts & Infiniti Accessories. OEM Infiniti Parts and Aftermarket Performance Infiniti Parts”>

<META name=”KEYWORDS” content=”NISMO, infiniti parts, infinity parts, Infiniti accessories, Infinity accessories, G35 coupe, G35 Sedan, G20 accessories, G20 performance, G35 performance, G35 parts, G20 parts, infiniti parts, infinity parts, nissan parts, nismo parts, G35 accessories ,performance parts, brake pros, stillen, stillen brakes, metal matrix, performance brakes, g35 brakes, g20 brakes, oem nissan parts, oem infiniti parts, oem infinity parts, wholesale nissan, wholesale infiniti, wholesale infinity, nissan, infiniti, infinity, g20, g35, fx35, fx45, g35, q45, i30, j30, qx4, 350z, 300zx, datsun, infiniti factory parts, infinity factory parts, m45, m35, m30, i35, infinity g35, infiniti g35, infiniti fx35, infiniti fx45, infinity fx35, infinity fx45″>

Learning How to Compete

Dealers who want to compete nationally for parts sales need to create an SEO strategy that will build pages rankings and traffic that will not ONLY require SEM. Right now it seems like sites like www.parts.com have an inside track on what web architecture really drives organic sales results. The goods news for car dealers is that they will be having some competition very soon…the cat is out of the bag.

I’ve been studying parts websites for a while and have solutions to supplement the poor SEO design of many current automotive parts website platforms. If dealers are interested in building a better parts business on the Internet, they are encouraged to share best practices here. Dealers are also invited to give me a call to discuss how we can help better optimize their current efforts in selling parts online. I can be reached at 732-842-4720.

Technorati Tags: auto dealer parts, automotive car parts, car dealer parts, online parts sales

It is clear that search engine optimization (SEO), social networking, and organic search marketing are tools that car dealers need to understand and utilize to compete on the Internet.

There are a good number of articles available to car dealers that advocate automotive digital marketing as an important budgetary item however for some managers it can be difficult to quantify the actual ROI to their dealership in any given week or month.

Short Term Digital Marketing

The work to build consistent cars leads from an SEO campaign is spread over weeks, months and even years. So you can imagine my excitement when I had a chance to measure the short term impact of a proven set of Automotive SEO strategies on a single promotion event for an Infiniti dealer in Arizona.

The event was held December12-14th in Chandler Arizona at the Adesa Auction Grounds; a direct to public sale of used Infiniti and Nissan Cars coordinated by Nissan and a third party marketing company. Eight area Infiniti and Nissan dealers were invited to participate in co-op advertising costs for the event which presented about 650 cars for sale over a three day weekend.

The event was not an auction. It was a factory direct sale of lease end cars, repossessed cars, and demo cars which dealers could sell at the event on a first come basis. The advertising campaign from participant co-op dollars would go into radio, TV, and newspaper ads. The company who organized the event also had a website which included the basic details on the event: date, location, and time.

Automotive Event Marketing Tactics

The marketing strategy set by my client was to secure appointments in advance of the three day weekend event. I was given three weeks’ notice to come up with an Internet marketing plan. We created an action plan to determine what the dealer’s staff would be doing and what my company would be doing.

The dealer would be contacting all unsold prospects in their database as well as starting a small pay-per-click campaign that would send direct leads to a microsite that I was to create.

I was to create the automotive marketing microsite for the event which would load all of the 650 cars into an online searchable database, a concept which no other dealers participating in the event implemented. The event site was http://www.arizonausedinfiniti.com .

An ADF feed was created from an Excel Spreadsheet provided by the event organizers. This ADF feed was also loaded into Infiniti of Scottsdale’s used inventory which in turn was distributed to a number of third party car marketing platforms. This allowed the Infiniti dealer to promote the cars in the event to a very wide audience in a very short period of time.

Since Infiniti of Scottsdale was the only dealer that displayed the event inventory in advance of the sale, they had a distinct advantage on capturing and confirming pre-event interest. The sales staff could walk people through the site on the phone to find cars that met their budget and then book an appointment to see the car.

As part our Internet Marketing strategy, we emailed their entire customer database with a simple text email designed to get in under the spam filters and direct people to the event website. We issued a series of Internet press releases that directed consumer traffic to the site organically. This helped to compliment the buzz that was being created on radio, TV, and newspapers.

The Power of Automotive Press Releases

Since we knew that the traditional marketing campaign would generate online interest, we made sure that our site would come up in Google searches for a few variations of the event name. If you go into Google and type “Chandler Surplus Sale” or “Arizona car surplus sale” you can see that we dominate the first page of Google which lead to over 300 visits per day in advance of the car event.

In the three week prior to the event, we unleashed the Internet marketing “hounds” at a very reasonable cost to the dealership. We utilized social networking platforms, Craigslist, Google Base, and a few proprietary marketing models. The event site was getting over 300 hits a day from interested parties which were not generated by any of the co-cop advertising dollars for this event.

The results? Infiniti of Scotstdale had the most appointments of all Infiniti dealers at the event and they sold more cars to consumers than any other Infiniti dealer . The bottom line is that the event was very profitable and the ROI on the Internet marketing costs was very high. When the event was over, the General Manager clearly understood that the success at the event was a great partnership between his outstanding sales team and aggressive internet marketing strategies.

The residual benefits are that the 150+ leadsthat came into our marketing microsite are still being pursued and matched up with used cars from their used car inventory. The event created a fresh list of leads of Arizona car shoppers looking for used car values. The ISM is confident that he can turn these unsold event leads into sales this month.

The event marketing website will be repurposed for selling Infiniti used cars in Arizona year round. It has already started to gain some organic ranking for Infiniti used car searches in Arizona. It’s great to know that when the pressure is on, organic search marketing and Automotive digital marketing techniques can make a short term difference and return a fantastic ROI. The long term benefits of SEO have been discussed on this forum at great lengths. In this case, a short term Internet marketing campaign outside of Pay-Per-Click, resulted in outstanding results.

Technorati Tags: automotive digital marketing, automotive seo, car dealer events, car sales event, promoting car sales

Nissan and Infiniti are the latest to announce that they are not going to participate in the North American International Auto Show in Detroit next January. This news increases the count to seven car companies that will skip the 2009 Detroit Auto Show.

Nissan and Infiniti, which normally have large displays at the show, will not have a public display of vehicles. Earlier this year, Mitsubishi, Rolls-Royce, Ferrari, Suzuki and Land Rover all said they would not attend the 2009 Detroit show. This seems like additional anecdotal evidence of how fear and panic have spread into the overall economy.

Where I live in New Jersey, local restaurants that were once thriving are now 25% full on weekends. I visited the Borgota Casino two weeks ago on a Friday night and at 6:00 PM, there were two people on line to check. On a Friday the line is normally 15-20 people deep.

Local car dealerships are very concerned and many are drastically cutting back on spending. This new announcement from Infiniti and Nissan sends another wave of panic to the markets. This decision begs the question; what comes next for the auto industry?

Pulling out of any major industry venue may be knee jerk reaction compared to just cutting down the budget with a smaller footprint. I don’t understand the politics of the show but it seems like the baby is being thrown out with the bath water.

If you would like more information on the show, use the website link below:

http://www.naias.com

January 17-25, 2009

Cabo Center, Detroit Michigan

Technorati Tags: 2009 detroit auto show, 2009 naias show, infiniti auto shows, naias, nissan auto shows

Automotive advertising agencies – you are being called to task. It is very common for car dealers to have their ad agency create a sheet of monthly specials like the one shown for Audi cars. These ads are used in local newspapers but they are also being used for dealer websites.

Unfortunately, the ad agencies are not telling automotive sales managers that these graphical contribute practically NOTHING to attractive car shoppers via Google and Yahoo search.

Most traditional automotive advertising agencies don’t understand search engine optimization (SEO). They didn’t grow up with SEO. Their job is to produce auto ads every month, on schedule, and they are happy for the business.

Well, if I was the owner of a car dealership, I would not be happy how these ads are being used on the web. You see, these ads have text that Google cannot index. Google cannot read the text on a photo. They are in effect a blank page to the search engine spiders. If car dealers expect for consumers to find their monthly specials online, they have to take the time to type the details in plain text.

You may think this is a simple task and one that should be commonplace on dealer websites. But take a look at 20 car dealer websites by clicking on their “Specials” page and you’ll find that most are graphical ads with the pertinent information on an image.

What to Do?

So should dealers login into their website administrative panel and add their car specials in text? This is where things get interesting. Creating a good looking text page on most automotive website platforms is not easy. Yes, most platforms claim that they have easy to use HTML editors but in common practice, they are not easy to use.

I have worked with a number of HTML editors on car dealer websites and they all are tricky at best. The skills to create “tables” or aligned text requires skills that are beyond the average Internet sales manager. Copying preformatted text into these embedded editors can cause more trouble that it’s worth.

So, Sales Managers take the least path of resistance and drop in a graphic advertisement on their specials page so it’s not blank. Just keep in mind that these graphical ads do ZERO for drawing new customer via search. Even worse, pages that only contain one image will most likely never even get indexed by Google.

If car dealers take the time to create car specials and incentives, they should also take the time to publicize them on the web. In an ideal world, you would have a dedicated web page for each car you have on special that month. This way the HTML Title, META Description and content can be optimized for the offer.

In addition to their own websites, specials can be posted on free services like Craigslist, MerchantCircle and social networking sites. The dealers, who make the effort to give Google what they expect, will be rewarded with better search visibility.

Technorati Tags: car adwords, google pcc

Car Dealer keyword competition is on the rise and car dealers will be paying more for targeted keywords in Google Adwords and Yahoo Search marketing .

As the stock market fails to provide emotional support for a stunned consumer market, many car dealers are digging in their heels and fighting back. Recent data from our automotive clients indicates that car dealers are diverting monies from traditional advertising channels and increasing their spending on Google and Yahoo. From our customer surveys, monies once allocated to print, radio and cable TV are being reduced and moved to new internet advertising platforms.

The shift in car dealer spending has many implications. The cost per click (CPC) for popular automotive search phrases has been steadily rising in October and November of 2008. This is a clear indication that car dealers are embracing the fact that 85% of new car buyers are researching their cars on the Internet prior to a purchase. With cash flow tight and car sales dropping, Sales Managers are increasing their bids for the top positions in Google Adwords.

The increased keyword competition poses some interesting challenges for Automotive Marketing companies due to the risk of a bidding war erupting, and everyone involved being hurt. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is an important part of any car dealer’s digital marketing strategy. However, SEM alone can be very costly in the long term.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies can provide car dealers with sustainable, low-cost lead flow to supplement leads purchased through SEM. Automotive microsites are another tool which provide car dealers with a highly ranked website designed to capture local car buyer information. As PPC costs continue to rise, SEO strategies look increasingly attractive.

One SEO strategy example is a microsite designed for the release of the 2009 Infiniti G37 Convertible. We created a microsite on the domain www.infinitig37convertible.com for Infiniti of Santa Monica. It ranks #1 in the USA for the search phrase “Infiniti G37 Convertible” and is on Google page one for other search phrases like “2009 G37 convertible” or simply “g37 convertible”. The site had a low, on-time cost to create and has generated hundreds of consumer leads located in California who are interested in this new model. When the Infiniti G37 convertible finally is released in the spring of 2009, Infiniti of Santa Monica could end up being the West Coast sales leader for this car.

As car dealers look for effective marketing strategies, SEO and SEM will continue to rise to the top of a list of channels that produce the best ROI for local consumer car leads.

In time we’ll also know more about using free services such as Craigslist and social networking platforms to attract qualified local car leads. The market is continually evolving and your automotive marketing strategies need to be evaluated on a monthly basis. Car dealers take the time to learn more about effective SEO and SEM strategies, by reading articles on DrivingSales.com, will be well rewarded in what looks like a very challenging year for car sales in 2009.

Technorati Tags: automotive digital marketing, automotive seo, car dealer sem, google adwords campaigns, google awords spending

Google finally released a Search Engine Optimization primer that is easy to read. I would strongly recommend that readers download the PDF and pass it around your eMarketing team. The guide can be downloaded using the link below:

Google SEO Guide

The guide confirms many of the suggestions that have been made on this forum in the past. The booklet will be a review of the basics for some and eye-opening for others. If after reading the book, you compare what is on your website you will most likely find many opportunities for improvement.

Most car dealers who read the booklet will quickly find out that their website does not comply with all the guidelines in the book. Knowledge is powerful so the good news is you now have something from Google to discuss with your car dealer platform developers.

Many car dealer web developers will tell you that the booklet’s suggestions are not important. This is because they can’t fix their platform in any reasonable time to comply. If you want to rank in Google, my suggestion is to play by their rules. This is a good start to understand what Google expects to see on your website.

Technorati Tags: google, google seo, search engine optimization, seo guide, seo tips

Car dealers across the country are seeing an increase in used car sales. I am now working on an SEO campaign for a Honda car dealer. One of the top priorities is to increase the sales of Certified Honda cars.

Since the Honda Certified project is just starting, I thought I would share with you how to use the ‘Google Keyword Tool’ to refine an initial dealer keyword strategy. Keyword strategies evolve over the course of a project, but the initial research into what consumers are tying into Google is extremely valuable.

You can use Google’s free keyword research tool by using this link: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Keywords For Honda Certified Cars

A good keyword strategy will help direct the new written content that will be added to the dealer’s website. It will also serve as a guide for creating Certified Honda press releases and Certified Honda blog postings on social networking websites.

Google provides a free tool to query their database to see how popular certain search phrases are each month. Since we will be marketing Honda used cars on the Internet, we have to research the most popular phrases consumers use each month in Google. Here is a partial list of the data provided by Google:

• certified Honda - 18,100 per month
• certified Honda quote – no measurable traffic
• certified Honda NJ – no measurable traffic
• certified Honda PA – no measurable traffic
• certified Honda Philadelphia – no measurable traffic
• certified Honda phoenix – no measurable traffic
• used Honda quotes – no measurable traffic
• used Honda prices - 1,300 per month
• Used Honda - 368,000 per month
• Used Honda PA – 1,000 per month
• Used Honda NY – 1,000 per month
• Used Honda dealer - 2,900 per month
• Used Honda cars - 90,500 per month
• Honda used car - 12,100 per month
• Honda used cars – 90,500 per month
• Honda preowned – 5,400 per month
• Honda preowned cars – 390 per month

This research is important to determine which search phrases are the best to include in our targeted keyword list. When creating an automotive keyword strategy, it is important to let the data speak and avoid drinking your own Kool-Aid.

The data shows that consumers are more likely to type into Google “used Honda” as compared to “certified Honda”. Every month, 368,000 people type in “used Honda” as compared to 18,000 people a month typing in “certified Honda”. This knowledge is valuable in creating an effective Automotive SEO campaign.

Dealer’s love to use the word “certified” for their cars because they think the word “used” is not very sexy. That’s fine for internal printed documents and conversations with customers, but it’s not as powerful for Automotive Digital Marketing. I’m not suggesting ignoring the word “certified”, but it has to be placed in the proper priority for your keyword strategy.

If you were going to build a microsite for selling used Honda cars, this data would also help guide you to what domains to purchase. For example, based on this research I purchased www.honda-usedcars.com as a possible domain for this new project. I would not purchase www.certified-honda.com because the monthly traffic is too small.

Certified Honda Long Tail Searches

For example, if you are trying to capture consumers looking for a used Honda price quote, the phrase “Certified Honda Quote” would be a waste of time since no one is really typing in that phrase into Google. The more common phrase “Used Honda Quote” is also not a high volume phrase so that’s not a good choice either.

Slightly better, according to Google, is “Honda used car prices” which confirms that the word “quote” is not as popular as you would think. According to Google “Honda car prices” (1,600) or “Honda Prices” (33,100) would be a better choice to attract price shoppers.

An effective automotive digital marketing campaign has to include keyword research like what is shown above. This is only one part of a good Automotive SEO strategy but is a key part of the foundation for all work that follows.

Technorati Tags: honda certified, honda certified seo, honda seo, seo for honda cars, seo for honda dealers

Blogging has given consumers unprecedented power with free outlets for the distribution of their written opinion about car dealers and/or the cars that they sell. This is both a blessing and a curse depending on the content and target of the written piece. For automotive retailers, Internet Reputation Management has sky-rocketed. Dealers are finding themselves confronted with highly visible commentary of their car dealership on Google, Yahoo and MSN searches.

General Managers often feel helpless in protecting their online reputation from valid blog posts and negative posts planted by competing dealers. On the flip side, car dealers often fail to leverage positive commentary and testimonials posted on the Internet. A simple test would be to ask your dealership how many press releases do they post a month. Having a proactive strategy for disseminating positive customer feedback can often be the best defense against future negative attacks.

Internet Reputation Management services have a bright future. New web content is growing in direct relation to the explosive growth of social networking portals. Each month new tools are being made available to allow a non-technical Internet user to create their own website, blog and social networking portal. With the ease at which content can be created, organized and shared on the Internet, business owners need to be mindful of what is being written about their company.
Free Starter Tools

Protecting your reputation on the Internet can start with using a simple and effective tool called “Google Alerts”. Once you create a free Google account, you can enter specific search phrases into your own watch list. Google will then send you an email with links to articles that include the phrases in your watch list. You can request notifications as they happen or summarized daily, weekly or monthly. I would recommend that you start with the “as it happens” choice for a week, and then decide if you want to move it to “once a day”.

My watch list includes ‘Brian Pasch”, “Pasch Consulting”, “Pasch Consulting Group”, and “NJ SEO”. We also include in our watch list some of the buzz words in the niches we cover. For our Automotive Marketing Division our watch list includes: “Automotive SEO”, “Automotive Digital Marketing” , “Car Dealer Websites” and “Automotive SEO Specialist” . We use Google Alerts for both reputation management as well as tracking what other companies are posting in our competitive space.
Creating your Reputation Management Watch List

A recommended strategy for an automotive watch list would include your dealership name, your product names and the names of your key executives. Knowing what is being said, both positive and negative, is the first step in creating a sustained reputation management plan.
Your Internet Reputation Management strategy should have a clear escalation plan for positive and negative commentary. Positive commentary should be evaluated and the very best should be included on your own company blog or website news page. You may want to get permission from the individual to repurpose their commentary in your marketing materials.

Negative content should have an immediate response strategy which is best handled by a seasoned SEO and Reputation Management Consultant (RPC). Every post will have a different strategy depending on where the post was made and the policies of the website host.

Negative Attacks Apply to All Businesses

Recently, a New York City executive coaching and placement firm called the Pasch Consulting Group about a barrage of vicious attacks on the firm’s founder and on the services they offer for executives in transition. The negative posts were well planned and well placed so that they appeared on Google Page One, when consumers issued a search on the company name. The CEO said that these comments were directly hurting their business and needed immediate relief.

The company’s lawyer had already pursued legal action against the individual who posted the verbal assaults under different names and aliases. This disgruntled individual eventually signed a retraction letter and promised to stop this Internet reputation attack. In reality, he never stopped posting. So we were called in to help. Within 30 days we were able to have the most visible articles removed from the various websites. We also found additional negative posts on business portal sites that we were able to remove directly.

PCG created an offensive plan to get articles posted about the hundreds of satisfied clients the company had from its long history. For this client, they never invested the time to post their client testimonials and case studies on the Internet. Using various techniques, PCG was able to add significant content in Google page 1 and 2 for searches on their company name.

Reputation Management for Car Dealers

For Automotive Dealers, online reputation management must be part of your Internet Marketing Strategy to protect your Primary Market Area (PMA) from neighboring car dealers. If a car dealer’s visible Internet reputation is poor, consumers may very well shop at a neighboring dealership.
I have seen posts on the Internet that were outlandish and shocking. If I were in the market to buy a car, these negative posts would give me second thoughts about buying from certain dealers. It only takes a few angry consumers to make any dealership look like the devil. You can search Google yourself to find dealers being called racist, discriminatory and deceptive.

Often, consumers have a choice between two dealers that are 15 miles apart. If one car dealer has glowing reputation scores and one has low scores, reputation can sway their final pick. I recognize that other factors play a part in that final decision like price, convenience and availability. However, if your Internet reputation can be improved, taking remedial action is mandatory to continue to grow your Internet sales leads.

Sites like DealerRater.com, Yahoo Local, Insider Pages, Google Maps and Yelp all have review engines that can appear on Google Page One when consumers search your business name. General Managers need to implement a system to regularly request positive review from their customers. This can include new car customers as well as service customers.

Automotive retailers should create a list of all review website pages in an email and send these links to satisfied customers. The email should request that they post an honest review of your company; make it easy for them to post a review with one click of their mouse. Do not attempt to post customer reviews from your own business computers. Many of these sites track IP addresses and you could be banned from the directory for review spamming.

Empowering Your Satisfied Customers

Reputation Management requires both an offensive and defensive strategy. The longer your offensive strategy is in place, the harder it is for negative commentary to drastically affect your business. If you have been lax at posting positive commentary, then ANY negative commentary will look out of proportion.

Car Dealers can no longer ignore public commentary and commercial review websites. A restaurant
owner that has a comment posted on the Internet about a food poisoning episode, without balanced commentary, will be affected for consumers looking to try a new restaurant using Internet based searches. A hotel that has posts about dirty bed linens and mildew will see their online bookings drop. Simply stated, any post with your company name needs to be reviewed.

The Pasch Consulting Group has effective methodologies and strategies to assist business owners in implementing a solid reputation management action plan. If you would like additional information, visit www.paschconsulting.com

Technorati Tags: automotive reputation management, internet reputation management, reputation management

I have received almost 100 emails in 80 days. That’s the number of follow-up marketing emails I have received from an automotive lead collection service after I requested ONE “no obligation” car quote. This was initiated when I submitted an Infiniti car quote request to see how various lead collection services operated.

Will this type of marketing force consumers to enact a Do Not Email Law?

On July 8, 2008 I typed into Google “Red Bank Infiniti” and one of the listing on page one was a new lead collection service called ConnectWithLife. I clicked on the listing because the name seemed odd for an automotive lead website. The listing looks like this:

Find a Local Red Bank NJ Infiniti Dealer - ConnectWithLife Autos …
Infiniti dealers in Red Bank NJ are competing for your business - Free Price Quotes on New Infiniti in Red Bank Nj, Dealer Price Quotes, …
www.connectwithlife.com/infiniti-dealers/in-red-bank-nj.html - 205k - Cached - Similar pages

So, I filled out the basic forms and then there was a question checkbox that read:

“I would like to be notified of other ConnectWithLife! money-saving offers”.

I interpreted this checkbox as giving ConnectWithLife permission to sell my email address for marketing purposes other than this one car quote request. I made sure it WAS not checked. My interpretation was wrong.

By not checking the box, it meant that other third party companies would not immediately get my email address BUT the company running this site, Reply.com, could send me other offers from website properties that they control. These companies include:

• homevalues.reply.com
• myride.com
• autos.reply.com
• homevalues.reply.com
• realestate.icastle.com
• autobytelnetwork.com

The good news is that I got a car quote from a local dealer within 24 hours. The bad news is that I opened Pandora’s email box .

No Just Automotive Solicitations

Looking at my inbox shows that to date, 50% of the 90+ emails were for real estate solicitations, foreclosures and home valuation messages. The balance of the emails was car marketing emails of various makes and models. Getting other car sales emails is tolerable but foreclosure and real estate emails has nothing to do with my primary purpose; to get an Infiniti car quote.

I am writing this post because car dealers are hooked on the “drug” of third party leads. For many dealers, third party leads make up the bulk of their Internet car sales. They are easy to buy, cost around $20 per lead, and it keeps their Internet sales team busy. As long as the lead cost is covered by car sales profits, dealers continue to buy. This may seem like perfect business sense but have dealers asked how these leads being collected? Have dealers considered if this lead source is sustainable?

Do Not Call Law - Do Not Email Law

If this amount of email is typical from other automotive lead collection websites, then the future for this lead collection model is bleak. Consumers got fed up with over calling into their homes and created the Do Not Call registry. How long will it take before consumers fight back about over “emailing” from single source sites like this one? Now that I know that I would get approximately one email a day from requesting a car quote, I would never use a service like this again. I would go right to a local dealer’s website.

It’s an important note to say that ConnectWithLife is not violating any laws that I am aware of. Their privacy policy clearly states what they do with collected emails. The real question is how many consumers scroll down to the footer, click and read a privacy policy before requesting a car quote. Their privacy policy contains industry standard CYA language and a clear message that says by using the site they can or may sell your name to third parties, depending on your permission or if they were to close their business and sell their list.

Can you imagine what consumers mailboxes look like if they visited three or four car quote services? If this is standard practice, they would have hundreds of car solicitation emails in their inbox. This cannot create a great impression for automotive marketing. It doesn’t surprise me why consumers are reluctant to give out their email address on pop-up coupons or call to action offers on car websites. They are getting bombarded with emails.

Dealer Direct Price Quotes

I have requested email price quotes from car dealer websites and I will get one email a month, from most dealers, informing me of their current deals. This is very reasonable since the automotive market thrives on new specials each month.

As long as dealers not abuse the trust given to them by consumers, it won’t take long for consumers to decide that going to dealer websites is the safer choice for car quotes. If this is the case, then the dealers that appear at the top of search listing will benefit. Those with ineffective SEO strategies will suffer.

The dealers who agree with this assessment will make sure they are using the latest in SEO and Internet marketing strategies to get their websites AHEAD of these lead collectors for car searches in their PMA. They will realize that if they don’t build competitive lead collection strategies they will in effect, taken on a new business partner. We have helped a number of our automotive clients build lead collection websites that out rank and outpace lead flow from third party services. Our studies have also shown that lead collected directly from dealer websites have a higher conversion.

Take Control of Dealer Direct Lead Generation

The longer car dealers wait to create their own Internet lead collection model, the more vulnerable they become if the email marketing rules change. The DNC list put approximately 50% of outbound telemarketing companies out of business. If third party lead collection services can’t make money by email blasting, lead costs could double, triple or just go away.

Over calling by telemarketers was not illegal until consumers fought back. Email blasting is not illegal when consumers volunteer their email address. How long will it take for new email rules to go into effect which require lead collection forms to state how many emails a month will consumers be sent?

The dealer that builds their own collection model can continue to use third party leads as long as they perform, but will have a greater quantity of leads from their own websites. This dealer will have hedged their Internet business sales success and gain back control of their Internet sales future.

Taking The First Steps

If you are looking for new ways to collect more direct consumer leads, give me a call at 732-842-4720 and we can review some strategies that really work, that are dealer owned and controlled.

Technorati Tags: automotive digital marketing, automotive leads, automotive marketing, automotive seo, do not email

I have to take my SEO hat off to the marketing team at www.DealerRater.com. They have created a website platform that for most Google searches on dealer names, advertises their website on Google Page one organic results. This is not an insignificant feat and one that all SEO consultants should recognize. They have also scored a big win by having Google include their user reviews on Google Maps results. This is a home run for their business model.

The characteristic that I like most about DealerRater.com is that they are the model of entrepreneurial spirit. Their Internet business model gives car dealers who are the best at customer service and Internet marketing an edge. Dealers who think that consumers don’t care about CSI will get run over by Dealerrater’s business model.

In the recent past year the company has offered their “Dealer Certification” program which was pure genius to allow dealers to respond to negative posts on their site (for a fee). Today, they are raising the bar by offering banner advertising on “key” locations of their site.

I’m not going to let the cat out of the bag in this post. Car dealers who are reading this post, should inquire about their “competitive” display ad opportunities. It’s ingenuous. Imagine posting your banner ad over your competitor’s review page. Mmmmnnnn. This is a cage match in the making.

If you need help to find this golden nugget, contact Heather MacKinnon who called me today to give me a heads up for some of my clients.

If you need some additional insights, email me: brian@paschconsulting.com

Technorati Tags: dealer rater, dealerrater, reputation management