PureDealer Automotive Marketing Blog

Automotive Internet Marketing Plan

This great graphic below demonstrates what an automotive marketing plan can look like. There are other similar ones but this sums up many overall pieces of the concept.

 

 

automotiveinternetmarketingplan

Putting an Internet marketing plan of action into effect can help your car dealership or business survive through that hard times and prosper in the good. However, this is one of the most difficult strategies to master. It takes a lot of foresight, planning, and also requires buy-in from everyone from the dealership owner down to Internet Sales managers and staff.

There are many things to manage including the ongoing battle between Internet budget and traditional budget, where the money is spent, and how much will be done by dealership staff versus being outsourced. Obviously all of the media comes into play as well as the message- what is your offering and where do you make the offer- on third party automotive lead sites or on your own site?

Decisions needs to be made on who the Internet marketing plan revolves around- the Internet department, the dealership, or the 3rd party lead provider.

The good news is that you can get help you through this process from many great vendors at Driving Sales. Depending on the size of your dealership, staffing, even location and brands that you sell, a good automotive marketing expert should take all of this into account when helping you with your marketing ideas and planning. Contact us for more details on how we can help you with your Automotive Internet Marketing plan.

Technorati Tags: automotive marketing plan, automotive seo, automotvie internet marketing, car dealer marketing, dealership marketing, marketing plan for car dealers, puredealer

One video, one youtube account, 15 minutes, and 54 THOUSAND video views in less than two weeks. Oh, and for one dealer.

The power of clicking compels you to read this update to a simple, cost effective way to use youtube to get traffic to your site, views of your local ad, and national search engine ranking just by using the factories campaign to your advantage.

There was no trick, no gimmick, nothing that required an advanced degree of any sort. This is the modern day guerilla marketing.
Here are the results: 54,000 views of this video, and links from Esquire, Maxim, Edmunds, Ford, and other sites both nationally and Internationally.

This automotive video marketing idea helped also proper the dealership to #1 status nationwide for Toyota’s factory campaign, catapulting past Toyota and every dealer in the world. In fact, I would go so far as saying that we have marketed Toyota’s campaign on Google perhaps better than Toyota themselves.

More details here: or feel free to post a replay with any questions you may have.

Technorati Tags: pure dealer.com, puredealer, video marketing, video search engine marketing, viral marketing

There are many legitimate Automotive marketing experts in the marketplace, and there are just as many snake oil salesmen. Here is one way to differentiate between those who offer real services and those who are looking to make a buck.

There are many categories of snake oil salesmen in this marketplace, including the following:

The followers:

"Traditional automotive ad agency" turned into "Internet advertising agency". This is the result of sleeping dinosaurs who became so fat with their commissions that they lost sight of the goal. Suddenly they wake up, slap "automotive internet department" or "automotive e-marketing" on their website, patch together a few vendors, and think they can take a $50k ad budget and put it into adwords. Some are so late to the game it is embarrassing and couldn’t even name 5 search engines without the help of their outsourced department. Typically, these companies turn into vendor whores and sell whatever ends up on their desk to try to get back the "good old days" where dealers lined their pockets with print budget. They know automotive, but do not know Internet.

The wanna-be’s:

They are late to the game, have a few tricks in their bag, and have achieved some level of short or long term success. They are riding off of buzzwords and will sell whatever you want to buy or whatever seems to have a good "pitch" at the time. They may also be a version of the "converted advertising agency" concept outlined above or they were involved in another market and are just getting into automotive in the past few years (or months). They may have some marketing experience but they do not know automotive. Many of these companies will be jumping from one hot topic to the next. You may "feel" like you are cutting edge but results can, and should, be measured carefully. You may find yourself saying things such as "I am an automotive social network enabled dealership" or,

The snake oil salesmen:

These are self proclaimed "automotive seo experts" and the type who manage to get dealers hooked on the allure of national traffic  that cannot convert or getting them super-long tail phrases that get no traffic such as "2006 Infiniti with low miles and A/C in Bumbletown". Some dealers are just addicted to #1 positions, despite the reality that they may not be good words. These are the true criminals in automotive advertising industry that gives legitimate marketers a bad name.  Never mind the leads their service brings, and phone calls that can come of it. A good snake oil salesman will sell the dealer on the sizzle, promising that the steak will come. Six months later, they dealer may (or may not) come off of their high but by then they are many thousands of dollars invested.

A good tracking system including CRM, and call tracking, will help stop the snakes from getting more of your budget.

One recent example is an automotive waste management study we performed on a dealer in the Northeast. He had purchased some microsites, SEO, and some electronic press releases (automotive ePR) among other related services from this provider. Months and months of time and money were invested, and the dealer stated over and over that the investment was one of the best they had made.

However, Rome was burning while Nero was fiddling.

The dealer was not tracking the phone calls, nor were they tracking the actual sales from this "automotive search expert". Sure leads were coming in, but in the past 3 months, they sold a single car. In one week, they received one phone call off of this investment. Now that we have the data, we can help the dealer to see better, but a good snake oil salesman will always say that results are - just around the corner.

Creating legitimate content, focused on driving legitimate traffic on the proper keywords, to the right dealer at the right time is the right move. However, there is too much smoke and mirror activity in search engine optimization that the room can quickly turn into a funhouse with sleight of hand and shell games taking precedence over real logic.

In all, it is not easy for a dealer, and there are many choices, but choose a company that offers full disclosure. Above all, answer every statement that make with "well, how many sales became of that, and who can I call to verify". Quickly, they will load up their huge luggage full of tricks and send their telemarketing company off to set more appointments to find the next sucker.

-Michael Sweigart

www.automotiveseoblog.com

Technorati Tags: ad agency for dealers, automotive advertising, automotive advertising agency, automotive agency, automotive internet ideas, automotive marketing, automotive snake oil, pure dealer.com, puredealer, seo research

This is a re-post from Tom Ferris, author of the 4 hour workweek. This has some great meaning in today’s economy and can be interpreted from a dealer’s perspective in an interesting way. It deals with how you handle crisis, and understanding the ups and downs of being an entrepeneur. Full post is here: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2008/10/03/harnessing-entrepreneurial-manic-depression-making-the-rollercoaster-work-for-you/

Many dealers are in "Crisis of Meaning" stage right now, and need to recognize that although this is a temporary situation, how best to handle it.

The sky is falling!

Ever since the media’s Chicken Little response to the tremors in the financial markets, I’ve felt like shouting from the rooftops “now you know how it feels to be an entrepreneur!”

I just lost 9% overnight?! Fill a bathtub and get the toaster. I’ve had enough.
Wait… I actually gained 13% while in the bathroom? I’m f**king Superman!

This is a guest post on capitalizing on — vs. countering — the “entrepreneur’s disease” (manic depression) through 4 cyclical stages. This is done by pairing appropriate activities to specific — though not necessarily positive — emotional states…

The author is Cameron Herold, former COO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, whose professional resume includes:

-Helping build revenues from $2 Million to $105 Million in 6 years (no debt or outside shareholders)
-Building a PR team that landed more than 5,000 stories in those same 6 years
-Hiring 220 people in 4 months
-Leading the sale, branding, and integration of 450+ franchise locations.
-Teaching his psychological theories at the Entrepreneurial Masters Program at MIT.

I first saw this presentation at an Entepreneurs’ Organization (EO) event in Omaha prior to my successful Warren Buffett quest at the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting.

I encourage you all to read this, especially with the fear mongering that is just getting started.

Cameron:

Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, once wrote:

“First and foremost, a start-up puts you on an emotional rollercoaster unlike anything you have ever experienced. You flip rapidly from day-to-day – one where you are euphorically convinced you are going to own the world, to a day in which doom seems only weeks away and you feel completely ruined, and back again. Over and over and over. And I’m talking about what happens to stable entrepreneurs. There is so much uncertainty and so much risk around practically everything you are doing. The level of stress that you’re under generally will magnify things incredible highs and unbelievable lows at whiplash speed and huge magnitude. Sound like fun?”

Many ultra-successful entrepreneurs are even clinically diagnosed as manic-depressive or bi-polar. Francis Ford Coppola has it. So does Ted Turner.

This article is about the emotional intricacies of being an entrepreneur – about what you’re going to feel during the journey.

The concept that we’re going to examine is called the Transition Curve. It resembles a rollercoaster.

Regardless of whether or not you believe you will ride an emotional rollercoaster running a business, you will. You have two fundamental choices: you can hold on and scream, or you can wave your hands in the air and have some fun.

I’m going to walk you through these different analogies, but let’s first look at the various stages of this process, which repeat.

* Stage 1: The first stage of the concept is called “Uninformed Optimism”. At this stage on a rollercoaster, just getting to the top of the rollercoaster, you experience feelings of an adrenalin rush, characterized by excitement and nervous energy.

* Stage 2: The second stage is called “Informed Pessimism”. As you ride over the top of the curve you now have a bit more information. Feelings of fear, nervousness, and frustration begin to set in. Perhaps you even want to get off of it.

* Stage 3 – The third stage is called “Crisis of Meaning”. You’re past scared. You feel despair. It’s as if you’re standing on the edge of a cliff ready to jump, and you begin to think “Today the rollercoaster’s going off the bottom of the track for the very first time.” You feel helpless and you’re both terrified and frozen.

* At this point, you face a critical juncture. You can come off the bottom of the curve and crash and burn, which is when your business goes bankrupt, you lose your marriage, you start drinking, or you end up in a doctor’s office because of stress. Or you can come around the corner because you’re getting support at “Crisis of Meaning” and you can enter an upward swing call “Informed Optimism”.

* Stage 4 – Informed Optimism. You’re calm. You’re informed. You might even say you are cautiously optimistic.

Capitalizing on All Emotional Phases — Activity Pairing

Here is the critical point – at each stage of the curve, you can do things to leverage the feelings and energy — positive or negative — that you have at that moment. Fighting against these phases is like working against a natural force.

Stage 1 - Uninformed Optimism

As an example – at Stage 1 – Uninformed Optimism – it’s both a great place and a dangerous place to be for your business, depending on what you are working on or in at that time.

When you’re starting your business, you have seed financing, some friend and family money, or you’ve just started the business with $50 in your pocket. You can start a business without a lot of money directly because you’re benefiting from uninformed optimism. You can take risks when you’re feeling like this. Because you’re so full of excitement you don’t really know what’s coming yet. So you’re uninformed and your fully optimistic – or you wouldn’t have started.

When you’re at Uniformed Optimism you should be doing things like:

* Talking to the media. Imagine if a newspaper calls you when you’re at that stage of uninformed optimism. How’s your media interview going to go? It’s going to go amazing because you have unbridled excitement and big thinking.

* Talking to potential investors. That’s why everyone was investing through the 90s with the dotcom bubble. The entrepreneurs were so full of uninformed optimism and enthusiasm.

* Doing speeches in public – the audience will love you.
* Recruiting new employees – they’ll all want to work for you.
* Networking for new clients – who wouldn’t want to buy from you?

When you’re at Uniformed Optimism there are also some things you should avoid doing:

* Spending money is a bad thing to be doing at this point. Because when you are really excited and full of optimism you think nothing will go wrong. The last thing you want to be doing is spending all this money because the reality is – at some point, you’ll cross the curve and discover harsher realities.

* You don’t want to be doing business planning
* You don’t want to be working on your budget
* You don’t want to be making buying decisions
* You don’t want to be making hiring decisions
* You don’t want to be doing your accounting, or your bookkeeping.
* Anything that requires you to be making financial decisions or planning logical shouldn’t be done when you’re at the manic energy or uninformed optimism stage.

Remember that when you’re at that uninformed optimism stage, anything that’s outward facing — talking about your company, selling the story, raising money — is well-matched. Simultaneously, at that stage, you don’t want to make buying decisions, or hiring decisions, or planning decisions, or budgeting decisions.

###

Stage 2 - Informed Pessimism

At Stage 2 – Informed Pessimism – you have more information now. You’re not as excited as you once were. Coffee is helpful to get you started. You are worrying at times. You aren’t depressed or scared – but you’re somewhere in between scared and excited. You’re just a little bit pessimistic now. The great aspect of this stage is that it prevents you from making careless mistakes due to overly optimistic thinking.

When you’re at Informed Pessimism you should be doing things like:

* Planning the next phase of your growth
* Intermediate-term strategic planning
* Budgeting, as you’ll be more realistic
* Purchasing things like advertising – you’ll be careful with where you spend your money and will not over-purchase advertising based on exuberant pie-in-the-sky sales forecasts.

When you’re at Informed Pessimism, there are also a few things you should absolutely avoid doing.

Do not:

* make hiring decisions.
* talk to the media or do speaking events.
* work in roles where being excited would help you get a better result – wait until things turn around emotionally for you.

Stage 3 – Crisis of Meaning

This is a scary stage and can feel like you’re standing on the edge of a building needing to jump. It will feel like all the odds are stacked against you and that everything is going wrong. It will be hard to get out of bed in the morning. Sleeping at night will be close to impossible due to worries and fear. You’ll feel like you’re paralyzed and can do little more than clean your filing cabinet drawers successfully.

When you’re at Crisis of Meaning you should be doing things like:

* Cleaning your filing cabinet drawers – seriously. Doing a few little things can often perk people up.

* Reaching out to your support groups like friends, family, your church, groups like the Entrepreneurs Organization etc. to ask them for help, advice or to just lend an ear.

* Trying to set your TOP 5 daily and only work on the most important items each day.
* Taking breaks and going for walks, getting exercise, getting outdoors.
* Writing lists – lists about what you are strong at, lists about what you love – make lists that, when you read them, will help rebuild your confidence.

* Realizing that many others have been in this exact same place and usually turn the corner, just like you will.
* Remembering “The Little Engine That Could” – I think I can, I think I can – it can take time, but things will rebound.

When you’re at Crisis of Meaning there are also some things you should absolutely avoid doing:

* Don’t talk to others who are depressed.
* Don’t talk to others who are “half empty” types

* Don’t take any “all-in” Vegas poker type risks where you put everything on the line hoping for a big win.

* Don’t try to “rally the troops.” Your employees, the media ,etc. will all smell fear. And your fear will lead to making things worse

* Don’t turn to the bottle. Vices during stages of depression will lead to you spiraling out of control.

* Don’t think that you can “handle it” all on your own. You can’t. And when people “need” others, your true friends really will be there to support you.

* Don’t try to learn more. Reading books and magazines about how to be successful or how to grow your company will only make you feel worse about your current situation. They’ll just make you feel even more bogged down. Reading stuff like this is great when you round the corner though.

Stage 4 – Crash & Burn

I don’t really waste any time explaining this stage or what to do here – because if you slide off the curve, here it really is over – the company is done and/or so are you in the role leading it. Usually this is bankruptcy or forced sale, etc..

Stage 5 – Informed Optimism (or Hopeful Realization)

This last stage is much like when the little engine that could turned the corner – and realized “he did”. You’ll start feeling excited and energized again. You’ll start rebuilding your confidence. And you’ll start to feel momentum working in your favor again. You’ll also have a lot more insights and experiential learning to draw from. You’ll realize you have more competence and confidence than before and everything will start to go your way again.

When you’re at Informed Optimism you should be doing things like:

· Hiring
· Strategic Planning
· Reorganization of your team – putting the right people in the right seats
· Cutting the wrong people
· Generally getting everything in order to really start growing again.

When you’re at Informed Optimism there are also things you should avoid doing:

· Don’t lose focus.
· Don’t let your confidence slip.
· Don’t get cocky or you’ll fall backwards off the curve.

Conclusion

This cycle repeats itself. Enjoy the ride instead of fighting it.

Technorati Tags: automotive crisis, automotive marketing, internet marketing, puredealer

Typical cost per sale calculations for vehicle sales need to get thrown out the window. Throw them out and when your ad agency, NADA, regional sales manager even reference these old figures, please show them the door. Sorry you traditional ad agency types won’t like this, but I’m not blogging for you  =)

Cost per car sold is typically based on dividing your advertising cost (all of it) into the amount of vehicles sold. The fact is, your ad budget is taking credit for cars that you would normally sell without any advertising whatsoever. Think about it. If you stopped all advertising, would you sell cars? Yes you would.

Typical calculations:

$20,000 budget, 50 cars sold = $400 cost per car sold.

The reality is that based on your market share, and brand share in your DMA, you may already sell 40 cars even if you never spent an additional penny on advertising. So in that case, you need to divide your advertising expense into the cost for the *additional units* sold. Which in the above case, is 10 cars. You paid $20k to sell 10 cars. Do the math.

$20,000 budget, 10 additional cars sold = $2,000 cost per additional car sold. Not looking so good is it?

Now these REAL numbers are actually not too hard to figure out. You just need the registration info for your state, market share for your brand, number of dealers in your DMA, marketing budget, and cars sold. With some quick math, you can figure out what your "expected" sales would be if you never ran a single ad, and then you can see what the cost is for getting incremental sales.

It’s not a pretty number, but it’s time to get off the crack that all dealer’s have been fed for years and start analyzing the best cost per sale and cost per opportunity in the market. Reach more for less is what the goal is, and nothing is perfect but looking at the real cost per sale is a real eye opener.

To discuss more, or if you want our free Excel spreadsheet that will help you run these numbers, email me as ms@puredealer.com or visit http://www.automotiveseoblog.com

609 977 5050

Technorati Tags: cost per sale

How far is too far when it comes to factory/dealer relations?

Some manufacturers require the use of specific DMS systems.

Others require websites that meet specific design and compliancy standards.

Obviously, all have logo requirements, signage requirements, and less often now that a decade ago there was more flexibility with some bending of the rules on a few of these issues. The goal is to protect their brand, and ensure that standards are in place and there is some consistancy in the way their product is marketed, sold, and serviced.

However, a recent trend has me a bit worried.

Many manufacturer’s are becoming technology and marketing “experts”. Recently I sat through a presentation by a well known and well respected representative of Google. I’ve met him personally at Search Engine Summit conferences, and have high regards for his work and understand the responsibilities to both represent the Google brand and expand it’s base of clientele. Let’s face it, the manufacturer’s spend a ton of money on advertising and promotion. More and more of that has been spent on the web in recent times and of course much of that came from major factories, not dealers.  Slanted opinion? Some may say, some may say not.

Up until now, the manufacturers have never been able to get into the “advertising” business, although through the use of some template designs, some have done similar things. But the manufacturer never got a “cut of the action” or a commission to so speak.

What has changed? Large manufacturers have developed “relationships” with technology vendors, search marketing providers, and other consultants who are looking out for the dealer’s and manufacturers best interest by ensuring compliancy. How is this compliancy ensured? By monopolizing the dealer’s choices by taking away some important assets, namely co-op funds, and linked pages from the manufacturers website. Or, golden leads, as some dealers will tell you.

Some manufacturers have gone so far as to offer “free” websites, which in turn are stripped down crippled websites that are nearly unmanageable. No choice- take the site, or get no leads. Very little SEO benefits, very little ability to post good deals or market the right cars, and often no ability to list non-manufacturer used cars or even non-certified brand cars (another forced deal might I say). These free sites are then accompanied by “upgrades” which end up costing as much as the original site they had. The dealer takes the bait, swallows the hook, and get’s reeled in. Say goodbye to ten years of search engine links because the new manufacturer site has removed all those links. Traffic drops from the thousands to the hundreds, calls drop from the hundreds to the dozens. I’ve seen it, I have the reports, from more than one dealer. The data is out there if you know where to look.

To go further, the manufacturers are getting into the search marketing business. Buy Google adwords from us they say, we will manage it, and you do not even have to look at it. Just pay the bill, we will get you some leads. So, the manufacturer is now a web developer, search marketer, and lead provider, and they are charging the dealer for the leads by both selling them the website and charging the dealer to market that website. Isn’t that the manufacturers job? This is bordering on Tier 1 advertising which is not the dealer’s responsibility. Any responsible manufacturer should be doing this anyway, to benefit their dealer base. Dump *your own* money into marketing not the dealers.

Some dealers will argue that the manufacturer is their best friend, and is looking out for the dealer’s best interest. Others may say they seek every opportunity to push them out of business by reaching into their pockets at every opportunity. The truth is somewhere in the middle but I happen to be leaning towards the side of the dealer, because they are getting the short end of the stick here.

Spend your money where you see fit, which returns the most on your investment. Do not bow down to pressure to let go of ANY source of quality leads that cost less than two American dollars per lead. Leads that result in 15-20% closing ratios. Leads that result in hundreds of calls per month, in favor of a crappy template that looks like every other template which returns just a fraction of the leads your previous site did. Seriously, if I walked in your dealership tomorrow and said I had a few hundred high quality, two dollar leads, which will close higher than any lead source, would you say no? TONS of dealers have already said no, and may not even know it because they do not track their business or leads properly.

Sure, you may have to battle a 500 lb Gorilla to get somewhere, but it is better than watching the manufacturer take money for each car for advertising, money for each car for your local ad group, money for your website, and money to promote that website online. Hey at least you can still buy paper from the local Staples and aren’t required to use "manufacturer endorsed" paper.

As a final note, how much money exchanges hands between these major vendors and the manufacturers. I have no idea, but private companies do not need to reveal their P&L although public companies do.

So what do you think? Is this an ongoing trend we will see more of in the future? Or will we need a bunch of dealer’s to stand up and not take it anymore.  Or are we too numb right now to take on such a task? Have dealer’s done so poorly in the past that they need this level of assistance?

Technorati Tags: automotive seo, puredealer

With the slow Economy, sluggish car sales, gas prices going up and down, what is a dealer to do?

Do you need a hatchet or a scalpel to fix things? Will the market come around and if so, when?

Tough questions, tough times.

These times are when a dealer and their automotive marketing partner needs to get into the Waste Management business. No, not the Sopranos “dump the body” waste management, but identifying the waste in your advertising and making hard decisions.

We have recently begin re-coining ourselves as Automotive Waste Management specialists, and it is a big part of what we do (and we looove doing it)

It’s simple really-

We look at your budget for all of your advertising (nothing held back) including phone calls, emails, CRM, walk-in traffic logs.

We identify the cost per action (call, email, walk in, etc)

We turn everything into a formula that shows us the true cost of your automotive marketing budget.

Then, we back up the dumpster and dump in the all of the advertising that is costing you way too much money. It may feel at times like you are getting rid of some “old friends” and in many cases that is what happens. If the old friends are costing you $300 per call from that newspaper ad, or your radio spot on that expensive station is creating a cost per sale of $3000, then it’s time to say goodbye to old friends.Parting is such sweet sorrow.

You have to know what advertising is creating true and measurable action. You have no more choice to wait around watching your sales reps play solitaire because that direct mail piece will “hit any time now” even though you know it hit a few days ago. You need to know which online sources are the best and which are not, and you cannot depend on your "gut feeling" to tell you what is working.

Hold your agency, your media, even your message accountable for every single dollar and believe me you will see drastic reduction in budget and fast shifts to areas that are successful. Put a tracking number on everything and track all calls, emails, walkins. Be vigilant about it and accept no excuses from any staff member or agency (internet or traditional). Toll free numbers are cheap (purecalling.com offers single numbers or packages as low as $10) and tracking can begin nearly immediately. A few dollars for tracking numbers can save literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in waste.

If you do not start really analyzing your results, you can just fuggetabout it and continue to throw your automotive marketing budget right in the dumpster. Which would you rather have? All of your money in random unnacountable advertising, or your money in trackable results-driven marketing?

Two recent examples came from “domestic” dealers in the Northeast.

One of them spent nearly $1000 per phone call on a direct mail piece (no walkins were verified)

Another spent $800 per contact from their postyourvehiclesforsaleonourwebsite.com advertising.

One received a large amount of calls from a print campaign which was a “special buy” and it worked out to be around $30 per call. This we deemed as a “keeper” and recommended that the dealer try this again when the opportunity arose. However, at “regular price” this would ad would have worked out to be over $120 per call.

Another dealer was getting tremendous ROI with their email blasts, selling cars every month with no cost other than the time to create the offer.

The biggest kicker of them all, was the dealers websites, which were producing phone calls under $2.00 per call (yes, two American dollars) Weight the options then- free sales from email blasts and two dollar website leads, or one thousand dollar direct mail leads, two dollars leads, one thousand dollar leads…hmm not much of a choice there. Ooh I hear the truck backing up with the dumpster- what goes in first?

Of course closing ratios account for something and cheap leads are not always good, right? Again, track it all to a sale. A good CRM will allow you to know the exact cost per sale on all of your advertising.

We can do it wrong all day long; doing it right takes a little bit more work, but it is well worth it. Put on you Automotive Waste Management hat and let’s get started. If anyone needs a little help reviewing these various reports, leads, and analytics, just let us know (or any other qualified waste management specialist on this forum) and we can give you a report on your wasted budget.

Read more about recording your metrics here

Technorati Tags: automotive marketing, budgeting, cost analysis, marketing budget, puredealer, sem, seo

Yesterday we posted Toyota’s new Saved By Zero event campaign to youtube, properly tagged it and put links to our clients website. Quickly this video rose to the top of Google’s search results for various phrases, all relating to Toyota’s campaign. In other words, we used Toyota’s national ad campaign to the dealer’s advantage (in a good way of course) to draw attention to both the event and the dealer.

The youtube video is also posted on the dealer’s website which benefits the dealer’s website page rank and overall traffic. So far the Google video and links to the video are in top positions for the following phrases:

saved by zero event toyota

 saved by zero event

toyota saved by zero video, and many many variations of this.

It pays to be quick to draw the guns, especially in this economy.

The lesson to learn here, is to act quick and you can greatly benefit. The first to the table get the best results.

This is the first of a series of posts about what to do, what to buy, how to prosper (as best we all can) in a slowing economy. Feel free to add comments and contribute any other ideas and strategies, so that we can all help each other in these tough times. Here are some thoughts in n particular order:

Buy more results-oriented and track able opportunities

• Internet Pay Per Click Advertising: Typically this is Google adwords but also includes Yahoo and MSN “paid” advertising. The reason why this is on the top of the list is because month after month our clients view their website results and state that the lowest “cost per opportunity” comes from the Internet. Plus, you pay per click. If they do not click you do not pay. Simple enough. With the right words, ad, and destination or landing page, this can add up quickly to a success story. Alternatively, if purchased the wrong way, this can end up eating up an incredible amount of budget very quickly. This is a very trackable expense. You set a budget and will know how many people saw your ad, clicked on it, visited your site, and took an action such as a phone call or email. Sometimes, you do have to sift through some deceiving reports on things such as “web events” and understand that a visit to a credit app does not mean that a credit app was filled out.

• Search Optimization Services: Again, back on the Internet focus, but there is a reason this will be a recurring theme. Most customers are online and if a good automotive search optimization expert can help you get top results online, they usually last a good amount of time. Over the long run, this will help your business even when you need to trim costs and cut expenses. If done right, it becomes the “gift that keeps on giving”. This is typically an ongoing effort but not one you can ignore since it takes time to build good results and they should be maintained once established. This can be a great return on investment.

• eMail blasts: These can be inexpensive ways to replace your expensive direct mail marketing. For under a nickel a piece, you can send out offers to people in your DMA that match your criteria including household income, demographics, age, sex, etc. Plus the turnaround time is quick and the results are trackable. Take the dollars spent divide by the clicks/visits/calls and there you have your cost per conversion. For the cost of a full or half page newspaper ad, just imagine how many people you could target that perfectly match your desired audience.

Buy less non-trackable “feel good” opportunities

• Advertising on specific media just because you listen/read/view them: OK, we all have certain patterns, habits, and tendencies to watch, view, listen to or read certain media. It is just human nature. However, just because you do it, that does not mean that everyone is just like you. There are still dealer principals out there that will buy a certain radio station because that is what they listen to on the way to work and they feel other people are just like them. It is human nature (take it from a psych major) to want to assume the world is filled with people that share your viewpoint. However, if you put some accountability in place to track the conversions, the truth comes out. It may make you “feel good” that you hear your spot every afternoon on the way home, but you may not be getting the best bang for your buck.
   
• Buying media just because you always have: This ties in with the previous idea of acting based on old habits. “I’ve been buying the “Big City Post” ever since my Dad taught me to sell cars.” Well, the Big City Post is down to 20,000 readers and you are paying out the wazoo to buy an ad still. In the words of Bob Newhart, STOP IT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYLMTvxOaeE Again, just because you always have and because the other dealer is buying it, doesn’t make it right.
   
• Buying opportunities because they are such a good “deal”. What is a good deal any more? With the bottom dropping out of the economy it is time to renegotiate all of your traditional advertising to start and your online as well. You may think they are a good deal, but if you track your calls or emails from each source and figure out a conversaion ratio, you will know which is the best and which needs to be cut. Sometimes you end up in a “contract” but even those can be renegotiated if you ask. Most media outlets are in the same situation so they are losing ad revenue and would rather get something than nothing…

Part 2 will focus on:

Get more Accountability in place

• Call tracking Services
• CRM and Lead Management
• Internet tracking

• New Vendors
• Existing media that you have or have not tried 

Testing, testing, testing: New Concepts, marketing ideas, and advertising:

• New Media ideas, concepts, and methods
• New Marketing ideas such as new strategies on this blog

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