Your dealership customers aren't just using their mobile devices to find your car dealer website, they are also using them to read the emails you send.  A recent report from the marketing agency Knotice found that more than 27 percent of emails were opened on a mobile device during the second half of 2011.  This is a 36 percent gain from the end of 2010.

 

Not only does your dealership need to have a mobile website and marketing strategy in place, but you also need to make sure your emails can be read on mobile devices.  iOS devices (iPhone and iPad) make up over 22 percent of mobile email opens, compared to less than 5 percent for Android devices.  For this reason, make sure your dealership emails use a minimal amount of Flash, if any.  Also, if you are sending pictures or video, make sure they have alt text or tags that explain what the images are showing.

 

The study counted an email "opened" if images were downloaded, so ke

Google recently released an eBook (or playbook, as they call it): "The Mobile Playbook: The Busy Executive's Guide to Winning with Mobile". For any dealership interested in mobile websites, mobile paid search, and how to expand your brand with mobile technology, this guide is extremely concise and helpful, answering the "5 crucial mobile questions that every business executive should be asking today".

I recently found a great article that discusses very specific things businesses should be doing to help their Google Places Listing improve its ranking.  Bizible, a start-up that makes local marketing software for businesses, conducted a pretty scientific attempt to determine how best to improve the rank of your Google Places Listing.

 

It is also interesting because his is the first time I've seen a distinction between Google Places Listings for integrated search results and Google Places Listings for non-integrated search results (searches occurring directly in Google Places).

 

Top Factors to Improve Ranking for Pages in Integrated Results

 

1. Have the category of your places page match a broader category than the search.  For example, if your dealership places page is Automotive, that is a broader category than a specific make which someone may search for.

2. Have the search category appear in the name of your business.  This is gr

A recent study by Marin, "State of Mobile Search Advertising in the US", shows that the percent of paid-search clicks from mobile devices is growing faster than expected, and if the trend continues, is expected to account for 25% of all paid-search clicks by Google by the end of the year. This includes not only mobile phones but also tablet computers. This is just another reason why your dealership needs to include Mobile Ads as a part of your PPC campaigns.

While not every dealership is actively involved with social media, it's a form of connecting with potential customers that doesn't seem to be going away.  If your dealership is participating in social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, etc), try to avoid making these common mistakes.

 

Replacing Your Dealership Website with Social Media Profiles: Maintain both for optimal results.  When you put your energy and assets into another platform (Facebook, Twitter, etc), it becomes their intellectual property.  If they were to shut down, your dealership would be left without a web presence.  Make sure you maintain your auto dealer website as well as social media sites.

 

Expecting Instant Success: As with most (not all) forms of marketing, you won't see results overnight.  Social media marketing takes time to build relationships and grow your network.  Set goals and benchmarks to help measure success, but keep in mind that you may not

Having a dealership YouTube channel is important for many reasons (as I touched on last year), but once your dealership has a channel, what do you do next?  Here are some tips and best practices to help your dealership’s YouTube channel get better search engine visibility:

Upload Regularly: Just like a blog, YouTube channels that are updated regularly will rank better than those that never are.  For this reason, if you have a lot of videos on your site or in your marketing collateral, upload a few per day to YouTube.

 

Encourage Interaction: If your videos have a voiceover or text, consider adding a call to action asking viewers to leave a comment, subscribe to your dealership’s channel, or like the video.  Interaction on your videos can help increase the likelihood they get ranked well.

 

Optimize Titles: The titles and tags on your videos should be treated like you do those on your car dealership website.  Tags help form the Relat

Most times, Google will make changes to their algorithm that either largely go unnoticed (meaning they only affect niche sites) or unannounced (your site will see SERP changes but won't necessarily know why). On Tuesday, Google announced 40 changes to search quality they have made over the past month or so. While many of these changes are pretty high level, some websites are taking a hit on their search engine results. Some of the algorithm changes that could be affecting these sites down on the SERP are:

Title tags should be a part of the SEO strategy of every car dealership website. Why? Its contents not only provide the text for the blue-links shown on search engine result pages (meaning users use them to help decide whether or not to click onto your dealership’s site), but also tell search engines what each unique web page contains. Many auto dealers leave this important SEO aspect up to their dealership website providers. For those that choose to take a more proactive approach, here are some things you should consider:

Google+ has been promoted lately by many in the SEO industry as a "must-do" for local businesses to help their search engine optimization efforts. While an important tool for SEO moving forward, there are other areas your dealership can utilize to keep your search engine optimization on the cutting edge. Here are a couple of additional things your car dealership should be keeping an eye on to keep your SEO efforts top-notch as the search landscape continues to change:

While some dealerships are successful with their email marketing campaigns, it is a task that can easily fall to the back burner or be neglected. When done correctly, email marketing is an effective way to stay in touch with existing customers, and build a relationship with potential car buyers. If your dealership has let your email marketing efforts go in recent years, here are some tips to refresh your campaigns and help keep them successful:

While at NADA, I heard quite a bit of buzz about mobile websites. Does my dealership need one?  If I already have one, do I need to actually optimize it?  Is mobile traffic really growing as rapidly as everyone says it is?  Should I be making my car dealership’s mobile website a priority to sell more cars?

The answer to all four of those questions is absolutely, unequivocally--YES.

Some stats:


The number of mobile searches has grown 400% in the last year

1 in 3 mobile searches is related to local search

79% of smartphone owners use their phones to help with shopping (compare prices, find product info, locate a retailer, etc)

28% of those that see a mobile ad take action

59% of users visit an online store after looking it up online


In short, mobile traffic is growing extremely quickly, and is expected to be the predominant mode of searching online for local content by 2013.  If your dealership is neglecting your mobile websites, yo

A few weeks ago I wrote about how Google was going to include items from Google+ in their regular search results when users were signed in, calling it “Search Plus Your World”. Now that users have had some time to get accustomed to it, I wanted to touch on how this new way of searching could benefit your car dealership’s local search optimization efforts. This combination of social media and search allows your dealership to do the same–combine your social media efforts with your search engine optimization efforts on Google. Some searches actually result in recommended “People and Pages on Google+”, and I would imagine this is only going to grow. Imagine if someone searched for a car dealership in your area, and your dealership was recommended!

Many dealerships focus their search engine optimization reporting on how well they are ranking for certain terms. As long as they show up on Page 1 of Google's search results, they are happy. While search engine page ranking is an important part of every dealership's online marketing efforts, what happens if your auto dealer website is showing up on page 1 for every keyword, but you aren't seeing any traffic? If you are seeing this happening at your dealership, here are some potential causes:

DealerOn Inc. is the recipient of a “Top Rated” Websites award in the third annual DrivingSales Dealer Satisfaction Awards, presented in conjunction with the 2012 National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) Convention & Expo. "What makes this award so meaningful is that it literally comes from our customers—our partners," said Ali Amirrezvani, CEO and Co-Founder of DealerOn. "At DealerOn, every single employee knows that our goal is to make our dealers truly happy in every way we can. We work with them to improve our platform, our support processes, our products, and their results because that’s what makes our dealers happy. We’re not building a customer base; we’re building partnerships with dealers. Winning this award is further proof that we're on the right track." DealerOn has become noted for documenting (through Google Analytics and 3rd party CRM reports) an average increase of over 200% in lead volume for their auto dealer clients. They have recently announced a Lead Volume Increase, Money-back GUARANTEE for new customers.

While (I hope) most dealership websites won’t be affected by this, Google has recently announced they will begin penalizing websites that have too many ads at the top.  It's being called the "page layout algorithm" and affects sites that "don't have much content 'above-the-fold'", according to Google's Inside Search blog.

 

We've all clicked onto a site only to have to scroll down through the ads to actually find the content we are looking for.  This algorithm change will penalize sites with little or no “non-ad” content visible above the scroll line, so that they appear less frequently and with less prominence in Google’s search results.

 

So how does Google tell what is an ad and what isn't?  They have a "variety of signals that algorithmically determine what type of ad or content appears above the fold, but no further details to share.  It is completely algorithmic in

iPads and iPhones make up over 90% of online purchases that don't happen on a desktop device. That means that 9 out of 10 mobile purchases come from an Apple product, a device that can't read anything in Flash. This is up from 88% when RichRelevance conducted the same study just last April. If your dealership mobile website uses Flash technology, the majority of those coming to your site from a mobile device won’t be able to see it. In fact, DealerOn customers typically see 2/3 of the traffic to their mobile website come from iPads and iPhones. Can you imagine if only 1/3 of your website visitors could actually see the content on your site?

I've written multiple pieces on how to properly set up and maintain your Google Places listing and account, but haven't touched on the mistakes you could be making, hurting your car dealership online marketing strategy.

Here are the places where you could really screw up your listing if you aren't careful:

Don't use a post office box. Even if this is where you get mail, make sure you use the actual address of your business.

Only enter the address into the address field.  That means no directions, no landmarks (turn left at the yellow building), and no descriptions.

Don't hide your address.  Google gives you the option of hiding your physical address--don't do it!  Google Places wants to be able to show users where you are located on a map, so let them.

Using a tracking number?  Stop.  Google has officially stated "Types of phone numbers that should not be included are: call tracking numbers and phone numbers that are not

 

Now that Google+ is open to businesses, many are trying to figure out the best way to utilize this new social media portal (including DealerOn).  I’ve gathered some of the more common mistakes that businesses are making to shorten the learning curve for auto dealerships.

Like all other social media sites, not posting on a regular basis can hurt your marketing efforts.  Consistently providing visitors with quality, worthwhile content is the best way to attract (and keep) potential dealership customers engaged in your social sharing.

Google+ really lends itself to sharing photos, so make sure you take full advantage.  Switch up your text posts with photos of your vehicles, dealership, and staff.  Make sure your profile photo identifies your dealership to help ensure your visitors know they’ve found the right Google+ page.

To further help identify your profile, make sure your tagline is clear and descriptive.  Use it as a way to stand

DealerOn.com, the premier auto dealer website provider is expanding its executive team to further accelerate the steady growth trajectory of its business.  DealerOn, Inc., a leading online marketing company serving the retail automotive industry – today announces the appointment of Gerard J. (Jerry) Petrotto to the newly-created position of Chief Sales Officer.

In announcing his appointment, Ali Amirrezvani, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, said, “We are delighted that Jerry is joining the DealerOn family.  Jerry brings a wealth of industry experience from his tenure at Black Book as Vice President of Retail Sales at the Online Division.  In his five years with Black Book, Petrotto was an integral member of an executive team that drove the meteoric growth of Black Book Online in the retail automotive sector.  His expertise with online sales distribution strategy, sales management, and product merchandising will be indispensible to DealerOn’

HTML5 has been in the tech news lately, especially since Adobe announced that they are going to stop developing Flash in favor of HTML5 on mobile browsers. This doesn’t mean the company is abandoning the technology on desktops, but according to Mike Chambers, the lead in Adobe developer relations, “a lot of the things that you have done via Flash in the past will increasingly be done via HTML5 and CSS3…”.

Google recently announced a new update to their search engine algorithm that puts a greater emphasis on recently published, fresh content. "This change...promotes fresher results...so that we provide users the most relevant answers to their queries," according to a Google spokesperson. Regularly updated content has always been a positive ranking factor in SEO, but this announcement from Google makes it that much more important. So how can your dealership use this change to help your dealer site rank better?

DealerOn, the premier auto dealer website provider, announces that two of their auto dealership customers have been awarded Dataium Website Performance Awards for October 2011. Dataium uses various performance metrics collected from participating dealership websites to recognize auto dealerships and their website providers for their online performance. Volkswagen of Lithia Springs was awarded the Auto Shopper Intensity (ASI) Award and Joe Cecconi’s Chrysler Complex received the Best Performance: Leads per Auto Shopper Award.

Google, in an effort to help small business ensure they have an effective mobile website, has launched "GoMo". This website (http://www.howtogomo.com) lets users learn about why having a quality mobile site is important, test how your site looks in its mobile version, and find resources to help if your mobile site isn't quite up to par. I really like the option to see how your current site looks in mobile. From the homepage, click "See How Your Current Site Looks in Mobile", then "Test Your Site". Enter the URL of your dealership website to see how mobile users will see it. After answering a couple of questions about what you see, you'll get a report card of sorts that focuses on four potential mobile website hangups: Loading Speed, Images, Text, and Navigation.

For the most part, search engine optimization (SEO) is a recognized necessity of running a successful auto dealer website. Not just in the auto industry, but there are still some hold-outs that think building websites and content to be found by search engines is a little spammy. According to Matt Cutts, the head of Google's web spam fighting team, his company does not consider SEO to be spam. "We don't consider SEO to be spam," and SEO is a "valid way to help people find what they're looking for via search engines". While he does denounce black hat SEO tactics, Cutts emphasizes that Google's goal is to return the best possible search results they can, and sites with quality SEO help them achieve that goal.

The amount of "best practices" and "tips" involved with social media marketing can be overwhelming to say the least (and yes, I'm guilty of sharing my own).  In the spirit of KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid), here is a short list of Must-Do's for dealerships using social media as a part of their online marketing efforts:

Have a Plan: Before starting any marketing campaign, your dealership should have a plan.  When it comes to social media, make sure you consider (and answer) things like:


What is your goal?

Why are we investing time and resources into this particular social media site?

Who are we trying to reach with this campaign?


Optimize: As with your auto dealer website, your social media efforts should have search engine optimization as a focus.  This not only means the content you post, but also your profiles.  Use keywords that your customers are using to search for your dealership online in your summary, backlink t

Having videos on your auto dealer website has been shown to increase website leads, and when done with video search engine optimization (VSEO), helping your site climb the search engine result pages.  If your dealership has videos on your website, you should have those videos uploaded to your own dealership YouTube channel.

Here's why:

Popularity: YouTube is the world's largest video search engine (and the second largest search engine) and growing every single day.  People all over the world use it to find videos, so if someone searches for a vehicle that your dealership sells, don't you want a video from your dealership to show up?

Timing: Like most search engines, YouTube tends to give older entries a little extra edge when returning search results.  The sooner you create your channel and upload videos, the better.

Cost: YouTube is free.  Aside from the time cost of uploading (though it's possible your auto dealer website or video provide

While many dealers see press releases as a marketing strategy for larger companies, it can be (and is) a valuable and worthwhile strategy for auto dealerships as well. It’s a great way to get news about your company out both locally and nationally. Press releases can make their way into both local and national news sources, helping your dealership brand itself within the community, as well as show up more often and higher on the search engine result pages. Here are some ways your dealership can get the most out of each press release you create:

It is so frustrating when trying to send a legitimate, valuable email to a customer (future or current), and have it be blocked by a spam filter. While there are some auto dealers that do send emails that might be properly classified as spam, most dealers who have spam issues are sending real emails to real customers. Their email campaigns are being inappropriately blocked by various spam filters. Here are some tips to avoid the dreaded spam filter in your customer's email inbox:

 

The verdict on Google+ for personal use still seems to be out for many (myself included).  But according to Christian Oestlien, group product manager for social advertising at Google has said that they are “close to unveiling Google+ business profiles”.

 

Only Ford and GM have official profiles right now (interesting that they are both automotive brands).  Some businesses have created profiles, even though most sit blank; just so you know, there isn’t a limit to how many times a name can be used, so no need to claim your dealership’s name ahead of time.  I see this being a problem in the future.  Google+ will need a way to verify business accounts, much like Twitter and Google Places have, or I think they will lose out on some trust.

 

Will your dealership take another look at using Google+ once businesses are allowed?  What if Google+ ends up integrating with Google Places?

For those out that use Google AdWords for your auto dealer website, this is big news.  After some testing in foreign markets, Google has announced that they are changing the algorithm used to determine the Quality Score of PPC ads to give landing page quality more weight.

According to Jonathan Alferness, director of product management on Google’s ad quality team, Google wants their advertisers to focus on relevance and “choose a landing page…that is both relevant to the keywords that you’re targeting and also a good experience for end users.”

This algorithm change will “result in better quality experience for the users” and those ads with a high quality, relevant landing page will get a “strong boost” upward in the auction.

Now more than ever, your dealership can’t afford to ignore where you’re sending your PPC traffic.  Having a webpage that uses relevant keywords and gives users the content and exper