Are you unsure if your dealership's SEO is going in the right direction? Are you confused on what metrics and filtering you should use to show success? Join PCG Digital Marketing's Chief SEO Strategist Matthew O'Such for this important webinar to learn how to use Google Analytics and website platform reporting tools to track your success. The webinar will take place on Thursday, May 23, 2013 at 1:00PM EST. During this webinar, Matthew will explain: Google Analytics advanced filters and segments  Branded and non branded traffic to your website  Goal tracking  Advanced SEO techniques to achieve success  Plus, Matthew will be covering Capital Ford LINCOLN's case study for an overall traffic increase of over 80% from organic and paid search.   If you are any of the following, you should not miss this webinar:  General Managers  Dealer Principals  Internet Sales Managers  General Sales Managers  Marke... Read Post

By Brian Pasch Haystak Digital Marketing is now part of the Autotrader family of companies serving car dealers.  The announcement further enhances the products that Autotrader can offer dealers to merchandise and advertise their inventory and dealership services.  In recent years other acquisitions have included Kelley Blue Book, vAuto, and VinSolutions.   Haystak Digital Marketing was spun out of Moore & Scarry a few years ago.  Moore & Scarry is an full service advertising agency with headquarters in Ft Myers Florida.   According to the official press release, VinSolutions is the purchaser. The search engine market place is crowded with well established providers, so what’s different?  Haystak Digital Marketing in recent years has stormed the automotive marketplace offering car dealers VIN level pay-per-click advertising, regardless of website platform dealers use to run their business. Automated Adwords campaigns based on in-s... Read Post

How confident are you that your digital marketing campaigns are delivering incremental sales each month?  Are you aware of the most common mistakes dealers make when using Google Adwords?   What is new in digital marketing that is helping dealers jump to the next level in monthly sales? If you would like sneak peak from leaders who will be sharing their insights and training at the upcoming 4th Annual Boot Camp, register for this free webinar today. The webinar will be held at 1pm on Monday April 15th 2013.  The webinar will last for one hour.   Q&A from the audience will be allowed for another 30 minutes. Brian Pasch, CEO of PCG Consulting will be moderating the webinar.  We are pleased to have three digital advertising educators on this webinar: - Dmitriy Gamarnik - PCG Digital Marketing - Chris Deringer - DealerOn - Jason Wiley - Haystak Digital Marketing As part of a new series of educational presentations leading up to ... Read Post

​Are you engaging your web traffic? Are you interested in getting more leads for your business? Then you need to learn about Gubaggo. Gubagoo is an “On-Site” Behavioral Engagement & Scoring Technology called the B.E.A.S.T., making “Anonymous” web traffic identifiable through a behavior score index. B.E.A.S.T makes it easy to engage or re-engage with your customers because of data collected about website visitors like Vehicle of Interest, Repeat Visits, Time Spent on Pages, High Traffic URLs and more. Pete Orlando will join Brian Pasch for a special Gubagoo demonstration. The duo will host a webinar on Thursday April 11, 2013 at 1PM EST. Learn all about the Gubagoo services and how they can help car dealers with "Making Leads Happen!" Register for the exclusive Gubagoo webinar here. ... Read Post

The 2012 DrivingSales Executive Summit (DSES) was one of the most impressive automotive conferences that I have attended.  The conference attracted close to 1,000 attendees, which more than doubled attendance from last year.   Congratulations to Jared Hamilton and the DrivingSales team for a job well done.   A popular thread to many of the speakers and workshops at DSES was “Big Data”; a new term for car dealers but not so new in other industries.  The term refers to how businesses can leverage the massive amounts of structured and unstructured data that is being collected every day electronically.   One example of structured data is the information that is typed into checkout forms on websites like Amazon.com.  Following this example, unstructured data would be the history of page views and clicks consumers make on Amazon.com while shopping. Unstructured data can also include how consumers came to the website; organic searc... Read Post

If you haven't noticed, about 14% of dealership website visitorsare coming on mobile devices with another 5% on tablets.  Your numbers may vary slightly but dealers would be remiss if they did not take mobile shoppers seriously. Google searches done on mobile phones have a different urgency compared to searches done on mobile devices. How do I know this?  The Google Adwords campaigns that I run for mobile devices have a Click Through Rate (CTR) that is four times that of normal SEM campaigns that target desktop users. The conversion rates on mobile ads range from 30-40% which includes many phone calls generated by the "Click to Call" feature that Adwords provides.  If you are not investing in mobile paid search, take a minute to read why I strongly encourage you to get started immediately. Mobile Advertising and Device Targeting   If you are not familiar with Google Adwords options for mobile devices, speak with the Adwords man... Read Post

I was visiting a dealership recently and the General Manager I was speaking with got a bit agitated when I asked him about their technology infrastructure.  In the past quarter, their store had gone through a website changeover that was painful, negatively impacted by the recent HomeNet upgrade, and experienced a CRM Server hardware failure which caused 14 days of CRM downtime. I didn't catch on to the depth of his frustration while I was talking about "new" ideas and strategies that he could implement at his store.  At one point he stopped me, and looked in my eyes and said:   "Brian, I have never seen such a lack of reliability over the past 24 months from my automotive vendor partners.  It seems like vendors are sprinting to introduce more new features or introducing a new product but I don't think anyone is really testing them very well.  I just want the products I bought to work so that I can run my business!&quo... Read Post

It is very common in the automotive industry, which relies heavily on the Internet to provide sales prospects, to put a great deal of pressure on Internet/BDC departments to answer leads in a timely fashion.   In fact, some OEM's hold dealers to a time-clock; they must respond to leads personally within a set number of minutes.  Is your dealership focused on lead response time?  Do your employees that work in the Internet Department have emails also coming to their cell phones so that they can respond promptly to leads when they are out to lunch, traveling to a meeting, or after hours when the store is closed?  For many of you, the answers to the questions above would be "yes, of course we do!".   This is even more common in smaller stores where the Internet department is only one or two people. So what if I told you that unless the dealership have a specific policy and training program in place, the leads that y... Read Post

Jason Stein, a writer for Automotive News, broke the story today that TrueCar has ended their exclusive relationship with Yahoo to drive traffic and leads to the TrueCar platform.  The breakup was due to the lack of traffic and leads that Yahoo was producing. According the the article "Under the revised deal, TrueCar's payments to Yahoo will be triggered when TrueCar receives a minimum number of leads and a minimum number of high-quality leads from Yahoo Autos, according to a TrueCar source. Terms of those minimums were not disclosed. " This does not surprise me especially when Cars.com walked away from Yahoo Autos.  It would seem that the price that Yahoo thinks exposure on Yahoo Autos is worth is highly overpriced. On another note, TrueCar.com has been working hard with dealers and regulators to get their business model in full compliance with state laws.  Get ready for TrueCar 2.0.  ... Read Post

The turmoil has continued since Google announced that Google+ Local would be using a new review system in lieu of the old Google Places "five-star" rating system. Dealers have been having trouble posting reviews from Apple iOS devices.  For many dealers, the review button was no longer visible on iPhone and iPads. Google+ Local App For iPhones This week something unexpected occurred when I chose to bulk update my apps on my iPhone.  The former Google Places  app was replaced by the Google+ Local App and a new icon design was introduced, highlighted in the red box on the right. The new version of the App makes it easy to post reviews on Google+ Local.  I recommend that all dealers update their iPhone and iPads so that they can continue to use their devices to encourage Google users to post reviews.   The New Look of Reviews The Google+ Local App business search feature is the same format as before, and I have included a few... Read Post

I received a call yesterday from a Dealer that was negatively impacted by the Google Penguin update.  Their organic search traffic is down about 25% and they asked me to take a look at their Analytics and Webmaster Tools. The frustrating part is that their marketing and "SEO Company" deleted the message inside of Webmaster Tools alerting the dealer that Google had some concerns about the linking strategy used by the dealership.   So without a specific message to go on, I looked at the links that were built. What I noticed was that this "SEO Company" had submitted their site to a number of sketchy directory (link building) websites that would be classified as link farms. If you need an example of what these sites look like, check out:  http://directorywebsitesubmit.com  From the screen shot on the right you can see that this is a very attractive and professional site.  NOT. Well in any case, their website URL on this site alone ha... Read Post

Google Adwords is utilized by many dealers for paid search marketing, which is no surprise to readers.  However, what is surprising are the "sloppy" campaigns that are being operated. Dealers have not been coached on how to inspect the work of their search marketing partners.   I hope that this article will bring to light a need to manually spot check paid search campaigns each month.  Here is a simple example that I randomly found on Tuesday when I was teaching a workshop on Paid Search marketing for Fixed Operations. Is It Hard to Create Fixed Operations Campaigns? You will notice that the Greater New York Toyota Tier 2 advertising "fund" is running PPC on behalf of dealers in the NY/NJ metro area.  I typed in a specific search for Toyota brakes and they are serving up an ad that has nothing to do with service.   If a consumer clicks on the ad highlighted in red, they are taken to this page: This page has nothing of v... Read Post

I was reviewing an active paid search marketing campaign that was focused on MOBILE devices and here are the stats from the last 30 days: The mobile campaign uses "conversion" data as a combination of mobile phone calls and leads.  Are your mobile campaigns delivering the same value for you dealership?  Over 20% of dealership website visits are from mobile devices so what is your paid search strategy for mobile shoppers ?   The mobile marketing results for this dealership were very attractive. Why buy 3rd party leads for more money when you can generate 1st party mobile leads at half the price?  Mobile marketing MUST be a separate marketing strategy and NOT combined with other strategies. Mobile Frustration Recently I had a dealer "panic" about the fact that message links that were sent via Twitter where not directly accessible to consumers surfing on mobile devices.  The issue was that the dealer's mobile w... Read Post

The final keynote speaker at the 2012 Automotive Boot Camp was Patrick Kelly, President and COO of CAR-Research.  Prior to this event, I never had the pleasure to see Patrick speak and let me say that I was blown away with his passion and knowledge of the car business. I was familar with the CAR-Research CRM product called XRM, which was won the Dealer Satisfaction Awards for CRM software presented by DrivingSales.  What I did not know is that CAR-Research has a full-time call center and research center that dealers can leverage to ensure that sales and customer service processes are being followed. We all have read statistics on how poorly leads, calls, and existing customer follow-up is in the automotive industry.  Every dealership employee knows that there are times when too many leads, calls, or ups flood the dealership and processes go out the window. What  ... Read Post

Anyone who has been watching the grow of Google Analytic's feature set may not surprised by today's announcement that Google Website Optimizer is being shutdown and a similar feature called "Content Experiments" will be added to Google Analytics. Google Website Optimizer was used to create A/B testing scenarios to see which elements of your website design could be changed to increase desired outcomes.  A/B testing is very popular in other industries however in the automotive retail industry, design changes are normally mandated by the OEM or rarely tested by the dealer once installed.  On a different but related note, Google Analytics has also added a very important set of  "Social Media" tools and has introduced a new concept called "Social Media Assists".  Google Analytics is becoming a very important software platform that dealers need to leverage to investigate the ROI of their marketing investments.  I'll be ... Read Post

Have you been frustrated with Google Places?  If you have, you are not alone.   Be patient because good news is on the way. To recognize the inevitable changes that are planned for Google Places, you just need to step back and look at Google's current business focus on Social, Local, and Mobile (So-Lo-Mo). Google Places is an old technology that is broken.  Dealers have reported that their reviews appear and disappear on a regular basis. Google Places business addresses and phone numbers have been reports to revert back to older versions that were updated.   Have you had any Google Places horror stories? Google+ For Businesses When Google announced that business owners could create a Google+ directory page for their business, it was the first sign that change was underway.   When dealers create their Google+ business page, it should be no surprise that dealers are displayed with matching results of a phone number search from non ... Read Post

The other day a long time friend shot me a note to say that my Facebook account was hacked.  I really appreciated the call but when I checked my account, it was not hacked.   I had allowed the "would be hacker" permission to post on my Facebook page. What had happened was that I saw a "funny" video posted on a friends website.  When I clicked to view the video, it requested that I use my Facebook login to view it. The implied permission gave the video website the ability to post what I watched to my Facebook profile any time I watched a video on their site.   Needless to say the video was not one I wanted to broadcast to my friends and colleagues; a parody of Wallmart shoppers caught in what you might call embarrassing poses.   As more websites use your Facebook account as the login key, I wanted to advise everyone to conduct an AUDIT of all the websites you have given access to your Facebook account.   When I did m... Read Post

Mobile Adwords campaign investments are becoming an important aspect in dealership digital marketing strategies.  Smartphone advertising is a unique opportunity to get to the top of the smaller screen which consumers view multiple times a day.  If a business is marketing to consumers that would search for their products and services "on the go", mobile pay-per-click and mobile display advertising is a must.  All dealers should be using mobile Adwords formats.   I was reviewing the success that our clients are having with mobile paid search and was thinking that body/collision shops could be an ideal candidate for paid mobile search.  If a consumer is involved in an accident that does not disable their car, they will be searching for a local body shop to fix their car immediately.     How many consumers will do that right after the accident on their smartphone?   If not right away, isn't it worth running Ad... Read Post

My team and I have been very busy this year producing dealer assessment reports.   The goal of these reports are to benchmark the dealer's current Internet/BDC operations, staff phone skills, website merchandizing, budget effectiveness, and the strength of their digital marketing investments.   The research culminates with a final report which often includes: - Summary of Online Reviews — - Brand Leaks or Distractions —- Paid Search Campaigns —- Video Marketing Campaigns —- Social Media Engagement - Functionality/Engagement of Website - Results of Mystery Shops & Phone Skills - Review of Marketing Budget The report also includes immediate market opportunities and recommended actions.  The need in the marketplace for this research and guidance has been confirmed by dealer demand.  Executives want to know how to fix the things that they can't see or don't know to look for. ... Read Post

I love the automotive business and the diversity of people that I meet at conferences, 20 Groups, and of course online on DrivingSales.com.   There are so many success stories in automotive retail but in order to sustain success, car dealers need to be developing the next generation of leaders. How is your dealership developing leaders?  Passing the torch from generation to generation is not easy.   Some second and third generation dealer principals have struggled to grow on the past success of their parents or grandparents.   Others have flourished to built a multi-generation, multi-million dollar business enterprise. One thing I know from personal experience, is that there are many smart people in the world to learn from.  Many of these leaders have published books that are a wealth of knowledge to develop leaders.  Are you an avid reader?  Does your dealership have a leadership reading library? Two Books You Must Read I'm on ... Read Post

YouTube is the second most popular search engine, so my question to you is how are you leveraging this platform?   I've been writing over the past year about the importance of video marketing and video optimization. I wanted to enhance those marketing suggestions with a quick discussion about the YouTube promoted video program.  It's the Adwords equivalent on YouTube. Take a look at the search I did on YouTube for a keyword "2012 Honda Accord" below.  Notice that only ONE video was "promoted" for this keyword (highlighted in green) and it was not for a local dealer.  Promoted videos are like PPC ads that dealers run on search engine results pages. Notice how many VIEWS the four videos under the promoted video received for this keyword, which are highlighted in red.  Over 110,000 views on four videos for this keyword.  It is clear that this keyword, or a variation on it, is being used by consumers and the video th... Read Post

Lately there has been significant buzz about a statement that Matt Cutts made at SXSW in regards to a project that Google has been working on.  This project, is designed, according to Cutts, to level the playing field for websites that don't do any SEO but have good content.   If I interpret his statement correctly, Google is trying to give Page One ranking to the most relevant content to the person searching regardless if the author had a budget or knowledge about proper website page formatting, links, keywords, and/or social signals.   Whether this can be done, will only be seen over time. White Hat SEO strategies are working well today.  It is clear to me that social signals can influence search rankings today just like White Hat SEO tactics in the past.  Companies or authors with strong social followings can already "game" SERP's with social influence and instant traffic. I think the cheese has already moved and this c... Read Post

Dealers, if you have been having problems with Google Places, this may be the right time to join the Google+ Hangout. I just received a call from the Google Jumpstart Auto Team about an event that is scheduled for tomorrw.   Join +Joel Headley and +Vanessa Schneider at 11 a.m. PST this Wednesday, April 4, 2012, as they discuss Google Places for business.  To join the Hangout, follow this link:  Google Places Hangout I know that many of you have tried to escalate your questions and issues with Google Places and have not gotten very far.  I understand your frustration, and I encourage you to be patient.  Things will be getting better in the future. How do I join a hangout?   You must be in a video conference room or have a video chat camera on your computer Next, login to Google using an existing gmail address or creating a new one (you can login to Google by visiting Google.com and clicking on the '&#... Read Post

The last time I wrote about specific dealership practices online, I got tremendous negative feedback from the dealer community about calling out a dealer by name.  Fortunately, this time someone else started the ball rolling and I thought it was important enough to volley back. +Ben Popken is the founding editor of Consumerist, and runs Stealerships, Jalopnik's aptly-named consumer protection section.  In an article he posted on Jalopnik, Ben shares how College Park Hyundai was marking up Door Edge Guards $1,495 when other dealers in the market were so much more realistic. Ben called a few local dealerships, including my client Pohanka Hyundai of Marlow Heights,  to compare costs.  Pohanka told Ben the door guards were $100 at their store and could not explain the price demanded by College Park Hyundai. Commenting about the markup pratice, Popken closes he piece with these words. "With such a huge markup, College Park is able to advertise a low... Read Post

Tonight I was speaking with some very successful Wall Street executives and I asked one gentleman: "What has the formula for success?"  His response triggered a number of thoughts about the automotive industry. He told me that success was not guaranteed year after year or month after month.  What worked very well last year was not necessarily what would work this year.  The formula for success in fact was the trader's ability to adapt and change to market conditions. Moreover, he stated that successful traders reinvented themselves on a regular basis.  At this point I started to see some parallel paths in our industry. How many dealers are sticking to advertising, marketing, and customer service strategies that worked 10, 15, or 20 years ago.  They are convinced that staying with what worked "back in the day" can still be relevant today. To their credit, some things never change.  Providing a great customer experience and ... Read Post

So a week has passed since dozens of dealers found out that their Google Places pages were updated inadvertantly by a massive update by Google.  

The original goal of this update was to "claim" and/create listings for dealers that had never claimed their Google Places pages.

The blogs have been filled with critical commentary regarding the update which GM participated in with Google, but as we have come to find out, the update impacted more than just GM stores.  

For many dealers their listing is in a state of "purgatory"; not publicly fixed although their Google Places login shows the correct data.

Without any direct conversations with GM, I think that GM recognized that a percentage of their dealer body was missing free traffic generated by Google Places.  Their intent was to help their dealer body get more traffic, leads, and calls.

For most dealers, Google Places ranks in the top 3 referring websites to a dealer's main domain. & Read Post

Lexus compliance has been reminding dealers that they may only use their factory approved URL for marketing if the word "Lexus" is in the URL.   This is not new in regards to their prohibition on microsites with the word "Lexus" in the domain name but recently I saw another variation on domain compliance. Social Media & Online Directory Compliance Dealers need to make sure that their primary OEM approved domain is the only website used to register business profiles on review sites like Google Places, DealerRater, Yelp, etc.  This also applies to any social media profiles that are setup with the dealership name. Lexus is intent on making sure that all public directories or social media sites that have a website URL are all directing to the approved domain. So before you get a compliance "strike" for your dealership, make sure you check all your business and social media assets carefully.   Brian  ... Read Post

If you are looking for ways to bring your search marketing strategy to the next level, one of the strongest opportunities will be to show your employees how to expand the visibility of their social connections to Google. Why should you take that action?   When a consumer (i.e. your employees) click on the  Google +1 button, their connected network of "friends" is influenced.  The greater the consumer's network, the greater their influence. I recently visited a dealer group that had 1,200 employees.  If each of these employees were trained on how to maximize their social network connections visible to Google, they could help the dealer increase their local search visibility very quickly.  This dealer could easily impact 30,000 - 50,000 local consumers if they trained their employees to invest 15-30 minutes of their time to assist the dealership with their local search visibility I hope you would agree that increasing local ... Read Post

Google's use of cookies to track consumer behavior on the web has been front and center in the news this past week. According to The Christian Science Monitor article Jeff Ward-Bailey: Google spent much of last week dodging criticism from Apple users about its online privacy practices. But when Microsoft got involved this week, that's when things got really interesting.   Users of Apple's Safari browser recently claimed that Google was violating their privacy by circumventing a mechanism the browser uses to disable tracking.   Here's what's (apparently) going on under the hood: by default, Safari disables third-party cookies, nuggets of code that companies can use to identify users returning to a site they've visited before, or to track what other sites they visit. Safari can accept cookies if a user explicitly gives permission, but Google's ad platform reportedly used a workaround to mimic approval of its cookies.   Wil... Read Post

There are many reasons why your dealership should be using Google+.  Content on the portal is being indexed well in Google search if you have the right strategy in place. One thing that you may not know is how to create a Title for your Google+ post when it only have ONE open box for content. The trick is to start your article off with a one line title.  Then surround the First Line of your post with asterisk..   The title of the blog post I created here in Google+ would look like: *Create Title Tags in Google+* When you save the post, Google+ will make what is BETWEEN the asterisks the title and use it as the title for search engines result pages.   This of course makes the Title part of your Google+ SEO strategy so think on the best balance between social and search. I hope you enjoyed the tip! Brian    Brian Pasch, CEO PCG Digital Marketing  Brian Pasch ... Read Post