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 yo...

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 t...

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...

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...

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 a...

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&...

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...

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...