Car dealers have an increasingly challenging task ahead of them as they have to continue to evaluate the latest digital advertising platforms, services, and related technology.

It is not uncommon for dealer principals to say that they are “sticking to what worked in the past” because they have no patience and specific strategy as they sort through the claims of automotive advertising partners.

Automotive Inventory Syndication & Marketing

PCG has created a whitepaper that will be released today at the Automotive Marketing Boot Camp in Orlando and it will be available for download at http://www.automotive-advertising.net.  Also keep in mind that the keynote speakers will be live broadcast on www.DrivingSalesTV.com starting at 7:30 pm tonight.

The PCG whitepaper is entitled "Evaluating Automotive Inventory Advertising Services" and its focus is on inventory syndication, advertising, and how to measure the ROI of these strategies.

Since many car dealers use platforms such as Autotrader.com, Cars.com, UsedCars.com, EveryCarListed.com, and Craigslist this is an important discussion on how to evaluate success with third party advertising strategies.

The whitepaper will be a living document. It will be revised periodically to include new entrants into the inventory advertising and syndication business. It will also be revised from data and commentary provided by the automotive community.

Consider the initial release on April 16, 2011 a starting point for many viewpoints and related discussions on dealer inventory advertising platforms and third party leads.

The goal of this whitepaper is to publish datasets and strategies to compare and contrast automotive advertising platforms. This information contained in this report will provide dealers with new ideas on how to evaluate their advertising and syndication choices.

As this document grows we will also include case study data from dealers who offer to share their results.

Dealer Centricity Scores Introduced

In addition to providing data on pricing models and lead quality we will also take a look at the way in which cars are displayed on the Internet. We will introduce Dealer Centricity Scores (DCS) as a measure of how many ads (potential brand leaks) are displayed on Vehicle Detail Pages (VDP).

We will also introduce one method of evaluating the ROI of popular inventory syndication platforms using a Cost Per Vehicle Detail Page Views formula created by Dennis Galbraith.

This approach is one way that Dennis suggests that a dealer can evaluate the benefits of upgrading from a basic advertising package to a premium package.

So if you would like to download the whitepaper, it will be available after 5:30 pm on April 16, 2011. After you have time to read the document, add your comments and suggestions how this whitepaper can be enhanced.

Sharing Your Data For Future Updates

If you would like to share data from your dealership to be added to future versions of the whitepaper, send me an email to: brian@pcgdigitalmarketing.com. We would love to get actual dealer data from ALL platforms listed in the whitepaper.

Here is an announcement that I received today from Google:

At Google, we’re always working to innovate and improve ways for small businesses to get online and reach more customers. At times, though, we have to decide where to focus our efforts and which technologies we expect will yield the most benefit to users and businesses like you in the long run.


In that spirit, we are retiring Google Tags for all users on April 29, 2011. No action is required on your part, and your Places account and listing will continue to work as usual. Effective today, no new tags can be created, but all active tags will keep running to the end of April for free.


In your Places account, you’ll be able to see billing history until July 31st. If your tag is active, performance data will be available from now until May 31st. Historical performance data of inactive tags will be available in your dashboard starting May 2nd until May 31st.

This is an interesting development...more to think about. I'll keep you posted on related news once I get back the Automotive Marketing Boot Camp.

Bing has decided to update their sleepy Business Listing product with all the focus that the market has placed on Google Places. Bing has always had an equivalent to Google Places called Bing Local Listing Center but now they have made a major upgrade and renamed it to Bing Business Portal.

New Interface and Features

I'm commonly asked if Bing and Yahoo are relevant and the answer is yes.

Having an updated Business Profile on Bing is an easy and relevant task to complete today. If you have an existing login, like a hotmail account, when you created your Bing Local Listing profile it will work with this new system.

If you have an existing account, use the "Sign In Here" button shown above on the right.

We just moved our office so I had to update our business address but there are additional features with the new product that should be completed. Take time to upload up to 9 great photos of your business. I suggest that you load up happy customer photos, photos of your work in the community, and limit shots of your facility.

You can also add products that you sell and any special deals or promotions (see graphic on right). Keep in mind that you should keep promotions general unless you have a process to update the deals each month.

Make sure you phone number, address, and website are synchronized with the data on Google Places. This recommendation applies to all business listing websites. Use the same address and phone number to create multiple source that can be used to validate your primary address and phone number.

Bing Business Portal Tools

Once you have completed your profile, make sure you click on the Publish/RePublish Button. (See above) Once published, Bing Business Portal will allow you to print Window Stickers with your store hours, print QR Codes, and it also creates a simple mobile website with your business data.

The idea of a simple mobile website or window stickers may not excite car dealers but think about the thousands of small businesses that don't have website or tools to create POS marketing materials. If you haven't noticed lately, banks and credit car companies are pushing "instant" website products as a value add upsell.

Get Busy

Bing is a relevant search engine and you should take advantage of any free tools to help connect your business with consumers. So get started today and visit http://www.bing.com/businessportal.

Bing Business Portal also has a "review" feature so once your listing is completed, include this site into your managed IRM processes.

PCG Digital Marketing is pleased to announce that DrivingSalesTV.com will be live broadcasting the keynote speakers from the 2011 Automotive Marketing Boot Camp (AMBC) in Orlando which starts on Saturday April 16th.

The AMBC conference has attracted top dealers, industry leaders, educators, and motivational speakers for this two and a half day educational event.

The content from the 25+ workshops and educational sessions will not be broadcast live, only the 10 speakers listed below.

Dealers who would like to attend the Boot Camp in Florida can call Renee McGowan at 732.450.8200 ext 5 or you can register online. Deadline for registration is Friday April 15, 2011.

Walk-in registrations will not be permitted.

The schedule of live broadcasts is listed below based on Eastern Standard Time (EST) and you can visit www.drivingsalestv.com to register to view the broadcasts.

Saturday April 16, 2011

7:45 pm Brice Englert from Dominion Dealer Solutions

8:30 pm Brian Pasch, CEO of PCG Digital Marketing

Sunday April 17th

8:00 am Best Selling Author Bob Burg – presents “Endless Referrals: The Go-Giver Way”

12:15 pm Daimen Boyd General Sales Manager-Automotive Marketing at NetBiz.com

1:00 pm Tracy Myers, Dealer Principal at Frank Myers AutoMaxx

7:15 pm Egon Smola – VP, New and Used Car Leads Businesses at Dealix

8:15 pm Erin Touponse - Director of Communications for the Harte Auto Group

Monday April 18th

8:00 am Best Selling Authors Jimmy Vee and Travis Miller – “Gravitational Marketing”

12:15 pm Allan Chell - President of cDemo Mobile Solutions

8:30 pm Brian Pasch, CEO of PCG Digital Marketing

As car dealers start to test the effectiveness of Google Boost I just want to remind members of this community on an important fact about Google Boost. If you don't have an IRM process in place that gets happy customers to post reviews, you will not be able to leverage this promising advertising option.

As I conduct 20 Group meetings around the country, there still are many dealers that have less than 10 reviews posted on Google Places. In most cases, when you have a small number of reviews on Google Places they represent the unhappy customers who took the time to vent online.

More Reasons to Engage in IRM

If you plan to leverage your great customer experience and start a proactive reputation management process, I would encourage you to make sure you encourage customer reviews directly on Google Places. This will allow you to test Google Boost with a strong number of stars showing on your paid ads.

This is not to say abandon posting to sites like Dealerrater.com but if that site has been your main focus for the past year, I would implement processes to get customers to post reviews directly on Google Places for a while.

Google will always show reviews that are directly posted on Google Places. You don't know when Google will show reviews from 3rd party sites. If you invest too much energy in sites other than Google Places, what happens when Google turns off including that site into their roll-up feed?

Once you have a balance of good reviews on all websites that Google rolls up, I would transition to a stronger focus in direct Google Places reviews.

Generate Over a Hundred Reviews a Month With Ease

One of the easiest ways to do this is using the Google Places App which can be loaded on an iPhone, iPad, or Droid smartphone. The best time to capture a customer review is when everyone is hugging and kissing in your dealership.

Now that you have this knowledge, get busy and leverage the hundreds or thousands of customers that can post a review directly from their own iPhone or Droid in your service lane and/or while they are in the F & I process. You just have to ask.

POS Tent Cards

You download this tent card artwork in the PDF provided (IRM Tent Cards) and go to the printer and print these TENT CARDS. Place them on the desks of your F&I staff.

Ask your customers if they have a Google Account during the F&I process. If they say yes, and about 30-50% will say yes, get them to commit to posting from the store while they wait at the desk.

They can post using the Google Places App (free) from their own smart phone. You can also hand them your iPhone or an iPad and they can use their own Google Account to login and post a review. It's that simple. Google wants consumers to post reviews while they are in a store, restaurant, hotel, or event.

Boot Camp Assists Dealers With IRM and Google Places

At the Automotive Marketing Boot Camp in Orlando, which starts this Saturday April 16th, Jeff Kershner and Glenn Pasch will be conducting a workshop on the latest strategies for Reputation Management.

I will be conducting a workshop of the latest Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies which includes a section on Google Places Optimization (GPO).

I hope to see you in Orlando. You can still register at: http://www.automotivemarketingbootcamp.com or call 732.450.8200 ext 5 and ask for Renee McGowan.

You can also download the PDF brochure by clicking on this link: Boot Camp Color Brochure

The Automotive Marketing Boot Camp which starts on Saturday April 16th truly has something for everyone in the automotive industry and that include attendees that are focused on personal fitness and increasing their energy levels naturally.

Prior to the start of each day's automotive training workshops, Rick Ivone will be leading Boot Camp attendees in a morning fitness and stretching program.

According to Ivone "Anyone attending the morning workout sessions will have more energy throughout the day and not less."  If you have attended automotive conferences in the past, you know very well that a full day of courses can drain your energy!

Ivone is the personal trainer and business coach to PCG Digital Marketing CEO, Brian Pasch. Rick is also a Type One Diabetic with an amazing story that will be shared with attendees of the Boot Camp.

The morning workout sessions start at 5:30 am and are designed for people at all fitness levels. Rick Ivone encourages all who are registered for the Boot Camp to start the day with movement.

Ivone added "We were created to move and movement creates energy. I'll be showing attendees who to burn fat and not sugar as part of the morning sessions.

Most people don't know the difference and their home workout and running sessions are not helping them to burn fat. We have unlimited supplies of fat which creates clean burning fuel for our bodies."

Slow Burn by Stu Mittleman

All attendees of the morning training sessions will also receive a free copy of "Slow Burn" by US ultra marathon record holder Stu Mittleman.

Stu set the world record for the 1,000 mile run as well as setting numerous ultra-long distance running records.

Stu is a unique individual and close friend of Brian Pasch and Rick Ivone.

Slow Burn discusses how to properly burn fat from exercise and how to avoid burning sugars to maintain high energy levels. The book will change your thoughts on running and exercise forever.

Start Your Day With Movement

As exciting as the Boot Camp program will be, nothing will prepare your mind and body for the speakers and workshop leaders than proper movement. Attendees are encouraged to attend the morning workout sessions.

Questions about the morning program can be addressed to Rick Ivone at: rick@rickivone.com

If you plan on attending, please send Rick a note via email so he can plan accordingly.

You Can Still Register For Boot Camp

Dealers can register for the Boot Camp online at http://www.automotivemarketingbootcamp.com or you can call Renee McGowan at 732.450.8200 ext 5.

I love my 1969 Superbee and as much as I enjoy the ride, there are a few things that give me reason to be careful when driving this classic.

Today we have grown accustom to air bags, superb braking and handling technology, surround sound stereo, iPod connectors, and the convenience of navigation systems. All of these conveniences are not included in this enhanced 1969 Dodge Coronet frame.

At 80 miles per hour on the Garden State Parkway I admittedly do not feel as safe as I do in my 2010 Infiniti G37x Sedan. A car that was once deemed safe in 1969 is now marginally acceptable. Did I mention that the Superbee lap belts just don't feel right without a shoulder harness?

Holding On To The Past

Its in our human nature to remember more of the "good times" when we were younger than the bad. We relish the memories of our high school cars whether it was a Superbee, Chevelle, Charger, Camaro, or some clunker. Cars were much simpler and working under the hood was easy. 

Members of DrivingSales.com, what was your favorite car in high school or college?

Today, some dealers want to believe that the strategies that they used to marketing their dealership in the 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's are basically the same today. I think they want to remember easier times and less complicated processes. They are hooked on how easy it was to work "under the hood" of their dealership in the past.

However, the reality is that in the past 10 years, marketing and operating a car dealership requires a significant investment in education that may be unparalleled in recent automotive history.

I might concede that once a consumer walks into a dealership not much has changed in the past 10 years. However, getting customers in the door and how dealer connect with consumers in your local market has drastically changed.

Are You Using Retro Marketing Strategies

The cure for the 1969 Blues? Education and Engagement. There are a number of great opportunities for dealers to learn from their peers. There are ample opportunities to read great case studies of dealers who are leading the way in new marketing strategies. They are not found in the trunk of a 1969 Dodge Superbee.

They are found in great online communities like DrivingSales.com. They are found at great conferences like the Automotive Marketing Boot Camp. There are also found on an emerging breed of online universities and teaching communities like www.DrivingSalesUniversity.com.

I estimate that less than 10% of dealership employees are attending live conferences and participating in online communities to grow their knowledge and refine the career path. This is embarrassing and so 1969! It's time to invest in the staff that will become the next generation of car dealers.

With that said, I hope to see many community members in Orlando on April 16th!

One way to build the next generation of leaders and success stories is to start a reading program at your dealership.  At the start of this year I made a commitment to read a book a week and it has been the best decision I made for my personal growth.

Great books will challenge your team to think outside of their direct work experience and see new opportunities for growth, change, and excellence.    Your reading program can be divided into categories like personal growth, sales, time management,  or organizational leadership.

Books are an inexpensive way to grow your existing investment in your team.   So before I list all most favorite books that can assist your team to grow, can you list 5 books that would help members of this community.  

When you list a book, add a quick comment which category the book would fall into like sales, marketing, etc.  It will be great to compile a DrivingSales.com recommend book list and have members add their feedback on specific books after they read them.

Two books that dealership employees can start reading today is "The Go-Giver" by Bob Burg and John David Mann and "Gravitational Marketing' by Jimmy Vee and Travis Miller.  The authors of these two books will be speaking at the Automotive Marketing Boot Camp April 16-18th in Orlando.

For vendors in the community, I strongly recommend that you read "Getting Naked" since this short book will change the way you interact with car dealers.

So, what are your top 5 recommendations for book this community should read?

Every day there are opportunities to learn, grow, and serve. I want to thank Paul Potratz for indirectly reminding me the power of remarketing campaigns. How did this learning take place you may ask? Well, all I had to do is visit his website. So before I continue, take a minute to visit http://www.ppadv.com so you can better understand the lesson I learned.

You see once you visit his website, you will be "haunted" by banner ads from Potratz Advertising on websites that you surf. Haunting is a good adjective in this case. Paul's remarketing campaign keeps the Potratz brand message in front of consumers (and me) who visited his website. These haunting banners are displayed on thousands of third party websites in a remarketing network.

His smiling face was on his banner ads that followed me around the Internet which forced me to dig into the subject of remarketing once again. For this, I have to thank Paul because the opportunities I discovered for my own business and automotive advertising is significant.
 

Leveraging Your Existing Website Traffic

Have you ever wondered how you could leverage the thousands of visitors that come to your website every month in a new way? Have you ever asked how you could market to the mystery shoppers that view your vehicles but never call or submit a lead?

The average car dealer get's between 3,000 - 5,000 unique visitors a month so wouldn't you like to automatically follow these consumers as they shop on competitive websites? How about having your ads show up on review websites, metro information websites, and popular automotive websites to people who already visited your site?

If you are answering yes to any of these questions, then continue reading.

Re-Marketing Campaigns Leverage Visitor Traffic

If you have never taken time to learn about remarketing which is also known as retargeting, I'll provide a simple summary. Remarketing campaigns are offered by many companies including Reach Local, Cobalt, as well as Google Adwords.

Since many readers are using Google Adwords already, let me review how you can add re-marketing lists to your existing Adwords Ad Groups.

• - Google Adwords groups keywords and ads into Ad Groups. Let's assume a dealer has an Ad Group setup to market the 2011 Ford F-150. In this Ad Group a dealer would include keywords associated with the Ford F-150.
• - The dealer would also create text ads and banner ads which have a call to action message to purchase or test drive a Ford F-150 from their dealership.
• - These ads, when clicked go to a landing page. In this case, let's assume it goes to an optimized landing page for the Ford F-150 on the dealer's website. This landing page has clear calls to action and engages the consumer.
• - Even the best landing pages do not convert high percentages of visitors into leads or calls. Re-marketing allows you to get a few more tries at winning over this PPC visitor. (see graphic above)
• - What you need to do is to create a "tag" that will track anonymous visitors to this F-150 landing page. You do this by going to the "Audience Tab" on your Ford F-150 Ad Group, and click on the "Add Audiences" button.

• - Once you click on "Add Audiences" you will be asked to select a "remarketing list" but you will not have any. This means you need to create a remarketing list. In this example, your remarketing list will be all people who visit your F-150 landing page.
• - To create your remarketing list, click on "Create and Manage Lists" on the page and you can now define your list.
• - Then click on the button "New Audience" and select "Remarketing list" from the drop-down menu. Notice that I have created two other remarketing lists which can each have a membership duration.

• - We'll pick a name for our list as "Ford F-150 Landing Page Visitors". (see below)
• - You will add a description to remember what this tag was created for and set the duration. Since car shoppers may be in the market for a 90 day cycle, I have set the membership duration to 90 days. If the consumer re-visits your website in 10 days, the clock will be reset.

• - Once you click on the "Save" button, you can retrieve the HTML code for this tag.
• - To get the code, click on the hyperlink for your remarketing list under the column "Tag/Rules".
• - You then need to place place this HTML tag (aka HTML Code) on the Ford F-150 landing page. You may need help from your website provider to insert the code if you are not comfortable with working in the HTML editor mode.
• - This code sets a cookie on the consumers web browser. Every visitor to your F-150 landing page is tracked via a cookie.
• - Once this cookie activated by a visit you can take advantage of the millions of websites in the Adwords Display Network that will show Google Ads. These websites need to have content that matches your Ford F-150 Ad Group keywords.
• - So for example, any website that allows Google Ads that has articles on the Ford F-150 can pop up your ads to consumers who visited your website.
• - By the way, if your keywords include "Ford Dealer" for "Ford" then you can expect your ads to show on popular review sites and business directories for competing Ford dealers in your market.
• - This includes review websites like Yelp.com, Dealerrater.com, InsiderPages.com, MerchantCircle.com, and popular automotive websites like Motortrend.com.
• - Which websites your ad will appear on will be determined by your automatic and manual placement setting in the display network and your bids.

Does ReMarketing Interest You?

It should. You should consider testing it for your dealership but there are many strategies to consider and options in this advertising medium. Questions? Well the good news is that at the Automotive Marketing Boot Camp, April 16-18th in Orlando, there will be a special workshop on Automotive Remarketing Strategies lead by Jeff Kershner.

Secondly, the man that inspired me to write this post, Paul Potratz, will be speaking at the Boot Camp on effective mobile advertising strategies and of course you can chat with him on remarketing. You'll have ample time to speak with Cobalt Remarketing Experts, Paul Potratz, Jeff Kershner, and the other industry experts that have experience with remarketing.

Get registered and save $100 off your registration fee by visiting this link; Boot Camp Registration Offer. I hope to see many DrivingSalesmembers at the Boot Camp, which is coming up fast!
 

Google Remarketing Video

Here is a summary video that Google created on the same topic of remarketing.

Google recently announced changes to their search algorithm and included in those changes were efforts to lower the visibility of spammy websites.  One of the secondary conversions was will Google lower the weighting of keyword rich domains like "www.buyviagra.com".

Matt Cutts addressed this specific question in a video below:

I want to thank Anirban Das for bringing this video to my attention.

All car dealers have their primary domains set and locked for most cases so buying extra domains would be used for marketing microsites for lead collection, brand awareness, or to capitalize on popular search phrases. 

Matt Cutt's video and his examples are really misleading because car dealers would not be investing the millions of dollars needed to create large technology or marketing portals like Twitter, Tech Crunch, Zappos, etc.  Branded websites do not become popular for non-match keyword searches magically, which is a large omission from Matt's video message.

Regardless if Google turns down the dial slightly for exact matching domain names, they are still the fastest way for a dealer to gain page one visibility in their local market for long tail keywords.

Buying non-exact matching domains still works, like Matt said, but what he didn't disclose is that non-exact matching domains needs significantly more external links with anchor text on the targeted keywords.

Example, search Google for "Automotive Microsites" and you will see www.dealerbytes.com on Page One.  It does not have either phrase in the domain name but it ranks on page one.  Why?  Because Paul Rushing, domain owner, has content on his website and links on the phrase "automotive microsites" directed to that domain.

For dealers, exact matching domains are the better match because dealers have smaller budgets for SEO projects. There are hundreds of automotive microsites that I have build that demonstrate that exact matching domains with great unique content are still the fastest way to hit Page One.

Need some examples, post Google update:

1. ToyotaRecall - ranks on page one for "Toyota Recall" over most major giant news sources
2. MiamiUsedCars.org - ranks well on Page One for "Miami Used Cars" in a very competitive market
3. ChevroletFortWorth.com - DFW is a very competitive market for Chevy dealers, Jerry's gets more awareness.
4. SeattleJeep.com - Seattle has a number of choices for Jeep dealers, Rairdon get more visibility.
5. BuffaloCars.net - A popular search phrase in Buffalo is "Buffalo Cars" and this site get the brand out there.

So, as many writers have said in the past, content is King and great content on a keyword rich domain can deliver an annuity of page one placements. Then the focus has to be switched to testing designs that increase calls, leads, and floor traffic.  In the end, a poorly converting microsites is a waste of time.

Microsites are a great tool for car dealers and regardless of what Google may signal, the proof is that SEO marketing strategies on a small budget can benefit from exact matching, keyword rich domains.

Microsite Education

If you are looking for advice and strategies to build effective microsites, PCG is offering  two classes at the upcoming Automotive Marketing Boot Camp that will show you everything you need to succeed.  You can register for the April 16-18th event by visiting http://www.automotivemarketingbootcamp.com.

I will be conducting a workshop on Automotive SEO Strategies and two members of the PCG team will be conducting a workshop on WordPress microsites and optimization strategies.  The combination of these two workshops will empower you to launch, test, and improve your microsite marketing campaigns.

Bring your laptop to these workshops since you will be jumping in and doing hands-on work for these sessions.  If you have microsites that have not been doing well, bring your logins and passwords so you can optimize them during the boot camp with help from the experts.