It's been a while since I published some "how to" articles on link building and Automotive SEO strategies.  Many people have said that that "Content is King" and I would like to append to that adage "and links are the Queen". 

Car dealers who would like to increase the number incoming links to their primary domains can read further to see if any of my suggestions are new ideas.  If so, add them to your digital marketing strategy to increase the search authority of your digital assets.

The sites I have listed below perform two basic functions: content publishing to get additional listings on Google Page One and secondly, to build links back to your website(s).  The more organic listings that you have on Page One for popular search phrases, the higher your chances that you will get a call, a lead or a walk-in.

Before we address those strategies, do you know how many links point to your website?  Let me make sure that everyone knows how to get their inbound link counts before we go any further. 

One of the best ways is to go to your Google Webmaster Tools control panel and see the links to your website but since few people have access to that data, Yahoo is second best.  If you visit Yahoo.com and do a search using the "link:" command, you can see how many links point to your website.

How To Get Your  Inbound Link Counts

Type in the Yahoo search box the words: link:http://www.yourdomain.com with "yourdomain.com" replaced with your website.  When you click on the search box, the Yahoo Site Explorer will come up and show and initial screen.  The link counts that are displayed on the initial screen are misleading because they include internal links.  Internet links are pages on your website pointing to other pages on your website.

The screenshot above shows 2,344 inbound links in box B.  However, we want to find just the inbound links from other websites.  To do that we need to click on the dropdown box in box C and select "Except from this domain".  Bring up your own domain name now and follow along.

When you select this in box C, the true number of inbound links will show, which in the case for Brickell Honda in Miami, 1,180 links.  This is the number you want to write down and check each month as you start a link building campaign.

Linking Building Ideas

Since I have written about using press releases and WordPress blogs as sources for content publishing and link building, we will assume that everyone is using these powerful link building strategies by now.  Here are a few other ideas that may add some value to your Automotive SEO campaigns by helping you with Google Page One Management, traffic building and of course link building:

1. Create a free listing in www.aboutus.org.  Take the time to fill out all the information that you are asked.  To create a new listing just search for your domain name (www.yourdomain.com) in the search box in the upper right hand corner. If they don't have your website in their directory, they will create a page on the fly.  Your content descriptions can also have links back to your website and you can also add related links to your microsites.

2. Create a Wiki page for your dealership website or microsite.  There are a number of Wiki sites that provide links that are picked up by the search engines.  Take a peek at www.openwiki.com and create Wiki's for your dealership name and primary search keywords like "Miami Honda Dealers" or "Dallas Ford Dealers".

3. Create a www.merchantcircle.com  free business account and use their publishing tools for blogs, images and videos.  A blog post on Merchant Circle will get indexed very quickly and you can include a number of links in your posts.  If you publish content on a regular basis you will be pleased to see the inbound links the site produces.  You don't have to pay to get the benefits of Merchant Circle for SEO.  An example is: http://www.merchantcircle.com/business/PCG.Digital.Marketing.732-450-8200 and you can click on the Blog tab to see example posts.

4. Create accounts on free micro-blogging sites like www.multiply.com, www.posterous.com, www.gather.com or www.biznik.com which will get picked up in search results and can help you with Google Page One Management.  Post articles on a regular basis and you will be rewarded. Here are some examples: http://brianpasch.multiply.com and http://biznik.com/members/brian-pasch . 

5. Create a www.Squidoo.com  lens for the top 10 keyword phrases that you want to target.  Make the lens with good content and use a few different modules like RSS feed, Video Module, and of course a few content modules.  The content modules can have links back to your website(s).  An example of a Squidoo Lens is http://www.squidoo.com/fort-worth-chevrolet-dealers.

6. Create a www.pligg.com site for your specific industry, market or brand.  The Pligg site is your own targeted "Digg" site that you can use to re-post links to your blogs, press releases, news releases, and content pages on your website.  Think of it as your personal news consolidation website and if you pick a good domain and setup the publishing correctly, you will be surprised at the benefits.  An example of an automotive Pligg site is www.carsalenews.com .

7. Create a www.ning.com social networking website.  Depending on the size of your dealership and how many cooperative employees you have, a NING site can reach search authority rather quickly with good content and frequent postings.  Examples of NING sites include www.internetsalesmanager.org, www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com and www.automotive-advertisingagencies.com.  The NING platform allow you to create a blogroll sidebar link tool that appears on all pages which has the potential to create hundreds of links to your website as the site grows.

8. Consider purchasing paid links in www.yahoo.com and www.business.com business directory.  There are some benefits of being associated with these two paid directories that I believe are worth the investment.  Yahoo charges $299 a year and Business.com has the same charge but readers can email me to get a $50 discount code, which changes each month.

9. Place your website in www.dmoz.org which is the most authoritative website directory in the world.  Getting your site listed in the directory takes some careful investigation.  One word of advice is to look where your competitors are listed and choose that page to submit your site.  This is because the editor of that page has already "approved" car dealer websites and thus your chances of being added are greater.

10. Have your service manager or brand enthusiasts participate in automotive forums like www.vwvortex.com , www.bimmerfest, www.nicoclub.com  and others that represent your OEM brand.  After active participation get your staff established in the community, their responses can often link back to your dealer website as long as the links are going to pages that provide answers to questions. 

Forums have a high PageRank and if your website has color brochures, specification sheets, warranty manuals, etc you can often link to these assets to help forum members.    As long as the links provide value you will be golden.

Here To Help DrivingSales.com Members

I hope that of the 10 strategies suggested, some of them were new. When implemented, these tasks will enhance your automotive digital marketing campaigns.  If you have any questions, just ask or you can email me at brian@pcgdigitalmarketing.com

Once you start playing with FlipBoard, one of the biggest revelations is how it transforms Twitter into a really powerful content presentation tool. 

I started to think about how companies could leverage FlipBoard technology for sales support and customer service.

My idea was that a salesperson or company could create a Twitter account for the sole purpose of creating an inventory of articles that assisted their sales process.

In effect, creating a Twitter account for the purpose of creating a digital media magazine. The company or salesperson would use this Twitter account to tweet out any articles that they found online to support the purpose of the social media magazine. 

FlipBoard for the Automotive Industry

Since I assist many car dealers with their digital marketing strategies, I would like to give an example of how FlipBoard could assist a salesperson in a dealership showroom.

In this example, a fictitious salesperson called Annie Stone working for Classic Chevrolet could create a Twitter account called http://twitter.com/classicchevymag . This Twitter account would not be promoted as the primary account for the dealership and would not proactively seek followers. Consider this Twitter account as a means to create your custom social media magazine.

As Annie finds great articles or reviews about the new 2011 Chevrolet cars and trucks from third party websites like Edmunds.com, MotorTrend.com, or Consumer Reports she would tweet them from this targeted Twitter account. As her customers post reviews online about buying cars from Classic Chevrolet, she will tweet these review pages. As she adds customer testimonial videos on YouTube she will tweet these as well.

In essence, this special Twitter account is her social bookmarks for assisting her sales process. The FlipBoard App for her iPad in turn will create a beautiful presentation of all this data in a custom Classic Chevrolet Social Media Magazine.

Equipped with her iPad, whenever Annie needs sales support, she can turn on her iPad and stand "side by side" with her customer and show them the accolades about the cars they sell or the customer experience. Annie could also hand the customer her iPad to read while she speaks with her General Sales Manager or gets the keys for a test drive.

Since FlipBoard transforms a boring Twitter feed into a beautiful social media magazine, it save Annie the time to create digital sales tools on her own. It allows Annie to update her sales materials in real-time which means that the latest reviews, accolades are in her hand at all times. 

Creating a Custom Social Magazine

Business owners from all industries can follow the same model and actually have all sales professionals share a single Twitter account that is linked to their FlipBoard App on their iPad. The only logistics to work out is who can post new content on the Twitter feed. In this case, you could install FlipBoard on the sales team's iPads without revealing the password for the Twitter account.

Flipboard is a revolutionary application for social media and the possibilities to create social media magazines on the fly that can assist the sales process is just endless. If you have created a custom social media magazine for your dealership, please share your ideas.

If you need help creating a customized social media magazine for your business, feel free to give PCG Digital Marketing a call at 732.450.8200.

I was speaking with Alex Snyder today and he reminded me of a statement I made in 2009 which was:

"The most important person a car dealer can hire in 2010 will be a content writer."

With half of 2010 now past, I thought I would revisit why this statement made in October of 2009 has never been so timely.  Regardless of which digital marketing strategy is your favorite at this moment, Content is Still King to develop relevance for your website.

If Content is King then Link Building is the Queen. 

So the question for today is:  Do you have the Royal Family as part of your automotive marketing team?

Choices For Content Writing

If you are a single rooftop dealership, it will be difficult to justify a full-time content writer to be on your payroll but there are options.  You should inquire at local county colleges for marketing interns that often will work for free as long as they have the opportunity to work with a live digital marketing project. 

Dealers can also look to hire recently “downsized” writers from local newspapers; most have been cutting staff over the past few years.  There is actually a glut of well trained writers on the market so you can negotiate prices by the piece for by the hour.  Some services charge $20 an article and for a small dealership, this could be an alternative to consider.

With a content writer working inside your dealership or as an outside consultant you now have the resources to be adding new pages to your website every week.  It is shocking to see how many dealer website pages have little to no content.  Areas of high profit like service and parts often have pages with less than 100 words.    How many dealer websites have you visited where their specials page is just blank?

Dealers should try to create well written content pages with at least 400 words and make sure they are well formatted for the consumer to read.  Of course you also have to consider SEO design criteria but there is a perfect balance that can achieve both goals.  It is hard to find that balance so be careful who you hire.
 

What is the ideal content creation pace for car dealers?  Dealers should be updating their blogs with 3-4 new posts a month.  Their primary dealership website should be updated at least 3 times a month with new sales, promotions, testimonials, etc. 

For my business, I create at least 10 new articles a week and post those articles on my blogs and sites like this one.  I spend very little money on advertising because my articles generate traffic and calls for those who need help implementing my suggestions.

There are a good number of dealers who take my advice and never call. I'm actually very happy to be an assistant to their success with the hope that they will pass my name along to anyone who needs help.   In the same way, your content will increase the relevance for the cars you sell in your market.  These efforts will be rewarded with increased traffic to your website and higher relative ranking to your competitors that don’t have a content strategy in place. 

Some of this traffic will result in sales but there are other reasons to create content.  Good content will

• increase the number of pages that show in Google search results
• push your competitors lower in search results
• protect your brand name from lead collectors and poachers
• increase Google ratings and relevance for your website

Good content is not just about sales. Content is the fuel to power up your website for a battle with competitors on all fronts.

What About The Queen?

Once you have a content writer on your team, they need to be trained on how to write content to achieve the maximum benefit of the content.  There is an art to creating content that is compelling to read as well as achieve important link building goals.

When writing content you should divide the placement of the content to distribute it to your main website and also to external sites.  The reason for this balance is that your website needs to grow in size with static content pages but it also needs to grow in external links.

For example, if you are a Nissan dealer you should have a few pages written about the 2011 Nissan Leaf.  If you want to see how much dealers need content writers, visit 10 Nissan dealers at random and tell me how many dealers have any pages on the Leaf with more than 300 words.  

Once a Nissan dealer adds a few content pages about the Leaf on their website, they should:

• post articles on their external blog on the Leaf
• issue a few press release on the Nissan Leaf and when it is coming
• include mentions on their social media sites with links to their dealer pages

Each one of these posts should have links back to the primary dealer's website and specifically the pages on the Leaf.  If you see the picture, the content pages on a dealer's website NEED links from external sources to increase the relative value compared to other local Nissan dealers.

There is another art form in finding places where you can post your articles for free that add valuable links to your website.  That could be a webinar in itself!

Time To Take Action

If you are just too busy or too intimated about starting a consistent content writing program for your dealership, you really cannot wait much longer.  I see a Tsunami coming for car dealers who ignore proven digital marketing strategies that are content based.

If you want to be completely blown off Google Page One in your own backyard, then ignore this warning.   Need more proof?

Test #1

Do a Google Search on your #1 keyword phrase that sells the MOST cars for your dealership.  You don't have to look at any reports since it's your dealership name.  So take a minute to search your business name in Google.

If you own ALL ten organic listings on Page One...you are doing well!  This would place you in the top 1% of car dealers nationwide.   If you don't own all of Page One you will most likely see lead collectors, review sites and parasites leaching equity from your brand.  You need immediate action.

Test #2

Now do a Google search for your OEM brand and your city name; like Oxnard Toyota.  If there are competitors and lead collectors on a search of your own city and OEM brand, you are allowing people to drain equity, leads and sales from your multi-million dollar investment.

So you can decide to Hire a King and a Queen or you can lease them. 

(I know a few great companies!)

 If you ignore this warning, you will soon be a slave to others.

Brian Pasch, CEO

PCG Digital Marketing

http://www.dealer-seo.com

732.450.8200

P.S.  Regardless of how well your content strategy becomes, these efforts must be partnered with Google Adwords (SEM) campaigns to capture the broad search phrases that consumers type.  Your content writing needs to be focused on the search phrases that will yield sales and are feasible to acheive rankings on Google Page One.    Digital Marketing is an inclusive game:  SEO + SEM + Social Media + (some secrets) = winning strategy!  :)

Robert Scoble on his blog Scobleizer.com broke a story about some new technology called Flipboard and it included the video included below which I was drawn to watch to completion.  The Flipboard software running on an iPad is a perfect example of how many innovations will be coming for the iPad in the coming year.

Flipboard is very exciting for me since I use social media regularly and have many people I want to stay in touch with; personally and for business.  The Flipboard software is a social media aggregator and presents the social media streams in a magazine format. 

It is mind-blowing how cool this application take an ugly stream of data and turns it into something very easy to read and with full content; a social media magazine.  For example, Flipboard takes a 140 character tweet and follows the link and finds the related story and presents it in an attractive format.

Take a moment to view the video and tell me if you agree that Flipboard is a really cool way to get rich data and stories from your social media streams.

Flipboard Video

Flipboard Setup

It tool two minutes to setup Flipboard on my iPad and look how cool my Twitter feed looks with articles shown from Eric Miltsch, Cobalt and also from my own posts.

When you setup Flipboard in your iPad make sure you add two important data streams:

http://twitter.com/automotiveseo

http://facebook.com/pcgdigitalmarketing.com

Then the application will truly have "richer" data. :)

As car dealers look to increase profits and revenue, their marketing agenda lately has focused on social media and how this communication channel can grow their business.

Social media of course is important but a proven money maker for car dealers is being ignored by many dealers as part of their digital advertising strategy.

When I am called into dealership meetings to review their online marketing strategy, rarely does a dealership ask about increasing service revenue through SEO and SEM.

Dealers seem to be content with service direct mail and email campaigns which work very well in most markets. Over the past few months I have been working on an SEO strategy to increase the visibility of car dealers for common service searches in Google.

It is an eye opener to see just how I have been able to increase visibility for car dealers by targeting popular service keywords. A good way to test the service visibility for any car dealer is to type in a common service for a brand that they sell in their own town.

So a BMW dealer in Virginia Beach would test their service SEO by searching Google for:

• BMW Oil Change Virginia Beach  (see Google Search)
• BMW Brakes Virginia Beach
• BMW Tires Virginia Beach

In the first case, PCG's new Fixed Operations Microsite appears on Google Page One for Checkered Flag Auto Group ahead of all business offering a BMW Oil Change. 

The service microsite is www.virginiabeachcarrepairs.com . This added visibility for car dealers over time, will increase service leads, calls and service revenue.  The site is about 45 days old and it appears in Google search for a number of OEM brands and services in their market.

If you search Google Videos or YouTube videos for the Phrase "Virginia Beach Oil Change", their service video is ranked #1. Christine at Checkered Flag does an amazing job with their service videos.

Dealers who want to gain an edge in their markets should leverage service microsites and videos to communicate an effective message.  Service videos, when they are done so well like this example, can be placed in many places to increase conversion.

Dealers Becoming Price Competitive

In this challenging economy, many dealers have decided to become more price competitive for common automotive services like oil changes, tires, brakes and coolant flushes. I wholeheartedly agree with this strategy.

If dealers have good service advisers, they can extend the dealership brand and customer service experience to owners of cars that dealers do not sell. The service channel can be a more effective sales and lead strategy than any other channel because of the number of car owners they touch each month.

Busy dealer groups service thousands of cars a week and if they were also marketing to all car owners in their market, these numbers could grow significantly. So I would like to cast a vote that Fixed Operations SEO and microsites be on dealership agendas for digital marketing spending.

Dealers should also create a budget to create videos for popular services that they offer which can light-up content pages. Google rewards first responders so before your competitors take the lead for service microsites in your area, make the move.

At PCG Digital Marketing we monitor the leads that come in on the websites that we build for clients to cutdown on spam and to measure the effectiveness of our marketing programs.  Periodically, we see massive spam attacks on our forms which we continue to tweak to stop spam from coming through to dealer CRM systems.

Today one of my clients received a lead from Jennifer M. Sorrells who is a  PERS Marketing Executive.  Ms. Sorrells is a salesperson and somehow she thought it was a good idea to use a car dealer's quote form to sell here goods.  The choice of using a car dealer website form for soliciting business is in bad taste and in my opinion, paints a very poor image her company: Preferred Call & Response LLC.

Jennifer Sorrells Email

Here is the message that Jennifer sent:

customerfirstname : Jennifer
customerlastname : Sorrells
customeraddress : 399 E. 29th St.
customercity : Buena Vista
customerstate : VA
customerzip : 24416
customerhomephone : 888-528-2331
preferredcontacttime : Morning
customeremail : jsorrells@pcr-va.com
timeframe : 1 Week
Year : 2010
Make : Nissan
Model : Xterra
Trim : 4WD 4dr Auto SE
Comments : Hello,

My name is Jennifer and I’m the PERS Marketing Executive for Preferred Call and Response.  We wanted to contact you with some information regarding our Safezone GPS system.  The Safezone works just like On-Star,  you would have GPS tracking, voice capabilities, and an SOS button.  This can be downloaded on their cell phone as an application.  As long as the customer has a data plan there is no cost for the sim card or other data charges.   We thought you may be interested in offering this as an extra feature.  We would be willing to pay commission for the system as well.  I would like to send you some information for you to review.  If you have any questions or comments please feel free to contact me.

Thank you,

Jennifer M. Sorrells
PERS Marketing Executive
Phone: 888-528-2331
Preferred Call and Response
399 E. 29th St.
Buena Vista, VA 24416

Why Spam When Your Can Call?

Wow..someone is interested in a Nissan Xterra.  Great...oh wait....its spam.

I wonder why a company that on their website touts the importantance of a live voice, would use email spam to market their business.   This is either a low class marketing strategy, a misguided marketing director or a "just a get the message out regardless of the cost"  tactic.  Companies that use these tactics should be called out and that is why I am writing about their marketing practice.

Notice, Jeniffer filled out the lead form to be able to submit the sales pitch so it was NOT an auto-generated email spam campaign but a deliberate plan.  This is best described as a doomed marketing strategy.  If their call center services were actually that good, they would have called.  Here is what their website claims:

"We offer call center services to businesses and government agencies that allow owners/operators to manage their core business while PCR attends to the sales, marketing, and fulfillment side. What a difference a live voice has on your potential customers!"

I guess they couldn't afford to invest in telemarketing to do their own sales!

Is anyone else sick and tired of car dealer lead form abuse?

Automotive retailers and their employees could significantly benefit from reading two powerful books. 

Many of the stereotypes that plague the car industry could be mitigated if employees of car dealerships practiced the Five Laws of Stratospheric Success that are outlined by Bob Burg and John David Mann.

I highly recommend that every member of the DrivingSales.com community reads these two books this month:

• The Go-Giver
• Go-Givers Sell More

These great, easy to read books will significantly impact the way you view the sales process and increase your success with communicating with people. 

Sounds too good to be true? Get the books and read them, it is well worth the investment. The books can be purchased on Amazon.com for under $14 each. Buy on Amazon. 

These two books outline the author’s philosophy about selling and success which goes against the grain of common sales training. The authors challenge the traditional sales process of:

prospect -> qualify -> present -> overcome objections -> close -> follow-up -> provide customer service

with a different approach that looks like this:

create value -> touch people's lives -> build networks -> be real -> stay open

Being a Go-Giver 

As I read the first book "The Go-Giver" I realized that I already practiced some of the recommendations in this book but I still have much more to learn. My passion for writing and sharing ideas on this forum is one way in which I can "give" with the hope that members will receive measurable value.

When I am asked to speak at conferences, 20-Groups and at individual dealerships I never see it as a "selling" opportunity although sales do come. I look at speaking as opportunity to teach and to give back to the automotive community.

Those of you who have heard me speak at Digital Dealer Conferences may know that at the beginning of my presentations I often clarify my purpose with this statement: 

"I will not holdback information on how to improve your ( insert seminar topic) and I will answer all your questions candidly. I will give you the tools to do everything on your own. That said, 50% of you will do nothing, 20% may call me and 30% will implement some or all of my recommendations on their own without any outside costs."

The Five Laws of Stratospheric Success

As a result of my willingness to share online and at conference, people have provided me with wonderful feedback and encouragement. Some have even made a commitment to help my business succeed. This has been hard for me to accept at times and so I was challenged by the 5th Law.

I have witnessed firsthand the power of following the recommendations in the Go-Giver. The Go-Giver outlines what the authors call "The Five Laws of Stratospheric Success". They five laws are: 

1. The Law of Value
2. The Law of Compensation
3. The Law of Influence
4. The Law of Authenticity
5. The Law of Receptivity

If these five Laws don't intrigue you to read these two books, then take a leap of faith and do it anyway! Are you looking for greater success? Fulfillment? If the answer is yes, spend $30 and take a few hours to read these two books. It's the best investment in your future that you will ever make. 

A Go-Giver Offer For DrivingSales.com

In the first book, The Go-Giver a story unfolds about a salesman named Joe that is struggling with success in his job and personal life. He is transformed in the book through a series of events and special people that show him the power of giving. 

For members of this community, you and your team may be challenged to sell more cars, gain an edge over your competition, lower the cost of advertising per retail sale or increase fixed operations revenue. These challenges sometimes feel like walking through an endless battlefield; every 30 days you reset the clock and have to trod the same battlefield again watching not to step on any landmines.

 Are your automotive advertising strategies really optimized?

A Fresh Set Of Eyes Can Help 

If you are understaffed, overworked or if the pace of changes within digital marketing are making your head spin, I would like to offer my help. If you would like a free evaluation of your digital marketing strategy and visibility on the Internet, I am offering community members my personal analysis and a written report.

All you have to do is to commit to reviewing the report on a phone call. I will schedule a one hour follow-up call to share my findings. I will provide recommendations on how you can fix any deficiencies that I found using your own staff and business partners. There is no obligation to use PCG services.

You'd be surprised to know that I can measure the strength of a dealer's digital marketing footprint without much inside information. 

What I do need is the following:

1. Your name and contact information
2. The domains names you use for marketing cars
3. Your top 5 local competitors and their website addresses
4. Five areas that you want to increase your online visibility; your top online marketing goals

For the fourth question, the guidance I need is best answered with this question "What have you been asked to increase through the Internet channel?". Some dealers tell me it's service revenue and other say that their top priority is increasing used car sales. Give me some guidance so I can evaluate how successful your automotive advertising strategies are to meet those goals. 

When you have this information, email it to me at: brian@pcgdigitalmarketing.com and I will let you know when I can complete the analysis and schedule a call.

I look forward to providing you some insight on your online marketing strengths and weaknesses.

Brian Pasch, CEO
PCG Digital Marketing
http://facebook.com/PCGDigitalMarketing

Facebook is a great communication tool for car dealers as they can stay connected to their existing customers and meet new customers by providing value. When done properly, they become a Trust Agents as described by Chris Brogan in his book with the same title.

With this great opportunity so comes spammers and scammers.  Companies have found that many business owners, including car dealers, don't want to invest in social media.  They would rather create INSTANT Facebook and Twitter fans to increase their "counts", regardless of the quality of those followers.

A Lesson I Learned: When someone you don't know asks to be a friend, be careful on who you accept.  

On June 29, 2010, I accepted Dayna Jaqeline as a friend. Since that time I have received over 10 recommendations that I "like" various businesses on Facebook. Today I noticed this one-way pattern of communications from this new "friend".

Dayna Jaqueline, or whoever this person really is, is part of an automated scheme to increase Facebook fans for a fee. Companies create these fake accounts or alternatively hire people to invite themselves into someones Facebook account and then use that doorway to solicit fans.

This is a becoming a big business especially since car dealers are being led into believing that more is better. So, they pay a fee ranging up to $1,000 to get a few thousands fans and accounts like Dayna Jaqueline whore out their influence to drive traffic and fans.

If my experience is any indication of the quality of communications these pay services offer, I would recommend that less is more.  It is the quality of your network that really matters in the end.

Facebook Whores

Should call this Facebook Prostution and Jacqueline is a Facebook Whore?

If you look at the 10+ requests that this account has solicited me in the past 8 days, you can infer that this person is pushing their influence for pay. What do you think? Would you send your friends requests every day to be friends with the companies you like best?

It's a shame that  good businesses are now associated with Facebook Whores. I will be sure to post this article on their walls to let them know the type of crap they are involved with.  Do you want your dealership associated with Facebook Prostitution?

Here are some of the companies that were solicited by Dayna Jaqueline in the past 7 days:

• Drake Institute
• Tryst Bingo
• Unlimited Twitter Followers *
• Vizio Optic Eyeglasses & Sunglasses
• MPB Today
• Quick Creations
• Roxanne Emery
• LYPHA
• Infused Web | Print | Design
• Hypnotist Ian Stewart
• DreamTemplate

* Also notice that Dayna was promoting Unlimited Twitter Followers...mmmmmm It looks like she also participates or encourages paid Twitter fan programs as well.

Advice on Building Facebook Fans

So, here is a word of advice. If someone offers to increase your Twitter and Facebook followers, and the methods are not clearly explained, run away. In this one case, Dayna Jacqeline is turning my Facebook inbox into the same spam junk that we experience with our email.

This is a discouraging twist in Facebook and of course I reported her to Facebook. It just takes time and effort just like the time it takes to review your spam inbox.

Last year I reviewed 35 popular automotive website platforms and published the results in the first ever Automotive Search Marketing Architecture (ASMA) study.   Of the 35  platforms reviewed, nine companies were recognized for excellence based on criteria that I set for the study.

We are now finalizing the applications for the 2010 ASMA Awards that will be presented this fall. I would like DrivingSales.com members to offer feedback on some of the criteria you would like to see in the comparison grids this year.

We will review about 40+ website providers this year and part of the study will be a chart that compares the base feature set of their website and add on modules the vendor offers.   This year we will include line items for mobile sites, mobile apps, Facebook apps, CRM, market pricing tools, etc.

As we compare and contrast the 40+ car dealer website platforms, what type of side by side data and comparisons would you like to see?  This is a big undertaking to create the report so your feedback will help make the report more meaningful to automotive professionals.

Please share your feedback here...I would appreciate your thoughts.

Brian Pasch, CEO

PCG Digital Marketing

http://twitter.com/automotiveseo

The Internet as a communications tool for car dealers is evolving and never before has the changing landscape been more challenging for dealer principals and General Managers.  As car dealers seek to develop online brand messaging their advertising budgets are being pulled in many directions.  Every month a new digital strategy is being presented as the next “big thing”.

Dealers are struggling to validate the benefits and implementation costs of social media, chat, streaming video, reputation management, SEO, SEM and a dozen other digital marketing pitches that come across their desk each month.  With little track records or case studies to help dealers with the education process, seasoned mangers are scratching their heads and looking for advice and support from the companies that they have leaned on in the past.

Unfortunately, these products are coming from more single source vendors and not their current automotive advertising agency.  Most traditional automotive advertising agencies that have delivered success with direct mail, radio, TV and print have stumbled to provide integrated digital marketing offerings.  Automotive advertising agencies clinging to traditional marketing expertise has created a disruption in the marketplace with no clear winners emerging from the chaos. 

Dealers who once had a single call to make for their advertising and marketing strategies now have to make multiple calls and are forced into becoming a General Contractor to build an integrated marketing strategy. Dealers have neither the training, desire nor the sustainable skills to act as a General Contractor.  

Next generation automotive advertising agencies must seamlessly merge the traditional and digital landscape to increase their value to car dealers.  The marketplace is screaming for integrated automotive advertising agencies that offload the burden currently on car dealers who seek to gain market share with the changing of advertising models.

 Data Protectionism

To complicate the integration of traditional marketing with digital marketing strategies, dealers are still tied to vendors that do not embrace open standards for data exchange and collaboration.  For example only two DMS providers serve all new car dealers in the United States.  For some dealers, the distribution of the dealer’s own data is restricted by antiquated data access policies. 

It’s hard to believe that in 2010 a car dealer cannot click on a menu to export a file of their own inventory into an ADF compliant XML file to send the third party advertising sources.   It is hard to believe that some vendors still use modems for data transmission.  Car dealers have allowed the confiscation of their own data and are held captive from creating truly innovating data reporting systems.

Since car dealers are using multiple single source software solutions, it is time to recognize that “lead lifecycle” reporting is one of the last barriers that car dealers need to measure true ROI.  When a dealer has a website provider that is different than their CRM vendor, significant data is lost due to the current way data is exchanged.  Commonly data is transmitted between two different software platforms using a file format call the ADF specification.

The automotive industry needs a revised ADF specification to allow an open source solution to end to end reporting across multiple software platforms.  The current specification is a 1.0 version that was last modified in 2000. A lack of leadership and protectionism is complicating a revised data exchange standard and costing dealers thousands of dollars a year.   

Automotive Advertising Leadership

The automotive advertising agency of the future needs to shepherd vendor integration because it is what their clients truly need.  I truly believe that dealer Principals and General Managers are spending way too much time in the General Contractor role and if asked, they would give up that title in a heartbeat.

Automotive advertising agencies that seek to gain market share must invest in properly trained technical staff that understands SEO, SEM, website design, data communications, data analysis and third party data integration.

Automotive Advertising Agencies that fail to provide integrated traditional and digital marketing strategies are going to be asked an uncomfortable question by the dealer:

“And remind me what I am actually paying you to do..”

When that question is asked, you can start the clock on when your account will be replaced by an agency that took the burden of the dealer and didn’t wait to let the market disruption be the last straw.

Brian Pasch, CEO
PCG Digital Marketing
http://twitter.com/automotiveseo