Effective keyword research is at the core of any successful paid search campaign. Especially if your goal is to produce ROI from your results. Without a solid plan in place, you’re throwing ad dollars into what I call a “money sucking fire pit”. A fire pit that burns your ad dollars with no regard to your investment. No one likes losing money or not getting a return from their investment, am I right? And usually (98% of the time) that’s exactly what I see when performing SEM audits and Discovery’s with new clients. With that said, I realize a certain percentage of you may never become a client of DRIVE—and that’s ok. But if this article helps even just a few of you to dominate your dealership’s PMA (or beyond), then…well, I will have succeeded.

The Top Free Keyword Research Tools

Google Keyword Planner– One of the first places I recommend starting your keyword research. Not only can you compile a list of keywords, but you can also gain competitive insights such as CPC and traffic volume. Enter a few broad keywords related to your business model (new cars, used cars, Makes, models, auto loans, etc) and let Google return new ideas for you. In many cases, you’ll be left with words you’d have never thought of on your own. Also use this to find a huge list of negative keywords to make your ads more relevant. 

Search Term/Query Reports – You can find “Search Term Reports”, “Search Query Reports”, or “SQR Reports”, as many PPC specialists call it, if you have historical Adwords data. If you aren’t—or have never—advertised on Google Adwords, then this resource will not help you. It’s one of the most insightful reports within Adwords. It allows you to see the exact search terms that match to your Adwords match types (broad, modified broad, phrase, and exact match). If you do have an Adwords account, navigate to the ‘Keywords’ tab. You’ll then see a smaller tab that reads, “Details”. Left click that and it will reveal “Search Terms”. You can do this by campaign or by adgroup. 

Google Trends – Want to know which car models are most popular in your area? Want to know which makes and models to focus on for Conquest campaigns? Google Trends is your go to tool to find the answer. You can also discover what the top rising searches are relevant to your entered keyword. 

BingAds Keyword Search Tool – Basically the same tool as Adwords Keyword Planner, but you’ll find new keyword ideas because the data is from Bing (and Yahoo). You can’t perform due diligence keyword research without includinging Bing and Yahoo. As of December 2014, Bing and Yahoo search market share rose considerably, w/ 19.7% going to Bing and Yahoo w/ 11.8% (as reported by comScore). Therefore, this alliance comprises approximately 31.5% of all searches worldwide. Ensure you take a moment to see what data (keywords) you can find. 

BingAds Intelligence – If you consider yourself a Microsoft Excel user, try the BingAds Intelligence Tool. It will allow you to quickly find seed keywords relevant to your business model and quickly expand on them in pure Excel fashion. It works with keyword lists up to 200,000 words. Most dealership’s keyword portfolio will never be this expansive, but it’s good to know it’s capable of handling large sets of data. 

Read the rest of the blog post here: 23 Free Keyword Research Tools To Dominate Your Market

In this blog post I hope to show you the bigger picture of a semantically marked up web looks like and more importantly to you, why you should already be fully taking advantage of it today for your own automotive website. The Semantic Web, or Web 3.0 is considered to be the next phase of internet and it’s already happening all around us.

We hope to explain to you why the structured web is not a fad or a new buzz-word, but part of a larger movement that is the foundation for linking social signals, web development, search engine optimization, online reputation, paid search, and improved search engine usefulness in general.

What Is Structured Data?

In the past search engines have done their best to return results to users that have keywords matching the words they use to search. Yes it’s more complicated than that, but at it’s core this was the goal of search engines. They wanted to try to match words typed into their search engine with web pages that have similar words. The order of the results was basically the most authoritative site that had the words on them matching the words being searched.

Search engines have come a long way and are getting more aggressive than ever in their quest to return the best results based on what they think the meaning behind the search words really is (The intent of the search). Search engines want to try to comprehend the context and meaning of the keywords entered into their search engine and now they want to provide results that best match the answer to the question (sometimes answering the question right in the search results in addition to providing linked pages in the search results) and keywords entered into their search bars.

The schema.org project was created in 2011 to expand upon the RDFa (Resource Description Framework in Attributes) work begun by W3c Semantic Web Activity (World Wide Web Consortium). On-page markup enables search engines to understand the information on web pages and provide richer search results in order to make it easier for users to find relevant information on the web. Markup can also enable new tools and applications that make use of the structure. A properly marked up website utilizing a microformat from schema.org will allow machines to easily read and relate data. This allows not only search engine spiders but also assisted machine readers for visually impaired individuals to better navigate and understand the content on the website.

By utilizing structured markup on your website you can help the search engines to better understand the content of your website in much greater detail than ever before. A properly marked up website will give search engines all of the information they need to be confident in knowing if your content will answer those questions that people are entering into their search engines. This confidence is all part of the authority you want to build on your website by hitting all the marks in the complicated search engine algorithm.

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With this blog post I will share with you some of the truly useful lessons in leadership and teamwork that we learned during our weekly team building meeting yesterday. These lessons can be applied to any team, any leadership, under any circumstances.

So just a bit of background, our operation staff has a weekly team building meeting where typically we cover a topic such as integrity or how to keep your love for the job like you were just hired, etc. Typically we meet, discuss, provide our various insights and then compile our notes into a useful blog post that we then publish on our website. 

This week we wanted to do something different. We setup a challenge. Here were the rules:

• Three team captains volunteered.
• The three captains played rock, paper, and scissors to determine the order of team selection.
• The captains assembled their team in the order set by the previous rock, paper, and scissors game. 
• One team member had to be blind folded and guided by the rest of the team through an obstacle course that was setup in our office. No touching was allowed between talking team members and the blindfolded member, only words could be used. 
• This was a timed challenge. If the blindfolded member touched any of the obstacles on the course a 10 second penalty was applied to their overall time for each infraction.

The great part for you is that we recorded all three team runs through our obstacle course and I’m going to provide that video for your enjoyment below! After watching the video please continue to read on. After the challenge we met to discuss as a group why the winning team won and the others didn't. I think you will find our finding relevant to your own teams and the challenges they face each day!

O.K, you can see that we had a bit of fun there, which is just part of our company culture :). Now after the three teams ran through we had a sit down discussion and we came up with some practical things that led to either victory or defeat, and I want to share them with you now as I feel they may relate to your own company challenges.

Things That Led to a Team Victory

1. The team captain selected her team based on the challenge she knew they were going to be presented with.

This is an important role of any leadership position isn't it? When you are given the choice to assemble your team, no matter how big or small the project is you should make sure that you are selecting the best people for the job. You want to allow people that have natural gifts to be able to put those gifts to their best use for the benefit of the rest of your team and the goal at hand. 

If you have enough people on your team that have a strong point, it might make sense to add someone that is weaker in that particular area as they will benefit from the experience of the other team members and create an even stronger team for future projects. If however you have a small team and ever man counts, you may need to make sure that all of your teams are Aces in every area required for the project. 

In the end the failure or success of a project ultimately falls back on the leadership. It starts with picking the right players for your team. A strong leader picks the best team for the goal at hand and when they win they stay humble and give the team the credit (even though they may want everyone to admit it's their awesome Avengers Assembling skills that won the day!). 

2. The team decided on ONE person to give direction to the blindfolded team member. With less chatter the blindfolded player was able to focus on a single voice and help them visual what they needed in order to win!

Most of us have had the unfortunate luck to be in a situation where you answer to many bosses. Too many chefs in the kitchen can lead to disaster! Our little experiment proved that the only team to have one voice was the victorious team.

By having only one leader walking the blindfolded person through the course, the blind-folded player could focus in and listen to exactly what the instruction giver was saying. With clear concise instruction, the blind-folded player was able to move much more swiftly as he had more confidence in what he was doing.

This point proves that it’s best to have very tightly structured leadership within your organization. Team members gain confidence and more buy-in when they are led by one person rather than several. The leader must be confident in his ability and also clear in his communication with his team if he/she wants to give them the best chance for success.

This is an invaluable lesson and it really solidifies the way we have built our business. Each product group has a single director. As the team grows, the manager report to the director and are responsible for their own team. With a structure such as this you can scale your business and maintain this philosophy of a single voice and a strong team!

3. The winning team had a member that was willing to do what it takes to win.

Even with the best leadership in place and strong corporate structure, it takes a dedicated team player that is willing to do what it takes to achieve success. While leadership would love to take the credit for big wins, it really does come down to team members willing to go the extra mile in order to achieve success. In our case the team member had to do several things well in order to win:

• Take direction well
• Move quickly, much quicker than he was possibly comfortable moving under the circumstances.
• Communicate quickly any challenges they were facing with the rest of the team.
• Not get hung up on small failures, always keeping the big picture goal top of mind throughout the challenge.

We hope that you all have as much fun watching as we had undertaking this little challenge experience! I hope this encourages anyone that is in a leadership position to really find creative ways to engage your team and use the experience as a learning lesson for everyone involved (INCLUDING YOURSELF!).

I would love to hear about any creative ways you migh​t have come up with to do something similar. We are always on the lookout for new ways to increase team awareness, bring our team closer, and most importantly have some fun!

One of the most common questions we get when discussing social media strategy with a car dealer is, how do we get more Facebook likes? This is a loaded question and I’m going to explain why.

The Basics of Facebook

By now I think it’s fair to say that you probably have some (or maybe way too much) experience using Facebook as an individual. If you have no experience it’s time to jump in and make a Facebook page immediately!

A business using Facebook is different in that the bulk of your engagement happens on your business Facebook page. The first thing you want to make sure you have done is grabbed your vanity URL. After you have a handful of people that like your new Facebook page you can create a shorter URL version of it by going here.  It’s the difference of telling people to visit www.facebook.com/pages/the-name-you-chose/some -random-numbers and telling them to visit www.facebook.com/YourBusinessName. It’s better for branding and it’s easier to advertise. Most of you have probably done this, but you would be amazed if I told you how many dealerships still have not.

Now that you have a page with some likes and a shortened vanity URL, it’s time to start engaging! This is where the troubles really begin. Social marketing is really foreign to most internet people at car dealerships. Maybe you have been doing a good job of posting some pictures of your customers with their new cars. Maybe you have been posting some pictures of your own inventory. Those are great! But it’s probably not really helping you grow your social community online.

Good Like vs. Bad Like

The initial question we told you about was “how do I get more likes on my page”. Ok, we understand that the number of likes is both visible and track able. In all fairness it seems like a great way to gauge the effectiveness of your social media strategy. The problem is that not all likes are equal.

You have probably heard about companies that can provide you with X amount of likes within X amount of days. Seems like a great deal! The problem is that those likes are really of almost no value to your business or your social marketing goals. Sure you can purchase 1,000 likes and have them on your Facebook page within three days, but what do those 1,000 people really do for you? Are they even within driving distance from your dealership? Will they ever be a good candidate to purchase a car from your dealership? Will anyone they know likely be living within the vicinity of your dealership if they aren’t?

As you can see the type of Facebook community you want to build is very specific. You want people to like your page that are living within driving distance of your dealership. These are the type of people that will give you a chance of actually converting into a sale if you do a good job cultivating your relationship with not only them, but all of their family, friends, and working associates. The sheer number alone is very unlikely to convince anyone to buy a car from your dealership. Seeing lots of activity from local people engaging on your page however, is proven to increase conversions for dealers!

How Do I Get Good Facebook Likes? facebook marketing the right way

This is the real question that you should be asking. It’s not about the number of likes, but how do you get real people in your local area that are going to actually talk about your dealership? The answer is not an easy one. I have tried lots of different methods over the past couple of years but I am about to share the most effective one that we use to really grow a following a boost engagement.

Many companies do the “iPad giveaway” right? You’ve seen it… like our pages and be registered to win an iPad. Sounds great, but it doesn’t work that well, mainly because it’s boring, overdone, and just not engaging.

Let me give you an example of a much more engaging and effective way to implement this same concept. Contact a local sports team. Maybe it’s a baseball or football team and let them know that you are going to do a promotion offering free tickets to their games. You will find an organization that is willing to accept this free advertising. Make sure you let them know that you are going to make a very big promotion out of this and the only thing you ask in return is that they post a graphic on their website linking to your promotional page on your dealership Facebook page. Now you just got yourself some awesome exposure for your business and your page for only the cost of some tickets, chances are you can even get them to throw in some tickets for your promotion.

Now you have to make sure you have a great landing page setup on our Facebook page that will be the center of your entire promotion. We utilize a Facebook app that allows us to setup a custom page on your Facebook page that has a graphic about the event, a textual explanation of the event, and a simple form that allows people to enter it. This is the page you will promote on your online and offline marketing.

What happens when people go to this page is that you will invite them to register for a weekly drawing for tickets to said sports event. Registration will automatically also enter them for some grand prize (maybe that is your iPad giveaway or maybe it’s tickets for them and their family to get box seating at the final game of the season!). It’s a simple process so someone that is local to you, that is a sports fan (something you both have in common) give you their name, email, and phone number. It also informs them that that they must click the like button to send you their registration. It takes milliseconds for them to click the like button; of course they’ll do it!

Congratulation you now have a physical lead you can follow up on as well as a new fan of your business page which you can market to daily! But why stop there? After registration our app will show the person a thank you for entering page which provides them with a shortened URL. We explain to them that if they choose to, they can promote the event on their social profiles, email, or via their own personal Facebook page. Anyone that registers for this event using their special link will provide them with another entry into the weekly and grand prize drawings.

You just turned one success into a chance to have a local, relevant potential customer advertising your dealership’s Facebook fan page for you, for free! Every time someone registers they are getting the same opportunity to help you market your page. This is the power of viral marketing.

Every week you are notifying a winner to come by the dealership where you are going to take pictures or video tape you awarding them your prize. You’re tagging them in these pictures and photos which helps make sure their friends and family will come and check out their five minutes of fame and celebrity on your fan page. Now you’re doing organic viral social media marketing!

The End Result

At the end of a couple of months of marketing and promotion combined with social media promotion of your weekly and grand prize winners, what you wind up with is hundreds or even thousands of local fans of your dealership’s business page. These are people IN YOUR BACKYARD that you can continue to try to entertain and market to daily!

I hope our example has awakened your desire to take your social media marketing campaign to the next level. Don’t just settle for buying fake likes or only doing daily boring posts that doesn’t generate real engagement or growth for you. Think outside the box. With a little creativity and hard work, you will be the king of your local market online.

Visit us at Drive Digital Group for more information