Automotive SEO 

Content marketing (SEO) is something dealerships started to learn and understand around 2013 – 2014.  Some masters of the craft, even earlier.  Since then there’s been a major fallout of companies able to produce quality content.  Whether you have one person or a team of in-house writers they must know all the rules the search engines play-by.  The golden rule, produce original, relevant and high quality content that produces revenue for your business.

• Keep Your Current Provider, Pay Less

• This is one of the biggest opportunities dealerships have when it comes to advertising spend and it can be seen at too many dealerships across the nation.  If your current paid search company is landing people on SRP’s or the homepage of your website.  They are doing it wrong.   Use SEO to work with your paid provider to create landing pages for low-funnel buying questions.  This keeps users engaged on your website therefore increasing your chances of a conversion.

5 Essential Components To Landing Pages

1 - Engaging Headlines w/ Proper H1 & H2

2 - Information Relative To The Searched Keywords

3 - Video, Pictures, Infographics

4 - The Benefits of Your Offering

5 - Clear Call-to-Action

If you’re landing paid search on pages that don’t include these things, STOP.  You’re paying too much and users are leaving your site without converting.  This is also known as wasted ad-spend.

Pay Less Overtime With Your Paid Search

• For example, if your keyword is “new chevrolet lease offers” and your current provider is sending them to your homepage or chevy SRP’s on your website.  Stop buying that keyword, your customers are bouncing.  And you’re paying a premium for that keyword, probably close to $10 or more.

• With quality content, land people that click on your ad to landing pages specifically talking about your brands’ lease offers.  And clicks could cost you 50% less.

• That’s right, with great quality content, you could be spending 50% less on paid search.  Either you get double the results for the same spend, or you use that money for other advertising avenues.

Dealerships spend an average of $500,000 per year on advertising.  As you read this, you might be realizing that your dealership spends well over one million dollars on advertising. Either way, it's a large sum of cash.  All of this marketing drives action, or at least is designed to create action on behalf of the consumer.  But when that consumer takes action on your marketing dollars, how is your dealership responding?  Is there a specific process your salespeople are taught when it comes to responding to marketing leads? Or did you just spend money on turning people away. 

The most successful companies in the world, dealerships included, have a detailed training program sales associates have to complete before they are able to engage with a real customer.  These same companies and dealerships are putting salespeople through continued training programs that shape the development of the employee all year.  If we follow this example, not only should dealerships be training salespeople when they are on-boarded, but each and every month.

Great training results in less turnover. Invest in your people and they are more likely to stick around. Effective and continued training also increases the ability for salespeople to be more successful in their jobs.  It’s no secret that when salespeople do better, the dealership makes more money. 

Training your sales staff isn’t just for large dealerships and dealer groups. It begins with thinking about your own processes for responding to internet leads.  Here are some things to ask yourself:

•  Where is the process written down?
•  What is to be included with every response?
•  How do you handle best price requests?
•  What is your time limit for responding to leads and making a call?
•  How many times do you attempt contact before moving on?

If you can pinpoint your sales process and find your pain points, you’re already on your way to maximizing your leads. It’s as simple as looking in to how your team is answering the phone. Effective lead capture depends on your ability to answer the following questions when the consumer makes a call to you store:

•  What is our uniform greeting for answering the phone?
•  Do we have steps for obtaining consumer contact information?
•  How does our team “sell” the appointment?
•  Does sales staff know how to handle the tough questions like, "What's your best price?" or  "What's my trade worth?"
•  When is it ok to give out pricing and availability?

It’s my recommendation that your dealership, or dealer group appoint a trainer specifically for sales staff.  This means having a person at your dealership dedicated to training and developing your staff in sales, service and parts. If you don't want to hire a trainer or convert an employee to be one, there are great companies that will listen to calls and provide feedback on how your leads are handled. Do what’s right for your dealership, but make sure training is a part of your business.

Invest in your sales people, their training, and how to process leads. Training programs are awesome, video training can sometimes be effective. Always remember it's up to SALESPEOPLE to watch videos and up to SALESPEOPLE to use what they watch in videos in actual customer interaction.

If you’re implementing training, make sure that management is reviewing your phone calls and how your leads are being handled. If salespeople are missing the mark, don't let them answer phones or respond to Internet leads.  Make them pay for their training.  They'll catch on quick, or they'll leave. Your business does not want "lifer salespeople" you want employees with a drive and a passion to succeed.  Great companies move employees up through the ranks, or employees leave for better opportunity (at least they think so!)

Refine your process for handling your leads. Don't add more lead sources or cut the ones you think aren't working because maybe leads aren't down, your salespeople are.

The year, 2002.  The dealership was a completely different place than it is today.  I remember my sales manager working with me one-on-one every day.  From around 9 in the morning to 3:30 we would go over closing techniques,  he would show me how he was going to pencil deals, he would teach me qualifying questions to ask, trial closes during the test drive.  
My first week at the dealership was an amazing experience, the manager pointed to the lot and told me to go drive every car out there.  I was 20 years old and had access to a lot of 350 cars, I grabbed the keys and hit the gas.  This was unfortunately before Subaru became known for its turbocharged cars but they did have the WRX and the most expensive car on the lot was an Isuzu Trooper, limited.  

I say those days were different because it was wildly a business-first mindset.  As opposed to a consumer first or customer service mindset.  We at the dealership put so much emphasis on steps to the sale because it was a complete mind game to increase gross profit on the deal.  The silent walk-around on a trade in works, if you go around and point and stare at all the imperfections of a car the owner will tell you about every scratch and ding on the car!  There were Autotrader and cars.com then but it wasn't used by many consumers to value their trade in.  Consumers would come in with their research written in notebooks.  Being at a Subaru dealership, we saw tons of engineers, scientists, MD's and professors.  Selling into this type of clientele was not hard, it was different.  We had to be on our A-game with product knowledge and understand that they were going to leave and come back, and then leave again and then come back to buy.  Consumer reports was still a thing and Edmunds was just popping onto the scene as an online research tool.

A few huge rules of being a salesperson, don't talk when your manager or someone is trying to close a deal.  After a closing question, don't say a word.

Our general manager, a gentleman by the name of Bill Breed was an incredible leader and knew the business in and out.  To the salespeople he would tell us three things, know know know your inventory, always have your D-tag in a safe place, and never lose keys.  Bill was also big on phone training and product knowledge.

I think those two things are still key today.  We were taught to perfect our walkarounds and always go on 30-minute test drives.  How many people work at a dealership today where the test drive route takes more than 10 minutes?  All of the Subaru salespeople were required to give walkarounds in front of the entire sales staff and maintain ongoing phone training to take phone calls. 

If you could do those two things properly, you would be successful selling cars, and in turn, the dealership would be successful.  We were doing around 220 cars in our prime, and that was a Subaru-Isuzu store in Olathe, KS. 

It was a privilege at the dealership to answer phones, every time the phones would ring, you would hear salespeople saying, "money's calling."  It's true too, when that phone rings, that's your money calling.  Most every salesperson had a phone script taped to their desk, we knew that it was there to help us make money, but also because if we were being secret shopped, we wanted that perfect score.  Our GM always told us, if you didn't set the appointment, don't count on them showing up and asking for you.   And he was right!  Not having an appointment, and telling them to come in and ask for you or setting a weak appointment never ended up with the customer asking for you.  Even if you had your upsheet with all of their info, you were still splitting the deal if they didn't come in and ask for you.

The strong appointment builds a solid rapport with the consumer before they even come in.  You know their name, they know yours (sometimes even have written it down), you have already validated that the vehicle they are calling in about is an excellent selection, you know about their trade-in, you have given them a couple of options on your availability to come into the dealership, and have given them directions to your store.

When people talk about getting back to basics when it comes to selling cars, these two things will make a significant impact on your dealerships monthly numbers.  Today in 2016 these two important skills have stood the test of time, they are always important and still in every great sales trainers curriculum. 

If your salespeople aren't trained on how to handle phone calls, they don't answer the phone, if they can't do a proper demo, the don't sell cars.

The year, 2002.  The dealership was a completely different place than it is today.  I remember my sales manager working with me one-on-one every day.  From around 9 in the morning to 3:30 we would go over closing techniques,  he would show me how he was going to pencil deals, he would teach me qualifying questions to ask, trial closes during the test drive.  
My first week at the dealership was an amazing experience, the manager pointed to the lot and told me to go drive every car out there.  I was 20 years old and had access to a lot of 350 cars, I grabbed the keys and hit the gas.  This was unfortunately before Subaru became known for its turbocharged cars but they did have the WRX and the most expensive car on the lot was an Isuzu Trooper, limited.  

I say those days were different because it was wildly a business-first mindset.  As opposed to a consumer first or customer service mindset.  We at the dealership put so much emphasis on steps to the sale because it was a complete mind game to increase gross profit on the deal.  The silent walk-around on a trade in works, if you go around and point and stare at all the imperfections of a car the owner will tell you about every scratch and ding on the car!  There were Autotrader and cars.com then but it wasn't used by many consumers to value their trade in.  Consumers would come in with their research written in notebooks.  Being at a Subaru dealership, we saw tons of engineers, scientists, MD's and professors.  Selling into this type of clientele was not hard, it was different.  We had to be on our A-game with product knowledge and understand that they were going to leave and come back, and then leave again and then come back to buy.  Consumer reports was still a thing and Edmunds was just popping onto the scene as an online research tool.

A few huge rules of being a salesperson, don't talk when your manager or someone is trying to close a deal.  After a closing question, don't say a word.

Our general manager, a gentleman by the name of Bill Breed was an incredible leader and knew the business in and out.  To the salespeople he would tell us three things, know know know your inventory, always have your D-tag in a safe place, and never lose keys.  Bill was also big on phone training and product knowledge.

I think those two things are still key today.  We were taught to perfect our walkarounds and always go on 30-minute test drives.  How many people work at a dealership today where the test drive route takes more than 10 minutes?  All of the Subaru salespeople were required to give walkarounds in front of the entire sales staff and maintain ongoing phone training to take phone calls. 

If you could do those two things properly, you would be successful selling cars, and in turn, the dealership would be successful.  We were doing around 220 cars in our prime, and that was a Subaru-Isuzu store in Olathe, KS. 

It was a privilege at the dealership to answer phones, every time the phones would ring, you would hear salespeople saying, "money's calling."  It's true too, when that phone rings, that's your money calling.  Most every salesperson had a phone script taped to their desk, we knew that it was there to help us make money, but also because if we were being secret shopped, we wanted that perfect score.  Our GM always told us, if you didn't set the appointment, don't count on them showing up and asking for you.   And he was right!  Not having an appointment, and telling them to come in and ask for you or setting a weak appointment never ended up with the customer asking for you.  Even if you had your upsheet with all of their info, you were still splitting the deal if they didn't come in and ask for you.

The strong appointment builds a solid rapport with the consumer before they even come in.  You know their name, they know yours (sometimes even have written it down), you have already validated that the vehicle they are calling in about is an excellent selection, you know about their trade-in, you have given them a couple of options on your availability to come into the dealership, and have given them directions to your store.

When people talk about getting back to basics when it comes to selling cars, these two things will make a significant impact on your dealerships monthly numbers.  Today in 2016 these two important skills have stood the test of time, they are always important and still in every great sales trainers curriculum. 

If your salespeople aren't trained on how to handle phone calls, they don't answer the phone, if they can't do a proper demo, the don't sell cars.