In 1995 I was made the Internet manager at a dealership simply because of my ability to use a computer. The store that I was at saw the potential of the Internet but as so many dealers in the beginning we had very little knowledge of how to implement a process or department. A lot has changed since then, but as the saying goes a lot has stayed the same. I have spent the last 5 years talking to dealerships about Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, web 2.0 and now even the concept of web 3.0. In that time I have found dealerships that are at the leading edge of these subjects and dealerships that are still way behind.

Quite often in my discussions with dealers the topic of how difficult technology is to learn comes up, how they don't have the time to learn, or there just isn't any interest to try.  The Internet is definitely here to stay, and to utilize it's full potential a dealership needs to have an Internet philosophy from the top down.  You can no longer rely on having a person that can "handle" that for you with zero oversight based on the fact you don't even know what they do.  In the book “The 7 habits of highly effective people” by Stephen Covey, Dr. Covey discusses the concept of the circle of concern vs. the circle of influence. The circle of concern being things that we have little or no no control over; like the economy or what the dealership in the next town is doing this weekend. The circle of influence covers the things that are within our control, and when focused on can expand over time. With web 2.0 and Internet marketing being so important in todays market environment I would like to suggest that becoming proficient in the skills that are needed to be competitive in this arena is well within your circle of influence.  To that end I have put together these three videos as the first three steps to taking charge of your Internet marketing department.  Once a week I will add at least one more video to build on these three so that in a short period of time you will be comfortable making marketing and vendor decisions that will impact your dealership.  Although my hope is that owners and upper management will take the 30 minutes or less per day to expand their knowledge as it relates to the technology that is available, there will be information for anyone at any level that is interested.   

So where do you start?

Regardless of your knowledge level as it relates to these subjects my intent with these videos is to simplify your efforts with tools and tricks that I have found to be very helpful. These first videos will guide you through setting up a workspace so that you can accomplish more tasks in less time. With this set up you will be able to learn and manage your Internet marketing efforts in about 30 minutes per day.

Step One: Creating an iGoogle page as an Internet marketing dashboard

You may have heard of iGoogle before or even see it as you log into your Gmail account. This video is to demonstrate how to use it as a dashboard and learning tool. You will be able to keep an eye on your Google Alert emails, rss feeds, information from your Youtube channel, dealership schedule with Google Calendar, web based spreadsheets and documents, and a multitude of other things all in one spot. The video is how to set up a Gmail account and iGoogle page with a few widgets that we will add onto later.

Step 2: A Youtube channel to manage your online videos and create video SEO

So you know how important video is, but how do you maximize your efforts. Setting up a free YouTube channel will help you leverage every video you create and measure the traffic that is generated to it, Of course we all know the value of video as it relates to selling cars on the Internet. This video is a how to set up your own Youtube channel. A Youtube channel will allow you to organize and network your videos to your clients and the world.

Step 3: Google Chrome to make a one click work space to save time 

I am using Google Chrome as an example here on how to use a browser to manage multiple websites for your Internet marketing work. You can use Fire Fox or even Internet Explore for this if you want to. I have chosen Chrome because it has been designed to run multiple web based applications at one time. 

Taking your Google listing to the next level

My guess is by now you are familiar with what Google's local business directory is. You have already claimed your listing, checked your phone number, verified your address, and added a description of your dealership. Now when you search for your dealership it comes up and looks something like the listing below. The video link at the bottom will walk you through how to claim your listing.

How important is Google local business?

What you may not realize is how often people see this and are getting to your site from your listing, or how many people call from your listing without ever going to your website. The numbers would surprise you; just to get an idea look at the keyword referrals from Google in your analytics tool. Do a Google search on the first few that are in the list. One of them will be your dealership name and if you are a franchise dealer one will be something like "make city" or "city make". When you run these searches notice which ones produce a listing map with your dealership information. After you have searched the first few go back to your analytics tool and add the number of hits together for the two or three keywords that produced the directory. Now take 80% of that number and that is probably pretty close to the number of people who found your site via Google local business directory. The example below is of real numbers from a website that we manage. Based on the calculation they received about 1859 visits from the local listing and about 2324 impressions.

At this point I am making an educated guess on this percentage but I bet it is very close to this if not more. I will be placing a tracking link for our clients to monitor this and will do a follow up post when there is enough information. For all the dealerships out there that use Google Analytics to track your website I am including a tracking link so you can do this too. Please place this link in your listing and let us know what you come up with.

Now that you know that this is a major source of impressions and traffic to your site what does it mean?

Manage the Reviews

First of all did you know that Google has a review section here? If you didn't, take a look at what kind of reviews you have, in most cases you will have some bad reviews. This isn’t because you do bad business; it’s because people are always willing to share bad experiences well before they share good ones. How do you offset these reviews? Like any review site you want to know as soon as the review has been posted so that you can resolve the client issue if possible (see video on Using Google Alerts). In a lot of cases you may not even have known they were dissatisfied. You can ask your clients to start filling out the reviews on Google business as a common practice. Don’t over do this, a good formula for this is to make sure you have between 5 and 10 positive reviews for every negative one.

Manage the phone #'s

I personally call the number on the directory when calling dealerships. Quite often the call goes directly to the parts or service department and the transfer gets botched. Of course I will call back or find another phone number, but your client just got a bad first impression. Test the number to make sure it is going to a person trained in handling phone calls. Use a local tracking # to help track how many people are calling from the listing. Measure, measure, measure… even though the information may not seem valuable at first you will find that you will need it down the road and if you haven’t started measuring now then you won’t have it.

Tracking Link

Here is the the link that you will want to use to track the number of visitors generated from the directory. This only works for Google Analytics and will create a campaign in your analytics account called "local". Just replace the "yourwebsiteaddress" portion with your url and put it in the url section in the set up as shown in the video.
http://www.yourwebsiteaddress.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=local

If you aren't familiar with how to manage your listing click on the link below and watch the video

click here to view the using Google Alerts to monitor web noise video

Don't let your listing get hijacked

You will also want to read this post to understand just how important it is to monitor your listing. There are businesses out there hijacking listings to their own sites.
http://blumenthals.com/blog/2008/09/18/google-maps-widespread-hijacking-of-business-listings-confirmed/

Mike Fitzpatrick
mike@dealertrend.com