May 4, 2016

• Consumers would prefer to conduct most of their business online. How "going vertical" on your finance page will help you sell more cars. 

According to a 2015 study by Autotrader, an astounding 72% of online shoppers would be willing to arrange their financing online, prior to coming in to the dealership. 56% want to start negotiating online and another 45% prefer to remain anonymous until the deal is locked down. Here's the link 

Enter Content Marketing 

Giving clients more "features" (in other words content) on your own landing pages will keep buyers on your site longer. It will provide them with trusted and valuable information they can use to determine whether or not they wish to proceed with a purchase, before they waste time with questions on the lot.

Here's some great features you can add on your finance pages to enhance clients' perception of your value to them:

1. Trade in Estimator
2. Leasing vs Financing
3. Payment Estimator
4. Insurance Estimator
5. "How to..." blog posts ( get a car loan, build credit, cosign...)

Horizontal Vs. Vertical Content Marketing

What's the difference in these marketing approaches? Here's the simplest (best) explanation I found so far:

"For example, maintaining an effective website, offering community classes, or participating in social media are all horizontal efforts. Compare those tovertical marketing initiatives and efforts, which are in place to support a specific marketing goal or effort. This might entail a go-to-market campaign that leverages a microsite and ramped-up social media posts to support the growth of a specific service line, for example." Reference

A tremendous opportunity for growth...

The explosive growth of companies like Canada Drives, CarsDirect and  other credit providers tells us, in the automotive business, that there is a huge demand for pre approved financing. 

These companies excel at creating valuable content online, marketing that information to buyers and capturing their credit information, which they then sell to you. 

By providing that service, and many more unique offers, on your own web-sites, you can educate your clients and build trust in your dealership and your services right away. 

After all, that same study by Autorader, tells us that shoppers are checking out Dealers' websites first, while they're "still looking" in the beginning of their buying cycle. 

This presents a tremendous opportunity to become the authority in your market for your brand. 

Content gets your rankings up

Content has been singled out as one of 3 crucial ranking signals Google uses to determine your website's ranking score (Links and the A.I. program "Rankbrain" are the other 2). 

Content builds relationships online

Being an authority on a particular subject builds trust in your consumer's eyes and turns shoppers into buyers. 

By being the first Hyundai dealership, say, to provide the right information to a client, you will position yourself as an expert source of knowledge. The more often the same shopper returns to you for that knowledge, the stronger your relationship will become.  

Get Vertical

It's becoming easier to see that the OEMs are taking a vertical approach to their content marketing efforts, your Dealership will benefit from being the first in its market to adopt these strategies. For more information on how to create valuable vertical content and content marketing strategies, download the Lead Generation Blueprint. 

Thanks for reading, I hope you got a ton out of it, all the best! Eduardo. 

How will Rankbrain help me sell cars?

The Artificial Intelligence, Rankbrain, is Google’s newest client satisfaction tool. Your dealership’s digital strategy (you have one right?), will be more successful if you understand what Rankbrain does and how to leverage it to sell cars.

Recently Google published it’s top 3  ranking factors; content, links and Rankbrain.

There’s a host of other factors *, but these 3 trump them all. Taking advantage of each one of these on your next website refresh (your website gets updated, right?), will maximize your online visibility and help you reach more customers.

Proper execution of these 3 ranking signals will not only boost your page rank – it  will benefit your customers, your dealership and yourself.

Content and links are fairly well known, and generally well applied, but most dealerships have never heard of Rankbrain.

What is Rankbrain?

Rankbrain is a highly intelligent piece of  software created by Google to assist you when you look for something online.

It is so well designed, it is capable of learning. In fact, it’s getting smarter every second and it’s now smarter than the Google engineers who built it.

Remember “Kit” from the 80’s T.V. show  Knight Rider? That’s an Artificial Intelligence. Rankbrain is like Kit, only it doesn’t talk back and it is way smarter.

What does Rankbrain do?

Essentially, Rankbrain keeps track of your searches, sorts sites by their relevance to your search and eliminates unintersting sites from the results, and also searches out what you meant to search for, in case you misspelled a search term, forgot to include one, or might be more interested in a slightly different search.

What? Ya, it searches what you meant to find, not just what you told it to find.

How does it work?

Let’s skip this part for now. It’s safe to just know that it does. Here’s the relevant links that will explain it way better than I can:

1. Wikipedia
2. searchengineland
3. Jayson Demers on Forbes

What is its function?

Rankbrain is designed to help you have a better experience on Google and Google Chrome.

It helps eliminate search results that are spammy, ad heavy, irrelevant, not mobile friendly and un-interesting for you.

Why does this matter?

Let me ask you a serious question first.

“How bad do you want to win online?”

If winning all of the time, without fail, by whatever (ethical) means necessary, isn’t a priority for you and your dealership, don’t worry about Rankbrain.

Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing- Vince Lombardi.

UNITED STATES – DECEMBER 31: Football: NFL championship, Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi victorious, getting carried off field by team after winning game vs New York Giants, Green Bay, WI 12/31/1961 (Photo by Marvin E. Newman/Sports Illustrated/Getty Images) (SetNumber: X8174)

Rankbrain is going to level the playing field, again, for businesses hoping to acquire new customers online in 2016.

How can you win a game, any game, if your team doesn’t know what one key element of the game even was. Let alone have a strategy and a team in place.

Imagine a football team that had zero special teams, no punts, no field goals, no touchdowns off kickoff returns. Nothing.

No one wants to play for a team like that. Don’t be that team.

How will Rankbrain help me sell cars?

Your dealership exists online, just like in the real world.

Imagine two dealerships.

The one on the left is in terrible shape. It has a burnt out light in its name. There aren’t any good cars on the lot, and none in the showroom.

The lot is hard to access off the highway and the people in the store are disinterested, not very knowledgeable or helpful.

Worse yet, there are blaring neon signs everywhere advertising cars you don’t like or want. Would you come back?

The one on the right is gorgeous and new. It is easy to get on the lot, find parking and enter the store.

Inside, there are tons of interesting cars to look at, touch and even sit in. The people are friendly and outgoing. They invite you in warmly and answer all your questions.

You are invited to come back, and the next time you do, even more interesting cars are in the showroom and new information is made available to you at your request.

Which dealership would you recommend to your friends?

Rankbrain sorts relevant search results the way you determined which dealership was the best, and organizes them by most to least interesting and helpful.

The differences between websites aren’t always as stark as my analogous dealerships here. But there are differences. Rankbrain figures out what they are for you, and ranks them from best to worst.

Rankbrain ensures good websites get found, great websites go first and poor or sleazy websites get buried.

Customized, responsive and relevant digital dealerships, with great content, will succeed at attracting, engaging and converting shoppers.

Building a website with Rankbrain in mind will allow you to reach a bigger audience, with a better experience and help you convert them into buyers with greater efficiency and greater effectiveness.

Who wouldn’t that for their dealership?

Just ask the Minnesota Vikings how important a good kicker is.

So how does Rankbrain help me sell cars again?

By building a digital dealership that is easy to find, easy to use, provides critical information and a great shopping experience you will win at the game of online dominance.

A digital dealership that invites your clients to come back and gives them relevant and important information each time they come, will thrive.

Dealerships that don’t provide Rankbrain with what it needs will begin to whither.

You can’t win a championship in football without great special teams.

You don’t have a winning digital strategy without a strong Rankbrain score in mind.

Having worked in the automotive industry as both a showroom rep and an internet rep, I have had the pleasure of working with real veterans of the game. I am continually blessed to be in your presence now.

I know how much you like to win accolades for your dealership and be the best around. I also know how much some of you enjoy references to the movies ” Suckers ” and ” Glengarry Glen Ross.” You surround yourself with greatness, you learn something new every day and apply it, you want to be better every day.

That’s what got you to where you are. Learning to use Rankbrain to your advantage is another challenge your dealership is fully capable of meeting head on.

Thanks for your time today. I hope you find value in this information and convert it to your advantage, make it powerful for you today!

Sincerely, Eduardo Aragon, digital marketing advisor and automotive industry professional. Connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter

By Eduardo Aragon

Sales Pros: If you’re not selling at least 2-6 cars off Facebook a month, you’re doing it wrong.

Dealerships: Suppose you have 10 people on your floor and they sell 2-6 cars extra, each – Facebook is time well spent.

” Quit taking pictures of your lunch and go sell me some cars.” These famous words were spoken to me by my sales manager Klay in 2013. This individual taught me so much about the business, but in this instance, I loved proving him wrong.

2 years later I was selling 3 cars a month, sometimes more, using the social media site Facebook.

This was hard to do, mostly because the dealership had blocked the site off our desktops and Wi-Fi, so I was forced to upload pictures and videos off my data plan.

But I kept at it. Day after day, post after post, failure after failure- untill I found success.

After a couple of months, the dealership relented and we got Facebook back. The proof of ability is in the results it seems, and I was getting results.

Fast forward to 2016, dealerships have turned to Facebook advertising in droves, fighting for space on our news feeds with paid campaigns, and launching their own Facebook pages.

Some do a great job and see great ROI. Some fail miserably and give up, swearing it off like a gambling addiction.

“If dealerships fail, how can an individual Sales consultant hope to succeed?”

For the average Sales consultant looking for a few more sales each month, it can be a challenge to get started. We start the business with little to no money and zero experience. Good thing Facebook is free and you have a super-computer and a movie camera in your pocket!

Paid ads are only one way to sell cars using Facebook. I’m going to show you a few more ways to sell cars using Facebook for free.

Before we begin though, let’s go over the numbers, best practices and things to avoid.

Believe me, I am not an expert on Facebook. This form of marketing is constantly evolving and if your knowledge isn’t real and up to date, you’re out of the loop. For a real expert on the subject, check this guy out: Gary V

However, I am a believer in big data. And if I can leverage anything to sell me more cars, I am going to use it.

So here’s the facts on Facebook and why you should be using it right now to market yourself and sell cars.

You can’t fool the math. Over 219,000,000 North Americans and counting own at least one Facebook account.

Half of these people are daily Facebook users. They spend over 20 minutes on the site each day. Mark Zuckerberg recently stated that the average time on the site in North America is 40 minutes a day.

These numbers are staggering.

Facebook marketing is here to stay.

When done right, Facebook’s massive audience can be leveraged by your company and by you as an individual to produce sales in huge numbers.

Think about it. Your Facebook posts can be liked, commented on and shared by your Facebook “friends” and then seen by their friends, and their friends’ friends.

It’s the cheapest form of advertising you can use. If you do it right.

Unfortunately, most salespeople aren’t doing it right.

Marketing yourself on Facebook the wrong way is just as bad, maybe worse, than not doing it all.

So before we explore what to do, let’s look at what not to do.

Here’s some things to avoid right now.

1.) Stop mixing business with pleasure:

Your personal views on politics, religion and sometimes even favorite sports team (don’t post Broncos’ posts in a Carolina market), can turn-off your audience.

People can block you, mute you, stop following you or troll you for your posts.
The goal is to attract people, not repel them. So keep it light, fun, and professional.

2.) Quit hammering your message.

Yes, you are in sales, but every post can’t be about business or people will simply tune you out.

Mix up your advertising posts with other posts that your audience cares about and you will stay in the “like” column a lot longer.

Try this 5 post combination out: a funny post, an educational post, a how to, a personal post/testimonial (remember what not to share) and then a sales pitch.

People go to Facebook for entertainment, so give them what they want. Entertain, educate and inspire your audience and they will do business with you.

3.) No target market.

Facebook paid advertising helps you identify your target audience. But if you aren’t clear on who you want to sell to it won’t work.

Make sure to identify a target audience before you begin.

For ideas on how to market and who to market to check this out: Attract the right customer. It’s a PDF so you will need to log on to your google account to download the PDF, I promise it isn’t malware!

4.) Not following through.

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” True words, just remember to take the rest of the steps or you will never get to your destination.

Maintaining a strong presence on Facebook takes work, creativity and dedication.

Following through doesn’t just help your golf swing, it is imperative for success on Facebook.

If you start a campaign, finish it. If you advertise a reward, make sure people “see” someone win it online. Keep going, don’t stop untill you perfect your pitch, your process and your results.

For a better understanding of what you want to do, click here to log in to google and download the PDF: The Lead Generation Blueprint (this is on here twice, it’s that important.)

OK, awesome. We know what doesn’t work. Now let’s look at how you will sell cars on Facebook.

1.) Make friends.

You need friends to make more friends.

Start with your service department. Then add key family members like your wife and kids. Avoid adding people from other accounts that will embarrass the heck out of you. Keep it professional.

Remember, this is your professional account. You might want to create a completely new one from scratch depending on your past posts.

Add previous clients as a way to follow up and add new clients as part of your delivery process. Get lots of friends.

This will pay off huge when they are thinking about trading in 3 years from now. Trust me.

They will message you on the “messenger” app, make sure you install it on your phone.

2.) Make groups.

The inimitable Bobby Howard has one of the biggest and best Facebook groups ever. Check it out. Facebook Vehicles for sale. He sold over 50 cars in February 2015 in a small town in Louisana. People came from 500 miles away, just to buy from Bobby.

Groups allow you to create a big following without having to “friend” a million people.

Use the group to create conversations, invite people to private sales, and help people out with their vehicle woes.

3.) Create a Facebook business page.

Dark posts, offers, sales posts, targeted advertising campaigns, coupons, etc. These all become available to you with a page. Make your own facebook business page

40 likes gets you the analytics tool “insights”. From there it’s all go and no slow.

4.) Join groups.

My hometown of Kelowna, Canada has a 17,000 person strong group called Okanagan Vehicle lot. That’s 17,000 people actively looking to buy, sell and trade their vehicles in a town of only 150,000. Now I have a huge market to prospect to. Okanagan Vehicle Lot

Use the search function in these groups to track down people searching ” ISO” for specific vehicles. ” iso dually reg cab “, ” iso Jeep tj”

Contact them using messenger.

5.) Get the word out.

You are your best product. So keep posting daily, build your network and provide value to your sold clients and prospects.

Need some ideas? Check out this interview with Gary V: How to advertise on Facebook

Alright, there you have it. Now get going and start creating awesome content to attract, engage and convert your “friends” into buyers.

Facebook is so important, it will take you months to learn and perfect what you need to do to get a consistent flow of traffic. But you can start selling cars right away, just take the first step.

I wish you all the best of luck in business and in life. Got questions? Reach out to me on LinkedIn, Google Plus, or Facebook. I am easy to find.

Have a Powerful day today!

Eduardo (Eddie) Aragon