Websites are big business for dealers and the vendors that provide them.  I often times am frustrated by the lack of mobility offered with the OEM recommended website providers.  Typically there are a few templates to choose from and those all come with limitations.  That being said I often wonder why we focus on the banner ads that slide across the home page that so many dealers resort to.  

On the one hand they do look nice and offer an opportunity to promoted the monthly specials, however if you look at a heat map the most common place visitors visit are the inventory pages.  In fact one study sites that only up to 5% of visitors actually click on the banner. And the clicks get worse the deeper you go in the slide show. Are the low stats because the specials aren't engaging or do visitors have banneritis?  Probably a combination depending on the dealership.

So why don't we put those front and center instead of our inventory which is the most popular pages to visit?  On a website to increase conversion you want to keep it simple.  Make the information that they are looking for readily available.  Test your website with an A/B test by offering two home pages.  One with banner ads and the other with quick links for the following most popular destinations on a dealership  website.

• Schedule Service
• Today’s Deals
• Lease Specials
• Search New
• Search Used
• Value Your Trade-In
• Get Pre-Approved

If you are running any kind of paid digital advertising like retargeting, PPC, facebook ads, etc.  it would be really interesting to see if bounce rates go down.  Even with these campaigns you can send the visitor to special pages that engage based on the content of the ads.  For example, if you are running a $199 lease on a Chevy make that ad click to a page that shows that vehicle up top right away and then quick links to other lease specials or other vehicles of a similar type or price.

An external link is a hyperlink on a website other than your own but points back to your website.  Many SEO companies believe that external links are important to attain good SEO rankings.  Beingseen360.com does believe that external links are part of the very big SEO equation but once again not at any cost.  Once again it must make sense.

External linking at any cost won’t win you any points with search engines.  They actually may hurt you.  I have worked with SEO companies in the past that will go out and link to different blogs, local radio stations or post event on our facebook pages to link the other way.  It all looks interesting but what good is it really doing.  Don’t do it just to do it.

First understand what search engines are looking for with external links. RELEVANCY AND POPULARITY.

 When doing external links the more relevant the page you are putting your link on the better.  For example, most dealers are on Cars.com or Autotrader, and on your individual vehicle listing pages and dealer profile page there is a link to your website.  This is a strong and relevant external link.  You are on a site for car shopping, what could be more relevant.

Below are some things to think about before doing external links:

1.       Is the site you are linking with a good one that people trust

2.       Is the content on the website you are linking with relevant to yours

3.       The more popular the page you are linking on and the more popular the site the better

Many dealership, particularly large dealer groups, have contracts with vendors.  I would recommend expanding the scope of that contract.  For example, if you have a contract with a radio station or a local online entity that you advertise on include content and social aspects to what you negotiate.  

If we spend at X level we would like 1 blog per quarter to be written about either our industry or our dealership with some reference to us and our website.  You can even see if you can provide the content.  This isn't meant to be a hard sell ad but just a way to establish your dealership with LOCAL relevance and trust.

Another interesting idea would be to get the entity to mention your dealership on their social media pages.  

Remember to include that all content must be approved by you to ensure your dealership is shown in an accurate way.

Television, Radio, Retargeting, Facebook Ads, PPC, SEO, Direct Mail, Reputation Management...so many places to put your marketing dollars how do you choose?  

Car dealers are always being told you have to have this and you have to have that.  The pressure can be overwhelming and sometimes you feel like a teenager at a party where everyone is drinking but you.  The fact is that now  a days media is more fragmented than ever and there are a lot of vendors out there for every media vehicle.

Every dealer and every market is different.  You ultimately have to decide how you are going to measure your marketing plans effectiveness.  However, here are some thoughts...

1. Start with the website

• Your website is the most affordable and best form of sales leads.  Maximize it with the best SEO, the right plugins and the right traffic drivers.

2. Don't leave your database behind

• Many dealers try to put something in place that will market to their database monthly but they don't take the time to make sure it is a targeted message.  Rotate your database communication around and mix it up.  Earning your customers back will pay off big in the long run.  Better gross and cheaper to acquire...BACK!

3. Do something else really well

• Don't get to fragmented.  Find something that you feel works and maximize it to the fullest.  Maybe its TV.  Don't just try to spend a little money in TV so that you can spend a little more in Radio.  Most local dealers don't have the funds to go real deep in a medium to have a big enough voice and then they make it even more difficult by trying to be everywhere.

4. Test

• Test other things.  Set up a test budget, a small one and define your parameters for success.  Then you can be ready to grow your budget with your sales.

I was watching TV last night and I saw a commercial for LISTINGALLCARS.com.  Another 3rd party lead provider is entering the market.  Seriously how many more to do we need.  Autotrader, Cars.com, Carguru, KelleyBlueBook, CarSoup, True Car, CarFax and now another one.  

As dealers we are told and taught that we can't live without them.  The reality of it is they need us as much as we need them.  Without are millions of dollars of inventory they wouldn't have a product and without their searchers we wouldn't be able to sell cars.  So although I am not totally anti 3rd party lead provider I often wonder that given the model why doesn't it ever feel like more of a partnership?  Why do I feel like I am working for them every time I write the check?

PAYMENT. I think it comes back to the way the pay is done.  When the market is down I pay the same.  When SRPS go down I am told it isn't them its me and my inventory quality.  When I have manager turn over or fewer staff I can't make any adjustments.  Whenever a decline in business occurs people all across an organization feel the financial hit, but not third parties.

There is no doubt that sometimes a dealerships failures with third party listings are their own but if I don't have any inventory would I write the check?  So if I know the market is down, particularly in the winter months, or if I have staff turn over why am I still writing the same check?  Wouldn't it be nice if I can make the dollars make sense for whatever obstacle my dealership is trying to overcome?

ANALYSIS. As more and more companies have tried to conquer the third party listing business model I often wonder why the increase in competition hasn't driven change in some companies pay to play model or at least the costs down.  

I think it may be dealers inability to truly analyze the numbers.  When working for a dealer I analyze the following:

• Cost/SRP
• Cost/VDP
• Cost/Lead
• Cost/Conversion (I define as call, visit, chat)
• Cost/Sale (harder to get to)

I keep it simple and the ones that are to high will tell me that they drive showroom traffic.  That is when the SRP and VDP cost comes in handy.  

So even if one is way higher than the other why don't we leave until costs are more inline?  Fear and lack of understanding.  I have never met a vendor I can't live without is my new favorite saying because it is true.  It is true if you have your marketing house in order.  SEO, SEM, Display, Retargeting and traditional advertising!  If you have this organized and well funded you will be able to be more flexible with who you keep and who you lose without sacrificing business.

ACCOUNTABILITY. The last thing that amazes me in our industry is that to my knowledge there is no 3rd party entity monitoring the numbers. In television we look at Neilsen ratings, in radio it is Arbitron, but for sites like Cars.com, Autotrader, KBB, etc. they give us their numbers with no auditing process.  Remembering when customers could only get the numbers on a car from a dealership before the internet...think about it...remember the grosses?  Imagine what could be going on here.  If there is an auditing company please let me know.

Third party listings, with maybe the exception of True Car in some states, have no skin in our game.  When we lose they win.  When we win they win.  Dealerships aren't set up that way so why should there be such little flexibility with third party listings?

This entry will ruffle a lot of feathers but it is not to state that third party listing are bad or wrong for your marketing plans.  It is to challenge us to look for better ways to partner and a more practical way of doing business.

I remember a long time ago helping car dealers with their SEO and so many companies were doing automated content.  They quickly learned what we already knew which is there is no easy quick fix to providing quality content.  Google has released many updates through the years: Panada, Penguin, Hummingbird.  All these updates were designed to weed out the short cuts companies were taking to try to increase rankings.  What they learned and what we always knew is you have to do the work.

The best SEO content will accomplish two things.  The first is to be relevant for the end user, the people.  The second is to let the search engines know what we are doing and why.  Search engines are in the business of answering questions for people and providing information.  The less relevant their results the higher their abandonment rate and the less searches the less valuable the search engine becomes.  Make no mistake about it SEARCH is a product for search engines.

How To Create Good Content

• Make sure your content provides information that is relevant to your services, location, and business. 
• Don’t use automated content.  Take the time and money to create your own.  By creating your own content you create credibility not just with search engines but with customers searching. 
• See what your competition is writing about and make your site the go to for information. Don’t just be relevant be more relevant.
• Off site linking is a big buzz word and I like it but again it must be relevant.  I think it is best to provide links to you own entities.  For example, I like to create content and then have a video that is a link to the you tube page. Or content on my Facebook page that links to the page I’m writing.
• On site linking is my favorite.  Write the content and then link words from that page to others on your site.  Google see that as creating relevancy. 
• Take the time to write enough.  Give yourself a monthly goal of how many words to write.  I recommend starting at 1,000.

There is a lot of crap out there.  General Managers and owners face an uphill battle because SEO can represent a huge part of their budget but typically isn’t in their skill set.  Just remember organic visits are the most valuable visits in terms of quality and conversion to lead and sales.  Take the time. 

As an extension to my blog from October 6th I wanted to dive deeper into Google Analytics and the acquisition part of the metrics.

In google analytics you can see where a session or visit actually comes from.  The acquisition overview not only provides insight into how visitors find your site but their behavior and conversion details as well.  There are several ways to measure the different sources and Google categorizes them as Organic, Paid Search, Direct, Referral, Social and Other for custom campaign tracking.  You can click on each channel to drill down to get a more detailed view.

Understanding acquisition of visit and its relationship to lead volume and sales can provide many insights into your business.  The process from attaining a customer to selling a car can be very complicated.  There are so many more steps these days.  Make sure the online price is competitive, merchandising, SEO, Paid Search, Direct Mail, Sales People pay plans, Lead Handlers, etc.  Acquisition and understanding it can be used to pinpoint why a month was good or why a month was bad.

Over many years of building websites and handling BDCs here are some insights I have learned about acquisition. 

1. SEO is the cheapest and best way to attain a visitor. 
   1. Visits that are attained organically have a higher percentage of turning into a lead and a higher percentage of turning into a sale.  We also did a snapshot and learned that we were able to gross slightly better as well, although I recognize that a majority of that is influenced by the floor. 
   2. Organic leads also were easier for BDCs to contact because their phone numbers were more likely to be legitimate.
   3. Leads and sales are obviously key but we also can gain other insights into analyzing our SEO.  For example, if our rankings are strong and our organic visits don’t increase that could be an indication that either the market is flat or down or that 1st 2nd 3rd teir marketing isn’t generating interest and therefore demand.
   4. You will probably also see that more organic visits typically means a healthier web site interms of conversion, TOS, bounce rate, etc.
2. Referral are visits that come from other places.  Basically you are paying to be on another website and hoping they do your job to send visits your way.  These visits are:
   1.  typically a much smaller part of the pie
   2. Convert to a lead at a much lower rate
   3. Are a less of a quality lead
   4. Higher in the buying funnel
   5. Much more expensive to attain
3. Paid Search are visits that are generated from Google ads.  These visits will typically:
   1. Increase your bounce rate
   2. Are less quality
   3. They are the hardest to convert to a lead

For Paid search it is all about targeting and balancing your budgets.  The more fine tuned your campaigns are the more effective and cost efficient your efforts will be.  Paid Search is a great way to boost the leads but a lot of leads do not mean more sales.  More of the right kind of leads mean more sales.  Click here to see more about Paid Search Strategies that we like to recommend to car dealers.

4. Direct visits refer to people that enter in your name into google or type your url straight into the address bar.  Like SEO these are typically very successful visits featuring a low bounce rate and a higher conversion to leads.  You can also use these visits to see when advertising effort are effective and when they are not.

5. The last is social.  Social advertising is deceptively cheap.  The clicks and exposure are great and the targeting opportunity is also wonderful, however tie it back to sales.  In some markets you will see great results but in some not so great. 

The better you are at setting up your analytics the more accountable you can be to your digital marketing efforts.  Marketing is a moving target.  Find the best and most efficient way for you to spend your money.

In a world flooded with vendors just let me say “I’m just not that into you.”  There are so many vendors out there that offer solutions to make the dealers lives easier but it can be so overwhelming.  Many dealer groups often need to hire one individual to just manage everyone.  I remember getting presented a product and a vendor trying to convince me that I was missing business all because I wasn’t signed up with them.  My response was “I’ve never met a vendor I can’t live without.”  After the conversation I realized that that is actually true. 

Most dealers I have worked for, and with, sign up for a product based on a promise of selling more cars but all to often the dealer comes to realize that the cost isn’t really worth it.  This happens for two reasons.  One the product isn’t really that good or two your dealership doesn’t know how to capitalize on the product.

How do decide to add or change a vendor:

1. Need – When you analyze your dealership process try to identify areas where you can gain more gross, more net and/or more sales.  Yes, everyone will say “I would like more” or “I could always do better” in all categories but the reality of it is you are far better off to walk then run.  Running to fast may mean a wasting money.  As a dealership establish what you need to do to hit your business objective and see if a vendor can help with that.
2. Present Status – After you know your need or objective analyze what you currently have in place in terms of people, products and process.   So often dealers already have a vendor that can offer a solution but they are just unaware.  Many times, when I am with a dealer we realize that they already have a tool that no one is actually utilizing.  Then we ask are you not utilizing it because you don’t have the personal or the process or both?  The point is that before adding expense and buying the dream you are being sold analyze how to achieve your objectives and approach it like you couldn’t spend money on another product and see what you come up with.  You may be surprised.
3. A Plan – So if you have determined that you have a need for a product before you sign on the dotted line develop a plan.  Make sure you decide who will be accountable to make sure the product is being used effectively.  Make sure you have a process.  Many times the vendor can give you insight into best practices and then you can combine that knowledge with what you know about the inner workings of your staff and dealership.  Another good idea is to have the staff assist you with developing the plan.  Finally define what a success with the product and vendor will look like at the end of the day.  It isn’t always as simple as more sales.  Sometimes using a new vendor is more about creating time savers or saving money. 
4. Evaluate -  After you define what success will look like set up a way to measure the product.  Be consistent in your measurement and be constant.

While working in a dealership we found that we had a unique opportunity to create business out of the service drive.  We hooked up with a vendor to evaluate equity of service drive visits.  We had a process, a person and part of a service to use to execute.  After we didn’t see an increase in sales we dug into why we weren’t getting what we expected and what we were promised.  What we learned is that one of the people in the process just wasn’t doing the job we expected and the other was that the product wasn’t successful because we weren’t using it to its full capabilities.  Since management didn’t want to spend more money on it and we didn’t have the person we need we ultimately decided that although we still believed there were untapped sales opportunities we weren’t set up to succeed and therefore it was just spending money. 

Another time we tried to implement video walk arounds on vehicles.  Again, the process was set up and we had the people.  However, it ultimately failed.  Not because the idea wasn’t good but because we found that the personal didn’t have time to do the videos on a consistent basis.

I have never been afraid to walk away from a vendor.  No one has the golden ticket sort of speak.  No matter how great the sales person or the presentation it really is up to the dealership and management to capitalize on any product or service you employ.  Yes, there are bad products out there, but there are good ones that dealerships just can’t make work for them.  Be honest with yourself. 

When I look for new solutions they typically have to accomplish one or more of the following:

• Save time for employees
• Save money for the dealership
• Answer a business objective

WRONG!  As I wrote in my last post I would like to introduce you to the Acquisition part of Google Analytics.  In your analytics Google provides an overview of your visitor acquisition, or how your web site acquired them. 

It is important for car dealers to understand where their visits are coming from because you can then dig deeper into the health, effectiveness and efficiency of your marketing budget.  Google categorizes visitors into five main channels: Organic, Referral, Direct, Social, Paid Search, Email and Other.  Click here to see a more in depth definition of each channel. 

Many vendors will tell you how your visits should be distributed among the channels but the reality is that most dealers will differ from one another.  For example, in a smaller market where there are only two FORD dealerships within a 40 mile radius a dealership may not be spending any money on email marketing or paid search so therefore, their organic visits may represent more of a pie than the other channels.  While another dealership may be spending a lot of money in paid search which is forcing organic and direct to represent a smaller part of the pie.  The take away here is not that one distribution channel is better than another because markets, brands, spend, consumer activity can all vary so dramatically make to make and city to city.  What you need to understand is how you can spend money to acquire customers in the most cost effective manner.

Although all markets can be different there are some general guidelines I have learned over the years when analyzing dealers web site traffic.  The first is that organic visits are the most effective in terms of conversion to sale, cost per visit and cost per lead.  Organic visits typically make a web site more healthy providing more time on site and a better bounce rate.   The cost also doesn't have to drain your budget.

Direct visits are also very high quality visits.  If you are spending money in direct mail, radio, televisions, etc. many times dealers will see an increase in direct visits during the times they are advertising.  This data can help dealers decide how much to spend and when.

Paid search definitely has its place in a marketing budget, but make sure you understand how paid search works.  Paid search will typically increase a sites bounce rate and lower the time on site.  The more targeted the paid search campaign the better.  The leads from paid search also tend to not be as effective interms of units sold but owning the page also has intangible benefits. 

My advice to dealers is to start with organic.  Make sure you are ranking well vs. the competition.  If you have the rankings owned then it is time to move on and drive different types of traffic to your site.  By understanding where your traffic is coming from and what happens once it is on your site you can begin to tweak your marketing and in the long run end of saving money. Don't be afraid to mix it up and test different form of advertising.  Take those test and look at them through the analytics of your web site and see what you can see!

To me Google analytics is one of the best tools a dealer can use to understanding his/her traditional or digital marketing efforts.  However to often to many dealers don't know how to read Google analytics.  To me it is almost as important as reading your financial statement!  I bet I have your attention now!

Google analytics is awesome because it can help you analyze a campaigns effectiveness, a websites ability to convert leads and stickiness, where to put marketing dollars, when to spend and so much more.  

When setting up a web site if the vendor using their own back end data you should assist on putting the Google Analytics (GA) code on there too.  GA offers a 3rd party view with no financial interest.  Plus web site vendors can alter code to make things like what counts as a session or how to define a bounce rate different.  Use GA as your baseline always!

If you are just starting with GA let's start with the basic metrics to learn first:

Sessions—A session is the period of time a user is actively engaged with your web site within a date range.  I look at Sessions for two primary reasons.  One I want to see if certain marketing, inventory, campaign, etc. efforts spike my web traffic.  The other is to see where I should spend my money.  For example I typically see web site visits go up the last 15 days for the month so I like to put my marketing there to capitalize on the industries organic increases.

Pageviews—Pageviews means the total number of pages viewed by a user. Note, repeated views of a single page are counted.  I love this tool because I can go into the advance search and type in "NEW" or "USED" and see if users are coming to see my new or used inventory more.  For example, in a dealer I consult for he didn't understand why his web site visits were up but his new car business was flat.  By looking at the metrics of the individual pages we found out that the increase in visits were driven almost completely by users searching on pages geared to used cars.

Avg. Session Duration—The average length of a session.  Typically a car dealer will see about 5 to 6 minutes.  This metric also relates to bounce rate which you will see listed later.  If your TOS or Time on Site is to low it suggests that customers aren't engaging and the site isn't sticky.  A couple of reason for this could be your content isn't relevant or the sources leading customer to your web site are not very targeted.

Bounce Rate—Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e., visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page).  I love this metric.  It tells so much about the sites ability to create conversions.  It also shows you how effective your marketing plan is.  Typically organic driven visits will have the lowest bounce rate, while pay per click or display advertising your bounce rate will rise.  That doesn't mean the rise isn't worth it but the lower you can keep the bounce rate the better your site will be in the long run.

Conversions—  Is you web site trying to generate activity like form submissions, leads, or calls?  Then you should set up goals in your GA.  Conversions are the number of times goals have been completed on your website.  For most car dealers you can do this by looking at your CRM or your call source provider.  However, if you want to know what buttons work best or what interlinking is getting clicked on most these goal can be really handy.  

In my next blog I will dive deeper into Acquisition.

Bottom line your dealership is better online when you know what the user experience is doing for you interms of engagement and activity.  You and your vendor should be analyzing Google analytics monthly and setting up your marketing with specific goals in mind.  If you are going to spend money on a web site you should understand what it is currently producing and have a road map on where it can/should go.

I like this video from Google too. 

Beingseen360 did a case study on Zimmerman Honda in the quad cities.  The study provides a look at to how see if the money you are spending on SEO is working and if it isn't.  It also looks at how a dealer ranks against their competition.  Pretty cool regarding what they have achieved.

Click here to see the detail of the case study!