Have you ever wondered why PPC and SEO are often separated. Even in companies that offer both, they usually treat them as two separate entities, stating that the practices that work in PPC are different from the practices that work in SEO. We beg to differ.

Much of PPC is driven by Quality Score. This means that the keyword, the ad, and the page that you send them to should all match up and bring value to the person doing the search.

Much of SEO is driven by relevance of content. This means that the keyword, the organic listing, and the page you send them to should all match up to bring value to the person doing the search.

Do you see what I'm getting at?

Google has stated over and over again that presence of a PPC spend has no effect on how well a website ranks organically. For years, companies in the automotive industry claimed that it did. Lately, there has been a reversal since there's so much content out there that demonstrates that the two do not correlate. As a result, companies have used that as a reason to now separate out the two.

The problem is that the correlations existed, just not in the way that was being preached. A page that's strong for SEO will also be strong for PPC from a Quality Score perspective. With this established, the only remaining piece to the puzzle is making the pages both valuable from a content perspective as well as strong from a conversion perspective. We believe we have this concept nailed, but that's something for our own blog.

Here, I'd like to encourage dealers who are doing their own PPC to think within this principle as they build pages. Sending everyone to the VDPs or SRPs is a popular strategy, but I believe it behooves you to do some testing. Building strong landing pages that work for SEO, PPC, and conversion may be your best bet. Does it require more work? Yes. Does it yield better results? Absolutely.

The SEO value of PPC is non-existent in our industry because it takes work, not because it can't or shouldn't be done.

We're talking about two separate strategies that have the same goals (traffic, leads, and sales) that play in the same basic venue. Don't you think they should be working together?

Digital marketing in the automotive industry has very few absolutes. When it comes to the difference between automation and manual effort, the proper answers are squarely in the gray area.

Let's take a look at some of the different aspects of digital marketing and break down which ones should be automated, which should be manual, and which should be a hybrid. Spoiler Alert: pretty much all of them should be a hybrid to some extent to achieve the best possible results.

Website Building and Maintenance

When I worked for a website provider, our biggest strength was the fact that we built custom sites. Our biggest weakness was that we built custom sites. It's hard and in today's day and age I've become a fan of using templates that have flexible content management systems for design fluidity and enhancement.

With that said, an automated methodology to the build that is guided by manual improvements is ideal. As much as we would all love to have websites hand-built exactly the way we want them, there are stability issues with that mentality. Inventory, specials, forms - automations is necessary to keep everything up to date. Where manual effort comes in is the design, improvement, and search engine optimization. Boilerplate content is all over today's websites because it's too challenging for most large website providers to hand-craft content.

PPC

It wasn't too long ago that I felt automation was necessary, particularly for keyword maintenance and bids. Then, I started noticing the improvements that Google was making and realized that a dealership or PPC specialist could do much of it manually. Most recently, I realize that a hybrid approach makes the most sense.

Don't get me wrong. I believe that way too much emphasis is placed on bid automation. In reality, letting Google manage bids can be nearly as efficient as having software do it, but there's more to it. Dynamic inventory ads, for example, are clearly easier with automation. However, it's in the manual efforts placed on keywords matched to ad text and ads matched to landing pages where the real separators come into play.

BDC, Chat, and Email Follow Up

Okay, so these are technically not functions of automation versus manual processes, but at the dealership level they really are. The choices are to have an internal BDC, chat operators, and email follow up or to hire other companies to do the work for the dealership. In a way, it's automation.

Once again I'm a little torn because it depends on the situation. For high-volume dealerships or dealer groups, the consistency that comes with hiring these services out can be beneficial. However, there's also an argument to building strong teams internally. If I'm forced to answer, I would say that BDC and email follow up should be internal and chat operation should be managed by a chat service.

Social Media

Again, the levels of automation here are minimal but there's still the presence of tools and strategies that should be addressed. Having a Twitter account that's just an automated feed from Facebook, for example, is a terrible idea. It just doesn't save much time and yields nil.

Then, there's the idea of using bulk posts from OEMs or large social media firms. This, too, is not beneficial to the dealership and is a waste of time. There are social media firms that do a nice job, but if a dealership has the resources to keep a robust presence on their own as well as to manage the ads properly, that's the best case scenario.

Classified Sites

As strange as it may sound, there are still those who manually post their inventory to sites like Autotrader.com. Bad idea. Thankfully, it's not very common.

What's more common is manually posting to Craigslist, eBay Motors, and some of the sites that charge per posting. The thought is that cost savings can be made by doing it manually, but there's a problem. Time costs money and the process isn't easy. While we don't promote automated feeds, there are tools like LotVantage available that make the posting process relatively manual while limiting the time wasted on the process.

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There are other things out there that deserve to be discussed. This is a sampling. If you want to discuss these or others, please comment below.

Automation has its place. Manual effort has its place. A key to success is discerning when to do things manually and when to push the easy button.

Digital marketing in the automotive industry has very few absolutes. When it comes to the difference between automation and manual effort, the proper answers are squarely in the gray area.

Let's take a look at some of the different aspects of digital marketing and break down which ones should be automated, which should be manual, and which should be a hybrid. Spoiler Alert: pretty much all of them should be a hybrid to some extent to achieve the best possible results.

Website Building and Maintenance

When I worked for a website provider, our biggest strength was the fact that we built custom sites. Our biggest weakness was that we built custom sites. It's hard and in today's day and age I've become a fan of using templates that have flexible content management systems for design fluidity and enhancement.

With that said, an automated methodology to the build that is guided by manual improvements is ideal. As much as we would all love to have websites hand-built exactly the way we want them, there are stability issues with that mentality. Inventory, specials, forms - automations is necessary to keep everything up to date. Where manual effort comes in is the design, improvement, and search engine optimization. Boilerplate content is all over today's websites because it's too challenging for most large website providers to hand-craft content.

PPC

It wasn't too long ago that I felt automation was necessary, particularly for keyword maintenance and bids. Then, I started noticing the improvements that Google was making and realized that a dealership or PPC specialist could do much of it manually. Most recently, I realize that a hybrid approach makes the most sense.

Don't get me wrong. I believe that way too much emphasis is placed on bid automation. In reality, letting Google manage bids can be nearly as efficient as having software do it, but there's more to it. Dynamic inventory ads, for example, are clearly easier with automation. However, it's in the manual efforts placed on keywords matched to ad text and ads matched to landing pages where the real separators come into play.

BDC, Chat, and Email Follow Up

Okay, so these are technically not functions of automation versus manual processes, but at the dealership level they really are. The choices are to have an internal BDC, chat operators, and email follow up or to hire other companies to do the work for the dealership. In a way, it's automation.

Once again I'm a little torn because it depends on the situation. For high-volume dealerships or dealer groups, the consistency that comes with hiring these services out can be beneficial. However, there's also an argument to building strong teams internally. If I'm forced to answer, I would say that BDC and email follow up should be internal and chat operation should be managed by a chat service.

Social Media

Again, the levels of automation here are minimal but there's still the presence of tools and strategies that should be addressed. Having a Twitter account that's just an automated feed from Facebook, for example, is a terrible idea. It just doesn't save much time and yields nil.

Then, there's the idea of using bulk posts from OEMs or large social media firms. This, too, is not beneficial to the dealership and is a waste of time. There are social media firms that do a nice job, but if a dealership has the resources to keep a robust presence on their own as well as to manage the ads properly, that's the best case scenario.

Classified Sites

As strange as it may sound, there are still those who manually post their inventory to sites like Autotrader.com. Bad idea. Thankfully, it's not very common.

What's more common is manually posting to Craigslist, eBay Motors, and some of the sites that charge per posting. The thought is that cost savings can be made by doing it manually, but there's a problem. Time costs money and the process isn't easy. While we don't promote automated feeds, there are tools like LotVantage available that make the posting process relatively manual while limiting the time wasted on the process.

-

There are other things out there that deserve to be discussed. This is a sampling. If you want to discuss these or others, please comment below.

Automation has its place. Manual effort has its place. A key to success is discerning when to do things manually and when to push the easy button.

It's great to be out of the website business. After a decade of working for dealership website providers, I now have the freedom to tell the story like it really is. There are certain truths about dealership websites that dealers need to know.

The first important point is that almost all dealer websites are either underutilized or incapable of being utilized at a high level. Here on DrivingSales the readership is more aware of this than the general dealership body, but even the people reading this article now have a good chance of falling into this category.

Most websites should be improved, added to, or replaced. Let's look at the three options, but first let's discuss why this is the case.

Universal Problems

Here is a brief list off the top of my head of problems that dealers face with their websites. Yours might not have all of these problems, but chances are very strong that you have at least some of these deficiencies.

• Boilerplate Content - There's very little a website company can do to generate unique, relevant content on every important page other than to hire an army of content writers. Very few do (and when I say very few, I don't actually know of any but I can't declare that none of them do until I go through all of them).
• Terrible Homepage Layout - At some point, website providers started pushing the idea of having several banners floating across the homepage. Testing has shown that very few people click on these banners, but that hasn't discouraged the practice. Then, the rest of the homepage is designed in a way that requires 3 minutes just to see everything and figure out where to go. Consumers aren't doing that. They're clicking within the first 30 seconds to the place they really want to go. Clean, intuitive homepages that tell a compelling story within a few seconds would be much more effective.
• Limited High-Quality Inbound Links - We've always understood the value of quality inbound links for SEO purposes. Lately, some website providers have jumped on the bandwagon, which is good, but they're still doing it at such a limited rate that it's not having enough of an effect.
• Too Many Calls to Action - There are providers who boast about having several calls to action on every page. The data shows that the most effective landing pages and even inventory pages have fewer calls to action. The most effective number is (you guessed it) one. A single powerful, relevant call to action is more effective than several.
• Poor Search Functionality - Sites like Amazon and eBay can attribute much of their success to proper search functionality. When will a dealer website come out that knows when someone misspells the word convertible with an "a" that the correct answer isn't "No Results Found"?
• Mobile Challenges - Responsive. Adaptive. I'm not here to debate those particular options. The list of challenges with mobile dealer websites goes beyond the layout style. Thankfully, this is one challenge that is being actively fixed in our industry, but there's still a great deal of room for improvement.
• Underutilized or No Blog - Blogging works. It works for the community. It works for SEO. It works for content marketing. It works for social media. If you don't have a blog on your website, get one. If you have one and you're not posting at least once or twice per week, start posting more.
• Ineffective Landing Pages - Most landing pages we see are terrible. Either they don't have an appropriate call to action, they don't have compelling and relevant content, or both.
• Bloated Content and Title Tags - It doesn't matter where your dealership is. You shouldn't stuff your content and title tags with more than two or three cities on the homepage and more than one city on landing pages. Instead, build more pages that fit each individual metro. When you put in too many, you might as well put in zero. Search engines aren't buying the concept that you're a "Honda dealership serving [list of 14 cities]."
• 2012 Inventory Pages - This is a topic that requires more than a bullet point paragraph. In fact, it probably requires more than a single blog post. If your inventory looks like the same types of inventory that have been on display in our industry for the last four or five years, they're probably not working the way they should.

That's off the top of my head. When we analyze websites, we usually see some or all of these and many, many more.

Dealer websites are like the movie Groundhog Day. Every time you build a new one, there's the hope of doing something better but it often turns out to be the same old thing over and over again. Of course, by the end fo the movie Phil (Bill Murray) puts in the effort to make it the best day ever for the folks of Punxsutawney, PA. As a result, he's finally rewarded with greatness.

I don't recommend building a digital marketing strategy around a Harold Ramis comedy. However, it's a good illustration that making something exceptional takes work. Just the other day we had to call a website company CEO for a simple fix to inventory because customer support told our client that something simple was impossible. You may be seeing the same challenges. If you're not, chances are you're not looking in the right places. These challenges are fairly universal. Thankfully, there are options.

Improve Your Current Website

This is the paradox in the group of three options. It's the one that's arguably the most effective yet it's probably utilized the least. The fact is that most websites, even the ones built by bulk vendors or OEM-mandated sites, have plenty of room for improvement as well as the corresponding tools to make most of those improvements happen.

Of the websites that we've seen improved, over half of them were OEM-mandated. They can be enhanced by improving the creative, eliminating extraneous calls to action, adjusting the boilerplate content, and adding additional pages designed for traffic and conversions. Most have or can have a blog. Out of dozens of platforms that we've worked on, only two platforms were generally unfixable and one of the two has allegedly made major changes recently.

Before jumping to option two or three, it's important to at least explore option one as it requires the least amount of time and effort and the results can be just as high if not higher than the other two options. I'll discuss why that is the case a bit later. For now, let's look at option two.

Add Another Website

For a long time, this was the most popular option for dealers with brands that had OEM mandates. The idea was to build a new, powerful website by an unauthorized provider and park the OEM site in the backyard somewhere.

This option has become less and less popular for a few reasons. The number one reason was the added cost. Fewer dealers are willing to pay for two websites. Another reason is the forced acceptance by the OEMs. Some of them will not allow their name on a non-compliant site, which means that ABC Lexus would have to park their shiny new site on ABCImportCenter.com or something like that instead of ABCLexus.com. Some OEMs won't allow co-op ad dollars to be spent sending traffic to non-compliant sites.

The most important reason that this option is fading is because the OEM vendors are getting better. We've seen a couple of the bigger providers adjust their platforms to make them easier to optimize, improve conversions, and look at least a little different from the competition.

Replace Your Current Website

This is the most popular option, particularly at the end of a contract. As much as most hate going through the building process, there are plenty of reasons to do so... at least that's the perception.

We've worked through dozens of new website builds since starting in 2013. If you include the changeovers we went through as individuals with previous companies, that number goes into the hundreds, possibly even thousands. The result is normally an improvement but rarely is it as great as dealers expect. I'm not saying it's a bad solution. However, it's an incomplete solution.

No website provider has a perfect solution. In fact, very few have what we consider to be a "great" solution and nobody has stood out as being superb at this point. That's the reason that I mentioned option one can yield as good if not better results. Changing website providers or adding a new website to the mix doesn't solve all of the problems. They all have their good and bad components and they'll all require effort to enhance them to their full potential. Out of the box, no website platform can be superb. Thankfully, nearly all of them can be made superb with effort put towards extreme and persistent improvements.

Greatness doesn't come at the flip of a switch. It comes through constant advancement, hard work, and incredible strategies. If you want to stand out, you have to put in the effort regardless of which website option you choose.

It's great to be out of the website business. After a decade of working for dealership website providers, I now have the freedom to tell the story like it really is. There are certain truths about dealership websites that dealers need to know.

The first important point is that almost all dealer websites are either underutilized or incapable of being utilized at a high level. Here on DrivingSales the readership is more aware of this than the general dealership body, but even the people reading this article now have a good chance of falling into this category.

Most websites should be improved, added to, or replaced. Let's look at the three options, but first let's discuss why this is the case.

Universal Problems

Here is a brief list off the top of my head of problems that dealers face with their websites. Yours might not have all of these problems, but chances are very strong that you have at least some of these deficiencies.

• Boilerplate Content - There's very little a website company can do to generate unique, relevant content on every important page other than to hire an army of content writers. Very few do (and when I say very few, I don't actually know of any but I can't declare that none of them do until I go through all of them).
• Terrible Homepage Layout - At some point, website providers started pushing the idea of having several banners floating across the homepage. Testing has shown that very few people click on these banners, but that hasn't discouraged the practice. Then, the rest of the homepage is designed in a way that requires 3 minutes just to see everything and figure out where to go. Consumers aren't doing that. They're clicking within the first 30 seconds to the place they really want to go. Clean, intuitive homepages that tell a compelling story within a few seconds would be much more effective.
• Limited High-Quality Inbound Links - We've always understood the value of quality inbound links for SEO purposes. Lately, some website providers have jumped on the bandwagon, which is good, but they're still doing it at such a limited rate that it's not having enough of an effect.
• Too Many Calls to Action - There are providers who boast about having several calls to action on every page. The data shows that the most effective landing pages and even inventory pages have fewer calls to action. The most effective number is (you guessed it) one. A single powerful, relevant call to action is more effective than several.
• Poor Search Functionality - Sites like Amazon and eBay can attribute much of their success to proper search functionality. When will a dealer website come out that knows when someone misspells the word convertible with an "a" that the correct answer isn't "No Results Found"?
• Mobile Challenges - Responsive. Adaptive. I'm not here to debate those particular options. The list of challenges with mobile dealer websites goes beyond the layout style. Thankfully, this is one challenge that is being actively fixed in our industry, but there's still a great deal of room for improvement.
• Underutilized or No Blog - Blogging works. It works for the community. It works for SEO. It works for content marketing. It works for social media. If you don't have a blog on your website, get one. If you have one and you're not posting at least once or twice per week, start posting more.
• Ineffective Landing Pages - Most landing pages we see are terrible. Either they don't have an appropriate call to action, they don't have compelling and relevant content, or both.
• Bloated Content and Title Tags - It doesn't matter where your dealership is. You shouldn't stuff your content and title tags with more than two or three cities on the homepage and more than one city on landing pages. Instead, build more pages that fit each individual metro. When you put in too many, you might as well put in zero. Search engines aren't buying the concept that you're a "Honda dealership serving [list of 14 cities]."
• 2012 Inventory Pages - This is a topic that requires more than a bullet point paragraph. In fact, it probably requires more than a single blog post. If your inventory looks like the same types of inventory that have been on display in our industry for the last four or five years, they're probably not working the way they should.

That's off the top of my head. When we analyze websites, we usually see some or all of these and many, many more.

Dealer websites are like the movie Groundhog Day. Every time you build a new one, there's the hope of doing something better but it often turns out to be the same old thing over and over again. Of course, by the end fo the movie Phil (Bill Murray) puts in the effort to make it the best day ever for the folks of Punxsutawney, PA. As a result, he's finally rewarded with greatness.

I don't recommend building a digital marketing strategy around a Harold Ramis comedy. However, it's a good illustration that making something exceptional takes work. Just the other day we had to call a website company CEO for a simple fix to inventory because customer support told our client that something simple was impossible. You may be seeing the same challenges. If you're not, chances are you're not looking in the right places. These challenges are fairly universal. Thankfully, there are options.

Improve Your Current Website

This is the paradox in the group of three options. It's the one that's arguably the most effective yet it's probably utilized the least. The fact is that most websites, even the ones built by bulk vendors or OEM-mandated sites, have plenty of room for improvement as well as the corresponding tools to make most of those improvements happen.

Of the websites that we've seen improved, over half of them were OEM-mandated. They can be enhanced by improving the creative, eliminating extraneous calls to action, adjusting the boilerplate content, and adding additional pages designed for traffic and conversions. Most have or can have a blog. Out of dozens of platforms that we've worked on, only two platforms were generally unfixable and one of the two has allegedly made major changes recently.

Before jumping to option two or three, it's important to at least explore option one as it requires the least amount of time and effort and the results can be just as high if not higher than the other two options. I'll discuss why that is the case a bit later. For now, let's look at option two.

Add Another Website

For a long time, this was the most popular option for dealers with brands that had OEM mandates. The idea was to build a new, powerful website by an unauthorized provider and park the OEM site in the backyard somewhere.

This option has become less and less popular for a few reasons. The number one reason was the added cost. Fewer dealers are willing to pay for two websites. Another reason is the forced acceptance by the OEMs. Some of them will not allow their name on a non-compliant site, which means that ABC Lexus would have to park their shiny new site on ABCImportCenter.com or something like that instead of ABCLexus.com. Some OEMs won't allow co-op ad dollars to be spent sending traffic to non-compliant sites.

The most important reason that this option is fading is because the OEM vendors are getting better. We've seen a couple of the bigger providers adjust their platforms to make them easier to optimize, improve conversions, and look at least a little different from the competition.

Replace Your Current Website

This is the most popular option, particularly at the end of a contract. As much as most hate going through the building process, there are plenty of reasons to do so... at least that's the perception.

We've worked through dozens of new website builds since starting in 2013. If you include the changeovers we went through as individuals with previous companies, that number goes into the hundreds, possibly even thousands. The result is normally an improvement but rarely is it as great as dealers expect. I'm not saying it's a bad solution. However, it's an incomplete solution.

No website provider has a perfect solution. In fact, very few have what we consider to be a "great" solution and nobody has stood out as being superb at this point. That's the reason that I mentioned option one can yield as good if not better results. Changing website providers or adding a new website to the mix doesn't solve all of the problems. They all have their good and bad components and they'll all require effort to enhance them to their full potential. Out of the box, no website platform can be superb. Thankfully, nearly all of them can be made superb with effort put towards extreme and persistent improvements.

Greatness doesn't come at the flip of a switch. It comes through constant advancement, hard work, and incredible strategies. If you want to stand out, you have to put in the effort regardless of which website option you choose.

At first glance, it's an easy question with an instant answer. Car dealers want to target everyone within driving distance with their message. As Ripley said in Aliens, "It's the only way to be sure."

Upon closer examination, problems start to pop up. Even if we assume that "everybody" is actually a large portion of the audience (since you can't reach everybody from a literal sense), there are still holes in the strategy. Those who have extremely large marketing budgets could do it, but even then they really shouldn't. Here's why:

• At any given moment at most 3% of the adult driving population is in or near the market for buying one of your vehicles and that's if you have a very popular brand. For many brands it's under 1%.
• Reaching all of them requires large mass-media buys and a shotgun approach. Based upon diminishing returns, the second $10,000 can be less effective than the first, the third $10,000 will be less effective than the second... etc.
• Targeting is getting much, much easier today than it was even 2 years ago. This trend is only going to continue.
• Targeted messaging isn't just about being smart with your money. It allows (forces?) a dealership to be more focused on getting the right messages out to specific targets and through individual venues rather than a bulk message or singular slogan approach.
• Most dealers and nearly all vendors confuse marketing with advertising. More importantly, they confuse marketing with branding, PR, and buzz. There are big differences and diverse approaches to achieving a brand expansion. It should not be the only focus in true marketing.

These really are just the tip of the iceberg when discussing the merits of targeting versus mass messaging. I talked about it in much more detail on our blog.

The best part about working in the car business today is that every dealership, big or small, has tools through which to hit the right people with the right message. It comes down to proper targeting which is getting better all the time.

At first glance, it's an easy question with an instant answer. Car dealers want to target everyone within driving distance with their message. As Ripley said in Aliens, "It's the only way to be sure."

Upon closer examination, problems start to pop up. Even if we assume that "everybody" is actually a large portion of the audience (since you can't reach everybody from a literal sense), there are still holes in the strategy. Those who have extremely large marketing budgets could do it, but even then they really shouldn't. Here's why:

• At any given moment at most 3% of the adult driving population is in or near the market for buying one of your vehicles and that's if you have a very popular brand. For many brands it's under 1%.
• Reaching all of them requires large mass-media buys and a shotgun approach. Based upon diminishing returns, the second $10,000 can be less effective than the first, the third $10,000 will be less effective than the second... etc.
• Targeting is getting much, much easier today than it was even 2 years ago. This trend is only going to continue.
• Targeted messaging isn't just about being smart with your money. It allows (forces?) a dealership to be more focused on getting the right messages out to specific targets and through individual venues rather than a bulk message or singular slogan approach.
• Most dealers and nearly all vendors confuse marketing with advertising. More importantly, they confuse marketing with branding, PR, and buzz. There are big differences and diverse approaches to achieving a brand expansion. It should not be the only focus in true marketing.

These really are just the tip of the iceberg when discussing the merits of targeting versus mass messaging. I talked about it in much more detail on our blog.

The best part about working in the car business today is that every dealership, big or small, has tools through which to hit the right people with the right message. It comes down to proper targeting which is getting better all the time.

As a policy, we've always chosen to obey the "once and nevermore" philosophy with our social media posts for clients. We handcraft each post and that post will appear one time and on one dealership's Facebook page. Once it's used, it's done forever.

A dealer asked me today if that's a best practice or something that we do for the sake of proper service. The answer is that it's both. It's a best practice to use unique content nearly every single time (with an occasional exception described below) and to make sure that any content is only used for one dealership page. However, that doesn't mean that the rule can't be bent a little, especially for car dealers who are doing it themselves.

Let's quickly discuss both reasons that we made the rule and you'll understand why it's a rule that you're allowed to break.

Unique is Best, but...

In an ideal world, a company will be able to generate so much content that everything posted on Facebook is never reposted again. In the real world, we understand two things for dealers who are managing their own social media:

1. Content isn't always readily available, so sometimes you have to recycle content that was posted in the past just to keep the pages and profiles going.
2. Evergreen content seen by one batch of people last month may be relevant and interesting to a new batch of people who are seeing you post this month. This is a strategy that we employ for our own social presence.

We have made it a general practice to keep the content unique because that's best for our clients, but there's no harm in occasionally republishing exceptional content at the dealership level. The risks involved are minimal; every post will reach more new people than repeat viewers of that post as long as the gap in between posting is pretty wide. The two minor negatives are that republished content gets a lower reach potential through Facebook, even with ads, and you might have the occasional person in your market who sees the content for the second time and doesn't appreciate it.

The exceptions that I mentioned above are videos and extremely important content. In both cases, the base content can remain the same but you should still mix it up with the description and attached image whenever possible. These two types of posts are worth the risk since videos have the highest potential of getting strong reach and important content is, well, important.

With Twitter, this rule is tossed out at least a little bit because the percentage of followers reached with each post is much lower. The recent changes to Twitter might have an affect on this; we're testing to see. For now, evergreen content can go on Twitter relatively often. We try to limit it to no more than once a month for any individual piece, but again there's nothing wrong with mixing it up with different wording or hashtags.

Business Decision for Proper Service

The other reason we've chosen to take the nevermore-approach is because the exact opposite is the norm in the automotive industry. The vast majority of companies who are posting on behalf of dealers use content libraries, bulk posting tools, and regurgitated stories in order to fill their client's pages and profiles with content. We've seen disastrous results when a company posts the same picture of the same car with the same description to every dealer of the same brand on their client list. It's amateur and looks terrible when people see duplicated content like that sent out through automation.

I know what you're thinking. Even some of the OEMs are doing this, so it can't be that bad, right? I won't go into details, but I know a very prominent OEM social media person who left their job over this practice. They've had someone convince them that it's okay, that it's better than nothing, that people are unlikely to follow more than one dealership... the list of excuses are many but the reality is the same. It's a bad practice.

It would be easier and more cost-effective to do it the bulk way that so many companies have adopted. I suppose we're just silly rebels who believe that dealers deserve better.

As a policy, we've always chosen to obey the "once and nevermore" philosophy with our social media posts for clients. We handcraft each post and that post will appear one time and on one dealership's Facebook page. Once it's used, it's done forever.

A dealer asked me today if that's a best practice or something that we do for the sake of proper service. The answer is that it's both. It's a best practice to use unique content nearly every single time (with an occasional exception described below) and to make sure that any content is only used for one dealership page. However, that doesn't mean that the rule can't be bent a little, especially for car dealers who are doing it themselves.

Let's quickly discuss both reasons that we made the rule and you'll understand why it's a rule that you're allowed to break.

Unique is Best, but...

In an ideal world, a company will be able to generate so much content that everything posted on Facebook is never reposted again. In the real world, we understand two things for dealers who are managing their own social media:

1. Content isn't always readily available, so sometimes you have to recycle content that was posted in the past just to keep the pages and profiles going.
2. Evergreen content seen by one batch of people last month may be relevant and interesting to a new batch of people who are seeing you post this month. This is a strategy that we employ for our own social presence.

We have made it a general practice to keep the content unique because that's best for our clients, but there's no harm in occasionally republishing exceptional content at the dealership level. The risks involved are minimal; every post will reach more new people than repeat viewers of that post as long as the gap in between posting is pretty wide. The two minor negatives are that republished content gets a lower reach potential through Facebook, even with ads, and you might have the occasional person in your market who sees the content for the second time and doesn't appreciate it.

The exceptions that I mentioned above are videos and extremely important content. In both cases, the base content can remain the same but you should still mix it up with the description and attached image whenever possible. These two types of posts are worth the risk since videos have the highest potential of getting strong reach and important content is, well, important.

With Twitter, this rule is tossed out at least a little bit because the percentage of followers reached with each post is much lower. The recent changes to Twitter might have an affect on this; we're testing to see. For now, evergreen content can go on Twitter relatively often. We try to limit it to no more than once a month for any individual piece, but again there's nothing wrong with mixing it up with different wording or hashtags.

Business Decision for Proper Service

The other reason we've chosen to take the nevermore-approach is because the exact opposite is the norm in the automotive industry. The vast majority of companies who are posting on behalf of dealers use content libraries, bulk posting tools, and regurgitated stories in order to fill their client's pages and profiles with content. We've seen disastrous results when a company posts the same picture of the same car with the same description to every dealer of the same brand on their client list. It's amateur and looks terrible when people see duplicated content like that sent out through automation.

I know what you're thinking. Even some of the OEMs are doing this, so it can't be that bad, right? I won't go into details, but I know a very prominent OEM social media person who left their job over this practice. They've had someone convince them that it's okay, that it's better than nothing, that people are unlikely to follow more than one dealership... the list of excuses are many but the reality is the same. It's a bad practice.

It would be easier and more cost-effective to do it the bulk way that so many companies have adopted. I suppose we're just silly rebels who believe that dealers deserve better.

Are you one of the few that blasts Social Media as a form of marketing? Maybe you just don’t believe that it works. Maybe you think it’s a huge waste of time. Well the good news is that you’re not alone. The bad news is that the numbers of non-believers are rapidly dwindling.

Let’s say that you’re on the fence about whether there’s actual ROI (return on investment) behind managing a social media page. I’m speaking on either budget or time as your ROI measurement. You may be asking yourself “Is this worth it?” Everybody seems to be doing it but does it mean you have to? I can assure you that a social media strategy not only works but it’s actually good for your dealership.

When it comes to running a dealership, there is basically one goal: to sell units. Of course, advertising and marketing are a huge part of achieving your goal. Most dealerships are used to the 3 conventional methods of advertising:

• Print
• Radio
• Television

To expand your reach and to hit your target market like never before, you MUST consider social media. If you’re thinking spending money on Facebook is a waste, you’re mistaken. The one thing to embrace about digital marketing is that it can fit ANY budget. It’s not a gamble and you’ll definitely get your money’s worth. Here’s an example of the potential and power of social media.

We work with a client in Long Beach, CA, and one of the social media posts we created (on May 31) went VIRAL. It’s not typical for a post to achieve viral status on the internet but the numbers that followed cannot be ignored. Another atypical detail is that this post included video (which will always bring up engagement). There was a fixed budget applied to that post (this is a daily practice) and it just took off. As of this writing, the post has reached 135,168 people. It was shared 1,206 times, gained 538 likes and received 117 comments. The video was viewed 41,079 times while the amount of total likes, comments and shares are well over 7,000. Organic reach was 130,625 and paid reach was ONLY 4,543! The good thing is that very little money was spent for these results. The amazing thing is that this was posted weeks ago and the numbers are still climbing daily.

Every dealer would be delighted to get similar results on their social media pages, especially Facebook. If you think that spending money on social is a gamble, that’s a legit opinion. 5 years ago, that statement would be accurate...today, this is a gamble that is surely paying off in huge dividends. Ignoring how essential social media is for a dealership is a bad idea. Are you willing to risk alienating an audience of potential leads and future customers?