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The Day the Internet Stood Still
I don’t know whether GoogleBots suspending a dealer's Google Places (GPs), or incorrectly merging their GPs, or automatically creating dealer GPs that the dealers don’t know about, qualifies for this dramatic article title (also the title of my new movie script!) or not. However, they can definitely cause as much havoc on your dealership GP as the robot “Gort” did in the 1951 science fiction classic “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (I didn’t much like the 2008 remake). And there’s no “lone alien" to listen to your pleas and perhaps Save the World (or just your GP) from Gort The GoogleBot: Uttering the famous phrase “Klaatu Borada Nickto” isn’t likely to work.
I want to note here at the beginning of this article that I believe that speaking too authoritatively about Google Places’ direction (much less Google!) is especially risky at this time. I’m using the term “GoogleBot” here, for example, but that’s MY assumption that Google is a wiz at automation, especially in the face of the massive GP effort they are making.
However, authority or not, I want to share my latest experience chasing issues with Google Places. I’m also, by the way, participating in their Request for Ideas at this link www.google.com/moderator/#16/e=ba1ca&v=23, but I still feel some GP misunderstandings occur and want to share my experience and issues with GP
Some background: Since Google launched GP, the sheer size of the work (cost) caused for businesses to create/manage GP and also to keep the effects positive to searches for businesses may well be without precedent in the modern age. GP affects EVERY business across the globe and requires attention from EACH of them. And remember while reading this article that Google is AUTOMATICALLY creating GPs RIGHT NOW from business directories—so you will have a GP whether you like it or not! And you may get tangled up because there can be MORE THAN ONE old Google Maps, or several directory listings for your dealer, and all that can compete for validation with Google for your new GP.
By the current “rules”, my experience is that--in order to ENSURE you keep a dealership’s GP as “safe” from GoogleBots as possible--you MUST begin with doing AT LEAST these five things:
- Have a unique, local ph #
- Have a unique address
- Use the same business name as various other online business listings
- Have a unique website per each GP
- GAIN GOOGLE REVIEWS!
What can happen if you don’t do these five, at least? A store I’m working with lost their current GP because an old GP gained a more-recent Google review and the old GP matched ph # and address with the new GP—and so the GoogleBot over-rode the newer and more-complete GP because of a more-relevant REVIEW. So, understand that my recommendation is that you MUST seek reviews in order to remain most relevant to Google on your GP. Did I mention that “Google Places Hijacking” is a real problem? (though not related to this article’s attention on GoogleBots). You need to get your GP going and keep it relevant.
And next, at the same dealer, a GoogleBot evidently decided that the pics and videos for the GP were some SEO hoakum and deleted them. So, this means to me that Google is using these GoogleBots to keep businesses from gaming GP for better SEO—a VERY good thing, because GP show automatically on most page one searches for your business. Especially those by brand. This advantage is VERY valuable in SEO.
And so just try launching, and keeping, a separate service GP on your same physical address. Apparently, in Google’s view at the moment we are dealerships and dealerships have service as a component of their business—so it shouldn’t have a separate GP. That doesn’t mean you can’t “get away” with it and create one . . . except if a GoogleBot clues in, you can have your whole GP suspended, reviews and all. The same thing can happen with multiple makes using the same physical address.
I’ve discussed and argued about these “Five Things” on my list with some very prominent SEO experts. And not only in Automotive. A very few—sadly and surprisingly—don’t have a clue about how to integrate GP into their SEO work. And others have shown me their very good work on a dealer’s GP that has multiple makes in the business name (instead of their directory-matching normal business name) and said “Ha! SEE!!” Or they’ve noted that they believe that Google will allow a separate GP for service. Or multiple suites in an address to handle multiple GPs for multiple makes at what is really the same physical address.
All that tells me is that SEO has changed with GP and that a few experts haven’t followed those changes. And that Google’s policing—and POLICIES!—aren’t perfect with GP, either, so, yes, you can “get away” with different GP strategies. For a time, anyway. There’s more changes ahead, I’m sure.
In the meantime, you can try “Klaatu Barada Nickto” in the text areas of your GP. Or you can be cautious, work within Google's rules, pay attention to changes, and do at least The Five Things listed above.
Personally, that is how I'll handle Gort The GoogleBot when he shows up again!
P.S. Here’s some links on Google Places information that are helpful to learn and also give Google some feedback:
https://www.google.com/moderator/#16/e=ba1ca&v=23 (ideas for GP, thank you Scott Falcone!)
by Keith Shetterly, keithshetterly@gmail.com
Copyright 2011 All Rights Reserved
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"Free", Like Freedom, Ain't Free!
Google Places. Facebook. Twitter. Foursquare. Etc. All free. Car dealers have to love that price, right?
My caution is not about whether to use these services, as YOU MUST USE THEM. It’s not an option any longer—it’s just a matter of when you can get to using them with the attention they deserve for the result you need.
My caution IS, however, about knowing what you’re getting with “Free”. With “Free”, you have no contract , you have “Terms of Use”. And you don’t have a platform you bought with agreed-to deliverables and some controls, you have a service you are gaining whose deliverables CHANGE. And whose data presentation and on-screen arrangement is NOT up to you!
The latest case in point is Google Places. Your GOOGLE business reviews are prominently displayed there, but previously your business “star rating” included 3rd Party review stars. You might agree with Google’s business decisions on changing that, but it still impacted dealers who went from hundreds of reviews in the star rating to a handful. Dealers who invested in 3rd Party sites for their reputation, and dealers who could use their 3rd Party sites in their burgeoning “Reputation MARKETING” efforts, were left out of the direct impact of the Google Rating Stars.
SEO, for example, has been like this for years, constantly changing, and so that has made SEO companies viable because there’s always a new twist to getting the dealership high in the search rankings. So, it appears this story is not new, right? Except you bought SEO services to chase this rabbit around Google’s “free” search engine race track, and it was always a fight to the top. With Google Places, now it’s also—VERY importantly—a fight for reviews in a system that the shopper sees on SERP ONE but that are arranged in a presentation YOU DON’T AND CAN’T CONTROL. And that changes without notice: Talk to some dealers who have had their Google Places “pulled” because GoogleBots thought they were gaming the system. YES, Google, this dealer really has SEVEN manufacturers under one address (more than five categories), and YES they all share the same main phone line. And so on. Well, maybe you've won that one for now—until something else in this “Free” service changes, whether for information, presentation, search results, or reviews. Or whatever else becomes “Free”.
You can only stay on top of this part of your advertising if you dedicate the time to use them AND to get and stay educated on what all these “Free” services are doing. And what they may be planning. PCG Consulting (Brian Pasch) is on top of it. Tier 10 (Ralph Paglia) is on top of it. And there are more educators and consultants that I don’t know about who are on top of it. They can educate you, but in the end be sure YOU are on top of it. And that you get what you need from it.
Because “Free”, like Freedom, Ain’t Free!
by Keith Shetterly, www.keithshetterly.com
Copyright 2011, All Rights Reserved
keithshetterly@gmail.com
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It's Reputation MARKETING!
To me, we’ve all clearly moved past the Reputation Management phase: Now, it’s “Reputation MARKETING”. Before I explain that, let’s talk about where we have been so far with Reputation Management.
Reputation Management is the ability to monitor and defend your online reputation. And, although folks gaming the system have been rightly and roundly condemned, some companies still try and sell some type of “review ballot-box stuffing” service much like Black Hat SEO companies still try and sell their schtick. I think we all know, or can learn now, however, how to get the best reviews ourselves from our customers. And, SURPRISE, they can do the review at the dealership. I see it done every day, even for Google Places. In my case, Presto Reviews (which we still use) taught me that.
Reputation Marketing, as they say, “begins at home”: Are you pressing folks to your review sites and your Google Places throughout your media efforts? Does your print point to the review site, does your TV/radio mention it, and are you making efforts on your website, review site, and Google Places to show videos, pics, and positive customer reviews? And do all your email efforts—from responding to Internet Leads to email blasts—have a link to all your best online reputation? Finally, but more importantly than you realize, are you marketing your reputation to your social media like Facebook? Do you capture short videos of happy customers to share?
So, put your reviews on your social media and website. Blog about them. Talk about them in your print, TV, Radio, and email efforts. Marketing makes online and store traffic through hope-inducing advertising—REPUTATION Marketing makes you and your advertising look REAL to your shoppers. After all, other real customers said real things about you.
We will all still certainly manage to a positive reputation, but to get "bang for the buck" we must now MARKET the result. Don’t just let your online reputation sit there to be found as part of an SEO strategy, advertise it! Blow your horn, folks, and let it be known: NOBODY in your market sells better or treats customers better.
And Reputation Marketing will make sure everyone knows that!
by Keith Shetterly, Copyright 2011
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FREE BEER!
Made you click from the title or the picture, didn't I? Well, this article is about Pay-Per-Click (PPC), but a short story first to explain my point: When I had my entertainment company ten years ago, we always laughed at the long-standing joke that naming a band “Free Beer!” would make all the honky-tonk signs read “Free Beer Tonight!”—ensuring strong attendance. I still grin at it, because it’s so damned true. And impossible to do, because no bar would book you.
PPC campaigns that focus only on Click-Thru-Rate (CTR) are a very similar “high click attendance” effort, but they’re no joke. Just a few years ago, people fought for audience, and anybody clicking your ad was a win: It was All About the Click. All about yelling "Free Beer!" for attendance.
NOT true any more. It’s all about “conversion”. Want to have some PPC companies turn as white as a sheet? Ask about conversion. And also know that saying “conversion” is like saying “religion”: Which one do you mean? Conversion is divergent the same way.
So, back to the start here, what do we want for a CTR? I’ve had everything now from one percent to OVER FIVE percent, depending on the line of cars I presented. And the offer, of course, and the inventory. So, essentially, for CTR it depends. If a PPC company trashes another PPC company I’m using based only on CTR, then they get shown the door. CPM (cost per thousand impressions) is a very handy number, too, but don’t just talk to me about that, either.
The Click-to-Conversion-Rate (CCR) is now my clearest measurable of the PPC campaign. Of any PPC campaign I run. And my PPC vendors know it. What should a good CCR be? I'm tracking that data for my campaigns right now, and I'll let you know in a future article.
For conversions, ask yourself and your PPC vendor these questions: Do you have a compelling text ad relevant to the search you’re targeting? Once shoppers click to your conversion page, do you have a strong offer for them and show them the inventory—and with real pictures, not stock? Do you have aggressive pricing (or a clear “Call for Best Price!” might work in your area) on your conversion page inventory, with a sense of urgency to contact and/or print the car they want and bring that with them?
Ask all that and more. CTR isn’t the “thing” any more, it’s CCR. And it sounds very sad to write it, but for PPC, remember . . .
No More Free Beer!
by Keith Shetterly, Copyright 2011
All Rights Reserved, keithshetterly@gmail.com
www.KeithShetterly.com
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Your Digital Lot Sucks
So, you market well to your website: Use it across your advertising, put the URL on t-shirts, do fantastic SEO, and run PPC campaigns that would make Best Buy weep with joy. Got your Social Media sending people there, too. After all, we know that everybody (90%+) shops online now! Success for your dealership is just a click away...
And then your online inventory is incomplete. Mis-priced. Photos are wrong, or they’re just stock. Individual comments are missing. The Specials Page—often the 2nd-most visited page on your site!—is blank. You have no calls to action on the site at all. There’s no way to make an offer, either, if shoppers can find the car. And nothing is said about your reputation or who you are as a dealer.
Great. You spent all those marketing dollars and effort just to send all your customers to the worst salesperson you’ve ever had! Maybe the worst in history. And “success is just a click away” becomes “your competitor is just a click away!”
You want customers who get in their car and come visit you to park and come in and not drive on—and so you won’t let trash accumulate on your physical lot, vehicles sit on it unpriced or unstocked, and you won’t have signs pointing the wrong way to service, etc. And, hopefully, you don’t have stuff on the walls talking about your dealership’s personnel from 1972 (unless it’s some retro-art)! So, why would you do it online? A dealer’s website should convert to a customer call, form, email, or visit using compelling format and contents. Or you’re just wasting your time and money on your marketing. Unless you’re happy sending shoppers to your competitors with just a “click”.
by Keith Shetterly
Copyright 2011 All Rights Reserved
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That Pesky Groupon Model Surfaces for Auto Sales . . .
Here we finally have a car dealership using Groupon for CAR DISCOUNTS (Cadillac and Groupon). People can purchase an amount off the car later for buying a coupon for a lesser amount now.
I tried to get four separate dealers to try this last year. I'll get the same push-back here, perhaps, as I did from them, but this guy quoted in the article gets it: It's not a coupon, it's ADVERTISING.
$199 buys you $500 off a car purchased this year. The customer commits to buying from you by spending money NOW, and you apply this as an advertising expense. Really, how much do most of you spend now per vechicle to get the phone to ring, leads/emails to come in, and to get walk-in traffic?
It's going just like pricing did: We used to hold all the cards for brochures and price, and some of us played games in the newspaper. Nowadays, if you're asked a price in a lead, you answer with a price (as well with calls to action and enticements, but you send a price). THAT began when the first dealer sent a price and got business when others did not. It will be the same here, if this works out, and I think it will. It's just the first.
by Keith Shetterly, keithshetterly@gmail.com
www.keithshetterly.com
Copyright 2011, All Rights Reserved.
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Grand Theft Auto - Customer!
Grand Theft Auto - Customer: It’s not a video game—it’s your real profits. How do other dealers steal your customers?
They park a PPC campaign on your dealership name. They use your dealership name in their SEO work. They hijack your Google Places results (just found and undid one of those!). And your Bing. And Yahoo. And so on. All because you’re not watching your digital presence and stopping it.
And you cooperate as theft victim, as well. You push your customers to review you on third-party review sites that sell ad space around your reviewsto your competitors. You pay to drive your customers to online inventory sites that lead shoppers off to other offers. And I’ve even seen links within a dealer’s Internet Autoresponder that invite customers to visit these sites to get stolen by competitors! In one particular case, a dealer’s Autoresponder was sending the shopper to a review site where they had 2-star reviews…
And this is all before these other competing dealers make any honest effort to reach out via a marketing campaign to conquer your customers in your area. And perhaps you help, as well, by not reaching out to your sold customers to get them in to your service drive—and your competitor has a strong customer retention program that keeps them once they get them.
So grab your Google Places, Yahoo, Bing, etc. Get ready for Google’s new “+1” strategy. Protect your dealership name with trademark and/or vigorous efforts as you can, plus SEO/PPC efforts of your own and (perhaps) a letter or two from a lawyer. Give great customer service and get great reviews from your customers in both sales and service. Get your sold customers in to your service drive. Set up a great customer retention program.
And stop being a victim of Grand Theft Auto - Customer!
by Keith Shetterly, Copyright 2011
keithshetterly@gmail.com
www.keithshetterly.com
Come see me at Brian Pasch's PCG PitStop! www.pcgpitstop.com
Dallas, L.A., St. Louis, Toronto, Vancouver, Seattle!
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Shetterly's 3 Laws of . . . Online Video
1) Keep It Short. People don't watch commercials, they Watch Shows and Put Up With Commercials. And the Internet did NOT improve their patience!
2) Make It Fun to Watch and Share. Entertainment is the largest video audience, NOT education--so tell a great story, show your product, and leave the detailed info for a store visit. And remember: If your video makes them smile, they'll share it.
3) Include Calls to Action and SEO. Tell your viewers to come buy something and how and why! And remind them to share your video--and don't forget to tag the video with your website URL, keywords, etc. so that you get the full value of online video SEO.
Copyright 2011 Keith Shetterly
keithshetterly@gmail.com
www.ShetterlysLaws.com
www.KeithShetterly.com
www.twitter.com/keithshetterly
www.fullofshetterly.com
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Shut Up and Help Me Convert!
Those that know me or read my professional blogs know that I'm a GREAT believer in processes, and that I consider that many, many dealerships' profits would increase dramatically from just making THOSE EXISTING PROCESSES WORK FOR THEM. And we never want process to fail us, sure, but it's especially painful when we've gotten a customer in from a call, landed them on a car--and our process blows up in, say, finance. And they walk out.
Well, we need to consider our web conversions ARE JUST AS PAINFUL IF NOT MORE. We do SEO, PPC, integrated marketing campaigns, email, etc. . . . spend many thousands of dollars a month on all that . . . to get the shopper on to our website. And that visit somehow still blows up on, say, online pricing. Or website usability. Or unanswered questions and no one to talk to. And they click out. We call that "bounce rate", as in "We need a low bounce rate!!!".
Except what we should be saying is: "We need a high conversion rate!!!"
My mantra for 2011 for all vendors, consultants, and 3rd parties I deal with who want a dealership's business: "Shut Up and Help Me Convert!" Or go home and come back when you can.
Your website better be fewest clicks to inventory and get the shopper to submit a lead. You better support easy landing pages for a PPC campaign that offer incentives to convert. Your chat better offer a great experience that leads the customer to give up contact information. And your ability to drive phone calls from the web better be second to none.
I am not kidding. You had better shut up and help me convert, or get the hell out of my way, for the rest of 2011.
by Keith Shetterly, Copyright 2011 All Rights Reserved
keithshetterly@gmail.com www.keithshetterly.com
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Shetterly's 3 Laws of . . . Sales Calls
1) Rapport Gets'em in the Door: Smile! Shoppers buy from people they like and trust, and that process begins from the first moment on the phone. Be and sound happy and interested, and they will be, too. They can see your smile through the phone, and always give it to them--so that they want to come see you and your vehicle for sale.
2) Conversation Leads to Conversion: Give in Order to Get. Give your name to get theirs; give your enthusiasm to get theirs; give your phone number to get theirs; give your urgency to get theirs; and so on. And answer enough of their needs only to convert to the appointment, not close them on a vehicle. Which is actually the next rule . . .
3) Close on the Appointment, not on the Vehicle: For best selection and terms, they must be present to win! An appointment is faster and makes best use of their time; you'll have several vehicles pulled up and ready for them to choose from; the particular pre-owned vehicle is very popular so your manager is scheduling times for test drives; finance will already be prepared to discuss terms; etc. An appointment gives all that in perception and is your well-proven best shot at actually delivering both a great shopping experience for your customer and a sale for you!
See the rest of the laws at www.shetterlyslaws.com.
By Keith Shetterly, keithshetterly@gmail.com
Copyright 2011 All Rights Reserved www.keithshetterly.com
www.twitter.com/keithshetterly
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