Google’s making a big change. Will you drop off the first page of SERPs? Here's what you need to know.

Today, when your customers are trying to find your vehicles on Google, they see 3 ads at the top, 3 at the bottom, and 5 down the right hand side. 11 in total.

Look at your campaign analytics right now. If any of your ads are showing up below ad position number 4, you may be invisible very soon.

Here's what changing: Those ads down the right hand side are going away. And Google’s added one to the top. 

That means instead of 11 ads showing, now there’s only 7: 4 at the top and 3 at the bottom.

My data shows that 85% of potential customers will click one of the top 3 ads when they’re ready to buy. 

"Google is killing off the dead," Bill Nagel, co-founder and chief marketing strategist at Morrisville, N.C.-based Netsertive, a digital marketing intelligence company in a CMSWire interview @ https://t.co/pkYqmOuFBs

"The right hand column wasn't producing great results, so they’re eliminating it in an effort to make supply and demand more competitive. As mobile search — and revenue — increases, Google is adapting desktop per this shift in consumer behavior. Basically, they're limiting supply as a way to drive up demand, ultimately to increase ad revenue."

It’s more important than ever to work with a digital marketing partner who can help you optimize your position because this change requires more expertise and strategy.

Watch my short video to learn more. ​

Millward Brown Digital reports that just 25% of buyers purchase the vehicle they first research online.  This means that 3 out of 4 shoppers are open to influence to purchase another brands’ models. (Vehicle Path to Purchase Survey, 2013.)

Question: Who’s your highest-value prospect?

I would argue it’s Jane, the in-market shopper who just visited your website after conducting an Internet search.

It’s a solid bet that she’s cross-shopping within a specific segment. This means that she’s in the market for a new sedan, but not tied to a specific brand (i.e. Nissan) or model (Altima).

Next question: Once she browses your website and leaves to check out your competition, what tactics do you have in place to bring her back to choose your model?

My most successful dealers have addressed this opportunity by combining two tactics that have been proven to drive increases in return website visits by cross-shoppers using mobile devices and PCs.

Put simply, we’re running search ads in a new way that’s actually getting a response to help our dealers meet their sales goals consistently.

Start: Remarketing Lists (RLSAs)

Your first step should be to create one or more remarketing lists inside Google AdWords, then use Google Tag Manager to place a corresponding a tracking pixel on one or more pages on your website.

Consider creating lists for your model inventory, specials, and conquest (model comparison) landing pages.

Each list allows you to roll up a unique, high-value audience list of cross-shoppers based on the page they’ve last viewed.

Next: Conquest With Search

Your remarketing lists can be used to deliver targeted ads to these audiences. Think targeted search (text) as well as Google Display Network banner ads.

The key is to create new ad groups for each remarketing list. The most effective compare the segment the shopper just viewed with one they’re also researching at your local competition. It’s this one-two punch of conquest remarketing that’s changing the game: Conquesting 2.0.

Case Study: Faulkner Nissan

Faulkner Nissan in Harrisburg, PA has been using our conquest remarketing approach with excellent results.

Local shoppers search Nissan Altima on Google, then click on a search ad to visit Faulkner’s website. When they leave and continue to do sedan research using terms like Hyundai, Honda, Chevrolet, Ford, or Toyota, they see Faulkner’s conquesting search ads enticing them to return:

A click on any of these ads connects shoppers to a comparison page, highlighting why Altima is a better choice over competing models.

These pages are custom tailored to earn a high quality score (6+), driving down the cost per click, boosting the average ad position, and increasing the click through rate, leading to more qualified shoppers returning to Faulkner that convert into buyers.

Faulkner chose a 50-mile radius for their campaign, and added $1,000 a month to their online marketing investment to fuel results. Their ads are shown 7 times out of 10 in a strong position (top 3), earning a 70% share of voice (impression share).

The new campaign has driven a 40% increase in click through rates, resulting in a 5-7% conversion rate. Faulkner is seeing more foot traffic for Altima on their lot leading to more sales.

For similar dealers, we find that while the cost per click may be higher on conquesting ads, the messages are much more relevant to recent search activity. This leads to faster reengagement by shoppers, leading to a 40-50% reduction in the total cost per conversion over a standard campaign. Fewer ad clicks were necessary to trigger buying activity, leading to the cost savings.

This new approach gives dealers the opportunity to increase per-click bids to pay more for a return visit by an engaged prospect who is actively cross-shopping across segments and digital devices. Dealers can also increase the target geography for these new campaigns to capture an audience from a wider area.

Don’t Break the Bank

Given the complexity, the best way to generate results with these tactics is to work with a Google Premier Partner who can effectively leverage the “big data” generated by dozens of conquest remarketing campaigns.

Your partner’s digital marketing technology will make the difference between success and failure. Choose carefully!

A proven partner will keep close tabs on performance at the ad group and landing page level, plus proactively add high-performing keywords, ads, and new geography targets to help dealers like you meet and exceed monthly sales goals–all without breaking the bank. 

It's a question we hear often: "I know advertising is important. In the past, I relied on local media (newspapers, radio, TV) and word of mouth. Today, I'm reading studies that show 9 out of 10 auto shoppers use the Internet to research new purchases before they walk onto my lot. How much should I be investing in advertising every month given this shift?"

The fact is that there's no set-in-stone formula when it comes to establishing your advertising budget. However, asking the right questions - and keeping your sales goals at the forefront of the discussion - can help you realize the most powerful outcomes.

That said, there are two ways to approach this question to arrive at a monthly investment that will generate a strong return on investment (ROI).

The first is that most marketing textbooks tell you to set aside 15 to 20 percent of gross sales for your advertising activities for any business generating $5 million in gross sales or less. 

However, as Roy Williams writes in Entrepreneur magazine, It isn't possible to designate a percentage of gross sales for advertising without taking into consideration the markup on your average sale and your rent/overhead expenses.

Williams offers his more realistic three step process to calculate your minimum and maximum allowable ad budget. This formula reconciles your ad budget with your rent or employee costs as well as the profitability of your average sale.

Step 1: Gross Sales & Markup

Take 10 percent and 12 percent of your projected annual, gross sales and multiply each by the markup made on your average transaction. As a general business rule you'll need to adapt to your dealership, assume that my business is projected to do $1 million in gross sales this year, I have a profit margin of 48 percent, and my rent is $36,000 per year. The first thing to do is calculate 10 percent of sales and 12 percent of sales ($100,000 and $120,000, respectively).

Step 2: Adjustments

Next, deduct your annual cost of occupancy (rent) [or employee costs (whichever is higher)] from the adjusted 10 percent of sales number and the adjusted 12 percent number.

Using the example in step 1, we must convert my 48 percent profit margin into markup, because markup is what we've got to have to make this formula work. Most business owners know their margin by heart, but never their markup. To make the conversion from margin to markup, simply divide gross profits by cost. Dividing $480,000 (gross profits) by $520,000 (hard cost) shows us that a 48 percent margin represents a markup of 92.3 percent.

Step 3: Get Minimum & Maximum Budget

The remaining balances represent your minimum and maximum allowable ad budgets for the year. Now we multiply $100,000 times 92.3 percent to see that our adjusted low budget for total cost of exposure is $92,300. Likewise, we multiply $120,000 times 92.3 percent to get an adjusted high budget for total cost of exposure of $110,760. From each of these two budgets, we must now deduct our $36,000 rent.

For our $1 million business, this leaves us with a correctly calculated yearly ad budget that ranges from $56,300 on the low side to a maximum of $74,760 on the high side.

More realistically for a $1 million business, if rent or employee expenses were $75,000 per year, the ad budget would range from $17,300 to $35,760, representing 1.7 to 3.5 percent of sales.

Where to Invest Your Monthly Budget

With a monthly investment number in mind, the next question is where to invest your dollars for maximum ROI.

If your goal is to lead your market, a higher investment will be necessary to achieve success. Many businesses start with a more modest investment to participate in their market, and grow their spending based on advertising and sales success.

Across the industries we serve at Netsertive, our most successful local business clients are allocating 40% to 50% of their monthly budget to Internet-related spending, with the rest spread among traditional marketing channels like newspapers (15%), radio (10%), TV (20%), and direct mail (10%).

For automotive dealers, recent NADA data shows that the average new car franchise dealer spends $8,000 to $10,000 per month online.

In hyper-competitive metro markets, assertive GMs invest $20,000 - $40,000 online.

You'll need to adjust your projected spending up or down based on the size of your market, the cost of media, what you can learn about how much your competitors are spending, and the speed at which you'd like to source new buyers. The key today is to be assertive online, take the lead in your market, and invest at a strong level to be the dominant dealer for your brand.

Contact Netsertive today to get the information you need to position yourself for success in the street fight in your local market with assertive online marketing at 800.940.4351.

How would you feel if you hired a marketing vendor who simply copied and pasted another dealer's campaign into your account, made one change, and threw in the towel?

To add insult to injury, what if local shoppers could clearly see that your ads were identical to your local competitors?

The hard truth: This situation is going on in hundreds of markets across the United States today. And most dealers don't even know it.

Great advertising is an investment that must produce a high return to help you meet your sales goals. Your marketing should deliver a steady stream of qualified, in-market shoppers to browse your inventory and specials online, leading to more test drives and sales.

For marketing to make a difference, it must differentiate you from your rivals. That means tailored calls to action, citing your unique strengths and offerings, years in business, and more to help you stand out from the crowd.

In other words, settling for a cookie cutter campaign is a recipe for a diminished return on your online marketing investment.

Cookie cutter is the norm

Ask yourself, would you settle for the same television advertisement as your local competitor, with the only difference being the dealership name? Today, many dealerships are settling for the same kind of situation on the Internet, the #1 resource for anyone searching for their next new car.

Here are some real-time examples of generic ads appearing for Dodge dealerships everywhere:

“Local Dodge Dealer. Browse Dodge Listings Online.” Not exactly a strong marketing message is it? Multiple dealerships in most markets are running generic ads like these that don’t contain a strong call-to-action, nor do they provide any unique branding message for each dealership.

Need another example? Let’s try a specific model search in the Dallas, TX market:

These ads at least have a stronger marketing message with a financial incentive; however, when competing dealerships are running the same ad in the same local market, the marketing message is no longer effective for differentiation.

Now, you should see the apparent problem: digital ads for many dealerships lack originality and advertising quality which can result in lower ad click-through rates, less effective digital advertising campaigns, and lower return on investment.

How does this happen? How does a dealership, spending hundreds or thousands of dollars every month on their digital ads, settle for this kind of an advertising campaign?

Of course, every situation is different and multiple factors can come into play:

• Many times, dealerships do not have the expertise in-house, nor the time to spend to carefully monitor aspects of a digital advertising campaign.
• Many dealerships hire digital advertising agencies, and trust that these agencies will provide them with a successful online ad campaign that will drive quality buyers to the dealership.
• Unfortunately, evidence shows that some of these agencies do not have either the capability or desire to provide fully custom-tailored ad campaigns to each of their clients, and are not careful enough to prevent dealerships in the same local market from getting the exact same ad copies for their digital ads.
• At the same time, many dealerships are not fully invested in monitoring the quality of their digital ad campaigns, and sometimes don’t even know what their own ads look like.

Have you been cookie cuttered?

Let’s find out. When is the last time that you really looked at what your current digital advertisements look like? Try to pull them up in a few quick searches in your local market with the Google Ad Preview Tool, which will provide you with the most accurate and unbiased results.

Two things to look for: Are your ads identical to those of your local competitors? Do your ads have strong marketing messages that set you apart and give you a fighting chance to attract qualified shoppers?

Hopefully, you are not just another "Local Dodge Dealer" with inventory on your website where your potential customers can obviously "Browse Dodge Listings Online."

If you've been cookie cuttered, there's a solution. Work with a Google Premier SMB Partner who assigns you a dedicated success manager who will tailor every ad to your dealership, and keep their eye on your results day in and day out. Your dealership is different and unique, and you deserve to have ads shouting your unique messages into your target market, leading to superior marketing results.

​

Did you meet your sales goals for 2013? In-market demand was strong last year, with 2014 off to a rocket start.

New research by Lincoln Merrihew at Complete.com — Automotive 2013: Mixed Market Messages — was blunt: "Not all brands enjoyed success, and some enjoyed success on only one of the two primary levers needed to drive sales: demand and conversion."

Demand Winners & Losers

Shopper demand is measured by the number of in-market buyers for each brand. Merrihew's data was drawn from his "sweet spot" in the digital purchase funnel, below site traffic (too vague) and above leads (not representative of true market dynamics).

Ford, Chevrolet and Toyota had more in-market shoppers each month in 2013 than did all other brands, with Ford leading the way at 592,000 shoppers. Buick, Lexus, GMC, Audi and Acura rounded out the top 20 brands with 100,000 or less shoppers per month.

Keep in mind that these are unique shoppers, meaning that a consumer that shops two models of the same brand was counted only once.

Demand, of course, holds only the potential for sales. For example, Tesla had more shoppers than did Volvo and Jaguar on average in 2013, but Tesla's sales were far lower due to limited inventory, available models and fewer dealers.

So which OEM's grew the most in terms of demand last year? Jaguar saw a healthy 27% increase in the share of shoppers added year over year. Jeep grew 24%, while Toyota (a demand leader) saw a 4% boost.

Conversion Rates

With strong demand comes more sales, right? Not so fast. As Merrihew notes, shopper demand merely creates the potential for unit sales. Your marketing and sales team work together to reach qualified in-market buyers through a mix of activities to convert research and foot traffic into buyers.

Taking total vehicle sales into account, GMC converted 38% of their 98,633 in-market shoppers in 2013. Dodge came in second at 35%, Ford third at 34%, and Toyota fourth at 33%.

The bottom four performers were Tesla (2%), Jaguar (5%), Porsche (9%) and Lincoln (11%).

What's Your 2014 Share of Voice?

Our deep dive into Merrihew's levers reveals last year's winners and losers. It also brings up a question every dealer must answer to break sales records this year. Call your digital marketing vendor or meet with your Internet manager today and ask them this question:

"Is my local Internet share of voice loud enough in this market to turn demand into conversions?"

Did you stump them? Look at all the data they supply, along with your Google Analytics, under the impression share category. This is how Google defines share of voice.

Given the robust in-market demand for your inventory, your online marketing must give you the power to reach at least 70% of active daily researchers in your local market. If you're below this threshold, your weak share of voice is costing you clicks, conversions and sales. Your competition is eating your lunch.

Share of voice is the number of online ad impressions you've received divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive. Eligibility is based on your current ads' targeting settings, approval statuses, bids, and Quality Scores.

You and your competitors are each trying to grab the biggest slice of your local market's daily research for your makes and models. By tracking your impression share metrics, you're keeping tabs on the size of your slice compared to the whole.

After you know what your overall share of voice number is, ask: "What was my search and display lost impression share?"

This is the percentage of time that your ads weren't shown on Google (or the Google Display Network) due to insufficient budget. If your percentage is high, you need to put more fuel in the tank (monthly online advertising investment) to have a stronger voice in your market.

2014: Winning Strategy

In 2014, the dealers who meet and exceed their sales goals will work with a marketing vendor like Netsertive who protects their turf online, delivering a 70% or greater share of voice for their local advertising. Consistently.

Our client success managers collaborate with dealers, one-on-one, to provide the digital tactics they need to be assertive local online to be heard by a rising tide of in-market shoppers to efficiently and effectively convert research into sales.

Merrihew's advice dovetails perfectly. "Consider share of voice relative to your market. Evaluate whether planned ad spend by model is enough to reach demand levels needed to reach sales goals. Recognize that without the right combinations of demand and conversion, 2014 sales goals will be impossible to reach."

There's no time to lose. Right-size your budget to meet in-market demand, work with a vendor who has a strong share of voice at the center of your campaign as a key performance metric, and make 2014 one for the record books.

Big data. Two words you’ve been hearing a lot lately. What does it mean to a dealer? Complexity, confusion and frustration.

Case in point: You’re spending thousands every month on a litany of marketing activities. Your vendors are drowning you in data to measure success. Still, you’re left wondering: “How much impact is it really having on my bottom line?”

I’ve worked with hundreds of dealers to help them be found in their local market and sell more. With terabytes of marketing results data at my fingertips, and happy dealers who’ve consistently increased monthly sales, I present these five marketing metrics that deliver game-changing results. 

#1 Advertising Position

If you’re like most dealers, you’re spending thousands of dollars every month on digital advertising. That investment should be consistently driving custom-crafted marketing messages into the top three positions at the top of search engine results in your target markets.

As Ricky Bobby said in Talladega Nights, “If you ain’t first, you’re last.”

How important is it to be on top? In search marketing, the difference between first and second is massive. According to Compete.com and Kantar Media, consumers click the first sponsored ad 59% of the time, the second 15%. The third? Just 9%.

A surefire recipe for ceding your local market to the competition is not to pay attention to search marketing. Google researched how organic and paid search results work together and concluded that turning off paid search ads resulted in an 89% drop in website traffic.

The inescapable conclusion: Search advertising position is a top metric for measuring success. Your ads must appear “above the fold” as often as possible to improve visibility and the probability of a conversion.

My mantra of dealer digital success: Your customized digital search ads written with clear calls to action and trackable phone numbers must appear in the top sponsored positions (above the fold) at least 60% of the time in your local market. And your display advertisements must generate consistent conversions so you get the maximum number of opportunities to turn online visibility into sales. 

#2 Share of Voice 

A close runner-up to ad position is, simply, measuring how often your ads appear, period. Shoppers are conducting more than 11 hours of research over a period of weeks or months before buying. Are you showing up?

Google your top brands, models and services. Are you showing up in the top positions, every time? If you show up two times out of 10, that’s a 20% “share of voice” in your market. Your competition is eating your lunch. Your advertising partner should be delivering your ads into the top positions 60-70% of the time. 

And don’t forget bing and Yahoo. Together, they account for about 27% of all search traffic, and are largely ignored by many advertisers.

#3 Advertising Impressions

Next, look at your impression level. Impressions are simply the number of times your ad is served in a viewer’s browser.

The more times your ads appear in front of qualified buyers across multiple devices and marketing tactics, the more likely you are to score a sale. The average consumer takes action after being exposed to marketing messages 10-20 times.

To boost impressions beyond search, display and mobile placements, consider funneling more of your marketing dollars into YouTube pre-roll videos and sponsored stories on Facebook. 

#4 Measurable Goals: Clicks, Calls, Conversions

Your digital marketing mix should deliver quantified results that match your goals. It’s important to consider all traffic sources and conversion metrics together, sharing attribution for each lead. Resist the “last-in wins” mentality, which gives the credit to the last marketing message seen by a buyer. Each of your tactics assists the others.

Clicks: Chasing the most clicks possible is misguided. Instead, focus on getting maximum qualified clicks. Run campaigns for specific keyword categories that indicate purchase intent. Aim for quality traffic, not quantity.

Resist the urge to get caught up in raw click counts from display ads. Traditionally, it’s been difficult to measure whether a click to your site was generated by a series of keyword searches alone, or whether display banners influenced the click. 

Your Google analytics data also includes view-through conversions (VTC). VTCs occur when a shopper sees an image (banner) ad, then later completes a conversion on your site. Also look at click-through conversions, which happen when a customer previously clicked on an ad and completed a conversion.

Calls: Call tracking is another important tactic. How much BDC call traffic is your digital advertising generating? Embed trackable phone numbers in your ads, and record calls. Decide whether a 30-, 60- or 90-second or longer call is considered a conversion. How many calls resulted in a test drive or sale?

Conversions: Finally, look at every conversion metric you can get your hands on. Which tactics led to specific actions? Some examples include tracked calls (including mobile click to call), content page emails, test drive requests or downloads, trade-in requests, etc. These numbers and types of conversions will be different for each dealer based on their goals, website, tracking abilities and more. 

#5 Not Cost Per Click

Some quick thoughts on cost per click (CPC). While it’s critical to work with a vendor who can effectively stretch your marketing investment to the max every month without sinking the budget or overpaying for each click, it’s unhealthy to focus all of your attention simply on the cost of each interaction. It doesn’t matter whether each “click” costs $.49 or $10 if you’re not converting clicks into measurable goals.

It’s never been easier to “get into the game” of marketing your dealership online. But if everyone’s doing it, why aren’t you seeing a significant increase in phone calls and sales activity?

That’s because not all dealerships are doing it correctly. In this post, I’ll review some common online marketing mistakes that may be diluting your results. We can work together to answer a few questions, diagnose these afflictions, and then apply the proper prescriptions to rehabilitate your marketing efforts and sell more.

Sensory Overload

Problem: You think your website is cool and exciting, but you’re not converting online visits into test drives, service appointment, or sales.

Ask yourself: Does your website look and feel like the midway at a fair? People are screaming at you from all angles, popping out to ask you to chat or fill out a survey, and you can’t easily find the ride you’re looking for. Your website may be a confused mess that’s turning off visitors from the get-go.

Diagnosis: You’re ignoring website fundamentals. Websites are not TV commercials or print ads. They don’t need to grab someone’s attention but should reflect your brand and provide easy navigability to exactly what the shopper has come to find.

Prescription: Customize your site experience to local buyers. If they click on a text or banner ad highlighting one of your models, take them to a specific page for that model. Create landing pages that convert searches into test drives, phone calls and sales. Don’t just send your visitors to your home page and hope that they find what they’re looking for.

If visitors do start at your home page through an organic search or keying in your Web address directly, provide simple prompts that will guide them toward specific models and services.

You’re Not Showing Up

Problem: Prospects can’t find you online when searching for specific makes, models and services in your market.

Ask yourself: What's my local market share of voice (also known as impression share) for the keyword categories that make me money? If you're a Chevy dealer, Google “Chevy Malibu.” What comes up? If you focus on fixed operations, who comes up when you Google “new tires” and “oil change”?

Ideally, you should be dominating the first 3 paid and organic search results. Instead, you’re likely giving away your online visibility to local competitors, cars.com, Edumunds.com, autotrader.com, etc.

Diagnosis: You’re not focusing enough. Your online marketing efforts are too scattered and underfunded to be effective. The pressure to market every brand, make, model and service means you're offering nothing special and diluting your visibility by trying to attack every opportunity.

Prescription: Focus on your top revenue generators and available inventory. You want your dealership to show up in the top positions in at least seven out of ten searches in your target market for your top three to four models. That's a 70% impression share, or "share of voice." You want to dominate the conversation by bidding on specific local search terms that position you as the market leader for those models.

Bottom line: Your campaign should be right-sized for your marketing investment. Resist the urge to over-stuff your campaign if your marketing funds aren’t big enough to attack each opportunity to be dominate in your market.

Terminal Blandness

Problem: Your website has a professional look but is not attracting the customers you want.  Perhaps you used a template to create it, or you instructed your Web designer to emulate another dealer’s website.

Ask yourself: What makes my website unique? Is it engaging? Or does it look like it can be any dealer’s website from Anywhere, USA.

Diagnosis: Your vanilla website doesn’t properly convey your location and connection to the local community.

Prescription: Promote your localness. Include your phone number and address on every page. Make sure you have maps and driving directions. Include logos and links to local organization you belong to (Chamber, Better Business Bureau, school booster clubs, charities, etc.). Include the local awards you’ve won, and promote upcoming events you’re supporting.

SEO-itis

Problem: You’ve allocated a large portion of your budget to an on-going search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. So, you’re ready to sit back and just watch the traffic stream in, right? After an initial bump, your traffic seems to be leveling off or even declining.

Ask yourself: Did you put all your eggs in the SEO basket? What else can you do to drive traffic to your site?

Diagnosis: You’ve fallen for the misperception that SEO is the end-all, be-all of online marketing.

Prescription: Set aside money in your budget for text (search) ads, targeted display ads, mobile marketing, email campaigns and other strategies. SEO is just one part of the critical online marketing mix.  A Google study (2012) found that turning off search ads resulted in an 89% drop in qualified website clicks. Resist the urge to be a one trick pony with SEO alone.

Memory Loss

Problem: You’ve launched or relaunched your website. You generate significant initial traffic but not a lot of return traffic.

Ask yourself: Have I examined my analytics? What search terms are working or aren’t working? Have I given people a good reason to come back to my website?

Diagnosis: Your set-it-and-forget approach has led to memory loss. Your search terms and Web content are not refined and up to date.

Prescription: By all means, revisit your search terms and your website. Use real-time analytics to constantly refine your search terms. The beauty of the Web analytics is that it provides immediate and quantifiable feedback.

Does your website look the same as the day you launched it? Update your website to reflect new promotions, incentives, rebates, testimonials, accolades, etc. While you don’t need to update content every week, you don’t want your site to appear stale and abandoned.

Create reminders on your calendar to regularly add new content. You can also tie in your website to your social media channels or a blog posts. Since search engines notice when new content is posted on a website, you’re also helping to boost SEO in a small way.

You do a lot to drive traffic to your website. Even if you’ve attracted a lot of first-time visitors, a large percentage of them don't come back. However, you can increase the odds of them returning by running a cutting-edge “retargeting” campaign.

"I ask my peers all the time: 'What happens when a customer connects to your website, then leaves?'" says Bobby Jorgenson, dealer principal of Kistler Ford in Toledo, Ohio. "After a long pause, I tell them about my reminder ads. Most dealers I talk to haven't heard of retargeting."

"It's the single most effective digital marketing tool I have to convert visitors into buyers,” continues Jorgenson. “We have customers tell us every day: ‘After I left your website, I saw you guys online everywhere! You were in my Yahoo email box, on The New York Times website, weather.com and more. I had to buy from you! It was a sign!’"

Retargeting 101

Let’s say customers in your target market search online for “Ford F150.” Your digital marketing vendor – ideally a Google Premier Business (SMB) partner – ensures that your dealership appears in the top two slots in local search results with hand-crafted text ads with strong calls to action, links to your inventory, and more. 

When customers click on your ad, you want to be sure to engage them as much as you can to get them to call, set up a test drive, etc. 

After a few minutes, your “qualified” customer may leave your site. But not before you’ve dropped a “cookie” into their browser. This little file will remain active for up to 60 days and track every site the customer visits, giving you the ability to make one of your display (banner) ads appear on the page.

In many cases, these retargeting "reminder ads" won't necessarily generate a click. Instead, they'll remind the customer about you and the model they're interested in, triggering another search on Google, bing or Yahoo. When you have them re-engaged in online research, you'll want to appear again in the top three slots of every search, and get them to click back to your website.

How to "Turn On" Retargeting

Your digital marketing vendor can provide you with a special piece of code to install on specific webpages or your entire website. Once 100 “cookies” have been distributed to your potential customers’ browsers, your ads will start appearing to them on the websites you’ve selected. 

To optimize results, be sure your campaign has all the popular banner ad sizes locked and loaded. You can control your budget, number of impressions, campaign duration, and more. Resist the urge to send them to your home page. Instead, create landing pages or inventory collections where clicks will "land" to increase conversions.

To avoid diminishing returns, change your creative every 5-10 weeks. At least consider changing the overall messaging, special offer or other text elements. 

Also consider embedding a trackable phone number so you'll be able to track retargeting-related phone calls into your BDC.

Your Quality Score

How much will this cost you? The good news: your clicks on retargeting banners may be less than, or equal to, a click on one of your Google AdWords text ads. The key to getting the maximum ROI is to concentrate on the overall customer experience and quality score.

Google assigns a quality score based on the number of times an ad is shown (impressions), the number of people who click it and how relevant the ad is to the user’s intent. Be sure your ads contain the same keywords as what's entered by buyers. If Google sees that your ads match well with the user's search intent, and your ads get clicked and shown often, that boosts your quality score.

The higher your quality score, the higher your ad will appear in search results (or displayed on a website for retargeting), the less you'll pay per click, and the more times your ads will be shown.

Finally, think about this: It takes the average buyer 8-12 impressions before they click and engage with ads. Many dealers today are paying $8-$10 per click doing a SEM campaign, but less than three customers per 100 visitors engage with your website. That's an investment of up to $1,000.

With retargeting, you can pay far less to "remind" the other 97 qualified customers over a 60 day period, increasing your exposure and the chances of them returning to your dealership.

How to Catch 'Em All

In summary, when adding retargeting to an existing digital campaign, consider these tips:

1. Retarget your most popular pages, makes and models. Create separate display ads (and retargeting code) for each of these opportunities. Think call to action, trackable phone number, great art and copy. Keep testing and refining. A qualified digital marketing vendor can handle this for you on request.

2. Target the right websites. Don't target buyers on websites that are completely unrelated to your business of selling vehicles. That said, be sure to target not only auto-related sites, but also news and weather sites, which show highly localized information to buyers in your market.

3. Right-size your budget. Be sure you add marketing dollars to each campaign to generate the best ROI possible, and always link customers back to specific pages, not your home page.

As dealers begin to wake up to this opportunity, competition is bound to increase in your market. Be sure to keep a close eye on your "share of voice," and work with a vendor who's been running digital "reminder" ads for years and knows how to make it produce maximum sales results. 

Smartphone and tablet research “closes the loop” on traditional marketing outreach

Our Mobile Planet: Global Smartphone Users

A recent study from Google and Ipsos OTX MediaCT makes several bold predictions for mobile marketing this year:

• 1 billion people will soon use mobile devices as their primary Internet access point
• 1 million small businesses globally will build a mobile website
• Smartphones will prove exceptional at driving new consumer behavior
• Tablets take their place as the 4th screen of most consumers
• “Mobile driven advertising spend” will emerge as a big category
• The ROI on mobile campaigns will increase as a result of unmatched relevance of customer proximity to retailers in target markets
• The intersection of search, display, mobile and social will spark dramatic new forms of engaging consumers

We’ve all done it: In a moment of boredom (watching TV, reading a newspaper or waiting for our kids to finish practice) we pull out our smartphone and start searching for a product or brand.

Whether we’re in the market to buy today, or just starting a new research phase, our smartphones have become our digital butlers, our personal researchers, our concierge.

Factor in ever-cheaper tablets (the iPad is no longer the sole choice of price-conscious consumers), and it’s clear that dealerships must be easily found via all device types when the mood strikes to conduct research.

New research from Google¹ highlights the opportunity: Nearly 70 percent of surveyed consumers started shopping research on a smartphone, 61 percent started on a personal computer (PC), and 4 percent started on a tablet.

However, 57 percent of the time those surveyed said they were using a smartphone while using another device ­– 28 percent with a PC, and 29 percent with a TV.

The opportunity for dealers is clear: We’re living in a multi-screen world. No matter which device your customers reach for, mobile research activity “closes the loop” on all of your marketing efforts.

Today, digital marketing turns local research for your brand, models, inventory and services into emails, chats, phone calls and foot traffic in your rooftops.

Most importantly, I’ve seen mobile campaigns that deliver click through rates that are twice those of PC-targeted ads. Even better, a properly segmented and targeted campaign can deliver mobile clicks that cost about half an equivalent PC click. This is reflected in a recent Covario study released late last year.²

Are you ready to be a first mover in the mobile marketing revolution, or are you poised to be road kill on the information superhighway? Your first step in answering this question is to do a little research and plan your strategy accordingly.

Why should I focus on mobile marketing?

According to analyst firm BIA/Kelsey, there may soon be more local Internet searches coming from mobile devices than personal computers.²

This trend can be attributed to the rise in the total number of smartphone users, set to grow from 44% of U.S. subscribers (118 million in 2012) to 75% (225 million by 2016).

Plus, Google’s latest data shows that smartphone search volumes are growing faster than search on the PC – local search accounts for 20 percent of queries on PC’s; it’s 40 percent of all mobile queries. Talk about a sea change!

What does my site look like on a mobile phone?

If your website looks great on a PC, the chances are high that it will look fine on a tablet. Tablet users tend to be more research-oriented than their smartphone counterparts.

iPhone and Android users, however, tend to be more interested in finding and buying within hours of conducting a search for a local dealer using keywords with purchase intent.

So focus on how your website looks when its viewed on a smartphone. Reach out to your website vendor to get current visitor data (analytics) to see how many customers are using mobile devices to connect to your site today.  

This will give you the data you need to put a timeline on adapting to the new mobile reality and planning your attack strategy.

Next, use your smartphone’s Web browser to conduct searches for your store name, as well as your brands, models and other top moneymakers (fixed operations?) Examples: volvo dealer, volvo dealer dallas, ford f150, bmw, civic, camry, oil changes, auto repair, tire sale.

Are you visible, showing up on the very first visible screen in the first three to four positions?

How are your competitors showing up? Read their ads, click on competitor search results, and view their mobile websites. You’ll quickly get a feel for the competitive landscape, and uncover weak spots in your local digital footprint.

Finally, ask yourself: Is it time to reach out to an online marketing specialist who knows your business, as well as the latest search, display and mobile strategies to help you deeply penetrate your local market online? (Ask your digital marketing vendor about your “share of advertising voice” or impression share. Are you getting your fair share of Net attention?)

How do I make a mobile website?

While your website may be legible via a tablet, chances are it has not yet been optimized for smartphones. Consult with your website vendor to see if mobile templates are available, and at what cost.

You can quickly and easily create a free mobile site (no fee for one year) using Google’s partnership with Dudamobile at dudamobile.com.

With a few clicks you can convert your standard website to a clean, clear mobile version using a variety of customizable templates. Automatic site syncing ensures that changes made on your store site will be automatically updated in your mobile version.

How do I advertise to mobile customers?

If you’re advertising today with Google AdWords, the chances are good that some of your ads are showing up in mobile searches. In fact, turning on mobile device targeting can be easily accomplished inside your campaign settings.

That said, do not fall into this trap. You should not be running the same search and display ads, in the same way, and targeting both PC’s and mobile devices inside the same campaign.

A better mobile advertising strategy is to segment your campaign to specifically target “on the go” customers who are in the market to buy from you within hours of conducting a search. This means writing and designing mobile-optimized search and display ads with clear calls to action that contain a trackable phone number, and more.

Your goal should be to have a high impression share with mobile users in your target market. You also should be efficiently driving mobile customers to a mobile website at the best possible cost per conversion.

Doing your own mobile campaign will take time and expertise, but it’s worth the effort. An elite vendor partner with the most training from Google and other media partners can most effectively set up and proactively manage a campaign to deliver top results all month long.

In future posts, I’ll share my top tips for how to write and design mobile search and display ads to drive maximum results. I’ll also show you how to define conversions on all device types to boost your return on investment, and apply analytics to mine your campaign data to report on sales impact in your dealership.

Sources:

1 The New Multi-Screen World - Google

2 When Will Mobile Local Searches Eclipse Mobile? - BIA/Kelsey Media Watch

3 Q4 2012 Global Paid Search Spend Analysis - Covario

Research: Mobile shoppers buy within 24 hours, prefer websites to apps

It’s time to get serious about mobile marketing. A growing tide of research reveals what digital dealers may already know:

1. Tech-savvy shoppers using smartphones are low-funnel sales opportunities who are searching “on the go” and are ready to buy (and soon).
    
2. Tablet users spend more time researching dealer reviews and special offers from home.

Plus, fresh projections show that mobile Internet use will surpass traditional desktop use in 2014² while more than 25% of Internet users in the U.S. say they are “mobile-only” and rarely go online via laptop or desktop computers³.

The most relevant findings from the xAd-Telmetrics Mobile Path to Purchase Study¹  include:

• Nearly 50% of smartphone users purchase a car or truck within 24 hours of conducting Web searches with purchase intent. (Within this group, more than a third (36%) convert “within an hour.")

• Nearly one-third of all Web queries using automotive keywords with purchase intent now come from tablets and smartphones.

• 66% of smartphone users search on the go, with 42% searching in their car. 49% search for auto dealers within local driving distance.
   
• Mobile auto buyers use a Web browser to conduct searches over dedicated apps 92% of the time.

Let’s add one more fresh data point to the mix: Google’s Compete-Polk⁴ study shows that local dealer websites are now the top source of research data for local buyers, surpassing OEM websites for the first time.

It’s not much of a stretch to say that digital dealers with the most robust, sustained sales growth are focusing their online marketing budget on a trio of Internet tactics:

1. Localized search engine marketing campaigns. Running ads on Google, bing and Yahoo! is still the most effective way of converting online searches with purchase intent into phone calls, website clicks and foot traffic to rooftops.

Work with a Google Premier partner who utilizes the latest technology to ensure that you’re deeply penetrating your local market and getting the largest share of voice possible for your budget. (Ask your provider for this data today: "What's my impression share?" If they can't tell you, it's time to re-think your marketing vendor.)

2. Localized display (banner and retargeting “follow along”) ads boost dealer brand awareness on contextually relevant websites. Adding a layer of display with tracked phone numbers and display ad-only offers will help you accurately gauge your return on investment.

3. With Google Enhanced Campaigns upon us, it’s critical to look at your digital marketing mix and move more money into mobile-specific campaigns. Doing so will ensure that you’re showing up in top positions across all Internet-capable devices with properly worded and formatted ads to covert the maximum number of purchase-ready buyers into new sales opportunities.

Keep in mind that you’ll want to be purposeful when designing mobile-optimized website content and landing pages. Mobile buyer behavior and expectations vary greatly from desktop users. Think one goal per page, focus on the single result or conversion you wish to achieve per ad and landing page.

Which begs a few important questions:

Is your website mobile-ready?

• The new best practice when gearing up for a mobile marketing campaign is to avoid using an m. domain. A "one URL" approach has been officially supported by bing and Google in recent months, while managing two websites presents its own challenges and costs.
• Your webmaster can employ user agent detection which will automatically display the correct rendering of each webpage based on the device type.
• Data point: None of the top-performing dealer websites in the xAd-Telmetrics study were using an m. subdomain, but instead directed buyers to a single URL.

Have you added at least one mobile-optimized campaign to your search marketing program?

• Until recently, running the same text ads across desktops and mobile devices was par for the course. No more.
• Create unique mobile campaigns with their own strategy (think special offers and calls to action), geography, mobile-optimized keyword categories and budget.
• The good news? The cost per click (CPC) for a well-run mobile campaign is usually lower than a comparable campaign for desktop results.

Have you optimized your display ads?

• You’ll need to resize them so they render correctly in smaller sizes on tablets and phones.
• Remember, display ads are more about brand awareness than clicks. Think “impressions” of your dealership name along with your top makes and models across relevant destinations.

"Automotive mobile marketers should recognize auto searchers' preference for mobile websites over apps," said Bill Dinan, president of Telmetrics, in a press release. "Also, understanding the role of location - specifically the importance of local driving distance - is essential to harnessing the 65% undecided mobile Auto audience and their purchasing power."

Sources:

1 xAd-Telmetrics “Mobile Path to Purchase Study” 2012

2 Mary Meeker, Morgan Stanley 2012

3 Alistair Hill, On Device Research 2012

4 Compete, Polk and Google "2012 Automotive Buy Flow Study" 2012