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.

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. 

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.