Let's face it. Websites are becoming a commodity in the automotive world. Most quality website vendors are putting out solutions that are good enough to work well. Few are coming up with innovations that can differentiate them, and those differences are relatively small in the whole scheme of things. The difference between a good and a great website is minimal when translating it to increased sales.

The reason for this is that consumers are becoming increasingly impatient when in car shopping mode. It's not that they don't spend as much time doing it as before. It's that they are doing most of their research on websites other than a dealer's site and only visiting when they're ready to look at live vehicles. At that point, they're going straight to inventory or specials and deciding from there whether to consider doing business with a dealership or not. If you have the right inventory items that they're considering, a bad website isn't going to keep them from contacting you. Conversely, if you don't have the vehicles they're seeking, an amazing website isn't going to coax them into doing business with you.

Websites are websites. Some are better than others and have strong conversion tools, but the real arena through which dealers can move the needle is in the quality of their digital marketing efforts. One of those efforts, search engine marketing, is arguably the greatest opportunity for advancement because it translates into more visitors, more leads, and potentially more sales when done right.

The biggest challenge that dealers with OEM-mandated search marketing products face is in defining competition. From the OEM's perspective, a Ford dealer's competition is the Chevy dealer down the block and the Honda dealer around the corner. They want search exposure that can take sales from the other brands. This is a good and noble cause, but unfortunately it's not the most practical target for individual dealers and dealer groups.

From the perspective of the Ford dealership itself, their primary competition isn't the Chevy dealer and the Honda dealer but rather the other Ford dealers in the area. It's how they're graded; we all see reports every month that tell us how we're doing against other dealerships in the area that sell the same brands. It is for this reason that OEM-mandated search marketing, as affordable as it is, simply isn't the best way to improve sales. At the dealership level, the lowest hanging fruit for increased business is by taking sales from the real competition, namely the other Ford store a few miles away.

As mentioned, there is one advantage to the OEM-mandated search marketing: it's cheaper. It's often paid for in whole or in part and can act as a check box on your marketing. "Yep, we're doing SEO and PPC. The OEM is taking care of that for us."

Unfortunately, that's really the only advantage. It's designed in most cases to keep every dealership inside their own little box. Reaching outside of the direct market area is a no-no for companies that work for the OEMs. In fact, they're goal is to keep the boxes neat and tidy.

When the search marketing is focused at the dealership level, it's a completely different strategy. The goals have changed; it's not that a Ford dealer doesn't want to take market share from a Chevy dealer, but that's a heck of a lot harder than taking a deal from the Ford dealer down the road. Let's say there's a dealer in a small town a few miles from you. They're the only Ford dealer in that town. Everyone in town knows them. When they want to do business with that dealership, they'll search for the dealership by name.

Consumers who search for the dealership by city are looking for an alternative. They know about Bob Ricky's Toyota in the heart of town. If they do a search for "Somewhereville Toyota Dealers" or "Toyota Dealers Near Somewhereville", you'll want your dealership to pop up. People that do searches like that are trying to find someone else from which to buy their Toyota. If they wanted to buy from Bob Ricky's Toyota, they would have searched for "Bob Ricky's Toyota". They didn't. They want someone else. They want you. If you're ranked for that search, there's a good chance they'll check out your website to see if they can do business with you instead of Bob Ricky.

Unfortunately, the OEM-mandated search marketing products aren't designed to help in this regard. In many ways, they're designed to prevent this from happening.

If your goal is to beat the competition, your competition, then don't look to the OEM's search marketing company. Don't just check off the search marketing box and call it a day. Explore your options and see if there's a way to improve your search marketing to focus on helping your dealership the best way you can, by being aggressive and getting your dealership in as many relevant searches as possible.

There as been a major shift in digital marketing that has been building up for a couple of years now. Content was once a tool used for search engine optimization and social media marketing, but today and in the foreseeable future content will be the most important (and easiest) way to advance in search and social. We discussed it in detail on ADM last month.

One of the advantages of working for an automotive SEO company is that we get to play with the vast majority of content management systems and back end tools that dealers use today. Some are very good at allowing page creation and management, including Vin Solutions, Dealer.com, and, of course, KPA Connect. Others are awful. If you're using a platform that has limitations on content creation, it's time to consider a change.

This isn't a pitch for our website product. It doesn't matter as much to me that you have our product or another product that allows you to easily create and distribute content from your website. It only matters that you have the ability to build two or three pages a month with content that comes from the dealership itself. Where to find and who can create this content is another discussion, but for now, it's imperative to gain the understanding of where content stands in the present and future of digital marketing.

Unique, high-quality content is the source of your digital marketing. It's where the magic can happen. You have to think along the lines of offering resources and points of interest for your local customers. Your standard website content cannot accomplish this. It requires the creation of content that people can find. Remember, it's not just about getting in front of the people who are interested in buying a car today. It's also about building your base, exposing your brand, and being at the top of mind for those who may be interested in buying a car in six months.

This is why "new" marketing trends like retargeting and video pre-roll require codes on your website to make them work. Getting these codes onto your potential customers' computers requires content. To make it happen, you must have a website platform that makes it easier.

Build pages. If you are limited with your backend, make a change. You have the potential to get a dramatic advantage over your competitors, but you simply cannot if you don't have a flexible system to make it happen.

Every few months, marketers around the blogosphere start the next batch of chants that search engine optimization is dying or dead. It's like clockwork; Google makes a change, their pages rank poorly, they declare that the party's over. I think I've written about the topic at least once a year since 2008.

The chants are starting again and I'm here to tell you that, as usual, they are premature. I'm not so naive as to make a statement like "SEO will never die," but the thought that the death is here is silly. It's not dead. It has changed. It changes frequently - perhaps more frequently in recent months - but it's not dead yet. In fact, those who are doing the right things are finding that their rankings are actually improving.  

Why They Always Pronounce it Dead

Since the dawn of SEO, there have been tricks that work for a short period of time. We've always taken the stance that anything that smells like a "trick" will not last and should be dismissed. This concept has helped us to stay on top of our searches and the keywords of our clients.

For example, 2007 saw a major increase in the effectiveness of social news and social bookmarking links. It was almost too easy - if you submitted a piece of content to Digg, it would rank for easy keywords within a few hours and for tougher keywords in a few days. Smart marketers refused to play this game knowing that Google would catch on and instead learned to use sites like Digg and Reddit to drive real SEO juice by posting powerful content and exposing it to the social news world. This still applies today for many sites, though they are fading quickly from relevance (except Reddit, which is growing).

Any time one of these tricks stops working, the SEOpocalypse is declared.

The most recent change that has everyone up in arms is the devaluing of automated links. Footer links, sidebar links, link farms - Google and Bing both have found ways to not only discredit these links but to make them harmful when done too much. SEO is dead... for those who couldn't keep up with these changes.  

Why SEO isn't Dead

Thankfully, smart marketers did not participate in the automated link-building programs. Personally, I'm shocked it took as long as it did for Google and Bing to figure it out. There was a time in late 2011 that I was starting to doubt my choice of not having our SEO team get in on the link-automation trend. I was getting questioned by some within the company because the path we chose, one of unique content and contextual link generation, was much more expensive to operate than the automated ways.

The corner was finally turned with the Penguin update and subsequent tweaks and my choices were vindicated.

Today, content is no longer a tool for SEO. It is an overarching concept that includes SEO as part of its mandate. In other words, the tool is now the goal and the goals of SEO, reputation, branding, and social media marketing all revolve around quality content.

When you're out there reading about the marketing trends of 2013, take note of those who are pulling away from social media or SEO and those who are pushing forward. This is easy for me to say since it's the direction that my company is heading, but it happens to be the truth. Quality content that people can enjoy, proper link-building and social signal practices that revolve around this content, and social media marketing that doesn't rely on funny cat pictures - these are the real trends that will drive proper marketing in 2013.

One of the most important components of a successful dealership Facebook page is pictures of happy customers. More dealers are doing it every day and they are seeing the results in improved engagement through likes, shares, and comments.

However, the increasing trend is also making it harder to stand out. With more of these pictures hitting Facebook on a regular basis, it's important to try to make your pictures more interesting than the happy-customer-pictures of the dealership down the block. It's easy once you know some of the types of photos that you should take and avoid the "guy and girl in front of the vehicle they just bought" pictures.

Last month, we covered the 5 Facebook Customer Photo Types That Aren't Totally Boring. In it, we gave examples from one dealership Facebook page that is doing it right. As we mentioned:

The problem is that the pictures of happy customers are often about as boring as a picture can be. There's a customer standing in front of their new car. Sure, they look happy, but is it going to get anyone's attention? Is it going to get comments from local prospects, even the friends of the person who is in the picture?

Check out those 5 image types on Dealer Bar.

There's a trend in the automotive industry that is alarming. We hear this scenario played out almost every day and it normally manifests itself into one of two stages:

• Stage 1: The Fresh Tech Hunter - When a dealership is tired of the limitations of their various vendors, they often go hunting for a replacement that has the latest and greatest automotive internet marketing technologies at their disposal.
• Stage 2: The Better Treatment Hunter - When a dealership is tired of slow response times and vendors pointing their customers towards tutorials about how to fix their own problems rather than fixing it for them, they go hunting for a vendor that acts like it wants to keep their business by treating them better through customer service and tech support.

Why can't it be both? What happened to the days when vendors were forced to have strong technology and amazing customer service rather than today's trend which seems to force dealers to choose between one or the other?

Here are the descriptions of both types of vendors:

The Technology Trendsetter

It's the nature of the beast. Search, social, lead generation, website design, mobile, CRM - it seems like the technology is advancing too fast for most vendors to stay fresh. As a result, the bigger vendors are the ones who have the resources to keep their technology at the top. Unfortunately, they fall into a catch-22; by being large enough to have the resources to stay ahead, they are also faced with the big-boat-syndrome of not being agile enough to make swift adjustments when major changes occur in things such as the Google search algorithm or website coding advancements.

Having proven technology that works today and that will continue to work tomorrow is the only real solution for dealers that want to stay ahead of the curve.

The Customer Service Company

Technology is great, but it comes at a price. All too often, the vendors that are large enough to have the resources to develop the best technology have not been able to scale their customer service and keep it personal. Moreover, the trend towards the coveted big contract changes the focus of the vendor; when they land an OEM contract, their client is no longer the dealer. They now answer to the OEM. This is bad news for customers service at the dealership level.

Smaller companies tend to hold each individual client at a higher value than larger ones and must do whatever they can to keep their customer service at its highest level. Dealers might love technology, but if you can't fulfill their needs at a personal level and treat them as more than just a number, they'll still leave.

Have Your Cake and Eat it Too

This is where the advice comes into play. Don't get wooed by technology alone. Don't settle for second-rate technology just for strong customer service. It's challenging to fill both shoes, but for a dealership to be truly satisfied with their vendor, they must take the time to find out how both sides of the coin work for that vendor.

This is where vetting comes into play. When taking a pitch from a vendor, be sure to write down all of the things that impressed you most about the technology. Test it out by finding dealers that are using the technology. Don't find 3 or 4. Find 20. Then call them. All of them.

When you call the other dealers, be certain to focus on the customer service component. The technology is important, but if their dealers have to waste too much time trying to get changes done to their website or are unable to have consultations on a regular basis with an expert at the vendor, they're probably not the right vendor for you.

Dealers no longer have to settle for anything less than the best of both worlds. For too long, they've trusted their vendors up until the point that they get fed up with the technology not working, the customer service falling short, or both. If you truly vet each potential vendor partner for both criteria, the result will be much better in the long term. It's not an easy process, but nobody likes switching vendors all the time. Find the right one right now and enjoy a long and mutually beneficial relationship with them.

If you're a retailer of items that are often purchased as gifts, holiday advertising makes total sense. You're competing for a portion of the most lucrative sales season and getting the word out about the deals, products, and sales that you have going on at your store is important.

If you are not a retailer with holiday items for sale, don't try to take advantage of it all by getting "in the spirit" of the season. You can do more damage than good.

There's an anti-holiday sentiment that has been growing for a few years. Consumers are getting tired of the mess that Christmas shopping has become. It has always been stressful, but now the increase in communication and marketing styles has put it front and center whenever we're connected to media. Television, internet, mobile - all are being bombarded with holiday messages.

This negative sentiment is a dangerous realm if you aren't bringing anything real to the table. You might be having a holiday special of some sort, but if it's not directly tied to something of immediate interest - gifts, food, or travel - you're just participating in the noise.

Instead, take a different approach this year. There's a difference between being "jolly" and trying to capitalize on the season by offering trumped up specials or events that don't directly influence how people will celebrate. Here are some ideas:

• * Give - The one noble aspect of the season that most people don't mind is the need for giving. There are plenty of those who could use the help of your business and by participating in local causes and encouraging others to do the same, you'll be doing good while improving your brand image. Be careful not to latch onto the guilt notion - all too often we're bombarded with messages that are supposed to make us feel guilty for having more than others. This is another type of message that gets overdone around the holidays. Give, support, promote, but do it in a celebratory manner.
• * A Message of Relaxation - A couple of years ago I saw a car dealership create a "Holiday Triage Center". They set up their service center waiting area with snacks, drinks, comfortable chairs, and a very prominent "no holiday music allowed" atmosphere. They then advertised it as a place to get away from the holiday hustle and bustle for a while, a pit stop to recharge and relax.
• * Focus on 2013 - We might not be done with this year, yet, but it's not too early to start pushing out a message of what's to come.This is particularly effective when reaching those who are beyond their holiday hysteria, who have already done their shopping and preparing.

Just because the holidays are upon us doesn't mean that your message has to center around it. Today, there are plenty of holiday messages that are both relevant and irrelevant. If you aren't selling something that goes under a tree, into an over, or that gets people from here to there, don't get sucked into the abyss. Be different.

The power of Facebook has impressed many of its users, giving them the ability to speak to family and friends and share their lives virtually together no matter the distance. It has also become a fantastic hub for businesses to express personality, share promotions and gain customer loyalty and trust.

However, Facebook has done much more, it has made a customer service comeback for businesses. Allowing Facebook users to speak with companies directly and quickly; expressing their concerns and exciting their praises.

In fact 1/3 of consumers are using social media to engage with their vendor of choice. Facebook has become the most valued tool as a social media lead generator, its platform for Business to Consumers (B2C) with 77% stating that they have received a customer from their Facebook page interactions.

Engaging with customers through social media can help your business gain advocates for your brand, advocates voice their joy of how you have treated them, sharing this information with their family and friends and therefore amplifying your reach on Facebook. You also need to keep in mind that the average B2C advocate has roughly 200-400 people within their Facebook community alone. Let’s not forget the power of peer-to-peer influence since studies show that 61% of consumers will buy from a brand that is recommended by another customer or more so from a family or friend.

Facebook is where your company’s customers are with 1 in 4 users checking the site up to 5 times daily; therefore your presence is a necessity if you want to earn your brand’s credibility online.  More importantly making connections with people based on an emotional distinction with your brand can increase a new customer and providing availability to consumers through social media is direct customer service that can keep a current customer happy.

Learn more about the statistics of Facebook for B2C and How Businesses Are Making Friends on Facebook in the following infographic created by Ambassador.

* * *

This article originally appeared on Socialeyezer.

As an owner or an admin to a Facebook page you clearly know that filling out as much as you can helps create the page and provides a way for people to not only find your page but more about your brand. It is still highly recommended that you ensure you fill out all the sections that can help people to understand your brand’s purpose except for one area and this one can hinder you more than help you.

Facebook pages are a terrific form of sharing information with like-minded people from tips to how-to’s to just what is happening in Industry news. They are the number one place for your business to be public on besides your own website. However, there is a spot on Facebook that can make you believe it is helping your Facebook page within Facebook search when in fact it is not.

Under the “Basic Information” section of your Facebook page you are able to choose a category and sub-category to help place your Facebook page properly within the search engine on Facebook. Beneath it is where the trouble can occur.

The “Official Page” section located under “Basic Information” and just below where you choose a category for your page asks you to “pick a topic”, this makes us easily want to find a relatable topic and add it to this section since where it is located makes us believe that it will help us even further to get seen and possible “likes” from those who are searching for what it is offered from your page.

The “Official Page” section needs to be blank, yes, as blank as the stares I am getting right now. Many hurry to fill out the sections on Facebook that they don’t take time to hover the small question marks that provide valuable information. Information that can help you to not make a bad decision and filling out the mentioned section is a bad choice.

The “Official Page” is meant to be filled in if there is another page that is active and live that represents your brand on Facebook. Which means that by finding a topic your page then becomes a supporting page and not the “Official Page”, therefore you need to keep this section without an associated topic unless it is not your brands main page on Facebook.

If you have this section added with a topic, simply go to Edit Page > Basic Information > and Delete the topic chosen. This will be more beneficial for your Facebook page and will change the way you are found on Facebook and within other search engines.

Facebook has reached over a billion active users and as our social history continues to unfold, each of our activities gathers quite a bit of intelligent information once it is formulated into grouped statistics. Wouldn’t you be surprised to find out that though many complain about their privacy being infringed upon by Facebook that only 5% of Facebook users have set their privacy settings to be completely private? Don’t you want to know what our most popular activities are? Or that though it seems like every time we turn around we are poking someone back but that 63% of Facebook users have never used the “poking” feature?

Those of us who use Facebook have deep rooted emotions about it, whether we love the social site or hate it; we are most certainly on it and use it various times throughout our day.

In the following infographic learn more about our time spent on Facebook and statistics that may surprise you.

By now we are all aware as to how our newsfeed has become our hub on Facebook since it is where we receive a river flowing of all of our connections status updates allowing us to see more of what is happening on Facebook in less time than it would take to go to individual profiles or pages. The newsfeed is not only the spot where we gain information, but also where we do our actions, such activities as likes, comments and re-sharing a post or status update. Facebook now has a newsfeed for Facebook Pages.

What is Pages Feed on Facebook?

This week Facebook is rolling out “Pages Feed” to profiles for its Facebook Pages to have their own newsfeed since clearly the profile newsfeed is where its 1.01 billion users like to spend most of their time. This means that any page that you have “liked” will be displayed within the “Pages Feed” collectively. Allowing you to again see more in less time, therefore you can keep informed about the latest status updates from your “liked” pages.

Where is the location of “Pages Feed” on Facebook?

If the “Pages Feed” has been rolled out onto your profile it will be seen on the left-hand menu bar under the “Pages” section. Below a few of your connected pages that you admin or own you will now see “Pages Feed” above “Like Pages”. If you have yet to see it, it will roll out to you shortly.

How does the new “Pages Feed” help Businesses on Facebook?

This is simple enough to answer, your Facebook Page has yet another way on Facebook to be seen and since it has been created as a familiar feature people will hopefully use it more. It is not another thing they have to learn on Facebook since every Facebook user is well acquainted with the newsfeed layout. Basically, Facebook is providing another place to amplify your brand without you having to do anything besides keep updating your Facebook business page. People when using the “Pages Feed” will now be able to see an array of their connected pages in one stream. Allowing your brand to not get drowned out by other posts that may be more personal to the user as well as increasing more actions since when a user decides to click on their customized “Pages Feed” they are there to actually see pages on Facebook.

What is “Follow Post”? A “Follow Post” allows users when using the “Pages Feed” to be able to click on the arrow located at the top right-hand corner of every post. When clicked, you will now be able to follow the activities of the chosen post and receive notifications wherever you happen to be on Facebook.

It is unknown if Facebook Page status updates will be removed from the profile newsfeed since it will defeat the purpose of the “Pages Feed” in the minds of many, however personally I think Facebook should not remove the ability of users seeing Facebook Pages posts within their newsfeed and to remain to leave it as is. Instead, I think the “Pages Feed” should be the additional option for its users in the instance that this feature does not gain popularity or help businesses as it is intended.