It's easy to take it for granted. When we want to look for a car or answer any of life's mundane questions, we go to Google and get our answers. It happens every day (a billion times a day, actually). Most of us get our answer without paying a penny and we move on with our daily lives.

Still, Google is making money. The service might be free and something that brings us to the site or to an app on our mobile devices on a semi-regular basis, but the advertising they sell for the service is the most profitable advertising platform in history by far.

With all that said, this latest infographic breaks down the story and technical background behind the most used research tool the world has ever known.  Click to enlarge.

Website marketing, lead conversion, and sales should be in a constant state of improvement. No design is perfect. No strategy is complete. The truly successful internet dealers of the world must be willing to put the time in to make sure they're best-positioned against their competition and offer a positive face that their customers can see.

The internet is now the first and last place most people go when buying a vehicle. They start their research there, and while there is still a good portion of people who refer to other venues, they normally end up on the internet before heading out to see vehicles.

Sometimes, they're on the internet while they're out seeing vehicles.

The only way to maintain a state of constant improvement is through testing. This isn't Star Wars - "The Force" does not apply here. One does simply know that their website is perfect. They have to test it.

With thousands of websites under our belt, we are still constantly testing, trying new things, and advancing our measures in the search for near-perfection.

True perfection can never be reached. That's probably a good thing - our work life might be boring otherwise.

It can be a challenge, but this infographic may help shed light on the best ways to test. Click to enlarge.

(Via: Monetate. Point of Reference: Doral Honda.)

The art and science of link-building has been growing in the consiousness of dealers for the last several months. The trumpet that a few of us have been blowing has started to make an impact in the industry as dealers and vendors realize the SEO benefits of quality inbound links to their sites.

It's starting to be a craze which is a good thing. As with any craze, there needs to be a word or two of caution attached. In this case, the words of caution were best illustrated by Google itself. It is against the rules to purchase links for the sake of increased page rank or rankings. Google has made this clear for years, and recently slapped its own wrist to make sure nobody thinks they're above their own rules.

It's not against the rules to purchase link placement. They've been very clear that sponsored links and advertisements are perfectly acceptible as long as they apply the "nofollow" attribute to the links. A company that the Google Chrome team hired to help with marketing didn't follow this rule and made purchases on Chrome's behalf of placement in articles about the browser. When word broke about this, Google acted swiftly and penalized itself in its own rankings.

Link-building is a challenging thing, which is why we've always relied on organic and networked links. We believe in quality content driving the links to sites through methods such as infographics, content writing, and social news promotion. We have never and will never buy a link.

You shouldn't either.

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JD Rucker is Director of New Media for KPA, a Dealership Compliance company. KPA purchased TK Carsites, an Automotive Marketing Firm, in 2011 and continues to provide top-notch internet marketing service to dealers across the country.

If there's one thing that's constant in the technology world, it's change. We see it every day - what was once hot goes cold, what was once dying is reborn. I had a bad-prediction moment the other day when I had to backtrack on my opinion of the Windows Phone. The TK Carsites founder had purchased one a few months back and at the time I was (inwardly) laughing at him. I was wrong. Microsoft will be a player in the phone wars in the near future.

That's what happens in automotive marketing as well. It's my job to analyze the latest and greatest products and trends in online automotive marketing and make a decision as to how effective they'll be, what the ROI will look like, and how long it will be able to sustain. We did this in 2007 when we first started exploring social media, for example. At the time, Facebook was 1/5th the size of MySpace, but we made the decision to bet on Facebook making a push and forcing MySpace to the side.

The infographic below shows some of the trending topics that made the news in 2011. Some of them apply directly to automotive marketing such as Geolocation Apps and Mobile Photo Sharing. Others, such as Group Buying, have seen lukewarm success in automotive.

Of note is one of the predictions in 2012. Mobile commerce will become the norm. Dealers may wonder how that could possibly affect them - nobody's going to buy a car off their iPhone, right? The key (and the item we're looking very closely at with our R&D team) is the effect mobile devices will have on fixed ops sales and marketing. More to come on that. In the meantime, enjoy this infographic.

Click to enlarge.

Those who have been on the internet side of the business for a while might remember some email marketing fads that came and went. They were sleak, sexy, interactive, and got blocked by 90% of the spam filters by 2008. Alas, the days of "fun emails" were behind us.

Or were they? Video emails are making a comeback and frankly, I'm not sure what to think about it. There are several products out there in the market today that allow dealers to make quick videos of them talking directly to customers, doing short video walkarounds, or simply giving the personal attention that customers want to receive. I'm interested in hearing from the Driving Sales about the effectiveness of these.

Call it a personal research project. It's not something that KPA/TK Carsites offers, but if it's effective I'd love to look into it. What are your thoughts? What's your experience?

This question was sparked by one of the infographics that we promote through Hasai that hit my desk and made me start wondering how it translates in the automotive industry.

Click to enlarge.

We are very pleased to have the best dressed man in the automotive industry shedding light and sharing wisdom with dealers across the country on Wednesday at 9am Pacific, noon Eastern.

"Marketing is constantly evolving and new innovative ways of reaching your prospects are emerging, most recently with the rise of marketing via smart phones and tablets. Join Paul to learn about how to most effectively market your services and connect with your customers in the world of Mobile Marketing. Walk away from this webinar knowing how to develop a mobile “mailing” list, innovative ways to make your message stand out, as well as key components of a successful mobile marketing strategy."

Come see Paul in the morning on the TK Carsites Webinar. It's free!

Most who are active participants of the Driving Sales community are well aware of the importance of having a Facebook page, getting local people to like it, and posting engaging content to keep our feeds present for people to see when they visit Facebook. Let's take it a step further and discuss some advanced marketing techniques that have been proven to be effective on Facebook.

One easy technique is the use of sharable photos. Many of us are posting pictures of our customers on our Facebook wall, but I cannot stress enough how important it is for these pictures to go beyond our own walls. We need them to be on other people's walls. We need them shared, getting comments, and getting exposure for our brands to as many locals as possible on Facebook.

Take a look at this update:

It has many of the attributes of a very strong update. It has real people doing real things. It highlights the personality of the dealership and the fact that they didn't something extra special for a local charity. It was originally posted on the charity's wall.

Here's what it was missing. Keep in mind, the likely reason it was "missing" these things is because this was done as a truly charitable, self-less act without marketing taken into account. They weren't looking for a publicity stunt or look-at-us exposure. They wanted to help.

Even when helping, I still recommend marketing as well.

Here are the things that would have made it perfect:

• Bigger photo with the dealership sign in the background
• Pro-active promotion of the image, asking people to not only contribute to the charity but to spread the word by sharing the image with friends and family
• More comments
• Links within the body to Facebook profiles of the participants
• Call to action: share, share, share!

Facebook isn't just about what we're saying about ourselves. There's more power in getting others to talk about us. Everyone knows that a business likes itself. What they want to see is that other people like them as well. The best place to see it is on their Facebook profiles more so than on our own pages.

This and 6 other tips are detailed in this week's TK Carsites and KPA webinar, 7 Idea-Sparking Examples to Jumpstart Your Facebook Marketing. The hour spent watching it can help you sell more cars through social media immediately.

What started off as a debate turned into one of the most eye-opening discussions of my career. A friend of mine who run marketing at an online corporate giant was interviewing me about my recent decision to purchase several of their products. The topic of conversions came up and the fireworks started: what was considered a conversion in the automotive industry?

His contention was that conversions can only be sales, that leads by themselves weren't enough to qualify as a web conversion. He went so far as to say that a good dealer website should be able to SELL cars directly and that people should just be coming in to finalize paperwork and pick up their vehicle (or even better, have it all delivered to their house or work).

I won that part of the debate - leads are conversions in today's world because so few people will buy cars without driving them first. I explained the necessity of building excitement and taking ownership during the drive, that people might be willing to plop over a couple of hundred dollars for a tablet sight-unseen but that even a new car is challenging to sell without a visit to the dealership, let alone a used car.

He relented, but only after pointing me towards the lack of a Chief Conversion Officer at dealerships. Despite being something that is more easily translated in direct online sales rather than lead generation, there are things that we can learn from the concept.

This infographic by Monetate details the job and its responsibilities. Click to enlarge.

What can the automotive industry learn from it?

In the competitive world of automotive internet marketing, it's hard sometimes to know what's really working and what's a waste of time. Too often, dealers and their vendors are led down a path to some new form of "marketing gold" that will help their search and/or social gain an upperhand on the competition. It's for this reason that I've avoided pushing too hard about Tumblr.

After using it for 3 years internally here at TK Carsites, I'm finally confident that it has 3 attributes that are important for anything that we are willing to recommend:

• - It's got to have sticking power. Despite ups and downs, Tumblr has emerged as a real player in social media and shows no signs of slowing in the future.
• - It has to be relatively easy. One of the reasons we don't recommend that dealers should build a unique class-C IP-driven, relevant-content-based blog network is because it is hard. It requires manpower, dedication, and several hours a week for a long time just to get it to the bottom level of automotive marketing tools. It works, but it's a huge investment for an individual dealer or even a large dealer group. Tumblr, on the other hand, is easy.
• - It has to work. There are pros and cons to using Tumblr, but the site has gotten to the point that, done right, it can bring much more value than many of the other things dealers spend time on today.

Wednesday, we'll be doing our first Tumblr-centric webinar called "Tumblr: The Most Powerful Automotive Marketing Tool (that nobody's using right)". It's from 9am-10am Pacific. If you're serious about your marketing, I recommend attending.

In the meantime, here's a video I did that highlights the basics of Tumblr.

There is a distinct taste of irony to this post. I made my feelings known about cross-posting on all of the social networks earlier this month. Now I must break my own personal rule.

This time, I have good reason.

We're trying to compile a complete list of automotive social networks. We've put together a good list but I'm sure I'm missing some, so with a heavy heart I must do the thing I prefer to avoid: post this article across all of the social networks I know.

Over the past 5 years, the automotive industry has managed an amazing transition. We were behind the times half a decade ago as an industry with many dealerships still using old technology or leaning on traditional advertising as their primary method of pushing out their message.

In the short amount of time since, we've gone as an industry from being behind other industries in internet marketing practices to setting the trend and embracing the internet as the primary method through which we market our dealerships. It has been an amazing transition and I believe we can thank the networks on the list for helping to blaze the path that has gotten us all here.

Please review the list and let me know if I'm missing any. You can comment here or email me at jrucker@tkcarsites.com with any additions.