Automotive marketing case study-15% click rates

Posted on 11. Dec, 2008 by admin.

Our automotive services are vast and we are often asked what a good click through rate is on a pay per click ad. We have taken over campaigns that have less than .01% click through rate.

If you want to get the most for your pay per click then read on or give us a call.

Pure Dealer.com website design and marketing need to work hand in hand to make sure you maximize your click results. Many dealers believe that the click through rate is solely based upon writing a good ad. We have helped dealers completely dominate their competitors in Internet search marketing. We are conquering Internet Marketing through cunning tactics, ideas, and techniques that will help you get more automotive leads in this competitive automotive market.

As automotive SEO, SEM, and PPC experts, we look at the whole picture to help you get a lower click cost. Proper selection of keywords, with better written copy and aggressive offers, driven to a landing page or microsite will help your dealership leads increase.

Our Internet marketing strategies have helped increase dealership leads as much as 200% but not at the cost of low conversions. Sell more cars and demand high click rates of your pay per click provider. If you do not know what your marketing is doing, ask us to help you figure it out.

If you are in in the automotive marketing industry, learn more about how car dealerships can get quality leads from an automotive expert. If you would like to see a screen capture of sites and Google campaigns that are converting at 15% or higher, just email us and we will be happy to show you.

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Automotive Search Engine Marketing - keep it simple

Posted on 04. Dec, 2008 by admin.

Automotive Search Engine Marketing is a complex concept for some, but can be simplified into various components to make it more easily digestible. Here are the two main categories of search engine marketing for automotive dealers. These are not all the variations of it and do not account for services such as automotive blogs, automotive epress releases, car dealer social networking or other automotive marketing ideas.

Automotive Search Marketing

This is also known as pay per click or in some cases Google Adwords. This is in nutshell, paying for placement or online advertising.

Automotive Search Engine Optimization

This is what many dealers call the “free Google listings” or what appears as the search results on a search engine. It is often called Automotive SEO or car dealer search engine placement, or you may ask Google to tell you some “car dealer search engine ideas“.

Marketing your dealership to the search engines is a very important concept but also, and often, involves a good dealer web site design to make sure that the automotive search traffic you receive will vonvert. Your goal is to become your own automotive lead provider through proper automotive search engine optimization and marketing.

If you want a Free Automotive Marketing Analysis contact us and we will review your site, your search optimization visibility and provide you with some great reporting at no charge.

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CraigsList Automotive Inventory for Car Dealers

Posted on 01. Dec, 2008 by admin.

Craigslist is a huge online property that car dealers can benefit from in some major ways. In the past it has been very time comsuming, labor intensive, and quite frankly a lot of work to get your postings in and keep them regularly updated.

PureDealer however has solved many of these problems with our new CraigsList Automotive Inventory Service. We will post your entire used car inventory into your local Cragslist Automotive area on a monthly basis for one low price. We work with all of the major data providers (and some small ones too) to get your current pictures and inventory onto Craigslist.

How it works:

• We post all your ads and inventory for you.
• We provide all of the staffing to get your entire preowned inventory online.
• We repost deleted, flagged, Craiglist ad postings as needed
• We add new vehicles once they are added to your inventory.
• We also post all pre-owned to backpage.com

In some cases the automotive marketing budget and inventory site investments have dropped dramatically for some dealers. Since this service is much less expensive than the major sites on the market, the return on automotive advertising investment is very high. Sell more cars and smarten up your automotive marketing efforts today. Contact us for more details, and sample links to some real dealers who are moving cars every month for fractions of what they are paying for other service providers.

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Automotive Search Marketing or Advertising?

Posted on 25. Nov, 2008 by admin.

Automotive Advertising or Marketing

You will find many automotive dealers confuse marketing with advertising or vice versa. While both are important they are vastly different. If you do your homework, you can help your dealership grow through some great advertising and marketing strategies.

Here are the main differences when it pertains to the automotive sector:

Automotive Advertising: Paid announcements with a message or offer from an dealer; the presentation or promotion by an automotive dealership of its products to its existing and potential customers.

Automotive Marketing: The planning, implementation and control of a mix of business activities intended to bring together buyers and sellers for the mutually advantageous exchange or transfer of products.

Looking at the above definitions, with some slight modifications to fit the dealership market, you can quickly see where you fit. Some dealers are straight advertisers, but think they are marketers. Other’s take a more systematic approach that involve a semblance of some marketing plan and variety of activities. (Planning a weekend sale does not really fall into this category, although you want it to)

It is easy to see the confusion to the point that automotive dealers think of them as one-in-the same, so let’s drill it down.

Automotive Advertising is just one single part of the marketing process. It involves spreading the word about your special car sale, weekend event, clearance, or the services you are offering such as oil changes, extended warranties, and the like. This often includes strategies such as ad placement, medium, frequency, automotive budget, etc. Automotive Advertising also includes the ad placement whether through traditional means or through Automotive Internet advertsing methods.

Automotive marketing is a large painting, and within that painting you have a variety of images which may include advertising, research, planning, ePR, sales, pricing, distribution, support, strategy, service, development or production, website hosting, community involvement and much more.

Advertising is just one section of the overall painting. The entire picture should take the form of something that works as both individual images and towards the bigger goal of a work of art.

Dealership Marketing is often mistakenly identified as advertising, and often confused when you throw in additional terms like search engine marketing (sem) and search engine optimization (seo). Both are really forms of advertising since they are not necessarily part of an overlying strategy.

The best automotive strategies contain solid dealership marketing plans that address the needs of the entire dealership. If you only look at it as “advertising” then you are truly, missing the picture.

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Automotive video marketing - 54,000 FREE ad views

Posted on 24. Nov, 2008 by admin.

We recently took a video for our client, which was a simple Toyota Factory spot (Saved by Zero Event) and it went VIRAL. Big time. Yes, that is 54,000 (thousand) views of this video in less than two months.

There was no trick, no gimmick, nothing that required an advanced degree of any sort. This is the modern day guerilla marketing.
Here are the results: 54,000 views of this video, and links from Esquire, Maxim, Edmunds, Ford, and other sites both nationally and Internationally.

This automotive video marketing idea helped also proper the dealership to #1 status nationwide for Toyota’s factory campaign, catapulting past Toyota and every dealer in the world. In fact, I would go so far as saying that we have marketed Toyota’s campaign on Google perhaps better than Toyota themselves.

Do a Google search for nearly any variation of the following:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=toyota+saved+by+zero+event&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=

The dealership website, Toyota of Allentown, Pennsylvania’s best Toyota dealer is here

If you want more information on how to optimize your automotive marketing, or just want to learn how video advertising can help your dealership, email or contact us today.

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Automotive Internet Marketing is the new snake oil

Posted on 11. Nov, 2008 by admin.

There are many legitimate Automotive marketing experts in the marketplace, and there are just as many snake oil salesmen. Here is one way to differentiate between those who offer real services and those who are looking to make a buck.

There are many categories of snake oil salesmen in this marketplace, including the following:

The followers:

“Traditional automotive ad agency” turned into “Internet advertising agency“. This is the result of sleeping dinosaurs who became so fat with their commissions that they lost sight of the goal. Suddenly they wake up, slap “automotive internet department” or “automotive e-marketing” on their website, patch together a few vendors, and think they can take a $50k ad budget and put it into adwords. Some are so late to the game it is embarrassing and couldn’t even name 5 search engines without the help of their outsourced department. Typically, these companies turn into vendor whores and sell whatever ends up on their desk to try to get back the “good old days” where dealers lined their pockets with print budget. They know automotive, but do not know Internet.

The wanna-be’s:

They are late to the game, have a few tricks in their bag, and have achieved some level of short or long term success. They are riding off of buzzwords and will sell whatever you want to buy or whatever seems to have a good “pitch” at the time. They may also be a version of the “converted advertising agency” concept outlined above or they were involved in another market and are just getting into automotive in the past few years (or months). They may have some marketing experience but they do not know automotive. Many of these companies will be jumping from one hot topic to the next. You may “feel” like you are cutting edge but results can, and should, be measured carefully. You may find yourself saying things such as “I am an automotive social network enabled dealership” or,

The snake oil salesmen:

These are self proclaimed “automotive seo experts” and the type who manage to get dealers hooked on the allure of national traffic  that cannot convert or getting them super-long tail phrases that get no traffic such as “2006 Infiniti with low miles and A/C in Bumbletown”. Some dealers are just addicted to #1 positions, despite the reality that they may not be good words. These are the true criminals in automotive advertising industry that gives legitimate marketers a bad name.  Never mind the leads their service brings, and phone calls that can come of it. A good snake oil salesman will sell the dealer on the sizzle, promising that the steak will come. Six months later, they dealer may (or may not) come off of their high but by then they are many thousands of dollars invested.

A good tracking system including CRM, and call tracking, will help stop the snakes from getting more of your budget.

One recent example is an automotive waste management study we performed on a dealer in the Northeast. He had purchased some microsites, SEO, and some electronic press releases (automotive ePR) among other related services from this provider. Months and months of time and money were invested, and the dealer stated over and over that the investment was one of the best they had made.

However, Rome was burning while Nero was fiddling.

The dealer was not tracking the phone calls, nor were they tracking the actual sales from this “automotive search expert”. Sure leads were coming in, but in the past 3 months, they sold a single car. In one week, they received one phone call off of this investment. Now that we have the data, we can help the dealer to see better, but a good snake oil salesman will always say that results are - just around the corner.

Creating legitimate content, focused on driving legitimate traffic on the proper keywords, to the right dealer at the right time is the right move. However, there is too much smoke and mirror activity in search engine optimization that the room can quickly turn into a funhouse with sleight of hand and shell games taking precedence over real logic.

In all, it is not easy for a dealer, and there are many choices, but choose a company that offers full disclosure. Above all, answer every statement that make with “well, how many sales became of that, and who can I call to verify”. Quickly, they will load up their huge luggage full of tricks and send their telemarketing company off to set more appointments to find the next sucker.

-Michael Sweigart

www.automotiveseoblog.com

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How far is too far when it comes to automotive factory/dealer relations?

Posted on 29. Oct, 2008 by admin.

Some manufacturers require the use of specific DMS systems.
Others require websites that meet specific design and compliancy standards.
Obviously, all have logo requirements, signage requirements, and less often now that a decade ago there was more flexibility with some bending of the rules on a few of these issues. The goal is to protect their brand, and ensure that standards are in place and there is some consistancy in the way their product is marketed, sold, and serviced.
However, a recent trend has me a bit worried.

Many manufacturer’s are becoming technology and marketing “experts”. Recently I sat through a presentation by a well known and well respected representative of Google. I’ve met him personally at Search Engine Summit conferences, and have high regards for his work and understand the responsibilities to both represent the Google brand and expand it’s base of clientele. Let’s face it, the manufacturer’s spend a ton of money on advertising and promotion. More and more of that has been spent on the web in recent times and of course much of that came from major factories, not dealers.  Slanted opinion? Some may say, some may say not.
Up until now, the manufacturers have never been able to get into the “advertising” business, although through the use of some template designs, some have done similar things. But the manufacturer never got a “cut of the action” or a commission to so speak.
What has changed? Large manufacturers have developed “relationships” with technology vendors, search marketing providers, and other consultants who are looking out for the dealer’s and manufacturers best interest by ensuring compliancy. How is this compliancy ensured? By monopolizing the dealer’s choices by taking away some important assets, namely co-op funds, and linked pages from the manufacturers website. Or, golden leads, as some dealers will tell you.

Some manufacturers have gone so far as to offer “free” websites, which in turn are stripped down crippled websites that are nearly unmanageable. No choice- take the site, or get no leads. Very little SEO benefits, very little ability to post good deals or market the right cars, and often no ability to list non-manufacturer used cars or even non-certified brand cars (another forced deal might I say). These free sites are then accompanied by “upgrades” which end up costing as much as the original site they had. The dealer takes the bait, swallows the hook, and get’s reeled in. Say goodbye to ten years of search engine links because the new manufacturer site has removed all those links. Traffic drops from the thousands to the hundreds, calls drop from the hundreds to the dozens. I’ve seen it, I have the reports, from more than one dealer. The data is out there if you know where to look.

To go further, the manufacturers are getting into the search marketing business. Buy Google adwords from us they say, we will manage it, and you do not even have to look at it. Just pay the bill, we will get you some leads. So, the manufacturer is now a web developer, search marketer, and lead provider, and they are charging the dealer for the leads by both selling them the website and charging the dealer to market that website. Isn’t that the manufacturers job? This is bordering on Tier 1 advertising which is not the dealer’s responsibility. Any responsible manufacturer should be doing this anyway, to benefit their dealer base. Dump *your own* money into marketing not the dealers.

Some dealers will argue that the manufacturer is their best friend, and is looking out for the dealer’s best interest. Others may say they seek every opportunity to push them out of business by reaching into their pockets at every opportunity. The truth is somewhere in the middle but I happen to be leaning towards the side of the dealer, because they are getting the short end of the stick here.

Spend your money where you see fit, which returns the most on your investment. Do not bow down to pressure to let go of ANY source of quality leads that cost less than two American dollars per lead. Leads that result in 15-20% closing ratios. Leads that result in hundreds of calls per month, in favor of a crappy template that looks like every other template which returns just a fraction of the leads your previous site did. Seriously, if I walked in your dealership tomorrow and said I had a few hundred high quality, two dollar leads, which will close higher than any lead source, would you say no? TONS of dealers have already said no, and may not even know it because they do not track their business or leads properly.

Sure, you may have to battle a 500 lb Gorilla to get somewhere, but it is better than watching the manufacturer take money for each car for advertising, money for each car for your local ad group, money for your website, and money to promote that website online. Hey at least you can still buy paper from the local Staples and aren’t required to use “manufacturer endorsed” paper.

As a final note, how much money exchanges hands between these major vendors and the manufacturers. I have no idea, but private companies do not need to reveal their P&L although public companies do.

So what do you think? Is this an ongoing trend we will see more of in the future? Or will we need a bunch of dealer’s to stand up and not take it anymore.  Or are we too numb right now to take on such a task? Have dealer’s done so poorly in the past that they need this level of assistance?

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Automotive Waste Management is the new Automotive Marketing

Posted on 21. Oct, 2008 by admin.

With the slow Economy, sluggish car sales, gas prices going up and down, what is a dealer to do?

Do you need a hatchet or a scalpel to fix things? Will the market come around and if so, when?

Tough questions, tough times.

These times are when a dealer and their automotive marketing partner needs to get into the Waste Management business. No, not the Sopranos “dump the body” waste management, but identifying the waste in your advertising and making hard decisions.

We have recently begin re-coining ourselves as Automotive Waste Management specialists, and it is a big part of what we do (and we looove doing it)

It’s simple really-

We look at your budget for all of your advertising (nothing held back) including phone calls, emails, CRM, walk-in traffic logs.

We identify the cost per action (call, email, walk in, etc)

We turn everything into a formula that shows us the true cost of your automotive marketing budget.

Then, we back up the dumpster and dump in the all of the advertising that is costing you way too much money. It may feel at times like you are getting rid of some “old friends” and in many cases that is what happens. If the old friends are costing you $300 per call from that newspaper ad, or your radio spot on that expensive station is creating a cost per sale of $3000, then it’s time to say goodbye to old friends.

You have to know what advertising is creating true and measurable action. You have no more choice to wait around watching your sales reps play solitaire because that direct mail piece will “hit any time now” even though you know it hit a few days ago.

Hold your agency, your media, even your message accountable for every single dollar and believe me you will see drastic reduction in budget and fast shifts to areas that are successful. Put a tracking number on everything and track all calls, emails, walkins. Be vigilant about it and accept no excuses from any staff member or agency (internet or traditional). Toll free numbers are cheap (purecalling.com offers single numbers or packages as low as $10) and tracking can begin nearly immediately.

If you do not start really analyzing your results, you can just fuggetabout it and continue to throw your automotive marketing budget right in the dumpster. Which would you rather have? All of your money in random unnacountable advertising, or your money in trackable results-driven marketing?

Two recent examples came from “domestic” dealers in the Northeast.

One of them spent nearly $1000 per phone call on a direct mail piece (no walkins were verified)

Another spent $800 per contact from their postyourvehiclesforsaleonourwebsite.com advertising.

One received a large amount of calls from a print campaign which was a “special buy” and it worked out to be around $30 per call. This we deemed as a “keeper” and recommended that the dealer try this again when the opportunity arose. However, at “regular price” this would ad would have worked out to be over $120 per call.

Another dealer was getting tremendous ROI with their email blasts, selling cars every month with no cost other than the time to create the offer.

The biggest kicker of them all, was the dealers websites, which were producing phone calls under $2.00 per call (yes, two American dollars) Weight the options then- free sales from email blasts and two dollar website leads, or one thousand dollar direct mail leads, two dollars leads, one thousand dollar leads…hmm not much of a choice there. Ooh I hear the truck backing up with the dumpster- what goes in first?

Of course closing ratios account for something and cheap leads are not always good, right? Again, track it all to a sale. A good CRM will allow you to know the exact cost per sale on all of your advertising.

We can do it wrong all day long, doing it right takes a little bit more work, but it is well worth it. Put on you Automotive Waste Management gloves and let’s get started. If anyone would like a free analysis of their call reports, leads, and analytics, just let us know and we can give you a report on your wasted budget.

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Automotive Marketing- what are the basic metrics?

Posted on 14. Oct, 2008 by admin.

Automotive Marketing- what are the basic metrics to track?

Although this may be a “no brainer” for many dealers, we are time and time again reviewing the metrics and performance of automotive advertising. There are a few key elements when you want to understand how your advertising or automotive marketing is performing. The information you want to discover is “what is my cost per action” on each source of advertising or promotion, both online and through traditional means.

Before anyone can make judgment on the effectiveness of a message or campaign, or even make decisions about a specific media (is newspaper dead yet?) we need to see if you have the basic tracking in place. So, to keep it simple, here is a simple list of what you need to track in order to gauge whether or not your automotive marketing investment is working.

-Does it generate phone calls? How many? (track each source separately)

-Does it generate email leads? How many? (track each source separately)

-Does it generate floor traffic? How many? (track each source separately)

-Does it generate web traffic (How much, what is the quality, does it convert into a lead well?) Again, track each web property separately including your lead providers, websites, factory sites, microsites, dealer websites, etc. If it has a place for a phone number or form, TRACK IT.

The BIG and eventual question is, does it generate SALES? We cannot tackle that question until there is proper accountability in place to track all of the above. Let’s face it, this is a tough market and you need to get a handle on where every dollar is being spent. Therefore, to check your automotive ROI you need the proper tracking in place to:

Capture the Information (CRM, lead management, site analytics, call tracking logs, etc)

Report on the data (spit out reports on each source for the same time period)

Act on the data (Now that we know our $10,000 automotive ad budget in the Super Weekly press got us only 14 calls and zero walk in traffic, what do you do about it?)

In many recent meetings, face to face with dealers, who are facing one of the worst retail crunches in recent history, we have been asking these questions. Read our post on tracking in more detail here

We would be more than happy to share, free of charge, where you can get these tools or what information to track. For full disclosure, we offer many of these services but there are equally comparable services that you may already have in place that already do the same things.

As a good client of ours just recently said on Geraldo last week, when the wind isn’t blowing the sails, we get out the oars. Let’s figure out where the best wind is coming from, and where you can get the best oars for when the favorable winds do not blow your way.

To get more on Dominating the search engines, also see our article on search marketing domination

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Firing On All Cylinders With Your Automotive marketing

Posted on 09. Oct, 2008 by admin.

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