PUREDEALER | Automotive Internet Marketing | SEO | PPC | Custom Dealer Websites

Think Small for your Automotive Marketing Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Posted on 31. Dec, 2008 by admin.

The big automotive marketing companies think big, act big, make big deals with the manufacturers. Major marketing contracts are negotiated on the manufacturers (dealership’s?) behalf and the best automotive website and marketing solutions are chosen based on some factors that occur behind closed doors without dealership involvement, intervention, or say in the matter.

However, when the big marketing company represents YOU and also ALL of your local competitors, who benefits the most? How does the Internet, Google, the manufacturer, and this big automotive internet marketing company decide who will rank #1 on Google for “Honda New Jersey” or “Houston Honda Dealer”? You paid your money just like the other 10 guys in your market, but why is the other guy beating you in the search results when you have made the same investment, paid the same bill, to the same manufacturer or vendor?

Who will get the #1 spot? Will it be the big Chevy dealer or the little Chevy dealer who wins in Google? Is money a factor, luck, favoritism? Is it first in first on top?

Well, some of these questions can be put aside because here are some good points to ask the “big web developers” or “largest automotive marketing firms” in the US when they ask for your business…

A few questions to ask the Large automotive marketing companies

1) How do you get me ranked higher than my competitor, when we both use the same exact site and SEO?

2) Am I allowed to choose the phrases I want to win in the search engines and if so what exactly will you do to ensure that I get there, and how much will it cost?

3) What comes for free and what is extra, regarding search engine optimization and SEO-based keywords?

4) What can I do, and what tools are at my disposal to self-manage my destiny on the Internet or has my fate already been decided when you signed the deal with automotive-marketing-company.com?

These are some tough questions that will make the big guys squirm because they really, truly have no alternative but to dodge the question or provide you with some lip service. “You’ve always been my favorite, you’re the best, we will get you #1 for what you need”, etc etc”. Just sign here on the dotted line… They are hoping you do not check, forget about it, or in a few months will let you know they are working on it, hoping to buy more time. Chances are good that your personal account rep will have left within 6 months anyway so all feelings of the sweet whisperings will slowly turn into a feeling of rage.

The Benefits of a smaller automotive marketing company are large:

1) We serve you, the client and do not have major conflicts of interest like the 500 pound gorillas do.

2) We can hand-craft a marketing plan that matches your exact needs to sell the cars you want to sell.

3) We move fast, have no red tape to cut through, and are on the forefront of the most current marketing techniques because we use them for ourselves. We talk the talk and walk the walk.

4) We do not have to cater to the manufacturers and limit your website, microsites, pay per click marketing, or automotive Search engine optimization to specific demands (unless co-op is involved of course)

Picture yourself for a moment inside a supermarket, in front of the ice cream freezer. There are 40 choices but the flavor is only vanilla. Who determines which vanilla ice cream container is placed in front? When you choose a major automotive web site marketer who also handles 39 other dealers in your DMA, what is the likelihood that you will be the ice cream in the front of the freezer?

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Top 5 pay per click marketing optimization techniques

Posted on 29. Dec, 2008 by admin.

We have posted some incredible pay per click (PPC) numbers for our clients. Before we give 5 good tips on how to maximize your automotive internet marketing, there are a few things you need to have prepared in order to measure the results. You need good analytics and a lot of time. That’s really it. If you work hard, you can get some results that look like this:

If you spend some time look at your bounce rate, exit pages, new visitor ratio, and keyword list, you can quickly match that up to your keyword and PPC budget to help your dealership spend less per click and get more for your money. The top 5 list below already assumes you have run a campaign and have some background knowledge on search marketing. It also takes into account that you have a Google adwords or similar campaign that has run for a month or so.

How to get more from your automotive pay per click budget:

1. Review your keywords in your Analytics and remove those with very high bounce rates. If you are getting click after click on some top automotive phrases and still get a high bounce rate, then remove that keyword to give other keywords a chance to run. Some people will argue that a high bounce rate is indiciative that the dealership’s phone is ringing. This is possible so make sure to track every sales call to see if you can find trends. There are more advanced methods to track to phone conversion but we will save that for another article.
2. Remove the keywords that are not converting. Do you have a decent bounce rate but they are not visiting any pages or filling out any forms? Remove it. There are usually some great hidden automotive keywords in your Adwords PPC account that have not had the chance to run that may convert better. Sometimes long keyphrases are good, sometimes they are not. There is no hard and fast rule that can be applied to all automotive advertsing online.
3. Change your ads constantly. Testing testing testing is what marketing is all about. If you are not testing your ads or automotive copy then you are not maximizing your results. Just a few simple changes to your car copy or price of a vehicle in the small text ad can cause your automotive click through rate or CTR to skyrocket. We have a small handbook that we just may release to the automotive public on how to get the best click rates. Remember the phrase price sells cars? Well that often works with “price makes clicks” as well. A word of caution: Deceptive ads can cause high bounce rates, plus the fact that it’s just shady.
4. Group your keywords into proper campaigns and make everything match. If you are marketing Hondas and trying to get clicks on Civics, Accords, and used Honda’s, then setup a campaign for each. You can subdivide further, but this will enable you to match the keywords to the ad copy to the destination web address which Google just loves when you are trying to sell more cars online. Google wants more clicks and will reward you will a high quality score, which leads to item 5.
5. Fix your Adwords quality score. What is Quality Score you ask? In a nutshell, Google reads your keywords, campaigns, url, and destination page along with several other things including your relevancy and CTR, and gives your keyword a “Poor, OK, or GREAT” score. The Greater the score, the less you pay per click and the more relevant the results to the customer. You want the car buyer that is seeking a used Honda Civic to see your used Civic ad, and be brought to a used Civic webpage filled with relevant offers. Google likes when you do that, make Google happy and pay less.

How is this for conversion rates? This does NOT even take into account the phone calls this dealer received from the online marketing or pay per click campaign we performed for them.

There are many other tactics and techniques but let’s talk results. I challenge any automotive marketing expert or PPC specialist or so called automotive internet marketing company to beat these numbers:

Conversion Rates: Over 30% conversion rates on some keywords (you want more of these and less of the rest)

Bounce Rates: We have some clients receiving bounce rates in the single digits. What this means is that the shoppers are clicking around your website, microsite, or your ad. You want a low bounce rate. See graphic below for a real dealer from the past 30 days.

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