Baby Laughing Life Insurance

Life Insurance

Very Funny video i found online... and actually pretty powerful.

All in all, a good classic example of viral seoAnd here is the rest of it. Read more!

Convert Convert Convert

I've said it before and I'll say it again...

I don't care how pretty you think your website is. I don't care how many cool features it has.

What I do care about is how your site performs.

Wayne Gretzky wasn't the best looking hockey player that every lived. But he was the best hockey player that ever lived.

Because he produced. He got the results. End of story.

How does your website convert? 2%? 5%?

If you are converting under 15% visits to leads then one of following may be a concern:

1. Your site sucks. Just being honest. The site is not actively helping to convert. So change it.

2. You are not tracking the data correctly. Are you counting unique phone numbers found only on your site? Your website will produce more phone calls than form submits (and more service related inquires than sales). Are these not leads??? who handles these?

Once you know a true conversion rate, you can do the math down the line to get sales from traffic. You can really dig in and analyze it deeper and you will know just how many follow-up calls you need to make an hour to sell your objective for the month.

You do know your TRUE close rate right?

Give me a shout if you want to dig deeper... and finally have an accurate measure of the ROI of that department... Read more!

Cash for Clunkers

I wanted to pass along some information on the Cash for Clunkers program.

As you may have heard, this is a government-funded program with the primary goal of removing vehicles with low fuel-efficiency from the road. If a customer’s vehicle is eligible, they can receive either $3,500 or $4,500 for their trade-in (depending on several factors) and apply it to the purchase of a new and more fuel-efficient vehicle. (Please note that this program applies only toward the purchase of new vehicles).

Here are some general facts about the program (taken from cars.gov):

· The trade-in vehicle must be less than 25 years old on the trade-in date
· Only purchase or lease of new vehicles qualify (lease term must be over five years)
· Generally, trade-in vehicles must get 18 or less MPG (some very large pick-up trucks and cargo vans have different requirements)
· Trade-in vehicles must be registered and insured continuously for the full year preceding the trade-in
· Customers don't need a voucher, dealers will apply a credit at purchase
· Program runs through Nov 1, 2009 or when the funds are exhausted, whichever comes first.
· The vehicle that the customer is trading in is required to be destroyed. Therefore, the value the customer negotiates with the dealer for the trade in is not likely to exceed its scrap value. The law requires the dealer to disclose to the customer and estimate of the scrap value of the customer’s trade-in vehicle.

Dealers will need to register with the government before being able to participate in the program. Though registration is not yet open, they will soon be able to register through the cars.gov site. However, dealers are now able to begin collecting customer information for interested candidates.

Again, for much more information, please go to http://cars.gov. Read more!

Googles Competition - Search 2.0

Im not talking about Yahoo or even MSN. (They still exist ya know...)

What I am talking about are the new batch of search engines cropping up which might just offer something better. Thats right. Something BETTER than the all mighty Google...

From the attached CNN article:

"Some sites, like Twine and hakia, will try to personalize searches, separating out results you would find interesting, based on your Web use. Others, like Searchme, offer iTunes-like interfaces that let users shuffle through photos and images instead of the standard list of hyperlinks. Kosmix bundles information by type -- from Twitter, from Facebook, from blogs, from the government -- to make it easier to consume.

And Lets not forget Twitter itself... who is trying to capitalize on the warp-speed pace of online news today by offering real-time searches of online chatter -- something Google's computers have yet to replicate.

Facebook and FriendFeed also are experimenting with real-time searches, according to news reports. But each of these searches operates only within its own social network. Scoopler is another real-time site that's trying to aggregate info from all of these sites.

And all of these are seeing more competition, as two new sites -- TweetMeme and OneRiot -- launched new or updated real-time searches recently."

If you care, or have ever used a search engine... check out this CNN article... New search engines aspire to supplement Google

Just when you start to figure it out........ Read more!

Twitter for Dealerships

Ahh Twitter…

Getting past all the excitement I really think the best use of Twitter is real time interaction with existing customers.

Sure you can “market” with relevant tweets about your industry but “selling” will probably do more harm than good.

Think of Twitter as a real time search engine. Find out what people are saying about:

1. Your Store and their experience. Reach out to those people and thank them or assist them with their concerns. Not only does the customer appreciate the attempt but others may see your proactive approach to issues.

2. Your brand. Point people to correct information, relevant topics, news and the like about your brand. Never assume people just know the 3g Prius is available. Never assume people know the benefits of one product over another. If you can point people to an unbiased review or the like, that goes a long way.

As a rule, Twitter and the like are but one small piece of the puzzle. Dealers must grasp the concept and seize the opportunity to capitlize on all social networking platforms.

In reality, dealers have missed a HUGE part of the puzzle to make this work for them. The foundation. The process of handling this customer and prospect should be prioirty one. Until that is in place and running on all cylinders, then using Twitter and the like will do more harm than good. Read more!

Industry Experts

In an effort to better address your needs, we have an exciting announcement.

We are currently working with several well known SEO / Alternative Marketing experts with the intent of having them contribute to our Blog as "featured bloggers".

Check back often as we are positive these industry experts will offer some tremendous insight into what can be a confusing topic.

If there is anything specific you would like to know about please let us know.

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Published via Blackberry Read more!

In Dealership Marketing Manager?

Is Twitter really where I should be?

Does Facebook have value for your business?

Do I need a Blog?

The answer is YES. That's the easy part.

The hard part is figuring out how to manage all of these social media outlets.

Most dealerships I have been too have computers for salespeople. And that's great - you've come a long way. The problem is, dealers have these computers so locked down that internet access is usually only allowed to access the dealerships website.

Sales people are one the most underutilized resources in a dealership for social media / alternative marketing. Imagine if 50% of your sales floor had twitter and facebook accounts and used these avenues to work for them to help sell more product?

There has not been a single dealer who has given me a valid reason why they block these sites. Most dealers tell me "I don't want them sitting around all day surfing the internet". Um.... HELLO ?!?!? This leaves me speechless....

88% of the people that walk through your front door started their shopping online. You need to leverage this.

With all these sites and marketing possibilities, you might want to start thinking about a new position at the dealership. Alternative Marketing Manager or the like.

A person responsible for not only your SEO / VSEO (and all the things that come with that... way too many to list here - call me) but social networking and managing your online identity.

It appears dealers have no problem spending BIG BUCKS to buy ineffective third party leads (when they don't have the capacity to even handle them properly) yet that money may be better spent on a full time dedicated marketing manager.

Whens he last time you searched twitter for anything related to your dealership or your product in your area? Twitter is full of people reaching out. Its a tremendous opportunity to not only speak to the masses but to speak to a single person while the masses watch.

And that's HUGE.

RETHINK EVERYTHING Read more!

Fewer Leads More Sales

Its common knowledge that leads from your website are the most valuable. The highest closing, the highest grossing. It makes sense, the consumer has, in effect, chosen your dealership as a potential source for their needs whereas third party leads the consumer is more apt to be shopping product.

Knowing this, it makes good business sense to direct traffic to your website vs. just outright buying third party leads.

Or does it?

Traditionally a dealerships thought process has been "give me more traffic and Ill sell more". Good math. Bad logic.

If your dealerships Internet department doesn't have the proper process and headcount for the stores structure, while you may "sell more" you ROI will actually decrease. In many cases more leads will lead to LESS SALES and you can almost guarantee lower gross.

Before you even think about driving more (additional) traffic to your site (or buying more third party leads if you must) you must have the process and people in place to handle what you currently have not to mention the increase in lead volume.

Can your department effectively follow-up for 90 days with the leads you currently have? Do you have dedicated "lost Opportunity Consultants" to work nothing but the 30+ day no contacts? Since 60% of buyers who initially submit a lead end up purchasing after 30 days, and your follow-up is 2 weeks max, you are simply tossing away 60% of your business.

And by "follow-up" I am not talking about your CRM/LMT sending an email every couple of weeks. Do your "Lost Opportunity Consultants" make 100+ phone calls a day?

Before you even think about pushing more traffic to your site, give a serious consideration to managing what you currently have inbound. Manage the ROI for your current individual lead sources and make adjustments to those. Maybe consider reallocating funds your currently spend on ineffective ROI producing third party leads towards headcount or training.

In MANY cases, dealers would sell and MAKE more if they actually REDUCED their inbound lead volume but increased their follow-up.

Once you have effective managing, measurement and process in place, only then will you see the yields of increased lead volume.

RETHINK EVERYTHING Read more!

Long (Tail) and Short Of It All

Long Tail. What is it?

Essentially, the long tail is the hundreds to thousands of keywords and key phrases that a site is found for, yet rarely noticed or exploited.

The principle of the Long Tail is the opposite of focusing on the top 10-20 keywords for marketing their sites. The "top keyword" concept is reinforced by agencies that contract to gain rankings for 10-20 terms, maybe 30. However, when studying the referrals from the search engines and the traffic they generate, those that focus on the top 10-20 terms may be missing the majority of their market.

People tend to focus on the thousands of visitors that come to the site for the most popular terms. Most site managers are very happy to see the numbers increase for those specific terms, and even happier to see those terms consistently ranking well. Conventional thinking applies the 80-20 rule that the top terms provide 80% of the business, but in evaluating multiple sites, this has proved to be the opposite.

In most cases, the top 10 terms provide a lot of traffic, but not nearly as much as the total terms after the top 10 or 20 most popular. Add up the terms that refer 1-3 visits during the month, and chances are, they will add up to more total visitors than the top terms. On closer examination, most sites will have the majority of their business (sales and leads) generated from these terms that are rarely tracked. This is the heart of the long tail -- the length, or total number of low-number referred terms outnumbers the height, or the total of top 10 terms.

Now you know.... Read more!

Honda Insight Vs Toyota Prius NJ Dealer VSEO

Want to see the value of good vseo timing?

Click on this google search result link Open Road Honda Insight

As of the time of the writing of this post, the #1 ranked result was for a Toyota dealer video explaining why someone who is obviously searching for a Honda Insight at a specific Honda dealership might want to give the Toyota Prius consideration.

Also understand this dealer is ranking in top spots in multiple queries as well as multiple top 5 placement in many many more.

With the Insight launch you can bet there is going to be an increase in web search for the product. What better way to capitalize on this "chatter" than with FREE organic placement in search engines to make sure the searching party knows all the options available to them in this market.

Having the first spot ranking is huge. Having it for FREE is even better. Being first, having it for free and seeing results in LESS THAN 24 HOURS is just plain SICK!!!!!

Its all about driving traffic to your website where you can back into the numbers....

This is just an example. Think outside the box. Make it and own it. Maybe go after some long tail searches (Toyota navigation, yellow mr2 spyder, online service appointment setting etc)

Now, I can't come and shoot the video for you but I can come and help you get the results shown here.

Oh, and I wont charge you for this.

RETHINK EVERYTHING Read more!