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.

*****************
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!

Chicago Sun Times files for Chapter 11

The company that owns the Chicago Sun-Times and 58 other newspapers and online sites said Tuesday it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

At least 120 newspapers in the United States have shut down since January 2008, according to Paper Cuts, a Web site tracking the newspaper industry. More than 21,000 jobs at 67 newspapers have vaporized in that time, according to the site.

Newspapers have struggled to meet challenges posed by changing reader habits, a shifting advertising market, an anemic economy, and the newspaper industry’s own early strategic errors.

Where oh where will we advertise?

I've said it before and I'll say it again, rethink where your ad dollars are going.

RETHINK EVERYTHING Read more!

Used Car Pictures

I cannot begin to tell you how important it is to have good QUALITY pictures of your used inventory on your website.

They say 75 percent of used car online shoppers base their dealer selection based on photos of the actual car. Go figure.

To put it into perspective, think of it this was - let's say you are on match.com. Chances are you are going to skip right over the people with no picture. Right?

Why would this be any different?

There's no such thing as too many pictures. So take em and add em...

And make sure they are of good quality. Build value...

RETHINK EVERYTHING

*****************
Published via Blackberry Read more!

Official Google Blog: Two new improvements to Google results pages

Official Google Blog: Two new improvements to Google results pages

The longer "snippets" is important. It is quite possible to have FEWER results above the fold now. This puts your organic placement in a more important light. With less real estate, it is even more important to have your SEO operating effectively so you, at the very minimium, come in above the fold.

Its now more important than ever to be ranked #1 in organic placement. Read more!

Social Networking Analogy

Just stumbled on this article via Twitter.
Good read.

Let me know your thoughts.

http://www.scottmonty.com/2009/03/social-network-shorthand.html

*****************
Published via Blackberry Read more!

Yet ANOTHER newspaper says goodbye

You have to read this CNN article. Another one bites the dust..

LINK

RETHINK EVERYTHING Read more!