Upgrade to High Resolution Images
Are you still playing with CDK’s 640×480 images?
No pixelation, we can actually take native resolution images and offer your customers your inventory as it was meant to be seen.
We started in the 90’s with 1 image because that is what Autotrader Magazines took. The size was 640×480 because it was the default size in most digital cameras at the time. A few (Olympus!) tried different sizes and when dSLR arrived even a new aspect ratio but as soon as the image server databases adapted that 640×480 the industry was set on that.
There was another reason for this, remember those 13” monitors? 🤣 Graphic cards and other hardware were also at fault.
Fast forward to 2019 with dealers paying professional photographers to do 20-30 image shots in some cases (Lexus, Porsche, MB, BMW, etc.) for $100k cars, and some companies continue to use a 20+ year old display resolution. There is a little bit of an economic reason here; larger images mean higher storage and bandwidth cost. But they also mean new and better resizing technology, especially in responsive environments. Trust me: it’s all here.
It’s time to upgrade to high resolution images.
#dep Dealer eProcess Dealer e-Process West #notinyimages #cdk1990technology #thisaswasnotapprovedbyjoe
DEP-i IMS Connects to vAuto via API
DEP-i IMS connects to vAuto via API for near real time inventory updates.
Many thanks to Will McGinnis and Steven Warren for making this happen.
Velocity!
Speed Battle
The speed battle is not in the chassis but in the content itself, however the content defines the business. Balance.
Monday:
Could you put this tracking code, these 4 banners, and this video explaining that we are family owned and operated in my home page?
Tuesday:
I need you to check your code, the site is running really slow. I used this tool from Google and you can compress the code, delete some times, and add some H1 tags.
😳
Below is the difference in server taxation, and we have the Michael Jordan of servers (they are actually not “servers” as you think of them, but you get the idea), by adding or taking out the Moz tracking code.
Yago de Artaza Páramo
[email protected]
Necessity of Social Media Targeted Ads
If you have been in automotive for a while you may remember Marlboro Nissan (56k Facebook likes) as one of the first dealers that put “using Facebook for business” on the map.
Besides a few superstars like these guys (they also happen to be our client) the rest of the automotive world has struggled to fetch more than a few thousand likes.
It seems that now that we know how to use social media (SM), we don’t “like” that many pages. This extends especially to businesses, and thus the organic traffic generated from SM is not seeing much growth, for example, “social media platforms produced just 3.3% of all site visits in Q4 2017.”
However, I insist you use SM as if it was a Google product: spend some money with the right ad and the right target, forget about organic, and create some leads. For 2018, organic is still SEO (namely content), but SM must rely on targeted ads. Highlighting the necessity of social media targeted ads:
“Organic Search vs. Social Media
The share of site visits produced by organic search was 24% in Q4 2017, down 2% from the previous year but still still way ahead of site visits produced by social media. Social media platforms produced just 3.3% of all site visits in Q4 2017.” (Source).
Yago de Artaza Páramo
[email protected]
Introducing Photo Hot Spots
Introducing our latest website feature, Photo Hot Spots! Photo Hot Spots allow your customers detailed information about any vehicle by simply clicking around the image.
By pulling information directly from the VIN, the customer is guaranteed vehicle specific information. Plus, the customer no longer needs to scroll aimlessly through the VDP looking for information, resulting in more high-quality leads.
Read our blog for more information on Photo Hot Spots. You can start to see them, in addition to the new XLvDP.
So much work went into this by Steven Warren, Georald Camposano, and Samuel Vukas.
Yago de Artaza Páramo
[email protected]
Internet Sales 20 Group
Thank you Sean for giving Dealer e-Process West the opportunity to participate at #is20g Internet Sales 20 Group.
#seo #seo #dealereprocess #seanvbradley #dealersynergy
Instagram Hot Spots
Instagram recently added “hot spots” to their sponsored ads (two lower images) that provide interactive information about parts of the product.
This month we added hot spots to our website platform (top image) as a free feature. The website must be on the 3.5 version (which is also a free upgrade ) and use our inventory system DEPi since the hot spots are controlled from there.
In my opinion there is a tremendous advantage and easiness of navigation for the customer when we don’t force to scroll down the page to find options and technical data. Engaging the customer visually while providing additional information is and evolution of the VDP.
It is a must to combine hot spots with larger images, which our websites and VDPs also support. Our new and also free VDPxl supports up to 2MB (5x times larger than current) image files with no forced image degradation to gain speed but a new server side technology that adapts the image to the requested download speed.
I’ll shed some light for those of you already thinking what’s next. We are working on bringing OEM incentives, lease specials etc as a hot spot as well as providing dealers the ability to manage custom ones.
Email me or text me if you have any questions.
Evaluating SEO
The devaluation of content is real from a global point of view: thanks to key word stuffing and article spinners Google (d)evolved? ranking signals into the current model of “unique content” (is a little bit more complicated than that but…).
However if you stop for a second from evaluating SEO purely as a means to bring more traffic and you value it to enhance your product then its value hasn’t diminished at all no matter the volume of repetition on the web because the value is now to my customer on my website.
The website strategy has to evolve from just more traffic to also affect conversion. SEM and SEO have to work together but on independent aspects. View SEO indexing as a byproduct but its informative effect and enhanced customer interaction as the primary result.
If there is a place your content should be the most active is right after your SEM campaigns, in your landing pages.
Yago de Artaza Páramo
[email protected]
This Is How Campaigns Burn Budget without Results
This is how campaigns burn budget without results:
I googled “Dougs Cadillac” and a Ford dealer’s ad shows up?
I’m in Everett right now, 30+ miles (60+ minutes) from this Ford dealer. This was not a geo issue with Google. The campaign parameters and key words are just wrong. The keywords don’t match the PPC result.
Maybe this was a dynamic ad for a used Cadillac that the Ford dealer has? No, it is not. The links in the ad just go to the dealers inventory pages, not even custom landing pages with some sort of campaign purpose.
With also 4 other dealers in between my location and this dealer, even if this was a Ford search unless you have a much more compelling offer this would have failed anyway.
This is why click reports alone don’t matter, clicks are a good metric to understand when and how things happen in the campaigns but they cannot be the end result. Thought out campaigns with a purpose is what matters. What do you want to sell with this campaign, to whom, from how far are we pulling, how good is our offer vs the market, do we have the inventory selection to grab a high percentage of interest, etc.
How are you thinking your campaigns ?
PPC Campaign Problems
PPC campaigns without constantly inspecting inventory levels are a big part of wasted budget.
I searched “land cruiser” from Lake Stevens WA and Google showed “Rodland Toyota” paid ad as my key words and geo matched their campaign.
Upon clicking on their ad I landed in a zero results SRP.
Could be that the dealer recently sold the only Land Cruiser that they had in stock since Toyota dealers usually have very limited inventory of this model.
Still this is a good reason why limited supply models of any brand should land the campaign on a custom landing page with availability information (“this is a limited supply unit, for more information contact our Land Cruiser expert Mike…”) and perhaps even add content about the unit (custom ordering process, custom delivery options, etc).
Spending money on a “0 results” page has to be close to one of the worst options.
On a different note, I don’t recommend building landing pages with a lot of content for volume models but for limited supply ones we have the added benefit of the content SEO and those getting indexed.
A couple years ago we found a Nissan dealer that spent 30% of their PPC budget on “gtr” related keywords. They only had one, a track edition with carbon fiber package worth $117k. While everyone dreamed about this car very few people could afford it. We looked the campaigns as far as a year back and they had zero leads. The money, about $3k/month, spent on “gtr” keywords may have been better used for that unit on eBay motors, the Rob Report, etc.
This comment does not intend to reflect poorly on the dealership showing in the ads, this is just a campaign done by a 3rd party and my goal is to discover small flaws in the systems so dealers can improve their campaigns.
I do believe that a big part of the PPC campaign problems is the focus of dealers on paying a non-percentage flat fee which resulted on campaign automation instead of custom ongoing planning.
Introducing DEPi
We are proud to be introducing DEPi, the NEW Dealer eProcess Inventory Management System with unlimited exports, bulk inventory updates, HD photos, vehicle hot spots, 360-interior, video walk-arounds, hyper-zoom, window sticker module, & unlimited EVERYTHING.
Read the official release: http://www.dealereprocess.com/dealer-eprocess-announces-a-new-inventory-management-system/
AWA Website Pinnacle Award in 2018
So proud to receive the AWA Website Pinnacle Award in 2018.
Every company in the room tonight has an amazing team and product, it is getting harder every year to stay at the top, and it is the work of many that makes this possible.
2018 started great and we have so much new technology and heart left to share this year.
2018 Driving Sales Highest SEM Award
2018 Driving Sales Highest SEM Award. Keep them coming!
So much owed on this one to Geoff Wilkins, Megan Glick, and Samantha Santimaw.
2018 AWA Best Digital Marketing Award CAROI
2018 AWA Best Digital Marketing Award: CAROI
This one is a lot of work but worth it if you have a strong SEM / SEO budget.
SEM Hyper-Locally and Inventory-Dependent
It is me, or, if you already pay CG for:
GoogleSearch–>CGWebsite–>MyInventory
this new service is doubling up for the same results set?
If there is a high relevancy search with a good ROI will I show directly, or will CG? If the answer is CG, then I don’t want this product because a direct customer is better than one that can see multiple inventories; if the answer is me directly, then why pay CG for their classified website?
The answer is that dealers should SEM hyper-locally and inventory-dependent. I’m talking inventory grouping campaigns dependent on units on the ground, not just dynamic campaigns.
So while CG can rightfully do both, I still see a tremendous, almost counter-fiduciary, conflict here. On top of that, one company will know your front lead load and your 3rd party lead load. The company will even know, should you ever cancel, how to exactly outbid you in what terms to maximize their damage.
Truth is that I always thought CG won their place by a fantastic SEO strategy with content rather than SEM. At the time Google started cracking for spinner content CG came with a great strategy. Dealers should ask for their SEO knowledge not SEM.
Sign your business knowledge away, put your name here. CG.
DD24 in Florida
Come see Megan Glick and Gino Cipperoni at DD24 in Florida.
Megan and Gino will be talking about Google’s recently released dealer playbook with new guidelines and program changes as well as sharing some of our most successful SEM campaigns this year.
If you didn’t get to see us at NADA, we will also be at booth 621! Looking forward to seeing a lot of you there.
HD Images on Google and VDP Complaints
HD images on Google, VDP complaints, and how that ends on my view of automotive online buying: Google just added ‘HD photos only’ search to the image search category, yet they continue to use “scare tactics” while claiming ridiculous speeds for load times needed for small businesses. (Please note that I say “small businesses” because Nike, Amazon, eBay, or Google itself haven’t made note of the speed test tools time references and have not made their sites any faster. They all fail this absurdity).
The fastest ways to make your website faster (quote me on that!) are to reduce the number of graphics on the site, to reduce the number of consumer tools per page (code, data recalls, etc), or to reduce the graphics quality by graphics size or pixelation (smaller graphics weight).
All these options have one thing in common: They affect the consumer experience on the site. Google claims that faster speeds increase positive experience (a view not shared by the companies I mentioned above) but no one mentions what is the experience lost by decreasing options and quality. Obviously Carvana.com didn’t agree with that and decided to follow Google’s mobile image search lead and provide a VDP that is product-centric first, with high resolution images on the desktop version. I believe that Google’s speed test should be used to measure redundancies in the pages like:
- Do you need a map on that page?
- Do you need 5 CTAs that link to the exactly same form?
- How much code is recalling external data?
- Etc.
To my [self-serving] point, we launched a project a few months ago (for which I must thank Georald Camposano, Steven Warren, and Sam Vukas) so we can drive dSLR camera high resolution images to the VDP and have built a full screen vehicle view VDP. Our goal was a better customer experience from a product point of view.
Joe Gillespie said in a meeting that “for all we talk about Amazon, be like Amazon, look what Amazon does, we continue to build websites that focus on lead generation yet we don’t send leads to Amazon!”
For years we have built websites that served our goals: to generate a lead. Period. From the position the vehicle pointed to, to the SRP/VDP flow, to the CTAs color, position, names, etc. We decided to build our newest SRP like a VDP used to be; a 640×480 image, scrollable images (a first I believe), dealer comment, a group of data (options), pricing structure, and a set of CTAs. Since you can do VDP stuff in the SRP, here is the biggest change. With how hard it is to bring customers to the VDP, make it the landing place to truly experience the vehicle by:
- Creating a VDP without CTA obstructions (background) that focuses 100% on the product (vehicle), and that uses all available media technology (high definition images, hot spots, video, 360, and panoramas).
- Focusing the VDP to bring the most of the product experience to the consumer via the computer to leave no questions or doubts.
- If the customer has every piece of possible data, they have every view imaginable where they can see all fine details and/or imperfections. Where there is interaction with videos, expanding images, and immersive 360, the only possible following step is to discard this vehicle if it didn’t satisfy our needs or to start the buying process online.
This is why I believe that online vehicle buying will start not with a better form connected to a bank nor with a faster loading, thin page but when the customer has total access to the vehicle and there are no questions left: This is my car. If you want to see more about our new high definition image VDP with hotspots, videos, and 360, as well as our online buying system, come visit at NADA March 23-25 in Las Vegas.
Yago de Artaza Páramo [email protected]
Match Sales Data to Your PPC Campaigns and Align Them
Match sales data to your PPC campaigns and align them. CAROi heatmap targeting is a good advance; you should read it just to know what tools are available so you can use them whether is now or in the future.
CAROi heatmap targeting links the geofencing concept with your GAN account via your DMS data. This tool will allow you to spend your budget better by lowering the budget of lower-performing campaigns over time and increasing the better performing ones (or adding more campaigns with the same budget). Notice that while you don’t have to use DEP as your agency, you have to have CAROi set up (with a DMS access fee).
The website platform must also be connected to your Google Adwords Account.
Email me if you have any questions at [email protected] or come see me at NADA, March 22-25.
Yago de Artaza Páramo [email protected]
Toyota Site Redesigns
Our newest Toyota site redesigns (see: magictoyota.com) are pretty close to the OEM, included with all the geo changes (ads have the state disclaimers, etc).
We put inventory first and research pages second (OEM only has research pages) but made the research pages available via the SRP and the VDP. New to this site is also “thumb enabled” ads, and SRP/VDP images.
It has passed compliance. 😉
Email me if you have questions about the new Toyota sites at [email protected]
Yago de Artaza Paramo
[email protected]
Dealertrack Credit Application Form Updates
In an effort to make the Dealertrack © credit application form better integrated with the website system we will be making a modification to remove special characters from leads before sending to Dealertrack. We are finding a lot of restrictions with their system as far what characters can be received or not.
If you have had any issues about not receiving leads into their Dealertrack tool, we are hoping this will begin to reduce those issues. We will continue to make modifications as needed to increase the consistency of this form integration.
The following characters will be removed from leads before sending (note users can still enter them into the form, we will just be removing before sending to Dealertrack):
! & ‘ , $ ~ ; : # % ^
This update is installed automatically in all forms and there is no need to contact us to update your individual form.
Yago de Artaza Páramo
[email protected]
Review Your PPC Campaigns
“If you don’t review your PPC campaigns individually you are not improving the underperforming models.”
If we run longer and better funded campaigns on the top models, dealer name + geo, OEM + geo, etc you will find every customer around you (customers that know you) that already intend to buy a vehicle from you. The result is great campaign numbers (clicks, phone calls, leads, etc) but NO GROWTH. Campaigns must be based on inventory level, offers available, and model sale numbers goals. If you want to grow ➡️ [email protected]
New Vehicle Mobile Menus
We have added new vehicle mobile menus that now list models the same way as on desktop, making it easier for customers to navigate to the vehicle they are looking for (see screenshots below).
With the initial mega menus release we looked for a design that was compact as well as that it showed all the options in the down menu. User feedback prompted the expanded vehicle line menu reducing the click path and increasing the customer visual identification (customer clicks on Corolla advertisement then sees New Corolla link).
Yago de Artaza Páramo
[email protected]
“Unlock” Price Generates 42% More Leads
“Unlock” price generates 42% more leads:
I’m not a friend of gimmicks, and we have seen similar “forced click” strategies work only on smaller programs like for example two stage credit apps for secondary financing websites. The “unlock” idea came after the EOM imposed requirements of having engaged the customer before disclosing discounted prices beyond factory incentives.
The results are in and the set up is easy, there is no cost, and the results are better. However, you must have your price strategy well set up on your website and your lowest price behind the “unlock” will not be on 3rd party sites (just on your website upon interaction).
Yago de Artaza Páramo
[email protected]
VDP Versus SRP Lead Counts
VDP versus SRP lead counts: Dealer eProcess now measures form leads that came from the SRP (search results page) versus the VDP (vehicle details page).
I think that for the last 10 years (or as long as I can remember) we have focused mainly on VDPs design thinking that is where the customer makes the final decision (ZMOT).
New data shows that the leads are almost 50-50 from SRP and VDP. What I don’t know is if we were in the right track years ago when the SRPS had limited content and also didn’t work very well on mobile devices (too much data made them slow to load). The new designed SRPs (at least ours—praise to my team!) offer almost as much data as the VDP (scroll photos, pricing, CPO status, Car-fax status, etc).
Besides added information to the SRPS I truly think the new responsive designs have made mobile and tablet devices a lot more useful and in those the customer tires to avoid any extra clicks and load time therefore making the contact options in the SRPS a lot more useful.
This screenshot from a Washington dealer shows SRP (77) Vs VDP (64) specifically from PPC leads. Every different entry point is separately recorded. Remember that these are form leads, phone calls are not measured independently at this time.
Yago de Artaza Paramo
[email protected]
Bing Partner Summit 2017
Bing Partner Summit 2017: with Joe Gillespie and Gino Ciperoni.
Seattle 2017.
Yago de Artaza Paramo
[email protected]
Google Adds Video Previews to the SERP on Mobile Devices
Google adds video previews to the SERP on mobile devices.
There are a few “rules” too many, if you ask me, that limits the reach of the change. The feature is browser controlled, so it can be disabled, meaning that so far this will work only in Chrome. A plus for Android devices but a choice for iPhones since Safari is the default browser. Google introduces this as an evolution of their recent snippet search results update.
That is a fast turn on updates for these guys. So pay attention to local searches for people using videos like Andrew’s (What’s Next Media) used on individual pages with the right contextual content. Dealer walk arounds may actually start to be more relevant in local searches.
While this has no relevance on inventory videos like those shorties we showed a month ago it accentuates the relevance of video on mobile devices, something Google heavily brought up last year at their NYC automotive conference.
Questions?
Yago de Artaza Paramo
[email protected]
DealerEProcess Chicago 2018
DealerEProcess Chicago 2018:
Working with the smartest, most committed, people in the industry.
Yago de Artaza Paramo
[email protected]
Dealer eProcess Chosen as Mazda Website Certified Provider
DealerEProcess chosen as Mazda website certified provider in the USA:
We are now Mazda website and digital marketing certified. So many thanks to a great team of people that worked hard to make this a reality.
Email us for a demo: [email protected]
Yago de Artaza Paramo
[email protected]
The Secret This Spartan Racer Knows That Your Business Doesn't
Glenn Pash wrote and article about the automotive industry and racing, below is the link to the article and also my answer to Glenn’s “optimistic” view of me!
The Secret This Spartan Racer Knows That Your Business Doesn’t
Thanks Glenn, but you are wrong: I’m naturally gifted and do all these without training, planning, recovery, post-race assessment, and of course, not much effort needed. Just like everything hard to achieve in life, I made it to the finish line by sheer luck. 😉
Now seriously and not saying that you must follow my path, but there is a lot of truth on saying that all the necessary attributes for success are the same in sports, business, and life, and that the more areas of our lives we practice their implementation the more chances of success because it all connects.
People think that is crazy to run a 20 mile race uphill with 38 obstacles and punish yourself for 5 nonstop hours, but that is not. That was only 5 hours. The real challenge is finding the drive that took you from the first race that was 1 mile and 1 obstacle to seek for a longer race, and then another, and then another. Is the repetition of seeking your limit, finding your best and knowing that is not it. There is more. For that you must learn, train, and plan.
You endure one (race, project, task, challenge, any improvement) and you just prepared yourself to endure the next one. Keep learning.
Yago de Artaza Paramo
[email protected]
#AAAS2017
Were you at #AAAS2017?
Thank you Brian for a great conference.
A few things that I’m learning about this conference:
Only top dealers are here, and by top I mean in knowledge. Perhaps there is not a lot of actionable data on changes to promote sales tomorrow, but there is a lot of information on how to look at the data and to learn how to set up the direction of your dealer for the future.
Dave Page speaks at 1:30 EST while he explains why your sales attribution reports are flawed!
Yago de Artaza Paramo
[email protected]
Measuring Automotive Attribution
Measuring automotive attribution: how do you assign attribution to this?
Yago de Artaza Paramo
[email protected]
Toyota PPC Budget Increase Yields Results
Toyota PPC budget increase yields results: when dealers ask about Google spend they don’t understand that there is a direct correlation between spend, traffic, and leads.
These numbers are from a Toyota dealer. It went from $5000/month, to $8000/month, to this at $17,000/month in a quick 3 month growth.
Notice that traffic grew almost at the same percentage as leads. Time on site went down tremendously and I’m going to guess that we went from having just more “traditional” traffic on the site to a lot of paid traffic.
Not enough time yet to fine tune the campaigns, but I think ROI will get better in the next 90 days. Nothing extraordinarily amazing here. We did landing pages for the campaigns but the dealer didn’t give any sales other than the OEM offers (so we are in the consideration but not winning by offer, probably just location and reputation). A better than the OEM offer pushed on a Friday spikes weekend traffic.
A lot of money went into display (not our main ROI choice) because the association is doing the traditional PPC (so great deal for stablished dealers in good locations and terrible for up and coming dealers).
So next time you ask about spend, the question is: how far can you grow my spend but maintaining the ROI?
Yago de Artaza Paramo
[email protected]
DealerEProcess Chicago 2018
DealerEProcess Chicago 2018:
When you grow, space becomes a premium! Excited for 2018 @DealerEProcess with Joe Gillespie, Jenna Anderson, and Eileen Murphy.
Yago de Artaza Paramo
[email protected]
Craigslist Charged 10x
Craigslist charged my card 10x.
Thank you, Craigslist, 1,575 ads at $5 is supposed to be $7,875 and now I have a $78,750 charge on my card. Thank goodness our dealers pay us a lot of money for the posting software so we don’t mind dealing with these issues!
Yago de Artaza Paramo
[email protected]
Google Is Blocking YouTube on Amazon's Echo Show and Fire TV
Google is blocking YouTube on Amazon’s Echo Show and Fire TV: Lack of commercial reciprocity makes digital networks act like wired networks and restrict access.
You have (or strongly should!) already consider two different networks for your digital advertising: Google and Facebook. I’m risking to say with almost equal budgets. There is nothing wrong with that, other than higher management (time + knowledge + tools + cost). But this also has less network dependency (choices + specificity).
We may soon have more digital network choices as lines are drawn (and sorry, I don’t mean Bing or Yahoo).
Yago de Artaza Paramo
[email protected]
Cox Automotive Files Lawsuit Against CDK Global
Cox Automotive Files Lawsuit Against CDK Global:
Taxing information (goods) flow never works. It didn’t work with tea and it will not work with dealer’s data.
Yago de Artaza Paramo
[email protected]
17 Years at PGI
Celebrating 17 years at PGI this week.
Want to know how far back that is? Check out this memory from the past.
Thank you to everyone that reached out to congratulate.
Yago de Artaza Paramo
[email protected]
2018 TOP Rated Automotive SEM Vendor at Driving Sales
2018 TOP Rated Automotive SEM Vendor at Driving Sales
Great news! @drivingsales announced the 2018 Dealer Satisfaction Awards winners today. DealerEProcess will be awarded SEM DrivingSales Awards at the upcoming 2018 NADA Convention.
I personally want to thank all of our clients, & the automotive community for the recognition and prestigious awards.
Yago de Artaza Páramo
[email protected]
Dealer eProcess at NADA 2018
Dealer eProcess at NADA 2018
Come see Geoff, Steven, Jake, Samantha, or me at 2018 NADA in Las Vegas booth 4092C. Find out how!
Yago de Artaza Paramo
[email protected]
Mobile Swipe Functionality
New feature (long overdue 😳): Mobile swipe functionality.
We have added new functionality to both the SRP and VDP pages on your website! Now when using a mobile device, users have the ability to ‘swipe’ through vehicle images in addition to the original functionality of clicking the arrows to scroll through images.
If you have any questions let me know!
Yago de Artaza Páramo
[email protected]
Kill the Fixed-Ops Mailer
Kill the fixed-ops mailer. If your goal is to increase business to your fixed-ops services, I strongly suggest digital campaigns.
Even if you are slow in the department only a couple days a week (Tuesdays? Wednesdays?), tune your digital campaigns for fixed-ops to run for a shorter week and move to incentivize those slow days.
You have so much flexibility. Check out the DEP Toyota parts and service digital advertising case study to find out what may work best for your dealership.
Yago de Artaza Páramo
[email protected]
Support Contact & Site Search
“72% of customer search your site for answers before they contact support.”
I believe that, unfortunately, customers don’t see automotive dealers as “support providers” for the most part and that we don’t get as many questions as we should.
Answers on your website promote interaction, increase trust, it brings overall business transparency. A well done list of answers also brings a certain base level for the business so you know what your sales team are providing.
It is both a good content and customer service strategy and most dealers don’t have it. Start by creating a list of the top ten questions or issues that arise at each department, send to your content company, let them build it and fine tune it. It is content that will have service for a long time.
Yago de Artaza Páramo
[email protected]
Target & Rank for Two Keywords on a Single Page
Google’s Aaseesh Marina: ‘You Can Target & Rank for Two Keywords on a Single Page.’
The topic of optimizing for one keyword phrase over multiple is nothing new and it has serious implications on how many pages (content) you have to dissect and build for your site.
The question asked in the Google forums was: “I want to target 2 keywords on a single page. Is this a good idea or should I create two different pages to target both of the websites?”
Answer by Google’s Aaseesh Marina: “If the content on the page is relevant for both the keywords, then I don’t see an issue. Make sure the content is providing useful information to user queries around those keywords.”
For automotive websites I like the idea of combining similar vehicle types like corolla + camry, accord + civic, f-150 + f-250, colorado + silverado into one landing page so two SEM campaigns land into one page. I’m not looking to minimize work by combining pages but to increase the landing page usability by having two layers of selection and at the same time not losing any SEO potential (clicks, traffic, etc) by having to add a “no follow” tag to the page.
Yago de Artaza Paramo
[email protected]
Facebook and Google Automatic Form Filling
We just added Facebook and Google automatic form filling to the websites, which works for anyone logged into their Gmail or Facebook accounts.
This is not a new technology, as you can see in the first image (Athlinks is a running race management app that I use), as it has been widely used by other systems. So far it is more predominant on apps than websites.
The first example shows a full finance app implementation and the second a short lead form (floating form). Social integration makes information access faster for your clients and it ensures information veracity for you. The easier it is for customers to enter information the less form abandonment. Remember that we still have to abide by Facebook and Google information access guidelines.
The forms are a free feature of our 3.0 website system (new clients) and the 3.0 system is a free upgrade for existing clients.
Note: this service does require a little bit of set up to connect the website to your dealer’s social accounts so that the information is released.
Please contact your DEP representative or drop me an email if you have any questions: [email protected]
Who Do You Hire for Social?
“That’s crazy some of my posts get up to more than 40k views a day just wondering how that happens if you only have 6k friends?”
Meanwhile I get a miserable few hundred views on my posts after reading and thinking about a topic for hours.
It’s ok, I’m not salty, I know I cannot compete. I must improve my writing skills, ASAP!
#whodoyouhireforsocial?
Yago de Artaza Páramo
[email protected]
Local Mobile Searches
Yelp indexes very well specially on mobile searches. However, many mobile users are using social media apps that can bring recommendations based on geo locations, such as services like Facebook Local. Will this new offering for local mobile searches (in a sense a network consolidation) affect relying on location indexing dependent services (like Yelp)? Will they go out of fashion?
Yago de Artaza Páramo
[email protected]
Google AMP Project Changes
How many times in 2017 did Google push to use the YouTube director app? Be careful falling too far for Google’s AMP project.
In terms of changes, direct traffic, business name searches, geo + product location, etc. will not be affected. Only a small fraction of long tail searches may be affected. If you don’t even do custom content this may be less than a tiny change in indexed pages.
However, the speed test is greatly affected by image optimization which is really an image quality degradation choice. We all use the same cloud optimization systems, so what’s left is to chose either fewer images per page or fewer quality (pixel density) images. Additionally, the script optimization problem has to be fixed by each one of the companies providing the scripts to the website provider as they are built.
All these changes come to one choice: how much content, links, maps, etc. do you need per page? Showcase all or reduce and speed up.
You must chose the right balance. But be careful, don’t fall for another Google project that may die by 2018’s end. Remember that Google’s AMP is a global project, and I don’t believe it will affect local automotive sites. Take off unnecessary stuff from your site, but don’t trade quality for speed.
Automotive DMS Security
Note: I have not fact checked the news below.
Google AdWords Review Changes
“As of January 15th, 2018, Google will no longer be supporting AdWords Review Extensions”
Automotive Responsive Platform Upgrades
“Target discontinued its iPad app after six years, noting that it had improved its website to create a more streamlined shopping experience across all devices.”
Will this affect the future of attribution?
“Google is cracking down on apps collecting info they don’t need”
Automotive Delivery Procedures
The automotive industry is desperately looking to bring transactions away from physical location to online. There will be mandatory OEM programs starting 2018 and you will have to adapt your F&I and delivery procedures.
The effort is leaning on the software that handles the transaction but we are not working on two major aspects:
- The operational needs of the offsite delivery.
- An enhanced product (vehicle) format that allows customers to make the decision away from the dealer.
I believe that the customer will take for granted the fact that you can process the paperwork online and the costs of these new systems plus the delivery will be offset by a more efficient F&I process and a smaller if existing, sales team.
The battle for the sale will be in the presentation. How easy can your customers make a decision with just the information that you provide?
Hyper-zoom technology is already in use by Amazon, Nike, and even a $100 parka company.
We have incorporated over 7 technologies in our 3.0 system to handle this, videos, 360s, hot spots, and the ability to play with all these on a mobile device.
Give me a call at 2069491896 if you want to hear about the most flexible inventory, marketing, and website system in the automotive industry.
Cars on Amazon
Limited edition VW for sale on Amazon Italy during Thanksgiving weekend.
If the fact that the automotive industry is rapidly slowing down, that 2018 projections are low, and that the main 3rd party sites talk is attribution (wait for the attribution assignment battle to start), are not enough reasons to think that you should look at your digital strategy, then maybe this is.
Who Sold it
Leaving #aaas2017 with a great present, a signed copy of Brian Pasch’s new book “Who sold it”.
I can’t recommend it yet because I haven’t read it but I’m not finding many other Automotive attribution guides in the market.
As you can see in my Goodreads profile I’ve read so far 40 books 📚 this year out of a 45 total goal. Not all of them about business, I read a lot about sports improvement and history, but the key as Brian and Glenn’s message has been for years, never stop learning .
Good or bad but based on the quality of the #aaas2917 conference I would recommend that you read this book to at least gain a basic understanding of attribution. You will hear a lot about this in 2018 and onwards .
The assault on the Automotive’s industry ability to balance the outcome of an already abrasive system continues to deepen
TO: Prime Response Dealers
FROM: Prime Response Product Team
DATE: November 8th, 2017
SUBJECT: Yelp
To our valued dealerships,
Today we received a notification from Yelp stating that reputation management systems are, “putting our clients’ online reputation at risk by soliciting reviews on their behalf”. Yelp views this solicitation for reviews as an “illicit tactic” and states that it violates their policies. While we disagree with their stance, we want to be transparent and deliver this message to our dealership community.
This recent policy statement and “shift in thinking” follow the recent exclusion of Yelp reviews from two major domestic OEM sponsored reputation management programs.
In an effort to protect you, our dealers, from any demotion in Yelp search results, we are recommending the following action.
The removal of Yelp from any service redirects and/or sales redirects that you may have set up today.
The removal of Yelp from any email asking for customer reviews.
Finally as a service to you, our valued dealers, we recommend to continue to track Yelp so that you can be aware of any review activity and keep whatever alert notifications you have already set up.
Below are some key links that were provided as part of Yelp’s email.
https://www.yelpblog.com/2017/11/businesses-not-work-review-solicitation-companies
https://www.yelp-support.com/article/Don-t-Ask-for-Reviews
https://www.yelp-support.com/article/What-is-Yelp-s-review-solicitation-penalty
Yelp’s support number is: (877) 767-9357.
Facebook extends messenger capabilities to business websites
In short, there is a way to replace your current chat/text system and implement messenger (FBM).
Not everyone has Facebook and not everyone that has Facebook has or uses messenger (it is a separate download for mobile devices) but the advantages of using FBM could be enormous.
For one you will have some knowledge of who is that you are communicating with, it is unclear at this time what customers personal information FBM will share with the business. However what I’m more excited about is the global customer profile data FBM will collect and how this will help you create very targeted campaigns in the future using FB marketing tools.
Imagine how different your FB would be if you had full consumer records of all chat website interactions for the last 4 years?
http://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-extends-messenger-capabilities-to-business-websites/
Craigslist and Google's Re-Captcha
Craigslist has installed a captcha security step upon log in their system. This means that postings via their API will continue as normal but any other updates will not be possible to automate such as deleting or updating vehicles as this is not permitted via the CL Bulk Posting Interface.
Your cars will be posted as usual but they will not be deleted before the 30 day expiration date, prices will not update, and vehicles can not be inter-exchanged in the ad.
Additionally non-API areas can no longer be automated.
I believe that CL added this feature to stop dealers from updating sold cars with unsold ones and skipping paying for another ad.
We are adding a few disclaimers in the ads for the next batches of postings:
“Dear Customer,
Craigslist maintains their ads live for 30 days, we strongly recommend contacting the dealer for vehicle availability.
Please contact dealer for latest pricing information.”
In my opinion this is not good or bad since every dealer has to play with the same rules, it is annoying more than anything since some customers will undoubtedly contact us about cars we have already sold. However, on a positive note, this encourages the customer to contact us about pricing and availability, which is a good thing for a well trained sales staff.
We will keep you posted as the system develops and CL continues to make changes.
Yago de Artaza Páramo
[email protected]
Google Mobile Speed Hackathon FINALIST
Dealer eProcess – Google Mobile Speed Hackathon FINALIST! Congratulations to our Development Team
Seattle Google Mixer
Small gathering with Google to discuss what’s new in Automotive #seo #sem with Satish Pandiyan. Wan’t to know what we learned? Reach out to Sammi at [email protected]
Hyper-Zoom by Dealer eProcess
Just launched our hyper-zoom tool at www.northwesthonda.com The tool relies on having large images (2Megs or more) loaded in the background so they offer deep detail when zoomed. In the top example customers are able to see damage in the vehicle (transparency) and in the bottom example they can zoom into features. You can see similar technologies used at Nike.com or Amazon.com Our system will adapt the photo size to the screen and its size to the device. Current clients must upgrade to our 3.0 responsive platform which has many other features like a rededeeigned VDP and SRP, SSL, etc (not currently present at northwesthonda.com). The upgrade is free of charge. For more information about hyper-zoom or 3.0 contact [email protected] For more information about photo sizes and systems contact [email protected]
KIA Dealer campaign
What do you think about this KIA dealer campaign? To be fair, my location was Everett, which still 40 miles from the dealer. If you don’t understand your SEM reports and all you ask is for numbers this can happen to you. We sometimes do targeted campaigns with unique offers aiming outside DMA customers, but Jerry Smith Kia in Burlington is almost 100 miles from Puyallup, a 2 hour plus drive, and you must drive pass Kia of Puyallup, Car Pros Kia, Lee Johnson Kia, Chuck Olson Kia, Kia of Seattle, Sunset Kia, and Performance Kia. I don’t know you can make an offer on any car that amazing! The easiest way to cheat a dealer, and I’m not saying that is the case here (disclaimer: as advised by our legal team) is to create campaigns in areas with a high density of population. The lead numbers will look good, but the sales numbers will not improve.
Yago Paramo
[email protected]
Digital Dealer 23 - Jewel Night Club after party
This stuff comes natural to me but I’m happy I saved @gillespiechicago life last night. I need you alive at least 2 more weeks to run the Spartan Beast at Lake Tahoe #roadtolaketahoe #dd23 #epicparties
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6316326559787679744/
Put on the watch list:
In a recent article ReadWrite contributor David Curry warns us that “BMW has added 40,000 drivers to ReachNow, the company’s car-sharing service currently available in Seattle, Portland, Oregon, and Brooklyn.”
This program is a must watch for auto dealers.
Google rolling out "Chat With Your Customers"
Google continues to add new features and this week they announced they are rolling out the “chat with your customers”, a texting feature on Google My Business. Once activated, customers can message you right from the knowledge graph.
There is a one time set up for this process. Sign into your Google My Business account, and look for the chat section titled “Message with Customers”. You’ll be asked to verify the phone number you will be responding from. After that, you will want to set your “welcome message” or the response every customer will receive. That is the same dashboard you will use to change the phone number or turn the chat feature off if no one will be responding. Make sure you add a number that can send and receive text messages!
Unrelated to Google, but for those dealers that continue to argue not having a texting number on their website or Craigslist ads, it is time to implement texting across all your advertising. For any questions about setting your Google texting feature or to implement on other ad copy please shot me an email.
DMS Access Taxation
On a conversation with one of the top CRM systems I was told that DMS access fees are sometimes as high as $800/month depending on how often and how many departments they may need, this cost inflating their price as much as 30% of their charge to the dealer. So you, the dealer, thinking that are the client, are just the end user of a relationship between two companies that need to share your data. The problem resides that the company that has the data has never agreed to spend time and money on systems to deliver your data and the company receiving it can’t give you a true quote on a cost that varies depending on the depth of your needs.
We are in a world where malware systems have fine-tuned their models so well that they even attack police departments and getting away with it: Police pays off ransomware & 8 years of data stolen Texas police department (You can find plenty of eye opening cases by searching Google for ransomware).
So you must ask yourself if should the DMS company that faces more access points as new vendors enter the space carry on the cost or pass it on to you? Is this a fair thing to ask and what protection do I get? As you know we all get a $500 checking account withdraw limit with Bank of America, you can call and change the limit, but forfeiting their liability when you do so.
An important question for those of you negotiating new DMS contracts is to ask for the terms of access to your data. While it is not a fee present in the contracts because you will not be directly paying the DMS for it, it will come back to you, so you may as well negotiate that rate in at that time and when the next vendor needs data, make sure you know that they are taking that cost out and that you connect them with your DMS provider.
Should auto dealers use upcoming app Letgo?
I had my first introduction to Letgo about a year ago thanks to Seattle’s special finance dealer Curt Bush and it came again in my radar in a recent article in Mashable.com “Marketplace app Letgo raises $175 million in quest to take on Craigslist” by Patrick Kulp. You can use the website https://us.letgo.com in a similar fashion to CraigsList but truly it has been optimized to be used from your phone as an app.
The automotive section, which loads content based on your geo location on both the mobile app and the browser doesn’t have very much for content even in one of the cities claimed by the app as a “top city” Brooklyn, NY. One big difference before anyone gets excited as “we have a new Craigslist” reminiscent of the site’s revolution for automotive lead generation 4+ years ago is that Craigslist had a tremendous traffic that was created organically (never advertised) purely by the usefulness of the site. Letgo is not there yet, but keep an eye on it.
I also want to point out that while leads are no longer coming in waves like those magical first years, Craigslist continues to post amazing user numbers: 60M users, 50B page views/month, 80M ads/month, 1M job listings/month ($45M a month just from this source), 200M post in discussion forums/month. Source: http://tinyurl.com/zl8ars7.
The magic is far from gone from “social” classified sites now that we don’t see waves of leads coming into our CRMs, but that customers have learned that they are not talking to some “cool” seller and that behind the ad there is-just-one of us car sales people trying to offer our product. My point there is that when (if) Letgo gets the automotive section to show some volume of ads and traffic and hopefully give Craigslist a run for its $5/post charge an absurd content restrictions (let us post URLs and HTML), don’t think that it is going to bring back the days of leads by the dozen. The site will succeed or fail based on the number of users and traffic that can muster because the site has failed.
3rd party sites acting as brokers?
Some of you may have missed a recent article on Automotive News just as I did: “California dealers file complain over online broker” but thanks to reading Dealer Refresh as my daily routine and to Chris Leslie from bringing that to the forums I was able to catch this. What is Carjojo.com? Carjojo advertises the vehicles without dealer’s consent and obtains the inventory probably by either scraping the data from the dealer’s website or by buying the data from one of the free 3rd party sites that your inventory provider sends your data.
Automotive news describes their selling strategy as: “The shopper picks three specific vehicles, say Honda Civics, which can be at three different dealerships, and enters their credit card and other information. Carjojo then emails or texts each dealership in turn, asking if it is willing to sell that Civic at that price. If the first dealership says no but the second says yes, the consumer is alerted and advised to contact that dealership within 24 hours. The car is not held. The shopper pays Carjojo a fee of $199, but Carjojo does not buy the car itself or have any formal relationship with that or other dealerships.”
The key to understand here is by looking at the heather in my article; Carjojo is attracting clients by advertising a lower price than the dealer has posted on any form of media. Carjojo claims on their site that: “The Carjojo best price is the lowest possible price that our data predicts that the car can be purchased for.” The car that I checked, a client of mine, was advertised at Carjojo for $174 less than the dealership’s lowest advertised price.
Is this really a bad deal? So if someone wants to buy a 2016 white Toyota Camry LE (of which every Toyota dealer in the continental USA has 30 in stock) would you drop the price another $174 from your current advertised price? Unless Carjojo is also selling the leads to the dealer so there is another money to factor in I would like to hear the dealer’s opinions on this matter. I guess that the discount price strategy may not work for every single model/unit out there (black on black loaded Honda CRV seemed to be in high demand and low inventory last fall) but nothing that a good new car manager couldn’t handle.
Protect yourself with a page on your website. I can see an issue with a customer finding Carjojo and wanting that lowest price plus not paying the Carjojo fee (Carjojo actually lists what dealer has the car). Some new car managers may be thinking already: “Come on in my minus $174 friend, you are welcome here“. But one quick thing dealers can do, least this being any legal advice since I’m not qualified to give any, is to have a page on their website about brokerage laws in their state and explaining how prices marked by broker’s can’t always be backed up by the dealer.
BZ Results Websites - remember them?
Remember those BZ Results websites (they were acquired by ADP in 2006)? If you don’t I’ll tell you: Those looked good. Mainly flash based, they appealed to the most dangerous word in the automotive industry: “I like that” (rather than “the data shows we should use this one instead”). Those guys made money.
They are long gone but flash survived all the way to just until about now.
By now some people in the car business have stopped reading this and have moved on to the next piece of technology data that they will consume on the Internet and that will guide future marketing decisions without any depth of understanding on the subject. You see the problem is not that flash was bad but that it took the total death of a system for people to stop “liking it”. There was little understanding on what did or didn’t do.
Today despite lots of industry leaders talking about real actionable items (which believe me, is a better deal than when anyone could say anything and there was no fact checking), dealers remain stuck on their technology choices because they either “like it” or they don’t.
For example today dealers continue not to use video for marketing purposes; every time we bring up the video conversation on a meeting we quickly downgrade from “doing something” to everyone’s opinion on how they need to be done–from subject to duration to format–but little actionable decisions.
Most of the time dealers hate “stitched videos”. I do too. But if that is all I have now, that is my start. Ot is the beginning of the conversation. That could be my baseline to have a file that I can learn to share, build social ads with it, and a system to start experimenting with “real” formats. Just start something.
If you want to know a little bit more about types of videos (for BDC quotes, walks rounds, format, duration, etc) you can simply look at what Elise Kephart or Andrew Myers do, whether you “like” them or now, its a start. They share so much on social media that you don’t even have to like them (although they are both very likable), just check what they do.
Videos are merging with content as a relevant piece of your website’s SEO (text + video). Videos are an absolute must for social media advertising. I’m sorry to tell you that this is not covered by the $300/month automated social media campaigns that came out of a cereal box. My friend Gary May knows about social media advertising, he can guide you (he is worth a lot more than $300 and he knows it).
Flash’s world is not the only one changing. This video craze that you think may take all your energy to understand is not the only thing changing, check out Google’s Youtube world changing; social media is overtaking video:
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/09/technology/facebook-video-stars.html
Btw since we are talking about video; check out one of our latest websites with a full on video player (works on mobile too):www.larsondodge.com You have to give a man the chance to show you his best work. Just in case, the video was purchased from the OEM gallery.
Video is not just merging into social media like a wildfire but those two are also merging with mobile faster than we can talk about it: it has already happened.
Any video + content + social must absolutely have a mobile interest at its core and this is very funny because again this life example the dying flash is giving us comes into play again. For every 10 meetings I have, 9 we talk about the weekly banners with the same OEM offer we all have, and 1 we talk about a mobile strategy. As a matter of fact we could not bring mobile into the conversation and dealers will shake my hand and let me go home as if our meeting had been a success.
Remember:
Flash = dead.
Video + content + social + mobile = alive.
New Inventory Search Features
We added two new search fields to every website inventory; search by package and search by features. The data is dependent on what the VIN decoder provides which nowadays is pretty accurate. Check it for example at www.larsondodge.com
The idea is three fold:
1) It was added as one of the several refine search options. Non intrusive but available for customers looking for specifics.
2) Customers can truly breakdown inventory by one or more of these options allowing to quickly narrow the options.
3) By the same token it allows the BDC to quickly find inventory with certain features and options to answer inquiries or to find inventory for customers.
For those of you doing hardcore PPC campaigns with mobile landing pages, this is a great way to break down larger inventories by options. Furthermore if you have incentives on certain groups you can use this to set those apart on temporary landing pages. This is a very attractive tool for campaigns!
Do you find this useful? Feedback always welcome.
Google Posts
Google just rolled out something new, called 
. It is basically like a little image/card with the ability to have a link on someone’s Google My Business Page. (See the example below, circled in green)
Cool Things:
· It’s FREE! (to Google). You have to maintain/manage/create the graphics/offer/landing pages (or we can do it with your PPC)
· Great way to show leases, service specials, APR’s, sales, community outreach, reviews, whatever you want!
· You can have an image, text, a call to action button, a link (with our tracking tags on it) and you can even schedule them to only run on or for certain days. (Must keep compliance/people happy and promote specials/sales on dates and not have to worry about going in and pausing them)
· It’s on the top half of a Google page, which is PRIME real estate.
***We NEED manage access to the Dealerships Google My Business Page in order to do this though.
Questions?
New Google my business based ads (mobile view).
New Google my business based ads (mobile view).
They give you the ability to add them with a date frame (week end offer for example) and link them to a specific URL (specific landing page).
This is, by far, your biggest website entry point which means this is a high visibility place. Make the ads and the landing page count.
Craigslist URL Structure, SEO friendly?
Craigslist just changed their URL structure to include Make Model and trim in some cases. Small change but perhaps an attempt to have a better SEO structure?
You can now also send larger photos and the customer can expand. The small photo is at 640X480 (standard automotive feed) and the new larger photo allowed 1200X900
Ram PPC Campaign, nailed it!
This campaign resulted on a killer weekend for our Ram client. Don’t mind showing the client because this was done a month ago, we killed it, and we are already 5 plans ahead of this.
There were plenty of dealers doing PPC campaigns that week end but 2 of them had no monetary value proposition; their proposition was “Don’t waste time. See us first” and the other one “Fastest growing truck brand”. The 3rd campaign had a $5000 discount, and our campaign had a $8281 discount. Do you see why we got all the business that week end?
A few things on why this happens:
I’m going to make a strong guess that the 2 dealers with no value proposition are on a OEM campaign. These campaigns are like slow runners at a race; they are just making the fast runners look good. Participating medals at the finish line! The dealer with the $5000 discount was a lazy attempt to try. If your competitor can beat you by $3281 you are not in game (ok got it, you are holding gross).
Your campaigns must have a purpose (what will this campaign accomplish?) and they must be competitive (are we in the line of consideration?). Just showing in the results is not a strategy.
Even if your budget is small, make sure is targeted. We shortened the days before and upped everyone for that week end.
Have absurdly good landing pages. Have professional thought out graphics on those, the customer landing page must be perfect.
A multipage PPC strategy on a major term is an easy way to get the week end. We use it all the time and get rid of competitive websites all together.
What do you think the same were for those 4 dealers for that month?
I’ll post the answer in the comments later.
Yago de Artaza Páramo
[email protected]
MOZ 2017: SEM SEO and Alexa
Samantha and Oksana are finishing up at MOZ and they are already sending science fiction advances to us.
“Something interesting that we learned at MOZ is that with voice and chat bots (Alexa and Google Home) you have to rank #1 to get answers, whether that’s through SEO or PPC! If someone asks their chat bot “hey google, where can I get my toyota serviced” or “hey alexa, where can I buy a 2017 Ram” they will pull the #1 rank to answer that question” Samantha said.
While before you may chose not to always rank #1 on all your campaigns in order to preserve budget this new activity on voice action requests may force you to rethink your strategy. This is actually further infuriating for those dealers dealing with a name conquest campaign so a competitor will take the voice result even on very close matches.
I would love to hear some thoughts on the monetary impact this may have on how you set up your budget, specially important for dealers in major metro areas.
Yago de Artaza Páramo
[email protected]
Google+, overlooked opportunity?
This is an “old” article about Google + (January 2017) that was published in Mashable. Notice that the “landscape photo community” has over 1M followers? As we are always quick to dismiss opportunities someone here made something out of G+.
Maybe Hunter Swift should look into bringing some of those Instagram shots here?
What other opportunities are you perhaps overlooking ?
http://mashable.com/2017/01/18/who-is-using-google-plus-anyway/#CNWwb2HWbiqi
Machine learning at its best!
Machine learning at its best. Last month at Microsoft Bing’s partner summit we were able to see 3 chat windows with 3 speakers in different languages being translated in real time. The advantages of breaking down language barriers for group collaboration are enormous .
"For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, plus a social media overreaction"
Something that sounds so negative is actually one of the best Social Media marketing advices for the auto industry.
The most expensive part of the SM campaign is the ad, the graphics, the campaigns can actually be done once and reused (settings wise) with minor modding from one to the next.
The inexpensive campaign uses the same ad for the entire month.
The more expensive campaign uses the ad for a week, it touches its target, gets a reaction , analyzes the reaction (calls vs clicks vs form subs vs etc). Makes changes and it goes out again.
After 1 year one of them had 12 rounds of evolution, the other will have 52.
Which one will be more advanced? Who will know more about its market?
Social Media’s advantage over traditional is the speed of feedback. Find the (over-) reaction to your campaigns.
Yago Paramo
[email protected]
Auto dealers be aware of Ransomware
Image Credit NBC News, KACPER PEMPEL / Reuters
Now that we are over the fact that US auto dealerships will pay a little bit more in 2017 for DMS (Dealer Management system) access due to security reasons you must make yourself familiar with Cryptolocker (ransomware) so you can ask the right questions when protecting your dealership files.
I should add for the record of the DMS access saga that in recent events some companies believe that data restriction is a business control move by Reynolds & Reynolds and CDK (ADP). It is for sure that data access and security will be a topic for 2017. Thanks to Cliff Banks for the article.
Back to Cryptolocker, in the words of Thomas Wenger, an automotive dealership cyber security expert based in Seattle;
“Cryptolocker has been an increasing issue for auto dealerships. This destructive ransomware encrypts files so the dealer is forced to either restore from backups which often are not properly maintained or in place, or to pay up and hope to receive their files back intact. This ransomware easily infects systems from infected webpages, or from phishing emails. The emails often come to everyone in the dealership, and will resemble legitimate emails you would often receive at a dealership, such as financing notices, deliveries, or potential leads.”
The monetary end of the ransomware attack is a tremendous enticement for an increase in sophistication in the attacks.
I asked Mr. Wenger to share a couple stories he has dealt with:
“Recently a Cadillac dealership had a particularly nasty ransomware incident when the service manager, who is fairly computer savvy, from a simple email attachment he soon found his entire PC, as well as some network attached folders all were encrypted. The price to buy the freedom of 10 years’ worth of service files? $1000.00.
Another large dealership finance manager landed on the wrong fantasy football site and soon his system was notifying him that his files were locked and payment would be required to release them, while nothing on his system was particularly valuable it did make its way to the main file server which was. The file delivery portion of the ransomware failed, so even if the dealer wanted to pay the fee they were unable in this case, costing them weeks of time rebuilding lost files.”
With the average large dealership between mobile devices, PCs, and other tools has literally hundreds of devices and email addresses to act as points of entry into a network. With a lot of dealerships backup services not often or not properly maintained this is the first type of virus/ransomware that has proven to a major issue for the average dealer.
Ransomware attacks are brave enough to have infected police department systems and ask them for money. In a recent NBC News article a police department is cited saying “We Are Cops. We Generally Don’t Pay Ransoms” showcasing the frustration they may have felt. Hospitals haven’t been any safer so far. See the trend? High value small businesses without large IT support staff.
Things you can do to protect your business:
- Have a good data backup plan
- Have an updated malware system in place
- Have a written download/open file policy
- Have an URL blocker or a non-business URL (website) visitor policy
Yago Paramo. VP of Business Dev. [email protected]
Thomas Wenger, Owner of Technology Portal, is a 14 year veteran of the IT industry with a focus on auto dealerships and the businesses that support them. He acts as IT consultant, network engineer and technician to over 100 dealerships, and advises and deals with ransomware cases on a regular basis. You can ask him questions at [email protected]
Yago Paramo, VP of Business Development, is a 15 year veteran of the automotive industry with a focus on inventory, website presence, SEO, and SEM. He acts as consultant to over 1,000 dealerships, and advises and deals with marketing needs on a regular basis. You can ask him questions at [email protected]
AD VS landing page, a failed relationship
I was recently reading automotive articles on Flipboard https://flipboard.com (iPhone version) and clicked in an Amazon ad (the screenshot is of the actual ad), rather than continuing with a browser open request it offered to open the Amazon app. I clicked open and the App Store opened form a brief second, then phone automatically refreshed as if it knew that I have the Amazon app installed and… happy I was that could go from advertisement to 1-click purchase but… the app failed to recognize the browser request (probably because it went thru the App Store) and it failed to open. I just got an error. Consequent tries found the same problem.
I remember for a second that time when car dealers wanted to have apps to show their inventory. Recently at NADA 100 in New Orleans a group of foreign investors looking for possible ventures to bring back to their country asked for my opinion about apps for car dealers. While the failures of these were related to other things (not enough customer base, low download enticement, awareness, etc) it also reminded me how important is for digital advertisement to be in complete sync.
If the total resolve of the landing digital assets is not viewed and measured by the team producing the front advertisement, you run the risk that the request of one doesn’t match the digital assets functionality.
The front of the ad is as important as the landing page. In a recent dinner with my mentor @brianpasch we came up with some prophetic words as we talked about the lack of interest by automotive dealers on investing on fantastic landing pages; “The bait is as important as the net”.
Dealers tend to focus only on the ad, have different companies producing a website and a digital campaign, and run one as separate from the other. Our best results for SEM campaigns have not been from some golden bullet the we forged, but by tedious fine tuning of the landing pages. SEM worked best when followed by fine tuned SEO.
OEM coop programs are worse, they are based on the ads we can submit to the manufacturer but not on the final customer destination.
De-integration of the process forces us to measure, in the best cases!, the activity of one (clicks, views, opens, etc) versus the activity of the other (less, calls, submissions, etc). We work on them individually when they need to work together as one.
Measure total campaing flow.
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VP Business Dev.
#sep #sem #automotive #cardealer #ppc #automotiveseo
Just a few weeks ago I put BMW's ReachNow program on my watch list.
http://dealerlab.com/put-watch-list/
On February 2nd I saw this one parked outside Amazon downtown Seattle and just around the corner from that one, a BMW SUV from the same program.
Things move fast nowadays .
Should BMW dealers expect higher service numbers and decrease sales from ride-share programs?
Yago de Artaza Páramo
Parking difficulty now on Google maps:
Google just announced https://blog.google/products/maps/know-you-go-parking-difficulty-google-maps/ that it will display parking difficulties on its next update.
The system will only be available at this time in 25 metro areas in the US. Look at the P(arking) icon in the maps screen shot.
It should be a dealer’s concern that if this expands into businesses the same way busy times show now on Google places desktop results, it may give customers a negative outlook if we always have a “limited parking” icon in our listings.
It is a bit too early to act on this but I would keep an eye on how Google assigns the parking limitations. What can we do as a business to show customers that it is easy to park?
Until now we didn’t watch this because by the time customers drove to the dealership and realized you almost have no parking available it was easier to just do whatever they had to do to get their business done. This may be a big decision factor for both service and sales for a customer trying to save time and comparing two similarly distanced dealers to visit.
DealerEProcess is proud to receive the 2017 AWA Awards Top US Website provider.
@pcgdigital #nada #nada100 #dep #awa2017
DealerEProcess is proud to receive the 2017 Driving Sales Premier Website Award and SEO platform.
This achievement is only possible by the work of many and the feedback from our dealers.
#nada #nada100 #drivingsales #dses #dep
Increase Engagement with Your VDP Pages
If you didn’t know already, you can easily Increase Engagement with Your VDP Pages and it is fairly easy to do as long as you use the benefits of VDP. There are many additional things you can do to make them stand out as well as many things you can do to improve things you already have on your VDP pages.
Tips to Improve Your VDP Pages
If you have VDP pages, there are many things you can do to improve them and increase your engagement. The best thing you can include on your VDP pages is photos and even more photos. Never use stock photos if you can as you need beneficial real photos. The more photos you have, the better, however, too many can be daunting that is why you just need enough to give potential buyers a good look of the exterior as well as the interior. This is important as a picture showing the leather seats means a lot more than just saying “leather-appointed seat” in the description.
Another tip is always include CARFAX information especially on used vehicles. Potential buyers want to know if a little more work needs to be done and having a history report viewable helps the decision process. The same thing goes with the price of the vehicle. Always include the price as if they cannot see a price point, they may not come in thinking that the vehicle could be out of their budget. It is better to have it then saying “contact us for price”. Even though you know have tons of pictures, you need to at least list what is in the car as well including important and luxurious features.
Why Your VDP Pages are Important
Before looking through your VDP to see if you can Increase Engagement with Your VDP Pages, you need to know how important they are. Your VDP pages are as important, or maybe more so, than everything else on your website because it is the first big engagement you have with potential buyers. Since you are not there to make sure they have all the information, you need to make it easily accessible. Make sure you have all the information they need.
These tips on how to Increase Engagement with Your VDP Pages are very important to know. This is because engagement with VDP pages can lead to increase volume of sales when down right. We at Dealer Lab can offer our help to get you where you want to be and easily switch your site over to responsive so you can reach out to more potential customers. If you have any questions, please contact us at 877-622-2291.
Responsive vs. Adaptive Websites
When it comes to Responsive vs. Adaptive Websites, there are a lot of differences and benefits so it is important to know which format is right for you. That is why it is important to know the differences between them and what they can bring to the table. However, most dealers today are switching to responsive due to its device friendly nature.
Responsive Sites Benefits
When it comes to responsive sites, there are plenty of benefits. When it comes to staying modern, responsive sites can help you do just that. Responsive sites can easily adapt to any device. So if someone is viewing your site on a desktop and then switch over to view it on their mobile device, your site will automatically adapt to the size so it looks organized and easy to navigate. This is where Responsive vs. Adaptive Websites are both differ and are similar.
Without a responsive site, it will not transfer over from a desktop layout to a phone layout very well which can cut off buttons, make everything unorganized, and all around not adaptable. If you are looking for a clean, crisp site, going responsive will easily help you do that no matter what device someone is using. It responds to it more efficiently which is why they can take a second or two longer to load but you get a cleaner, more concise looking page on your phone.
Adaptive Websites
When it comes to adaptive sites, they do not adapt to different devices as easily as they tend to pull everything when converting to a different device leading to issues of unorganized sites that make it difficult to navigate around. This can be a turn off and turn people away. However, these sites can have faster loading times making them pull up quicker. They tend to adapt to the width of the browser instead of respond. This makes them only concerned about the browser being a specific width to adapt. Depending on your site, this could lead to some slight issues.
There are a lot of differences between the two as responsive works better in today’s technological focused society. Responsive vs. Adaptive Websites is important to know. We at Dealer Lab can offer our help to get you where you want to be and easily switch your site over to responsive so you can reach out to more potential customers.
Use Your Dealer Website to Sell More Cars
Your biggest tool when it comes to selling vehicles is your website. This is because, in today’s society, most people do all of their research and shopping online before they make their way to the dealership. This is why you need to Use Your Dealer Website to Sell More Cars as it can improve your sells.
Improving Your Website
There are many tips you can consider when it comes to improving your site. It is very important to know that you can easily Use Your Dealer Website to Sell More Cars as it is one of your biggest tools when it is properly made. There are a few elements to consider when you are creating, or trying to improve your website. Adidas Yeezy Boost 330 Pas Cher The first one is creating an effective website and the second one is being able to drive traffic to your site. Effective websites keep customers engaged and causes actions of interests.
The next thing is to bring traffic and there are two different traffic drivers you can use: search engine marketing and search engine optimization. These two things will help generate more traffic when people use search engine. In order to appear high up on the list you should consider relevancy, popularity, number of linked sites, frequency of change in content, and more. Finally, generating leads is huge and the people generating leads should be outstanding at it to help maximize it.
Why Your Website Can Sell More Cars
If you are asking why your website is one of the biggest tools you can use to sell your cars, there are many reasons as to why. For example, everyone searches and researches vehicles online now because the information is easily attainable. The way to get someone to your dealership is marketing yourself and providing a very nice and easy website layout that is full of information. Yeezy Boost 750 Acheter When someone goes to your dealer’s site, chances are they know what make of vehicle they want unless they are searching for a used one. That is why online inventory is highly important and needs to stay updated. Adidas Yeezy Boost 350 Homme
All of these tips you choose make it easier for you to boost your website for vehicle sales. All of these tips will not only help you Use Your Dealer Website to Sell More Cars which is the ultimate goal. We at PGI Data Solutions offer products to help sell your vehicles on Craigslist, better your inventory, ROI, and more.
Benefits of Mobile-Friendly Automotive Website Design
In today’s society, there are so many devices out there that we can use to effectively search the internet. This includes a desktop, tablet, phone, and more. However, as you know, each device has a different size screen and operating system making it difficult for websites to look good throughout the lineup without proper setup and help. That is why knowing the Benefits of Mobile-Friendly Automotive Website Design is highly important in today’s society.
The Benefits of having a Mobile-Friendly Website
There are many benefits out there that you can come across when it comes to mobile-friendly websites. These responsive sites are more user friendly. That is the biggest benefit to them. How they work is that they are able to adapt to the device and screen size as they read the system. A friendly site that is easy, informative, clean, and quick to navigate is all you need to turn on potential buyers. The information on the site is what keeps them there to consider your dealer.
If you do not have a responsive site, then your site can be very unfriendly to users making it difficult to get around and turning them away. More often than not, people are using their tablets or phones to do quick searches on vehicles and if they come across to your site and they are having trouble getting around, they will quickly move on to the next page losing out on a potential customer.
How to Get Mobile-Friendly Automotive Websites
After knowing all of the possible Benefits of Mobile-Friendly Automotive Website Design, you might want to know about how to get your site responsive if it is not. We at Dealer Lab can easily help you out with this as we have professionals that can work with you to make the quick and easy switch. It is fast and requires little work on your part. You will be surprised on how clean your site can look when surfing it on a phone.
These Benefits of Mobile-Friendly Automotive Website Design can potentially get you more customers as well as keep them coming back. One little thing like an unfriendly site can spell doom for your sales. We at Dealer Lab can offer our help to get you where you want to be and easily switch your site over to responsive so you can reach out to more potential customers. If you have any questions, please contact us at 877-622-2291.
6 Online Marketing Tips For Used Car Dealers
Selling used cars can be more difficult than selling new cars because you have to give as many details as you possibly can about the vehicle when brand new cars people can see details from the manufacturer site. These 6 Online Marketing Tips For Used Car Dealers can easily help you turn things around and help you move your inventory more.
6 Online Marketing Tips for your Used Cars
Successful dealerships know the overall value of a powerful marketing strategy that can help you sell used cars. If you need to find more ways to help market your used cars, these 6 Online Marketing Tips For Used Car Dealers can help you go in the right direction. First, create your website to be a lead generating machine. You can easily do this by having a responsive design, video content for information, and allowing easy access to conversion. Do these three steps and your site will easily generate more leads. We at Dealer Lab can help you with all three.
6 Online Marketing Tips for Used Car Dealers
Of course, there are many other things you can do as well including utilizing traditional and digital marketing together. Basically, keep advertising on TV, on the radio, and create print ads. These advertising techniques are not dead yet and help bring in local audiences. Another strategy is to engage in the community. Give support to local causes and charities which in turn will help people see your dealership as good business acumen and promotes yourself as an integral part of the community.
Offering referral incentives is also a great concept and it is even better if you are creative. For example, market your referral program as a way to help a friend or make it a great surprise instead of discounts or money back. Add on a free wax and wash as well and give it a unique name. Also, you need to help drive traffic to your website. Finally, you can drive traffic to your website with digital marketing strategies including pay per click (PPC).
If there is one thing you can take out from these tips is it that there are always ways to improve your strategy and make it stand out more. Just follow these simple 6 Online Marketing Tips For Used Car Dealers. We at Dealer Lab can offer our help to get you where you want to be by selling more used cars.
Tips to Best Optimize Your Dealer Website
There are a lot of tips you can follow and use to optimize your website to the best of its ability. These Tips to Best Optimize Your Dealer Website focus on what is more important when it comes to selling vehicles and that is easy, accessible information. When your site is easy to get around and includes plenty of great information on the vehicles you sell, you will see an increase. There are also multiple ways to go about it.
Tips to Best Optimize Your Website
When it comes to your website and how it performs, all depends on what is on it and how you utilize the tools you have. If you do not have many tools, it may be time to upgrade. Making your site easily accessible is one of the best tips to follow. This includes making it accessible on any device including phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop. Many people do searches using a tablet or even their phone and if your site is not friendly with these devices, the customer will simply go somewhere else even if everything else about your site is perfect. These sites are called responsive sites as is one of the many Tips to Best Optimize Your Dealer Website you can follow to optimize your site.
Benefits for Inventory on Your Dealer Website
One of the biggest parts of your website includes your inventory which is one of the best ways to connect with your customers and build their trust. When you are building your inventory page, it is very important to make sure that each vehicle listed also includes plenty of information and many different photos including interior and exterior. Photos are always needed for your inventory and not just stock photos. Stock photos are lazy and do not show the customer what the vehicle exactly looks like. This is big when they try to make their decision.
It is also important to make sure you include plenty of information with each vehicle including the popular make, model, year, color, and engine engines. Besides these details, you should also include the features that can be found on the vehicle from technology to comfort. Make it easy to find and organized as organization is key.
There are many different ways to optimize your website but these Tips to Best Optimize Your Dealer Website can show the best overall improvement in the shortest amount of time. We at Dealer Lab can offer our help to get you where you want to be by selling more used cars. If you have any questions, please contact us at 877-622-2291.
How to Make Your Auto Dealer Site Mobile Friendly
In today’s society, smart phones have taken over making it easy to surf the web at any time when needed. That is why it is important to make sure your dealer’s site is mobile friendly so people can easily access it from their phones. If your site is not, there are ways on How to Make Your Auto Dealer Site Mobile Friendly. These tips will make your site appeal more to those who look it up on your phone.
Benefits to Mobile Friendly Auto Dealer Sites
There are many benefits you can get from having a mobile friendly site. The first and biggest reason is that mobile friendly sites enhance user browsing experience making it so much easier to navigate and get around. They can also read your content easier without it being cut off, squished, or too large. By going responsive, your site can tell what device is being used to access it and it can respond to the different layout with ease. Another benefits by going responsive is that your site will not just be mobile friendly, it will also be friendly among multiple types of devices including tablets as well. Another key benefit to mobile friendly sites is that they are also SEO friendly and can easily boost search engine rankings for your site making it stand out even more. Despite more visibility on the search engine, you will also get more visibility on the mobile market as well giving you more marketing strategies.
How to Make Your Auto Dealer Site Mobile Friendly
Going responsive is very important in these days as over 60% of people check their email directly on their phones over any other device. To go responsive, it is quick and easy and just takes a moment to switch it over. If you are wondering How to Make Your Auto Dealer Site Mobile Friendly, we at Dealer Lab can easily help you get the results you desire. The mobile user market is constantly growing so now is the time to switch. When you are wondering How to Make Your Auto Dealer Site Mobile Friendly, let us help you out. Just a quick switch over is all you need to see the difference. We at Dealer Lab can offer our help to get you where you want to be and easily switch your site over to responsive so you can reach out to more potential customers. If you have any questions, please contact us at 877-622-2291.
Common Car Dealer Marketing Errors
There are many different types of marketing errors out there that you can make and each one can cost you. These errors, unfortunately, are pretty common when it comes to car dealers. In today’s digitally connected world, it is important not to make these mistakes. These Common Car Dealer Marketing Errors is what can harm you overall.
Car Dealer Marketing Team
One of the biggest, and first, things you should make sure is that you have a dedicated marketing team at your dealership. Customers want responses as soon as possible which is why having a good team that can manage your websites, blogs, apps, social media, etc. is key. Placing all of these tasks in the hands of one person is difficult which can create untimely responses as well as not active social media. Smart phones are great tools as well so your marketing team can easily train your sales team on how to use their phones to help increase leads and better customer follow up.
Other Common Car Dealer Marketing Errors
Another big mistake that can easily be switched is not having a responsive website for mobile or tablet viewers. If you have yet to switch your site over to responsive, now is the time to do so. We at Dealer Lab can help you get the best responsive site. This is important as more and more people view sites directly from their phone or tablets and a responsive site can automatically detect what device is being used to make it more user friendly.
Besides to not having a responsive website, other mistakes you can make includes not making use of video advertising on the web or your social media platforms are not helpful or purposeful to your customers. Including video of first-hand details on how the car features work can be a difference maker when it comes to competition between another similar dealers. When it comes to social media, it can provide more than just featured sale and special offers. You can communicate with your customers by retweeting a post from them or responding to a question. This makes them feel important as they are being listened to.
Overall, these are the key Common Car Dealer Marketing Errors to avoid when you are trying to increase leads, sales, and more. We at Dealer Lab can help you turn your site into responsive as well as offer more tricks to better your dealership and increase sales.
Spanish Car Dealer Website Advantages
There are many different kinds of sites out there that can draw attention to your customer base. Responsive sites are becoming bigger but one type of site that is being overlooked is Spanish sites for Spanish-speaking customers. There are so many Spanish Car Dealer Website Advantages that are being overlooked. There is a huge market for Spanish sites especially in the south. We at Dealer Lab can help you establish the best site.
How to Get Spanish Car Dealer Websites
We at Dealer Lab offer custom made Spanish website design so you can find the best one available to you. Custom sites are always preferred as they make you stand out even more over other dealers. Flexibility and attention to detail is important in every site especially when it comes to targeting a different demographic. This is how you can be unique in you market area as we will work with you to create the best site. We also can create mobile websites, inventory management, offer Google Analytics Integration, and more.
Spanish Car Dealer Website Advantages
A good percent of car purchases are from Spanish-language speakers and when you accommodate to their needs, you can draw in extra customers. They are also always looking for new vehicles as they constantly use search engines to acquire information about the vehicles they are seeking. The United States is the second largest Spanish-speaking country in the world with over roughly 50 million people using the language as their first living in the US. You may think offering a Google Translate version of your site is sufficient enough but that is not true, as it results in an unauthentic voice.
With Spanish websites, you are offering that authenticity they are seeking which will easily draw them in instead of being a little broken and off-putting. Spanish Car Dealer Website Advantages are very important to understand as it can increase the amount of shoppers you may have. When they see these genuine Mexican websites, they will see your appreciation for them and their culture and will turn into loyalty to your dealership for their next purchase.
Spanish-speaking people make up a large proportion of the population and it is now the best time to make yourself more appealing to that demographic. If you overlook them, you are making a huge mistake. Here at Dealer Lab, we offer Spanish Car Dealer Website Advantages and help create the best Spanish-language website for your dealership. If you have any questions you can contact us at 877-622-2291.
Keys to Effective VDP Pages
It is critical to note that the most important thing to any website for any dealer is the vehicle inventory for many reasons. When people are shopping around for a vehicle, they want something that is easily accessible and very informative without having to look and click around a lot. Most shoppers will make their decisions before stepping foot in a dealership thanks to all the information that is online. That is why it is important to make sure you know the Keys to Effective VDP Pages.
The Importance of Effective VDP Pages
Your VDP are probably the most important part of your website especially when used correctly. They are what draw potential customers in and keeps them there as they look around the vehicles you offer. If you have bad VDP pages, you will lose out on potential customers as they will look elsewhere to get the information they need. Having professional photos, videos, descriptions, and more all help with creating VDP that makes sense.
Keys to an Effective VDP
If you are looking for ways to improve your VDP pages, there are many Keys to Effective VDP Pages that you can follow. At Dealer Lab, we offer innovative responsive designs for VDP including fonts, colors, and more. Calzoncillos Slip Calvin Klein Everything is always double-checked for manufacturer compliance as well. You can create your own pages with us to help make them stand out even more. This design will not only accommodate the branding you want, but also help your customers access the vehicles you have. That is why it is important to make sure your pages are easily accessible. To make them accessible, organization and structure is key. Calvin Klein Underwear Mujer You want the more popular buttons and information noticeable including the make, model, year, color, engine, and more. These are the first things people look for before getting into features. Features should also be organized by technology, safety, mechanical, and more. Having an organized page with plenty of information, pictures, and even videos can easily put you over the top.
Seeking VDP pages all starts with what you want and what customer’s desire. Those are the biggest Keys to Effective VDP Pages. Tendances de la mode We at Dealer Lab have the tools, resources, and knowledge to help you meet your goals. When it comes to effective VDP pages, we at Dealer Lab can help you sell more vehicles. If you have any questions you can view our site or contact us at 877-622-2291.
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Benefits of Reviews for Your Automotive Website
Your website is key when it comes to making a profit or not. If you do not have all the right tools or use them properly, you will not see the kind of results you want. From photos, videos, inventory, and more, everything is just as important. One thing, however, that some dealers do not include that is hurting are reviews. There are so many Benefits of Reviews for Your Automotive Website that you can get which is why it is important you have reviews.
Benefits of Reviews Builds Trust
Thanks to the worldwide internet and Google, finding what you need has never been easier which is why more buyers are refining their buying decisions at home before going out. They can easily search for reviews on cars and on dealers so it is important to include reviews on your site for easy access. Not only can you come up on search engines but people also like accessibility. When you have everything they are looking for in one place, it makes things easier.
It is important to know that by offering reviews, you are building trust. Without posting reviews, some customers may think you have something to hide and will not even bother stopping by or just back out of your site. It is better to put up average reviews than have nothing at all. If you are posting great reviews with other mediocre ones, it shows you have nothing to hide and can build trust. Trust is huge in this business because they don’t want to feel like they are being taking advantage of.
Using Reviews for Your Automotive Website
Besides all of the Benefits of Reviews for Your Automotive Website you can find, it is important to know why you should use them. It is important to know that according to recent surveys, over 90 percent of potential buyers look at reviews online to make sure the local business is good. This means a good chunk of people out there value reviews to help make their choices. Without reviews, most of these potential customers could leave.
Using all your tools available to you on your site, you can improve building potential customers. Know the Benefits of Reviews for Your Automotive Website so you can get the most out of it. We at Dealer Lab can offer our help to get you where you want to be and easily switch your site over to responsive so you can reach out to more potential customers.
Benefits of Mega Menus for Dealer Websites
There are many Benefits of Mega Menus for Dealer Websites that you can be missing out on if you do not have them. Not only do mega menus help with organization, they can improve your SEO as well. That is the biggest available benefit for many different reasons. Not only that, but it helps organize everything. We at Dealer Lab are here to help you out as we offer many different products and services.
Benefits of Mega Menus
When it comes to mega menus, there are tons of things to consider. The first benefit is that mega menus facilitate the display of many options all at once making it easier. Mega menus do not hide options within sub menus like a regular drop down. This way your customers can see every option instead of having to rely on memory. Another benefit to mega menus is that they can use icons and pictures as well as titles where appropriate to make scanning through it easier. These pictures also can add a little extra style to it as well.
One of the biggest benefits includes the fact that they allow for more efficient organization and grouping and support visual emphasis of relationships between items. This will help guide users to the information they are looking for without overwhelming them in tons of different items that they may not be interested in. These are some of the more highly regarded Benefits of Mega Menus for Dealer Websites.
Implementation Mega Menus for Dealer Websites
There are many best practices you can follow that includes crawlability, HTML simplicity, and code placement. These three things are very important to remember when implementing mega menus. There are also some things you should not do as well including using unusual or bad transitions, use inconsistent interactions, overcrowd your menus, and more. These things are some things to stay away from when you want to get the most out of your mega menus.
Overall, there is no better time than now to start implementing mega menus to help make your SEO stand out better. It is about time you start to reap the Benefits of Mega Menus for Dealer Websites. We at Dealer Lab can offer our help to get you where you want to be by selling more used cars.
Optimizing Your Auto Dealer Website
Getting the best website for your dealership is highly important when you want to stay competitive and offer plenty of information for potential customers. When you are thinking about Optimizing Your Auto Dealer Website, there are a lot of things you can add and we at Dealer Lab can help you get there. From having a very informative online inventory to having a pre-approval loan application, there are a lot of different things you can include.
Auto Dealer Website Inventory
The biggest aspect of your website is your online inventory. This is what draws people in and keeps them there so having a good inventory is important. If there are no pics or videos and information that is too hard to find and scattered around, this will easily be a turn off to someone. Your inventory will include photos of your vehicle and it can even feature inventory videos to enhance your website and make it stand out even more. When you want to go into Optimizing Your Auto Dealer Website, this is one huge way to do so.
It is important to make your inventory easily accessible and easy to get around in. That is why your inventory page can include an advanced search option which will allow people to choose exactly what they are looking for from make, model, year all the way down to engine and color options. This way, those who view your site can start to find their ideal vehicle before even contacting you.
Optimizing Your Auto Dealer Website
You can easily customize your own website with us as we will help design something that fits your brand, your vision, and your desires. Mode From designing the home page to the banners, it is all up to you. When it comes to adding other pages to your site to make it more informative, you can have an about me page, a blog with news and vehicle information, SEO, financing page, service page, and more. Including as much about your dealer as possible is key.
There are many different pages and features you can easily add to your website and we can help. Optimizing Your Auto Dealer Website is the number one thing to gain more potential customers. We at Dealer Lab can offer our help to get you where you want to be and easily switch your site over to responsive so you can reach out to more potential customers. If you have any questions, please contact us at 877-622-2291.
Canadian Car Dealer Website Advantages
When you are looking to get the best website for your dealer, we at Dealer Lab can easily help you out. We have many Canadian Car Dealer Website Advantages that will turn your dealership around. There are a lot of advantages and reasons why our Canadian car dealer websites are the best. The advantages that come with Canadian dealer websites includes a lot of things from easy maneuvering to ideal inventory organization.
Why Canadian Car Dealer Websites are Important
We at Dealer Lab offer flexibility and attention to detail when it comes to website platform. The dealerships we help have been successful in doing things that make them stand out in the market and it all starts with your website. If your website does not draw in customers, then you will not have many people stopping by your dealership. If you are wondering how to get people to look at your website, there are many advantages our Canadian sites can do for you.
Canadian Car Dealer Website Advantages
The biggest advantages all starts with what your online inventory on your website can do for you. The more detail you put into it, the more customers you will engage with. The best way to really make your inventory stand out is with photos, videos, and the most important details of the vehicles. If you include videos on your page, you can easily integrate it to other sites including YouTube, Cars.com, and more. It is also important to include inventory management. Our inventory management tool that is included allows you to stay in control of your inventory feed to help import and export pricing and more.
Other Canadian Car Dealer Website Advantages includes responsive or mobile websites. This is huge to help make your website stand out as it helps make it adapt to any device. All Canadian websites we help create include a mobile website as well as they are 100% more mobile adaptive and include most of the features found on the regular mobile websites we do.
Every single one of the Canadian Car Dealer Website Advantages that come with our service will help you easily reach your goals. We at Dealer Lab can help you out as we can set up these pages easily for you as we have knowledgeable individuals that can help you out. If you have any questions, you can contact us at 877-622-2291.
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All Rights Reserved.
Automotive Marketing Errors to Avoid
Making errors happens to everyone as it is inevitable to not make an error sometimes. However, it is highly important that you make sure the errors made are not critical or consistent. There are a lot of Automotive Marketing Errors to Avoid especially when it comes to the online world from social media to your inventory. Making sure these errors are avoided will help make you stand out and more trustworthy as well.
Avoiding Automotive Marketing Errors
Errors are not just like spelling mistakes on descriptions that we all make from time to time but include costly and avoidable things. For example, when it comes to your blogs, inventory, social media page, etc., inconsistency is very bad. If you are not posting enough on your blog, site, or social media page, people will notice which can easily be a turn off. It also shows less engagement and makes you show up lower on the list for searches. That is a lot of bad that comes with that one mistake. That is why it is important to make sure you are consistent with everything you do.
Another error to avoid is when you are ignoring your audience in general. If you are not giving them what they desire or are taking too long to respond to a question, it shows that you just don’t care about their business making them go elsewhere. This is one of the more important Automotive Marketing Errors to Avoid. This includes anywhere from not answering their questions quickly enough to not including the information they seek on your online inventory. Have descriptive VDPs, answer any questions in a timely manner, focus on what the customer wants and is looking for.
Benefits to Avoiding Errors
Making errors like the ones mentioned can easily harm your marketing strategy and you can also lose potential customers. Consistency and tailoring to customer needs shows you care about their business and are willing to go that extra mile. It also helps you stay high up the list on search engines as well.
Overall, seeking the very best for your dealership all starts with these Automotive Marketing Errors to Avoid. Once you master avoiding them, you will easily see an increase. We at Dealer Lab can offer our help to get you where you want to be and we can easily switch your site over to responsive so you can reach out to more potential customers. If you have any questions, please contact us at 877-622-2291.
Improve Leads on Your Dealer Site with Credit Applications
If you have an online website for your dealer, there are a lot of different things you can put on it to make it stand out, be beneficial to potential customers, and bring in more profit. Besides the obvious inventory, one thing you should have on your site is an easy credit application. You can easily Improve Leads on Your Dealer Site with Credit Applications as it makes it easier for everyone. We at Dealer Lab can help you improve with a simple change.
Benefits of Credit Applications
There are many benefits you can get from having a credit application on your site. First, this gives the customer an extra choice to see if they can pre-qualify for a loan on their own time. They can easily fill out this form whenever they like during their own time. This just makes it easier for them to decide. After the application is filled out, when they stop in, it will also make the process a little shorter as well. These time saving benefits for the customer is exactly what they desire and can make things easier for them. These benefits make it possible to Improve Leads on Your Dealer Site with Credit Applications.
Tips for Credit Applications
If you have a credit application on your website or thinking about adding it, there are some tips to follow to make sure it stand out and is useful. First, the application process must be secure. In addition to privacy laws, knowing that their information is secure will double the response rate and will make things easier for you. You also only want to ask for the minimum needed on the application with around ten input boxes and questions. SO many people start filling it out and then leave without finishing. Ropa Interior Calvin Klein Barata Keeping it short and simple will allow them to finish to get pre-approved. The credit application should also be just one click away from the home page. You want to make its access easy to find and approachable. Another tip is you will want to send an automated thank you email to the email address they gave. Comprar Bragas Calvin Klein This will show them that their information was successfully submitted and that you will reach out to them shortly. If you are looking for more benefits for your site, you can easily Improve Leads on Your Dealer Site with Credit Applications. This is one addition that you should have no matter. We at Dealer Lab can offer our help to get you where you want to be and easily switch your site over to responsive so you can reach out to more potential customers.
Keys to Effective Auto Dealer Credit Applications
Your website is your biggest tool for marketing, getting information out there, and more. There are many different tools you can use on your site to help make it stand out above the rest. One of them is having a credit application that people can fill out to become pre-approved. There are many benefits to having this on your site. If you already have it or are thinking about getting this tool, there are many Keys to Effective Auto Dealer Credit Applications that you should follow to get the most from it.
Keys to Effective Credit Applications
When you are using many different features for your website, the credit application can play a big role and there are many Keys to Effective Auto Dealer Credit Applications to follow for having it be successful. Some people might not trust the application with their information getting out. That is why in order to have an effective credit application, it has to be secure. Not just because of privacy laws, but to help build trust between the customer and your dealership. Showing that it is secure and using a secure web link is key.
Another one of the Keys to Effective Auto Dealer Credit Applications is accessibility. Your application must be within just one click from the homepage. This makes the process easy and fast for everyone. The button should be easily noticeable as well. No one wants to have to search for it when easy accessible pages and information is what they desire. The credit application also should only require the minimal information needed for a pre-approval credit application. Keep it to just one page or screen if you can with ten or fewer input boxes. Finally, sending at least an automated thank you message in email is important because it acts as a confirmation. Have a trained, motivated person contact them next as well.
Benefits to Auto Dealer Credit Applications
There are many different benefits you can get form these credit applications including giving people options. Having your inventory online is a great way to reel people in but once they find a vehicle they would be interested, they then can fill out the application to see if they qualify on their own time. This will generate more possible sales and more interested people.
Having a credit application on your site is highly important. Following these Keys to Effective Auto Dealer Credit Applications will make it stand out even more. We at Dealer Lab can offer our help to get you where you want to be and easily switch your site over to responsive so you can reach out to more potential customers. If you have any questions, please contact us at 877-622-2291.
Effective Use of VDP Pages for Automotive Websites
There are many tips you can follow to help with Effective Use of VDP Pages for Automotive Websites. VDP is always important, as these pages help you generate leads to your site. Without them, you will not see the results you are hoping to find.
Using VDP Pages for Automotive Websites
The more your car shoppers can engage with your VDPs, the faster your cars will sell. Results show that the more average views you get, the faster the vehicle will move. You may be wondering how vehicle details pages have such an impact on your site and your sales. This is because VDP views and time spent on them are two of the top four online sales predictors. Studies conducted show vehicle detail pages with more than thirty views spend 44% less time on your lot, while VDPs with around 20 spend only 29% less time on your lot. Basically, the more views you have, the faster you can move vehicles, and turn around rate on your automotive website is of the utmost importance and priority, especially when converting leads to sales.
Effective VDP Pages for Automotive Websites
If you are in need of adding more or improving your current VDPs, we at Dealer Lab can easily help you out. Effective Use of VDP Pages for Automotive Websites all starts with what is on your pages. If you have VDPs, make sure they are being used in the best way possible. Some tips you can use include having professional photos and not stock photos, vehicle details and installed options, pricing, and most importantly, the addition of videos. Videos can be a huge addition as you will generate better search results and can use them for YouTube and provide links from there to your site. There are also other things you can include like trade value links, and more to show people they can trade in a vehicle for another.
Finding the best way to get the message out all starts with VDPs and go from there. Effective Use of VDP Pages for Automotive Websites is how you can easily generate more leads, and therefore, sell more vehicles. We at Dealer Lab can offer our help to get you where you want to be and easily switch your site over to responsive so you can reach out to more potential customers. If you have any questions, please contact us at 877-622-2291.
© Copyright Content Motive, 2016.
All Rights Reserved.
Video personalization
Automotive home page personalization systems:
We recently added a new code that will make the websites display individual vehicle videos in the home page based on previous consumer click path. All the websites used are DealerEProcess responsive (RESS: Responsive Design + Server Side components), therefore the system works on all devices (desktop, mobile, and tablet).
Because we have certain limitations to the design; it is recommended to have a top menu and must have a banner area on the top as a design for OEM compliance in most cases, the personalized videos will show on the 3rd tier. Not the best place, I really would love them to be above the fold, but it is a start. Unlike other systems like Amazon where the SERP is based not only on browsing but also on account information, there is a limitation on product suggestion. There is also a limitation on product similarity suggestion, for example what vehicle is similar to a BMW M3 if you are not a BMW store and that is the only one you have.
Our goal was to offer at least one area of the website, specially in the home page, where the system could offer a dynamic area that will be different to every returning customer.
You can see how it works at Gillespie Ford. Navigate to the inventory, click on several units, exit the website. Come back to the site and once you scroll down a little bit you will see videos preloading based on the vehicles that you searched. Note: This is a live site, so please respect the dealer and don’t send fake leads.
Below are video view numbers from 6 websites (one of them didn’t have videos previously). All of them increased video views once the new personalization code was added.
video views automotive
While the system is simple it did help increase VDP and video views.
The system is free in all our RESS websites (yes, there is someone out there still in an adaptive platform…) but you must have a video program that we can use to show the inventory in the home page.
Did this increased sales:
I don’t know how to make a correlation between a few hundred more inventory views and an increase in sales, but everything on digital media is problematic in that sense because the gains and very small in percentage for each improvement. Is the addition of all these at the end of a quarter that increases your views by thousands that can then be measured.
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How Can Responsive Design Help Your Auto Dealer Website?
If your site has not gone responsive, you are missing out on a lot of benefits that can help your dealership gain more momentum and more potential customers. This is why you need to ask, How Can Responsive Design Help Your Auto Dealer Website? There are many benefits that come with a responsive site and switching over doesn’t take much as we at Dealer Lab can easily help you get the results you seek.
How Responsive Designed Sites Work
If you do not know what a “responsive” site is, it is best to get a full understanding of what that means to know the benefits that come along with it. These sites are normal designed websites except they can adapt to any device including a mobile phone and tablet. That means that nothing is stretched, missing, etc. when the page loads onto a smaller or larger than normal screen. However, because of this, they may take a little longer to load but that is because the site is trying to adapt to the device it is being loaded on. Now you may be asking, How Can Responsive Design Help Your Auto Dealer Website? That is a good question and there are many benefits that answer it.
Many Benefits to Responsive Websites
Since responsive websites can adapt to any device, it allows full range no matter what the customer may be using to view your site. This is important because nowadays more and more people are using tablets and even their phones to search for vehicles and check email. Customers want easy, accessible, and informative pages when looking at buying a new car. If your site does not load correctly and have trouble navigating, they will easily walk away and check out another dealer’s site. You can lose potential customers by not going responsive. People check their email on their phones more often than computers now so if you send email campaigns out and there are links in it that take them directly to your site, it will load for them precisely the way you want. Now is the time to be mobile friendly.
There are a lot of answers that come with the question, How Can Responsive Design Help Your Auto Dealer Website? Make your site presentable across all platforms. We at Dealer Lab can offer our help to get you where you want to be and easily switch your site over to responsive so you can reach out to more potential customers. If you have any questions, please contact us at 877-622-2291.
Benefits of Custom Dealer Websites
Custom websites are always beneficial in many ways as you can make them your own to fit your brand, goals, and desires. Also, making your site clean, accessible, and informative is very important. We at Dealer Lab can help you create your ideal dealership website as our professionals can offer tips and tricks to help make it one of the best. There are many Benefits of Custom Dealer Websites that can make your dealer stand out from the crowd.
Benefits of Custom Websites
The Benefits of Custom Dealer Websites offer the things you desire the most for your dealership. You can draw the attention from potential customers with a slick and accessible website that is highly informative. When you get a custom website, you can easily do what you please with help from us. Choose your color scheme that matches your brand, choose the font, photos, links, and more that all go on your site. A clean and easily accessible site is what customers seek for when they shop online.
There are many things you can add to your website as well to help make your dealership stand out more. This includes inventory video integration, search engine optimization, pricing options, and more. With these useful tools added to your custom website, you can make it stand out even more than before. Video integration can help enhance your website to make it stand out and search engine optimization helps get you the highest rankings on search engines.
Features of Custom Dealer Websites
When we help you create your custom website, there are a lot of features you can add to your site that helps make it truly unique. There are many different aspects of a website including different pages covering the different services you offer. Not to mention the most important, the inventory page. This inventory page can include advanced searches allowing customers to search exactly what they are looking for. These sorting functions on the inventory page can help them find the most powerful truck or luxury sedan in seconds by sorting.
All of these Benefits of Custom Dealer Websites are designed to help your dealership stand out more with an inventory that is desirable. Use these features to help make your website one that people will love to browse. We at Dealer Lab can offer our help to get you where you want to be and help you design the perfect website for your business. If you have any questions, please contact us at 877-622-2291.
© Copyright Content Motive, 2016.
All Rights Reserved. | Quality dealer content by Content Motive
Better SEO with Mega Menus
Having SEO on your site is highly important as it helps draw attention to search engines and brings people over to your site. However, if your SEO is unorganized and hard to find on the site, it will not generate as many leads as you want. That is why you can get Better SEO with Mega Menus. Mega Menus help organize your SEO and make them easily accessible which ups their quality factor for search engines. If you have SEO and no mega menu or vice versa, it is time to add both.
Benefits to SEO with Mega Menus
Websites are becoming more and more “mobile-first” making them easily accessible to mobile devices and having mega menus can help with that organization. That makes sites easily convert from desktop format to mobile format and stay easily accessible. With mega menus, you can still access all of your SEO with ease. The biggest thing about mega menus is not just organization, they also help with quality of your SEO. Having better quality SEO will help them show up better in search results and make getting around your site a lot easier.
Best Practices with Mega Menus
There are a few things to keep in mind when it comes to Better SEO with Mega Menus and best practices. Three things you want to consider for mega menus includes crawlability, code order placement, and HTML simplicity. You want to include your mega menu in the HTML after the main body content to get better recognition on Google.
When it comes to mega menus, it is important to know all of your categories as naming each category is also essential. Deciding on how many you need to include and what depth each potential category requires, you need to think about your SEO first. Having too little, or too much, SEO in each category can cause problems. Having a diverse range of naturally built links accumulated, no paid links, etc. then you have plenty of depth.
Knowing how important mega menus are can help establish your site even more. You will easily get Better SEO with Mega Menus which will lead to better search results and happier potential customers. We at Dealer Lab can offer our help to get you where you want to be and easily switch your site over to responsive so you can reach out to more potential customers. If you have any questions, please contact us at 877-622-2291.
© Copyright Content Motive, 2016.
All Rights Reserved. | Article by Content Motive
Modernize Your Dealer Website with Responsive Design
Keeping up with the times is always important when it comes to marketing anything. That is why it is important to make sure you Modernize Your Dealer Website with Responsive Design. One of the biggest ways you can stay up to date is by having a responsive site design. There are many benefits that come with having a responsive design including having your site be highly adaptive to many different devices which comes off more organized. Organization is another big factor when drawing in people to your site.
Benefits of a Responsive Design
There are many different advantages and benefits that come with having a responsive designed site. The biggest is that you will Modernize Your Dealer Website with Responsive Design. Staying up with the times is highly important. What responsive sites do is they allow your sight to adapt to any device from a desktop computer to a phone and tablet. This way, no matter what, your site will look crisp and can easily be navigated. Without a responsive site, it will not transfer over from a desktop layout to a phone layout very well which can cut off buttons, make everything unorganized, and all around not adaptable. If you are looking for a clean, crisp site, going responsive will easily help you do that no matter what device someone is using.
Why Getting a Responsive Design Site is Important
Besides the benefits that come with a responsive site, there are also many reasons why having a responsive sight is important in today’s society. First, it is important to know that most car shopping is done online and is done on multiple devices. There are a lot of people out there who use their phone to look for a car quickly and if your site can’t adapt to the screen for a clean layout, they will quickly go somewhere else and you will lose potential customers. Current statistics show the number is growing and will continue to grow with the amount of power tablets and phones now have and will have in the future.
We at Dealer Lab can easily Modernize Your Dealer Website with Responsive Design. It doesn’t take long and it involves a simple switch. Our team here at Dealer Lab can offer you help to get you where you want to be and easily switch your site over to responsive so you can reach out to more potential customers. If you have any questions, please contact us at 877-622-2291.
© Copyright Content Motive, 2016.
All Rights Reserved. | Quality content by Content Motive
How Responsive Web Design Can Benefit Your Dealership
To make your dealership stand out even more to get more customers, there are many different things you can consider as you constantly need to be doing new things to stay up with the game. One of these additions is having responsive websites. These designed sites give you more ideas on How Responsive Web Design Can Benefit Your Dealership. They are a little different than non-responsive sites in one major way. If your site is not yet responsive, here are a few reasons as to why you may want to switch over as soon as possible.
How Responsive Websites Work
First, you may be wondering how responsive sites work exactly. It is very simple. These sites are like normal designed sites except they can adapt to any device someone may be using including tablet or phone. However, because of this, they may take a little longer to load but that is because the site is trying to adapt to the device it is being loaded on. You may be wondering How Responsive Web Design Can Benefit Your Dealership as there as many advantages to these sites.
Benefits to Responsive Web Design
Since responsive sights can adapt to any device, it allows full range no matter what the customer may be using to view your site. This is important because nowadays more and more people are using tablets and even their phones to surf the web. Customers want easy, accessible, and informative pages when looking at buying a new car. If they happen to use their tablet to search for something and end up on your site that is not currently responsive, your site will not load correctly making it more difficult for them to maneuver around. This will make them walk away from your dealer almost immediately.
Another benefit to know about is how often people use their phones. The number one thing people use their phone for is also checking their email. If you have an email campaign or they asked to subscribe to your email. If there is a link in the email they want to click on right away, it will take them to your site and if it is not mobile friendly, they will become turned off right away.
When it comes to making things easier for your potential customers, it is important to know How Responsive Web Design Can Benefit Your Dealership as well as your customers. We at Dealer Lab can offer our help to get you where you want to be and easily switch your site over to responsive so you can reach out to more potential customers. If you have any questions, please contact us at 877-622-2291.
© Copyright Content Motive, 2016.
All Rights Reserved. | Optimized for auto dealers by Content Motive
Modernize Your Dealership's Online Marketing
It is always important to keep up with the times of the modern world. Especially when it comes to being in the automotive business. If you are still stuck a few years ago, there is probably new software, technology, or strategies you may be unaware of that you should know about. That is why it is important to remember to Modernize Your Dealership’s Online Marketing if you haven’t yet. Staying on top of things is key to help keep selling vehicles.
Why You Should Modernize
There are many reasons as why you should modernize as well signs that you need to in general. The first big thing is that technology is becoming bigger and bigger for the automotive industry. More and more companies are investing in technology businesses entering the auto industry. Some of the technology involved helps with maintaining your inventory. Inventory is very important to keep track of and there is a lot of new software that makes it easier.
Another thing to help Modernize Your Dealership’s Online Marketing is know that demographics are always constantly changing as well. Millennials are growing up and becoming a huge part of the automotive world. They also make up close to thirty percent of the average dealership workforce. The biggest thing to know is that the traditional dealership model is giving way to bigger change with today’s society.
How to Modernize Your Dealership’s Online Marketing
It is easy to start modernizing your dealership. The biggest thing is to make sure you get the right people working at your location. High turnover is an issue in today’s society. In order to help cut this problem down, you can easily follow these tips. When hiring a manager, make sure they are up to date with your dealership and the technology as hiring the wrong one can send you back a few months which will create problems. Technology is the biggest thing that dealerships are changing to and it is important having employees that can adapt.
Overall, when you are looking to Modernize Your Dealership’s Online Marketing, follow these rules and general tips. It is important to stay on top of society so you can be one step ahead. Here at Dealer lab we can easily help you modernize your marketing. We have professionals who stay up to date with everything. You can easily contact us at 877-622-2291 if you have any questions or would like help to modernize.
© Copyright Content Motive, 2016.
All Rights Reserved. | Automotive content by Content Motive
Tips to Improve Your Dealership Website
Your biggest tool when it comes to your dealership and getting people to stop in is your website. If your website is not user friendly, easily accessible, informative, and more, then your website could possible turn people away from your dealership. There are many Tips to Improve Your Dealership Website that you can take into account including some that will give you an instant increase.
Improve Your Dealership Website
There are many Tips to Improve Your Dealership Website that you can follow to increase traffic and sales. Your website should be well designed, informative, and have it well maintained. Make it unique as well. Another tip is to always double or even triple check what goes up on your site. Errors that make it to your site can look unprofessional and lack of tur interest. Hire a copywriter to help out or even a third party to help maintain it. It will be money well spent.
That is just the beginning as there are many other things you can do as well. For example, it is important that you only give the facts. Sticking with the facts of what you sell is successful for your product as any superfluous information is not necessary and is considered clutter. Finally, have clear cut perspective of what you are trying to sell. Ask yourself, what is the objective of the site?
Audience for Your Dealership Website
One of the biggest changes you can make to your website, if you have not, is changing it to responsive. Responsive websites can adapt to screen size to make it more user friendly no matter what device they are using. In today’s society, more and more people are going online using their phones or tablets which are smaller screens than a computer. If your site is not mobile friendly, it would make it very difficult for the customer to navigate through your site. That is where responsive comes into play as they can make it friendly no matter what screen you use.
If you follow these Tips to Improve Your Dealership Website, you will see an increase in traffic to your site, which in turn, will generate more profit. You website is your number one tool so use it wisely. We at Dealer Lab can easily help you improve your website as well as help build one. If you have any questions, you can contact us at 877-622-2291. We provide many different products to help improve your website, your dealership, and more.
Credit Application for Your Dealership Website
Some dealers may not think having a Credit Application For Your Dealership Website is important but in fact, it is very important. There are many reasons as to why having an application or consultant to help fill out the form on your site is important. There are many benefits that you can come across and getting an application page put it in is very easy as well. We at Dealer Lab can help you find the right tools for your site.
Benefits to a Credit Application
If you are a special finance dealer or a BHBH dealer, then it is especially important that your website has an online credit application. If you do not have one, you could be wasting more money than you think. When you offer a credit application online, you are giving possible customers the ability to do something when they can as the application can be accessed at any time. Giving someone the gift of time is great plus, it will make the process quicker for them once they decide to stop in.
Credit Application for Your Dealership Website
It is easy to get a Credit Application For Your Dealership Website as well. All you have to do is contact us at Dealer lab and we can help you out. There are some things to follow when getting a pre-approval application on your site. First, it has to be secure. This is key when it comes to trust and it has to follow privacy and identity protection issues. Also, it is important that they can get to the application in just one click instead of going on a hunt to find it.
Since this is a pre-approval application, you want to ask for the bare minimum that you need on the credit application. This is because over seventy percent of online applications are never fully completed because they either take too long or are too difficult to complete and without anyone around to help, they can easily just back out. That is why it is important to keep it quick and simple. Once they do complete it, send them a confirmation, thank you email as this acts like a receipt to show them you got it.
Overall, it is very important to know that having a Credit Application For Your Dealership Website is a very smart thing to have as it can easily draw more customers in. If you don’t, you may be losing tons of possible customers and sales. We at Dealer Lab can help you out as we can set up these pages easily for you as we have knowledgeable individuals that can help you out. If you have any questions, you can contact us at 877-622-2291.
How to Manage Your Dealership Website
Your dealership website is very important as it is your main “weapon” when it comes to attacking the industry and gaining not only sales, but leads and popularity as well. That is why it is very important to know exactly How to Manage Your Dealership Website. If you do it well, you will gain many new leads as well as new customers. Your website is the tool you have to get people to stop at your dealership which is why it is so important.
Managing Your Dealership Website
First, it is important to know why you should manage your dealership website to the best of your ability. The biggest reason is because, in today’s society, most people research online before they make their decision. They can get all the information they desire on the internet including your website. The more vehicle information you have, the better the chance they will call for more information or stop in. When it comes to How to Manage Your Dealership Website, there are a lot of tips.
How to Manage Your Dealership Website
If your site is not function in the best way it can, there are many things you can do to try and improve your outcomes. First, it is important to stay up-to-date with changes in Google’s algorithm. It requires a huge toolkit of technical abilities that most people may not have. That is why it is important to have a team of experts to handle this for you. Dedicated technical experts that can assist you with your site who have experience in car sales can be an enormous benefit.
Another key tip is to know that most of your potential customers are not just using a computer to view your site. They are also using their phones, tablets, and even readers as well. That is why it is important to make sure your site is “device friendly”. This type of site is called Responsive and if you have yet to go responsive, it something to look into. Finally, offering a real-time chat option on your site is great as customers can quickly contact someone if they have any questions about any vehicle.
Overall, if you are in need of help when it comes to How to Manage Your Dealership Website, we at Dealer Lab can easily help you out. We have the expertise you seek that can easily help push your website into the type of lead generating machine you desire. We can easily be contacted at 877-622-2291 if you have any questions.
Why Your Dealership Site Should Go With A Responsive Design
There are a couple different sites out there that offer different advantages however there is one type of site that offers one of the biggest advantages. This type of website is called responsive and there are many different reasons as to Why Your Dealership Site Should Go with a Responsive Design. The biggest is that, in today’s market, it can help you increase sales, leads, and customers.
What is a Responsive Site
Responsive sites are one the biggest and best thing you can do with your website. In today’s society, more and more people are using their phones and tablets to check emails, surf the net, read reviews, etc. That is where responsive sites come into play. They can automatic detect what kind of device the user is on when they go to your site which then allows the responsive site to load correctly and be more user friendly depending on the device.
How the site does this is go through many codes to detect what device you are on and then the site can load accordingly. This does, however, create slower load times but the difference is minimal and is worth it to not get a broken site. There are many reasons as to Why Your Dealership Site Should Go with a Responsive Design.
Advantages to a Responsive Design
There are many advantages you can get with a responsive site design. The biggest advantage is that your site can be easily read by anyone from anywhere no matter the device they be using. If your site was not mobile phone friendly for example, then your site will look broken and be tough to navigate around as they look at cars which is a big turn off to customers.
When people shop for vehicles they like a quick and easy process with all the information right in front of them. Plus, if you have an email campaign or a YouTube channel with links to your site, more often people might be on their phones when they click on those links so it is best that your site to mobile friendly.
There are many reasons as to why going responsive can help you but mostly it is the best way to make things easier for your customers who view your site from many devices which is Why Your Dealership Site Should Go with a Responsive Design. Here at Dealer Lab we can help you increase your VDP with tips, tricks, and software to help generate more views which lead to more sales. If you have any questions you can contact us at 877-622-2291. We are here to help you.
How Reviews Help Your Dealer Website
Today, more and more people are refining their purchasing decisions from the comforts of their home as they use web-based tools and resources. This includes using google, going to the site, and reading reviews. That is How Reviews Help Your Dealer Website since more and more people make decisions at home before going out to the dealer.
Why Reviews for Your Dealer?
First, there are many things to consider when it comes to reviews. The number of people who regularly, or at least, occasionally, has increased significantly in the past five years. It has gone from 71% to a whopping 92% of people who now read online reviews at least occasionally or all the time. Out of all those people, about 40% of consumers form an opinion just by reading one to three or so reviews.
All reviews must be written within a month or so for it to be relevant. A review that was posted six months ago may not have the same effect as one that was written within the last couple weeks. When it comes to thinking about How Reviews Help Your Dealer Website always put yourself in a consumer shoes and ask, what would they do? Another big fact is that most consumers say positive reviews make them trust a business more.
How Reviews Help Your Dealer Website
Now, you may wonder how this benefits your dealership. The increase of consumers who use reviews should be enough to sway most dealers to take full advantage of reviews. If you get reviews out there based on your dealer, you will draw more attention from consumers to check you out for their next vehicle purchase. Besides reviews, word of mouth is one of the biggest, and free, advertising techniques you want.
With 92% of people looking at reviews, it is smart to post those reviews directly on your dealer site. This will increase SEO value, improve conversion rates, and customers may start to build trust. There are many reasons as to why reviews n your site can overall help you out.
There are many reviews out there on the internet but they can easily be found with a simple search. How Reviews Help Your Dealer Website can ultimately make or break your business. That is why we at Dealer Lab want to help you post and get the reviews up for you. If you have any questions, you can contact us at 877-622-2291 or through our website.
Why VDP Views Matter For Your Dealership Website
If you think VDP views and exposure is not that essential to your sales, think again. The more your customers engage with your Vehicle Details Pages, the quicker your cars will move. That is Why VDP Views Matter For Your Dealership Website. You may wonder what the best ways to increase your VDP are and there are many different tricks you can do that.
How to Boost VDP
First, it is important to know what VDP is and how to boost it. The responsive VDP is 100% customizable from colors to fonts to match your branding style. You can add images, videos, and more to spark interest. The best thing to boost your VDP is by adding videos. People love images and they like videos even more. It can give them even more information about the vehicle. If a page is too “wordy”, it could be a turn off. Boosting your VDP is important because there are many reasons to show Why VDP Views Matter For Your Dealership Website.
Why VDP Views Matter For Your Dealership Website
A study was conducted to see how important VDP really is. VDP views and time spent on them are two of the top four online sales predictors. This means that the better your VDPs are, the better the chance you will sell the vehicle. Another key fact about VDPs is that if you get 20-30 page views, vehicles will spend 29% less time on the lot while more than 30 views spend 44% less time on the lot. That means, the more page views it has, the less time the vehicle will be on your lot and the number one rule is always have moving inventory.
Now you can start to see Why VDP Views Matter For Your Dealership Website. Ultimately, the more VDPs, the more sales. Having vehicles spending less time on your lot is the number one goal. Information and content is always important which is why it can really give you an increase.
When your main goal is to move vehicles, VDP is very important. That is Why VDP Views Matter For Your Dealership Website. Here at Dealer Lab we can help you increase your VDP with tips, tricks, and software to help generate more views which lead to more sales. If you have any questions you can contact us at 877-622-2291. We are here to help you.
Increase Clicks & Conversions On Your Car Dealership Website
Of course, when you have a website for your car dealership, you want visitors and clicks to help gain more customers. There are many things you can do that will attract shoppers but also there are many things you can do that will scare them away. You can easily Increase Clicks & Conversions On Your Car Dealership Website by following some simple steps that will improve your relationship with the customers and shoppers you seek.
Why Increasing Clicks & Conversions is Important
If there are things on your sight that are turn offs to shoppers, they will begin to click away and go somewhere else. That is why it is important that your site is what customers are looking for so they can get around with ease and has all the right information. There are some key practices you can follow that will Increase Clicks & Conversions On Your Car Dealership Website which in turn will increase shoppers and overall profit.
Keys to Increase Clicks & Conversions on Your Car Dealership Website
Believe it or not, filtering vehicles by color is highly important to customers. Most people who shop for vehicles filter color before they filter by price, possible rebates, engine, etc. They wanted to see the actual color of the vehicles you have listed before anything. That is just another reason why having professional photos up is very important. Never use stock photos as they do not accurately depict the vehicle you are trying to sell.
The next thing you can do to help shoppers is to actually help them find the vehicle they want. Very few people may not know the model names of vehicles they are interested in. This is one problem that is easily solvable by adding a category where your customers can filter through the different categories of vehicles you sell. Finally, most customers can be confused about why there are options to get price quotes or fill out a finance application this early in the stage of vehicle browsing. Too many options around the vehicle can be clutter and distracting so limit what is there.
Overall, if you follow these simple guidelines, you will easily Increase Clicks & Conversions On Your Car Dealership Website in more ways than one. By giving shoppers what they want and are looking for, you are also increasing your accountability and profit. We at Dealer Lab can help you build your site as well as help it make it more appealing to gain more clicks and viewers. If you have any questions, you can contact us at 877-622-2291 or visit us online.
Responsive Dealer Website vs. Adaptive Dealer Website
When you are trying to make the best site possible, it is important to know that there are a few different types of sites out there. Two of the most popular sites used for dealers is a responsive site and an adaptive site. You may wonder what Responsive Dealer Website vs. Adaptive Dealer Website offer you and the answer is simple. Each type of site has a different approach so it all depends on what works best for your strategy and dealership.
Responsive Dealer Website
There are many advantages to responsive websites but the amount of advantages depends on how well it fits with you. The biggest differences that responsive has is that it is a single template that is fluid and can easily change to fit any screen. This means that the site will change itself and look different depending on if you are looking at it on a phone, tablet, or computer. This is to make sure that your site stays organized and professional looking no matter what.
However, because you use one template that fits any screen, it may take a little longer for the page to load. Just because it has one template does not make responsive sites harder to use with SEO strategies. You do not have to decide between the two different sites as well as combination of the two might work as well. Overall, a well-designed multi-screen strategy needs to focus on what really matters the most in creating great mobile experiences.
Adaptive Dealer Website
When talking about Responsive Dealer Website vs. Adaptive Dealer Website, adaptive sites have their advantages too. For example, even though there are distinct templates for computer, tablet, and smartphone screens, these sites load faster as it does not have to use one template to change. It is also very supportive of SEO strategies and makes it easier.
Now you know the advantages and disadvantages to the biggest website types, the next thing to do is to decide which one is better for you: Responsive Dealer Website vs. Adaptive Dealer Website. We at Dealer Lab strive in this area and can easily help you decide which site is better for your dealership. We offer plenty of different products as well including custom dealer websites and more. If you have any questions, you can contact us at 877-622-2291 as we are happy to help.
Best Automotive Websites
When it comes to your dealership’s performance, it can easily come down to the performance of your website. Having a great website can make it easier for customers to maneuver around allowing them to view some of the vehicles you have in stock as well as the other services you may offer. That is why having one of the Best Automotive Websites out there is very important. Here are some things you can do to get improvement.
What Makes Automotive Websites
There are many things that can make a website great. The biggest thing about a great website is that they are usually visually-oriented that can create a great atmosphere for buyers. More often than not, most people will either call or view your website before coming in to your dealership. First impressions are huge and usually your site is that first impression. There are many different things and products you can use to improve your website overall.
Examples of Best Automotive Websites
Here at Dealer Lab, our goal is to help create the best overall website for your dealer. Visuals are very important which is why when you list your inventory online, having photos of the vehicle is so important. Never use just stock photos especially for used vehicles. The more photos of the vehicle you have, the better. This includes, the interior, exterior, and even some of the features. You can take things a step further by also adding video inventory. The Best Automotive Websites usually always have plenty of photos and details on the vehicles in their inventory.
Knowing if your site is friendly on any device is also very important. Statistics show that more and more people access their email on their phones. This could include a link to your site and if it is not mobile friendly, it will not load properly and look unprofessional and confusing. That is why responsive sites are very important as they can mold to any device someone might use including a phone or tablet.
There are many different ways you can improve your website to help bring in more customers. When you want to increase sales, one place you should look at for improvement is your site. We at Dealer lab can help you with getting one of the Best Automotive Websites as we offer many different products including responsive sites, photo reps, software, and more. If you have any questions you can view our site or contact us at 877-622-2291.
Is Your Dealership Website Mobile Friendly?
When it comes to your website for your dealership, there are many things you can look for to make it better. There is one thing you should ask, Is Your Dealership Website Mobile Friendly? This question is very important because there are many advantages you can get from having your website mobile friendly. It is important to know if your site is mobile friendly and if it is not, how to make it mobile friendly. Here at Dealer Lab we can help make sure you get the most from your site.
Advantages to Website Mobile Friendly
There are many advantages you can get from having a mobile friendly site. When you allow your site to be seen and accessed on multiple devices, you can increase the amount of viewers. More and more people nowadays access their email from their phones. Links can take them to your website and if it is not mobile friendly, your customers can be turned away as it will be hard to move around the site with ease.
Another advantage is you can stay on top of Google in searches to make your site stand out more. The biggest thing Google is doing to make sure people get the best web experience which is exactly what mobile friendly sites offer. You will no longer have to worry about the question, Is Your Dealership Website Mobile Friendly?
Is Your Dealership Website Mobile Friendly
There are many ways you can test your sites mobile friendliness. One of the best and easiest ways to test your site is by visiting Google’s mobile friendly test URL here. It will analyze the URL to your site and tell you if it is friendly or not. If it is not friendly, Google will tell why it is not and how you can make it friendly. That is where Dealer Lab can come into play. We specialize in making sites mobile friendly so you do not have to worry about how to go about it.
When you are needing a site that can touch on every base, a mobile friendly site can do exactly that. When you want to know, “ Is Your Dealership Website Mobile Friendly?” all of these tools are important in order to check that. Make sure it you site is mobile friendly as you will not only gain leads but sell more vehicles as well. All of these advantages can easily improve the leads you get on your site and makes it friendly for your consumer base.
How to Generate More VDP Views
If you are stuck on How to Generate More VDP Views, there are tons of things you can do to try and push it along. There are many different ways you can increase the views as most customers will go to the Vehicle Details Page to find a description of the vehicle. There are also many things you should not do as well that can turn people away from these pages.
How to Generate More VDP Views
There are many things you can do to improve people going to your site and VDP views. The first thing is of course photos. This one is obvious as the more photos you have, the better. Not just any photos, real photos of the exterior and interior of the vehicle. Do not use stock photos for used vehicles and instead take the pictures yourself or hire someone to do it. Real pictures gives the customer a real look at the vehicle they are viewing and chances are they will want to stop in.
Once you are done taking pictures of everything from the back seat, passenger side, and more, the next thing you should look into is seeing the history of the vehicle. If a customer cannot see the history of the vehicle it will create frustration and is very important. Potential buyers need to know if they can afford the maintenance of the vehicle if needed as well as the price of it. These are just a couple things on How to Generate More VDP Views.
Generate More VDP Views with the Price
Posting the price of the vehicle is not an option as it is a must if you want people to view your page and vehicles. By making people call for a price or jump through extra hoops will just aggravate everyone who wants to know. They need to know how much it will cost to see if it will fit their budget and may be the first thing they look for to make sure that it does fit the budget before they look at the description of it.
Of course, listing the features is also important as customers want to know what comes in it. Overall, knowing these simple things can easily get you more views. When it comes to How to Generate More VDP Views, we at Dealer Lab can help you sell more vehicles. If you have any questions you can view our site or contact us at 877-622-2291.
Why Having a Mobile-Friendly Site Is Important
When you have a website, it is important to make sure it can reach out to the most people possible as that is ultimately the overall goal when it comes to advertising. There are many reasons as to Why Having a Mobile-Friendly Site Is Important, including five top reasons that can easily change your mind about how they work. When you want to get the message out about your product or service on your website, having it mobile-friendly may be the best way to go and here is why.
Benefits to a Mobile-Friendly Site
When your site is optimized for mobile phones, it greatly enhances the user experience and it makes it easier for them to navigate around. If your site is not mobile friendly, it will be a huge turn off to most people as it will not only look bad but be almost impossible to navigate. Mobile sites are also compatible with multiple types of device and not just phones including tablets and laptops.
When you look at the statics about what devices are used to go to sites or read emails, you may be surprised to notice that more people use a phone or tablet to open up emails. Reading and sending emails from your phone has never been easier so most people may use a link from an email to go to a site. That is Why Having a Mobile-Friendly Site Is Important in multiple ways.
How a Mobile-Friendly Site Works
If you offer a service that includes phones, the internet, marketing, etc., then having a mobile friendly site may be important to show your customers your knowledge. There are multiple ways to go about getting a mobile-friendly site and one of them is making your site either responsive or adaptive. Responsive websites uses software to detect what device is being used to open up the website so that it can format it correctly making it easy to use. It is that simple to get a mobile friendly site and you do not have to do anything.
Overall, it is impeccable to know Why Having a Mobile-Friendly Site Is Important and that is because it can make or break a business depending on your product or service. We at Dealer Lab can help you find what you are looking for in improving your goals. You can contact us at 877-622-2291 if you have any questions or would like to know more information on how mobile-friendly sites work.
Common Live Chat Mistakes on Auto Dealer Websites
Having live chat on your website is a great way to connect to your customers more. However, a poorly executed live chat can lead to many problems that can not only not be useful to your customers, but turn them away as well. There are many Common Live Chat Mistakes on Auto Dealer Websites you should look out for so you do not make them. You can also contact us if you are looking to start a live chat service.
Having Representatives for Live Chat
There are many signs to look for and things to not to when it comes to live chat. One of these mistakes is waiting for the visitor to approach. You want to use a proactive approach to help engage with your internet shoppers. Do not wait for the “WebUp” to approach your representative. This also goes hand in hand with not having the coverage to greet visitors as well. That is just one of many Common Live Chat Mistakes on Auto Dealer Websites you should look out for.
There are a lot of online shoppers who shop online when your store is closed which can lead to missing out on a lot of potential buyers. If you can’t find the coverage to offer, there are chat provider services that offer the 24/7 service for you. By offering around the clock representatives, you are gaining more customers as there are tons of people who only have time at night or early morning before work until they get closer to choosing the vehicle.
Other Common Live Chat Mistakes on Auto Dealer Websites
One huge thing to look out for is if your representatives are coming off as “selling”. Nothing turns people away from shopping than a pushy sales person no matter if it is in person or not. The customer also can get away much easier and faster online than in person as well. Instead of “selling”, your reps should be offering information. When someone shops online, they are only looking around and having reps to help offer the information they are looking for makes things easier and it shows your willingness to help them out which will allow them to visit your dealership first if they had a great online experience.
Overall, these are some of the important things to look out for when it comes Common Live Chat Mistakes on Auto Dealer Websites. These mistakes can easily cost you money and sales. If you would like more information on the live chat, you can call us at 877-622-2291.
The Difference between Responsive & Adaptive Websites
If you are looking into the difference between responsive and adaptive websites, there are tons of different things to look at. Each website offers advantages over the other depending on what you desire the most for your business. When you look at The Difference between Responsive & Adaptive Websites, you can see what each way offers. More people prefer the responsive websites as they can reach a wider range of people.
Responsive Websites
The basic definition to responsive website is that it is designed to fluidly change and respond to fit on any screen or device making it easier to view no matter what. The idea behind responsive sites is to allow the screen to shrink or grow depending on what screen size or device you are using. Responsive sites also work very well with Search Engine Optimization.
Most people can use their phones to get access to websites and if they are not responsive, they might not be mobile friendly. This makes it easy to navigate around the site no matter what device you are using. Sometimes it can get frustrating trying to look up something on your phone but the site does function well as it might not fit. This is what The Difference between Responsive & Adaptive Websites starts off with when it comes to responsive.
Difference between Responsive & Adaptive Websites
Adaptive web design uses a set of predefined layouts based on screen size including popular ones like CSS to help give a user experience tailored to the device. To make this happen, the developer will design several different versions of the webpage. All with different coding. This is done to optimize the page for plenty of different devices. The server can detect the device the user is on in order to give them the proper fit.
When it comes to adaptive design, it provides an optimized website experience no matter what device you may have or use to look at it. Quality is not sacrificed in order to make this happen. One of the biggest things about adaptive is that it allows for faster load time as well as it has a more efficient rendering.
All in all, knowing The Difference between Responsive & Adaptive Websites can help you decide which way will work best for you and your business. These two websites have many advantages so it all comes down to what will work best for your business. Dealer Lab can help you find the perfect way to get your website running and working the way you want it.
Car Dealer Website Templates vs. Custom Web Design
Making a website is the biggest thing for your company so it is important that you do it right. There are multiple key features when it comes to building a great website including fast loading times, easy navigation, valuable content, SEO optimization, and most importantly, design. Though design is becoming more important it is also becoming more complicated. There are a couple different ways you can approach it including Car Dealer Website Templates vs. Custom Web Design. These two approaches are different and knowing what will work best for you is important.
Car Dealer Custom Web Design
When it comes to Car Dealer Website Templates vs. Custom Web Design, there are many things you should know on how to choose what one works best for you. When it comes to custom design, it works best for those who do not want to compromise any requirements for the website. A custom design also works well if you have established your company’s branding before and need a site that strictly incorporates and matches all of your branding.
Custom sites are great but only if they fit in with your overall goals and desire. It is the best choice for you if your site has a profound informational architecture and complex structure. All of these things should be taken into consideration when you are deciding between these two designs.
Car Dealer Website Templates
The other web design form is website templates. This is the right way to go when you need to speed up the website building process and want to save time as well as your effort. This is also great when you have only a limited amount of content to showcase. Templates also are great when you just want a “business card” type of website without making it too complexed. Basically a site that lists information about your business and contact information.
That is why, overall, website templates are preferred for a personal and small business startups and for those with a very limited budget. When you need something quick to get the word out, this is how you start the process.
Those are the differences between Car Dealer Website Templates vs. Custom Web Design. Now you have the choice to make to see which one works best for you. It all depends on your goals and desires as a dealership. We can help you point yourself in the right direction.
What Is Responsive Web Design?
There are many questions revolving around responsive web design and what it can do for you. The question, “ What Is Responsive Web Design?” is asked all the time but in reality it is a very simple concept. It is different than regular sites as responsive sites go broader. This gives you many advantages over regular sites that you may not even knew existed allowing you to branch out, create more leads, and, overall, generate more sales.
What Is Responsive Web Design?
The first thing you should know about responsive web design so you do not have to keep asking, “ What Is Responsive Web Design?” is that it takes things to a whole new level. Basically, it is an approach to web design that crafts sites to provide an optimal viewing experience for everyone no matter what device they be using. It provides easy reading and navigation with very little resizing, scrolling, and more. This way you get the best view no matter what device you are using.
Some sites may look great on a computer with easy reading and navigation but if you try to view the same site on your phone or even a tablet, the site will try to resize everything that could cut things off, have words spread out in a confusing way, and more. This creates an unattractive mess that will turn people away which is the last thing you want. With responsive sites, it makes sure your site is flawless across all devices and platforms.
Advantages to Responsive Web Design
The biggest idea when it comes to running a successful business is to put yourself out there as much as possible and branching out to other services, sites, etc. That is exactly what responsive web design is. The biggest advantage that it offers is that it allows your content to be spread out across more platforms so you can reach more people. By reaching more people, you will easily generate more sales which is the ultimate goal when it comes to marketing.
Now that you know what responsive is, you no longer have to ask, What Is Responsive Web Design? It is simple, helpful, and it takes things to a whole new level that will generate more business as everything looks smooth. Dealer Lab wants to help create the best website for you and your dealership that will pull customers in and give them easy access to the information they seek.
How To Optimize Your Car Dealership's Website
Your dealer’s website is one of the most important tools you can use to gain leads, customers and more. A bad website that not only looks bad but also preforms bad is a huge turn off and can lead people away from your dealer. It might not matter if you have a top preforming sales team or service department when your website does not perform well. When it comes to How To Optimize Your Car Dealership’s Website, we at Dealer lab can help you out with some simple tips.
Seek Out Your Car Dealership’s Website Goals
The first thing you need to do to optimize your website is to look at it. Identify your goals, aspirations, and change factor. You need a clear and concise goal in order to help yourself get to that goal. An obvious goal is “to sell more cars” but that can be too broad. For example, ask yourself how you can sell more cars and that will lead to How To Optimize Your Car Dealership’s Website. Do you want to increase how long customers on your site, page views per visit, etc.? These are the things you should looking at as they will, eventually, lead to selling more cars.
Next, ask what features on your website can be changed to help you get closer to these goals. There are many things you can do including adding video to a content page. More detail makes everything better.
Make a Plan for Your Dealership’s Website
When you have your goals in place, it is time to sketch out a way for you to accomplish those goals. There are multiple ways you can go about this including getting the approvals you may need, identify the page you want to change, and have it all planned out. From here, this is when you can move on to initiating and then testing. It may take a little time for improvement so be patient. Even after this, you should always be finding new ways for improvement as well.
Seeking out the best website you can will easily help you gain more customers. All of these tips are just the start of How To Optimize Your Car Dealership’s Website. We at Dealer Lab can easily help you optimize your website to the best of its ability. We offer many different services and products like VDP and responsive sites to help make this happen.
Best Practice for Tracking Your Dealer Website Traffic
Keeping track of your website is highly important as it tells you how your site is doing. If traffic is slowing down, you might need to make some changes to get it up again. There many more benefits to tracking it as well. There is one simple Best Practice for Tracking Your Dealer Website Traffic that will work well for you as well. You may wonder what exactly that best practice may involve.
Importance of Tracking Your Dealer Website Traffic
Some people may task why they should spend the time tracking and analyzing your web site traffic when you know it has visitors. The importance of tracking your site offers you answers to many different questions which is very beneficial to you. For example, when you track your site, you will be able to see if you are reaching out to your target market as well as see if they are truly interacting with your site. Just seeing if someone visited or not does not tell you if that visit was actually beneficial as they could of left after the first ten seconds.
Tracing your site will allow you to see how many people proceed through your site and where they spend the most time. You can also see what, if any, problems that they may having so you can efficiently go in and fix them. The information will also show you any trends that may exist. For example, you can see what worked well for you last year or what has not been working well this year. All of this information can lead to improved user experiences and ultimately, increased sales.
Best Practice for Tracking Your Dealer Website Traffic
There are ways you can track your site including one Best Practice for Tracking Your Dealer Website Traffic. The best way for you to track your site is using Google analytics. This is because Google is the most trusted third party source that deals with data in huge quantities.
Make sure you keep track of your website traffic to see if you need to make some changes or not. Also viewing your traffic after a change can show you how beneficial that change was. Using this Best Practice for Tracking Your Dealer Website Traffic is the first step to a great website. We at Dealer Lab can help you create or remodel your site to help with traffic.
What Makes a Great Vehicle Details Page
The backbone of any automotive dealer website is the vehicle inventory. Acheter Adidas Yeezy Boost 550 Your customers want information quickly and easily, often making many of their decisions before they ever set foot in the dealership, and the key to retaining your leads is offering the information they’re seeking. Along this vein, a key feature of What Makes a Great Vehicle Details Page is accessibility.
Quick, Easy, and Accessible VDP Platform
At Dealer Lab, we keep up with automotive industry changes and trends to make sure we’re only offering the most up-to-date and reliable solutions for your automotive marketing strategies and websites, including updates to your vehicle details pages to keep them easy to find, easy to access, and easy to follow. Adidas Yeezy Boost 350 Homme Calzoncillos Slip Calvin Klein Like with our websites, Dealer Lab offers an innovative responsive design for VDP, including customization elements for colors and fonts that are even double-checked for manufacturer compliance, a design that accommodates not only the branding you want customer-facing, but also helps to accommodate your customers and how they’re accessing your website.
We have reached a period in web marketing where mobile has not only gained a foothold, but is starting to lead in terms of web access and research. With an increasing number of customers, one of the main facets of What Makes a Great Vehicle Details Page is adaptability, with optimization to any number of devices, whether a traditional desktop computer, a tablet, or a mobile phone.
Features of Great Vehicle Details Pages
When utilizing VDP from Dealer Lab, you get access to a whole host of exclusive features specific to our responsive VDP design, all optimized for any number of devices. For instance, our vehicle details pages offer the largest and most dynamic vehicle photo displays in the industry, almost twice as large as the standard for the competition.
Additionally available with Dealer Lab’s VPD are displays for vehicle details and installed options with customizable calls to action, as well as customizable and mapable pricing fields, helping you gain customer retention with unparalleled transparency. Calvin Klein Boxer Baratos Vehicle Pricing also includes a feature for a payment estimator, and all programs on the website are selected and powered on the dealer level, so you’re only giving your customers the information specific and applicable to your dealership. Also included are options for pre-approval tools, trade-in valuing, videos, incentives, and more.
For more on the benefits of responsive VDP or information on What Makes a Great Vehicle Details Page, contact us at Dealer Lab for a consultation at 877-622-2291.
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Why Mega Menu is Great for Your SEO
If you are trying to get more leads for your business, there are many things you can do to market your business. One thing for example, includes SEO content. If you are using SEO to help gain some leads and attract people to your site, there may be additional ways to improve it. Mega Menus on your site can help improve your SEO. You may wonder Why Mega Menu is Great for Your SEO but there are many reasons as to why this is a smart way to go.
Mega Menus and SEO
First, if you don’t know, Mega Menus and SEO both are great tools to improve your website and to get more leads over to your site. SEO are articles designed to help get your site shown up in searches. The better the SEO you have, the more times you will pop up on Goggle and the higher up on the search list you will show up as well. SEO also offers information on the topic of the article as well to give information to your consumer base.
Mega Menus are used to display the SEO articles you have. You may wonder what the best practice you can use to implement a mega menu. You can consider crawlability, code order placement, and HTML simplicity. The answer to Why Mega Menu is Great for Your SEO is simple.
Mega Menu is Great for Your SEO
There are many things you can do with Mega Menus to improve your SEO. One of these things involves keeping it simple and another allows you to silo your mega menus. For the home page, use a mega menu heavy on visual clarity and anchor text written to easily communicate the link location. Also, do not link to more than four or five individual items for any one of your departments. This is because they should be changed frequently based on SEO priorities.
There are certain links you can use to include in a mega menu. However, do not include a link within your mega menus to goes to a page that lists everything on one page. This is because it can flatten out your site and does not allow you to prioritize pages with tweaks that you would want.
These are all some simple rules to follow to help use mega menus to improve your SEO. You can ask Why Mega Menu is Great for Your SEO but when it comes down to it, the answer is always right there. If you have any questions, you can contact us at 877-622-2291.
Benefits of Responsive Websites
One of the most essential pieces of having an online marketing strategy is having the most up-to-date tools and technologies to not only catch your potential customers but retain them with accessibility, versatility, and memorable branding and visuals. One of the many Benefits of Responsive Websites is that they do exactly that: their eye-catching design is not only dynamic and stylish, but simple and very easy to use.
Up-to-Date Responsive Website Technologies
Here at Dealer Lab, we believe that staying on top of fast-changing trends and technologies is vital to the success of any web marketing campaign, website, or web-based business. Recognizing where your customers are coming from, how they got there, and analyzing this data overtime can tell you great number of things regarding the direction of your strategies and how to best get your online auto buyers into the dealership.
Another one of several Benefits of Responsive Websites from Dealer Lab is that the responsive website solution is specifically tailored to these emerging trends. Your customers are accessing and searching for information in new ways, and responsive websites are designed with these tendencies in mind. Responsive websites are not just cross-platform and device accessible, but your site is simultaneously optimized for display on any device, be it a desktop computer, laptop, tablet, and even your mobile devices. This means that whatever the device your customer is using to research their next vehicle or automotive service, the same information is rendered in an optimized visual display unique to each type of device.
Features of Responsive Websites
Responsive websites with Dealer Lab, whether a new site, or a platform update, provide the same features: service side elements, responsive graphic sizing for any device, and all of the same services necessary to carve your niche in the automotive online market, including an accurate and up-to-date inventory, brochures, custom graphics, specials, unique pages for your individual departments, and of course SEO optimization and other available upgrades to help boost your web visibility and authority both organically and paid.
As mobile traffic and search continues to grow, the move toward websites optimized for any variety of mobile devices becomes more and more vital to reach your customer base. Make sure that your website is flexible enough to handle today’s trends and those continuing to emerge and develop. To find out more about the Benefits of Responsive Websites and how they can change your marketing strategy, contact us at Dealer Lab today at 877-622-2291.
© Copyright Content Motive, 2015.
All Rights Reserved. | Dealer content by Content Motive
Drive More Traffic to Your Automotive Website
Sometimes you can try many different things but still see no increased traffic to your website. This could mean many reasons as to why this is happening. At Dealer lab, we strive to help get your website traffic. There may be some things you could be over looking to Drive More Traffic to Your Automotive Website including some simple things. Here are some simple tips to try and generate more traffic.
Tips to Drive More Traffic
Take a look at some of these tips to see if they can help you with everything you need. The first thing you can do is to focus ad investment where it is most relevant which is the websites that customers for car shoppers trust the most. You should reach your customers on a premium network of trusted automotive research sites like Edmunds, Motor Trend, and more. Research shows that when people are looking at these sites, they will typically buy a vehicle within the next six months or so.
It is also important to display your new models by making them more noticeable. Basically, you want to direct new model campaigns at these same sites as well. For someone searching around for a vehicle they already know about and comparing it to other similar vehicles, it is important to have a display ad showcasing what is new with your vehicle.
Drive More Traffic to Your Automotive Website
There are many other tips you can take in as well including complement your print and TV ads. Digital advertising is a great to do that. For example, you can have your display ads on other places to. This is especially great after they hear or see a radio or TV ad. Always align any of your campaigns with the OEMs who investigate in the local market. This comes to another important part, always think local.
It is always important to optimize local campaigns with specific geo-targeting rules to make sure that people can see your ads in their community. It is always important to think local as the people who will visit the most are those who live the closest. That is one big way to Drive More Traffic to Your Automotive Website.
When you are in need of help to bring more traffic to your website, we at Dealer Lab have the tools and expertise to help you out. There a lot of tips you can take in to accomplish this feat. When you want to Drive More Traffic to Your Automotive Website, this can help you out.
Increase Car Dealer Website Leads With This Lead Button
There are many ways you can increase leads for your website and that is always a good thing. Some ways are obvious while other ways are not so obvious but are just as important. For example, there is a simple button you can add to your pages which allow you to Increase Car Dealer Website Leads With This Lead Button. You may wonder how adding one simple button can increase leads but there is a reason why.
What is the Perfect Lead Button?
There is one question that all customers ask before they stop in and that question is, “is this vehicle available?” This is because customers want to make sure you have the vehicle in stock before they continue looking at it. Usually they would have to call in which can take some time getting to the right person who can answer. Doing things that make it easier for your customers is always a plus.
However, this button makes it fast, easy, and creates more leads. That is why the button was created in the first place. The button is usually located right above the feature picture to make it stand out as much as possible. It was originally placed in ten different areas to find the best place for it. It was found that, of course, the button being above the picture of the vehicle was the best place for it. You can easily Increase Car Dealer Website Leads With This Lead Button because of its strategic placement.
Increase Leads With Lead Button
Ever since this button came out, the “confirm availability button” has become the number one lead form on Dealer e Process website. There are many reasons why this button increases leads as well. First, it improves your relationship with customers as you make things easier for them. Not to mention, you will get less calls asking just if the vehicle is available. It is important to keep your site up to date as well so the button works to its best to advantage.
There are many things you can do that creates more leads when needed but this simple change can make a big difference. You can easily Increase Car Dealer Website Leads With This Lead Button without any other work being done. We can help you point yourself in the right direction.
Google Mobile Algorithm Changes
The purpose of this article is to provide information to automotive dealers about Google’s new indexing changes and the technology and opinions related to them. The article has links to all my research for you to expand in the topic.
It is safe to assume that by now we have all heard that Google rolled out a “mobile-friendly update” (1) on April 2014. It is important to understand these changes as they are the beginning of the way our websites will be accessed by our customers. We are moving from desktops to mobile devices and the way Google will work for these is changing.
The update will begin to change how Google ranks and indexes website content for mobile searches. This is an update to force website owners to improve their websites so they are mobile compatible. You can no longer ignore mobile traffic. Period.
Google’s goal is to offer mobile friendly links on search results therefore improving customer experience on their search engine.
Moz (2) analyzed the changes in traffic globally (not just automotive industry) and they haven’t been very relevant. So far this update hasn’t been a big deal as you can see in their “7-day analysis” (3). But don’t think this is over, here is why:
The algorithm change only affects mobile (cell phone only, no tablets!) searches, not desktop.
Most companies that were already ranking well for high value keywords were already mobile friendly.
The changes will take time to spread, re-index, and notice changes-if any.
On a side note and quoting Google (4) about content and the effects of the mobile changes: “The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal — so even if a page with high quality content is not mobile-friendly, it could still rank high if it has great content for the query.” Google will prioritize indexing of high quality useful content versus just the fact that the architecture of your site is mobile friendly. In my opinion this should be specially noted for long tail searches.
Google is looking to bring content parity (5) so the websites “provide the same content to both mobile and desktop visitors”. Your customers (and now Google!) “expect to be able to do anything on their devices that they can do on a desktop”. We are breaking very fast the myth that consumers will not perform certain tasks on a mobile device VS desktop, data shows the opposite, mobile devices are becoming the center of how we look for content and interact with products.
You can check if your website is mobile friendly by using this free tool provided by Google: Mobile friendly test (6).
However here are a couple things you should know about that tool. Most automotive dealerships have what is called “adaptive website platform” (7). When a customer types a URL on a mobile browser or clicks on a link on a smart phone, the server knows the request is coming from a certain type of device therefore changing what the server shows. In essence you have 2 different websites; one for desktops and one for mobile devices. The issue with that is that customer experience is not equal from device to device; not all 3rd party tools, links, calls to action, etc are always equally positioned or even existent on all devices. An “adaptive website platform” still passes Google’s test because webmaster can add a piece of code that tells the tool that a mobile version of the site exists in the server and therefore the tool approves the site.
We also have in the industry what we call “responsive websites” (8). Responsive websites are not just a way to pass Google’s test but a new way to look at how we progress into the changes from desktop to increasing mobile and tablet traffic (note also the arrival of the desktop tablets (9)). In layman’s terms (spoiler alert: we produce this website) automotive responsive website systems (10) offer customers exactly the same website regardless of the device used so the website the customer experiences is always the same regardless of the screen size in use.
There is an evolution happening in front of our eyes from a desktop sized screen to a multi sized screen. The changes are also intrinsically related to site speed; while most desktops are connected to broadband mobile devices still suffer from connectivity. Site speed is a consideration (11) for 2014 and it will increase in years to come.
Our approach to responsive (DealerLab.com and Dealereprocess.com (12))has been an specific technology called RESS (13). RESS technology allows the websites to control the load based on device and therefore the website’s loading speed. This technology is a must for automotive websites where the SRP (Search Results Page) and the VDP (Vehicle Details Page) are loaded with image files. You can see the need of RESS when website companies have to revert to use “flex systems” that in reality are not fully responsive as they fall back in adaptive technology. There are plenty of articles to expand on RESS (14) technology and how this can benefit automotive e-commerce.
What should I do as an automotive dealer?
Understand that:
- Digital marketing/indexing is shifting to mobile devices.
- Content is a great indexing factor.
- Site platform is relevant to performance.
- Responsive websites are the future for consumer experience.
Yago de Artaza Paramo
CEO, PGI Digital
[email protected]
- http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/04/rolling-out-mobile-friendly-update.html
- https://moz.com
- https://moz.com/blog/day-after-mobilegeddon
- http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ca/2015/04/faqs-april-21st-mobile-friendly.html
- http://insights.mobify.com/what-is-mobile-seo-faqs/
- https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_web_design
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design
- http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/products/surface-3?SEMID=1&WT.srch=1&ocid=ONECONSTABS3_SEM_GOO_Generic_AW_en-US_tablet&wt.mc_id=ONECONSTABS3_SEM_GOO_Generic_AW_en-US_tablet
- http://www.northwesthonda.com
- http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-101-important-site-speed-2014/111924/
- http://dealerlab.com & http://www.dealereprocess.com
- http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1392
- http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/10/08/responsive-website-design-with-ress/
The post Google Mobile Algorithm Changes appeared first on Paramo Group.
CraigsList Changes
This is just a reminder that Craigslist is now cracking own on keyword spamming in ads.
In essence if you post a Hyundai Sonata and try to include keywords for other makes/models the ad is likely to be blocked. As was the case the past 2 days for this dealer (see attached image) as seen in the image below.
Overall this is a positive change for Craigslist. It will make the postings more relevant in search.
When a user searches for a specific make/model they will be more likely to see the types of cars they are looking for. Craigslist is definitely making an effort to be closer to Autotrader, Cars.com, etc on their offering.
The post CraigsList Changes appeared first on Paramo Group.
Easy Template Pages
We have implemented a new page template builder. What does this mean? You can create your own custom pages in half the time. These optimized layouts are ready to become landing pages, events, news releases, and can become whatever you desire.
Want to learn more? Call us at 877.622.2291
November 4th Class
November 4th at the Marriot in Seatac.
Light breakfast at 8am, class starts at 9am sharp.
Brian Pasch is coming from training European EOMs in Italy and Brussels for a one day exclusive event in the Pacific North West.
All expenses are covered by DealerLab.
Mega menus are here
The new code for mega menus (graphical menus) is being implemented in all sites.
We expect a full implementation within the next 30-60 days. An account manager will have to get an approval from you before we add the code to your website. There is no cost to this and it is a choice to upgrade the site to this new system.
Here are a few examples (mouse over the menu):
http://www.northwesthonda.com
http://www.definitivem.com
http://www.magictoyota.com
The idea behind the mega menus is to offer a visual menu to the customer so they don’t have to read all the options therefore creating an easier navigation experience.
Parts and service:
Mouse over these areas and see how the coupons pop to life without having to click on a link. This creates more coupon views and engagement.
The SEO piece:
Any pages in the website menu index better than when we add them to any other part of the system. If you check Klein Honda or Magic Toyota blog sections you will see all the content pages categorized by area/product allowing us to expand the umber of pages that we can link to the menu.
Videos and multimedia. Check 3 different video approaches:
Magic Toyota has a dedicated menu section to videos and it will display the custom test drives created by WhatsNextMedia for them. http://www.magictoyota.com
In Klein Honda’s case we added video inventory produced by FlickFusion on the research page. Mouse over “research” and click on “test drive honda videos” http://www.kleinhonda.com
Northwest Honda created videos in-house and added them to their YouTube Channel, we used those to create their video page by embedding them in the menu. http://www.northwesthonda.com
Mobile:
The mega menus work to a certain extent in mobile too by bringing the icons into the selection. The pages with video that we created also work on mobile devices and tablets.
Please email me with any questions or suggestions.
Please contact us for any help, questions, needs, etc.
Google Indexing Your Website
Google has recently made some algorithmic changes adding favoritism to newer fresher content. If your website is static and doesn’t produce new pages often, Google will not crawl your website as often. Having new fresh content on your website will not only increase the amount of times Google will crawl your website, it will also help to increase your website’s overall ranking.
If you are interested in getting Google to notice your website, content marketing is the perfect solution.
Mega Menus Are Going Live
The new code for mega menus (graphical menus) is being implemented in all sites.
We expect a full implementation within the next couple of months. An account manager will have to get an approval from you before we add the code to your website. There is no cost to this and it is a choice to upgrade the site to this new system.
Here are a few examples (mouse over the menu):
The idea behind the mega menus is to offer a visual menu to the customer so they don’t have to read all the options therefore creating an easier navigation experience.
Parts and service:
Mouse over these areas and see how the coupons pop to life without having to click on a link. This creates more coupon views and engagement.
The SEO piece:
Any pages in the website menu index better than when we add them to any other part of the system. If you check Klein Honda or Magic Toyota blog sections you will see all the content pages categorized by area/product allowing us to expand the umber of pages that we can link to the menu.
Videos and multimedia. Check 3 different video approaches:
Magic Toyota has a dedicated menu section to videos and it will display the custom test drives created by WhatsNextMedia for them. http://www.magictoyota.com
In Klein Honda’s case we added video inventory produced by FlickFusion on the research page. Mouse over “research” and click on “test drive honda videos” http://www.kleinhonda.com
Northwest Honda created videos in-house and added them to their YouTube Channel, we used those to create their video page by embedding them in the menu. http://www.northwesthonda.com
Mobile:
The mega menus work to a certain extent in mobile too by bringing the icons into the selection.
WEBSITE-Free payment tool
We met with a Mercedes Benz dealer a few months ago and I was surprised to hear that they sell most of their new cars based on the payment, not the price of the vehicle.
So based on that we built a tool that allows dealers to input:
- Loan rate as a percentage
- Down-payment as a percentage
- Length of the loan
- DOC fee
The system allows to input separate rates for new, used, and CPO.
As you can see in the screenshot we added the monthly payment to the VDP (in this case calculated from the vehicle’s MSRP) but we can also add it to the SRP and we can send it in the feeds to our CraigsList tool for the ads.
The system ads the disclaimer to all the vehicles which is also modifiable by the dealer.
With this tool you also have another level of price customization; for example we can have the MSRP in the system, calculate the payment, but don’t display the MSRP (just show the payment).
In order to use this tool you must use Autobase as your data provider (calculations are done in the Autobase server) and DealerLab for websites (all the mapping so far has been done to our systems), and Autoclassified Solutions for the CraigsList postings.
The tool is free to our clients.
Dealer Lab – AMMP New Features
Website feature: Inventory rules
In the auto special rules, you can now choose a range for their days in stock.
You would simply use the “between” for that option.
Website features: Deeper analytics integration
You can now expand the list for referral sources, referral sites and search keywords.
In your dashboard go to the “Analytics” section and look at the “Google Analytics” tab. As you can see in the screenshot you can now expand the referral sites and key words.
Website feature: Tracking vehicles
You can now expand the list of top view vehicles to Top 50 viewed (opens up 5 at a time) and it shows the number of views now.
In your dashboard go to the “Analytics” section and look at the “Website stats” then look at the “Vehicle stats”. You can now expand the number of vehicles tracked.
We hope these features help you better understand how your websites and inventory perform.
Website feature: Mobile, tablet, desktop tracking.
I promised this feature a while ago as we consider essential for 2015 to be able to measure where our calls are coming from. In the near future we will further measure tracking from the SRP (search results pages) and VDP (vehicle display page) rather than just from the entire website so we can better understand how our calls to action work.
The system can now track calls individually from mobile, desktop, and tablets.
Review phone leads by source and category as well as total leads for each department (sales, service, finance,etc).
All you need to do is provide the phone numbers (or request more numbers from us if you use our tacking system) and we will set it up. Your cost will be only that of the extra numbers ($10-15/month for all the numbers) since the minutes are already included in your totals (we are just splitting the measurements).
Digital Marketing Training for Dealers
Mark your calendars for these 2 special events on November 4-5-6.
This is a great opportunity to learn from one of the best Digital Marketing teams (PCG) in the world.
We are happy to invite all our dealers to this special event and DealerLab is 100% sponsoring the first day.
Call today and reserve your spots 877-622-2291.
As part of our ongoing efforts to grow our dealer’s knowledge we have put together a class or event every quarter since 2011. On November 4-5-6 we have planned two very special events.
Preparing Your Dealership for 2015
On Tuesday, November 4th DealerLab is sponsoring Brian Pasch to spend one full day with our dealers and give an overview of his new book “Mastering Automotive Digital Marketing”. This is a free event to our clients to better prepare for the year ahead. You must call us to reserve your spot, considering bring anyone involved in your digital strategy.
Also on November 4th, we will also have Dave Page from DealerLab talk about future digital technology; his class will be a forward look into what 2015 may bring to our industry and the latest new technology that is under development. I will speak about stealing low funnel leads thru targeted content and mega-menus, one of our latest code developments being integrated right now in our websites.
Digital Marketing Certification Courses
After our special day with Brian Pasch, Brian Pasch, Marc McGurren, Glenn Pasch, and the PCG team will conduct two Digital Marketing Certification Courses for dealers in the Seattle market. The courses are scheduled for Wednesday November 5th and Thursday November 6th. These two-day programs are designed to build the knowledge in your team to connect with the opportunities online to sell more cars. The certification program is based on Brian’s new book “Mastering Automotive Digital Marketing” and his best selling “Selling Cars in the Digital Age.”
There are two classes based on the role of the attendee in the dealership:
• Two-day program for Dealer Principals and General Managers
• Two-day program General Sales Managers and Internet Sales Managers
For these Digital Marketing Certification Courses you will pay PCG Consulting directly. You can call Carrie Hemphill at 908-601-6475 to register via phone or you can register online by visiting this page: http://www.pcgconsultingservices.com/courses/. The website also lists the eight learning modules that are part of each program.
TEXT – textstr System Update
This is a product that we have integrated with our websites (but not our product). We feel it is good that we keep you updated with the components that you use integrated with our systems.
We’re pleased to announce 2 new versions of our web enabled text frame. We’ll be split testing these variations for 1 month and report back accordingly.
Google Says Good-Bye To Google Authorship
Contrary to initial thoughts, Google doesn’t always have the Midas touch. Over it’s entire history the mammoth tech giant has demonstrated that no product or feature is immune to the chopping block. Just ask Google Base, Google Squared or Google Buzz. Never heard of them? Exactly. Google is constantly testing and evaluating everything. That latest thing that Google is shutting down is Google Authorship. Google authorship allowed web content creators to link their content with their Google+ profile. After three years the Google Authorship experiment is coming to an end. A moment of silence, please……….
One of the reasons that Google Authorship fell short of expectations was a low adoption rate by authors and webmasters. Participation with Authorship was at best spotty. This was partly due to the fact that many non-tech-savvy site owners or authors found the markup and linking to be too complex. Another reason for the demise of Authorship was the low value it provided to searchers. Some experts in the industry saw very little difference in “click behavior” on search results containing Authorship snippets compared to those without.
The demise of Google Authorship is just another glaring example of the changing landscape of SEO. You can count on Content Motive to be on top of all things SEO. Find out now if this Google Authorship news has any affect on your website by contacting your Content Motive Representative.
The post Google Says Good-Bye To Google Authorship appeared first on Paramo Group.
New Google AdWords integration
We have launched an new feature in the DealerLab AMMP reporting dashboard. You can now see your keyword level stats by following the steps below!
This feature is already implemented and working for those of you with Google AdWords integrated with your DealerLab website.
1. Inside the marketing tab on your DealerLab dashboard, scroll down to one of your campaigns and click on the link that says “Click Here To View Adgroup Breakdown”
2. Once your ad groups load, there will be a keyword column. Click on the word ‘Keywords’ for the ad group you would like to see additional details for. A pop up window will show all of your keyword level stats for that ad group.
Remember that we don’t have to do your PPC in order for you to take advantage of this integration, we can integrate any company doing PPC for you.
This new integration offers a higher level of transparency and a much easier way for the dealers to be informed on where their money is being spent without having to access multiple systems to get the information.
Please reach out to [email protected] with any additional questions, comments, feedback, etc..!
Yago de Artaza Paramo CEO, PGI Digital
CRAIGSLIST-Selection tool & areas
Selective Posting Interface This new interface will allow the dealer to select which cars they want posted to Craigslist. It works for both new and used inventory. This will useful for budget conscious dealers that want to select a group of used cars but also for new car managers that want to advertise just a small group of new cars. I can think already about many scenarios where this will be useful to a new car manager: You can run a 20 truck campaign ($100 for a month) on F-250’s diesel if you have a heavy rebate on those and compete with dealers selling ‘current -1 -2 models’. I also see it very useful for VW running the $199 Jetta lease or Honda in the Civic.
Non Prepaid Areas We now have the ability to post to any area within the United States whether you can buy prepaid blocks or not.
New Phone Leads Tagging
The phone numbers associated with your website (tracking numbers) are now labeled in the lead :: phone area of the back end.
In the attached case we also added PPC (Pay Per Click) and Retargeting (ret) to this dealer’s internal report.
Our goal is to provide faster access to information on your daily digital performance. Remember that we can integrate 12 major phone systems with our back end and if you don’t have any we work with Marchex (Seattle based) which I think is $4 a number and $80/1000 minutes. It is well worth the money to have unique tracking numbers on the website by department even though all the numbers dial into the same front desk. It is our goal for 2015 to further divide the system call so we track mobile numbers independently from desk top numbers as we believe it is increasingly necessary to understand our mobile conversion rate independently.
2014 Dealer Choice Award Winner
At the Las Vegas Industry Summit this September, Dealer E Process and Dealer Lab was awarded the 2014 Dealer’s Choice Award.
With all of Dealer Lab’s advanced backend tools and high performing websites, it’s no wonder we have won this prestigious award.
One Login For All
Simplify: Access all of your web assets in one central location. Simplify your decision making process. Throw out your long list of logins for analytics, forms, call tracking, Craigslist, and Google AdWords. Everything in one place: that is how it should be, and is at Dealer Lab.
Asset Integration Reporting: Dealers are overloaded with reports and metrics, and we believe our simplified dashboard and dealer score will resonate with dealers looking for “actionable” insights to their data. Know your conversion rates for all different devices and sources.
Google Analytics Integration: Get all of your website’s performance information in one convenient location. Industry standard for tracking metrics related to website usage. This invaluable tool is integrated directly into the Dealer Lab dashboard giving you access to all data in real time. Leave nothing to mystery with our transparent and fully-integrated analytics.
Pay Per Click, Dynamic Ads, and Remarketing Reporting: Using our proven SEM methods, Dealer Lab can ensure that your ads will show to the right customers at the right time; increasing conversions and bringing new customers to your site. Dynamic inventory based advertisements will be generated on the fly, based on your current inventory. Remarketing is one of the most cost effective ways to spread brand awareness among your target market and stay on the customer’s mind throughout every stage of the car buying process.
Integrated Craigslist Lead Reporting: Automatically keep your Craigslist posts up-to-date with daily posts of new inventory, pricing updates and deletion of SOLD vehicles, and photo update (when available). Our service is based on your monthly budget, allowing a disciplined approach for dealers, with predictable costs. With full transparency, our reports clearly illustrate your ROI.
Lead Management and Tracking: Don’t be left in the dark. With our lead conversion tracking you will know exactly who, what, where, and when you received leads from your website. All lead submissions on the website are recorded with statistics on submissions.
Chat Tracking Made Simple: Our advanced chat system lets you easily track past chat customer interactions. You can see website chat statistics and read chat conversations, all in one convenient location.
Leading Edge Call Tracking: All phone calls by department are recorded and stored in the Dealer Lab dashboard. We provide tracking phone numbers, and we’re also integrated with companies such as CallBright, WhosCalling, KnowMe, etc.
Top Inventory Searches: The Dealer Lab dashboard offers stats and data down to every vehicle you have in stock.
WEBSITES-Check the mega menus
We saw the potential of mega menus early in the year on sites like FireStone. The challenge was to replicate the code from a very expensive commercial site (that site services hundreds of Firestone retailers) into the systems that serve our individual dealers.
This is our first field test at BMW of Shereville.
Mouse over the menu and see how the information is displayed in a much better visual way than just drop down text.
I specially like the service and parts coupons so the customer can see the specials without having to click in the specials page.
SEO-Google mobile warning
This is a great article on Google’s direction on mobile.
They will force websites one way or another to become mobile compatible and offer an all around cross device compatible experience.
While most dealers already have the mobile issue resolved,
Dealer Inventory Schema Code
With Schema Codes Dealer Lab websites tell Google what the website data and content really means.
Enhanced Google Search Results
Dealer Lab passes a lot refined data to Google. Anything from the dealer’s hours of operations, to their address, to model and trim names. For example in the image above you can see that the inventory’s “Price Range” is shown. Also you can tell google the hierarchy of the web pages with your site. For example in the image above you can see that there are breadcrumb links. The breadcrumbs are links to general inventory, the root domain, and also the filtered inventory results.
Dealer Lab is constantly making advances on how its websites show in Google results.
Industry Summit Las Vegas
This year’s Industry Summit offers four educational tracks led by the leading trainers, executives and thought leaders in each segment! There is no better opportunity for dealers and senior managers to meet – and no better place than the beautiful and luxurious Paris Las Vegas! Your Industry Summit pass gains access to every session and networking event for all three days!
September 8-10 Las Vegas
Internet Battle Plan Seattle
Jim Ziegler’s highly successful Internet Battle Plan comes roaring back August 5-7, 2014 in Seattle, WA.
Battle Plan Graduates have given us incredible testimonials for profit increases and market share increases through technology-enabled sales and marketing tips they picked up from the powerful team of experts Ziegler has assembled here.
“As a friend and client of DealerLab.com you are entitled to a 50% discount on attending Jim Ziegler’s Internet Battle Plan – Seattle – August 5th-7th.
As a Premium Sponsor of the event, DealerLab.com has paid half of your ticket price for you to attend. Ordinarily $1500.00 per student, you may use this certificate code and pay only $750 per person to attend courtesy of DealerLab.com.”
Go to the website, www.InternetBattlePlan.com with credit card and register for the event. GO TO VIP REGISTRATION BUTTON Use the discount code ZIEBP16 . When the website asks for payment, use the code, and register as many attendees as you would like for only $750 each.
Dealers and General Managers are always – No Charge, just Call Jim and Reserve – (770) 921-4440
CRAIGSLIST-Free new car tool
One of the problems with Craigslist working from a feed and having to pay $5 a vehicle is that is made in unaffordable for new cars to post the entire inventory.
To solve that problem we just developed a selection tool, free of charge included with your Craigslist service.
The tool allows you to select the cars that you want posted, save them, and we take it from there.
As an example, it will cost you $250 (Craigslist charges $5 per vehicle posted) to have 50 new cars in their system for 30 days, but I think it is a great way to push lease offers, sale units, commercial inventory, etc.
Mobile Menu Updated
We updated the mobile menu so as you can see in this screenshot it appears at the op of every mobile page (this is a coupon page at Klein Honda).
The menu gives customers access to every page in the website and not just to some pages like most mobile pages do.
While this is not a new feature we did some testing and adding the word “menu” did better than the previous approach were we had an icon for the menu.
Study Finds Top Search Positions Raise Brand Awareness
Radio spots or TV advertising have been considered the go-to avenue for businesses to increase their brand awareness. Traditionally, search advertising brings its value through clicks, impressions, and conversions. However, a recent study by Google brings new insights into the effectiveness of search ads. The results may surprise you.
The Study
In 2013 Google ran over 60 search experiments to understand how search ads can affect brand awareness. The subjects of the study consisted of 800 US consumers who participated in the simulated search scenario. The participants were placed into either the control group who were shown a search engine results page (SERP) or the the experimental group who were shown a Test SERP spotlighting one of 12 categories: apparel and durables, auto, B2B, classified and local, consumer packaged goods, education, financial services, healthcare, media and entertainment, retail, tech, and travel.
Participants were asked to perform a search for a specific category keyword (for example, “used cars” or “bad credit loan”) on their desktop. They were then shown either the actual SERP or a Test SERP. Those in the Test SERP group would see the test brand’s search ad present at the top of the search results page.
The Results
According to the study results, search ads do in fact have a positive impact on brand awareness. When study participants were asked what was top of mind about a specific category, Google found the following results:
• 14.2% in the Test SERP group named the test brand
• 8.2% in the control group also named the same brand
Overall, there is a 6.6% increase in brand awareness when in the top search positions. Each of the categories studies got slightly different results in brand awareness increases. Most notably, the auto category saw a 9% lift in top-of-mind brand awareness.
If you’re not convinced on the benefits of search advertising, then the results of this study should nudge you in the direction to invest in search ads. If increasing brand awareness is your goal then search ads are a much more cost effective solution than radio spots or TV commercials.
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LEARNING-Jun 24th Bellevue
Chicago based Maria Espinoza will focus on what are the best conversion points in a website. After looking at over 1000 websites she analyzed the averaged sales leads per form and brought all this information into a powerful presentation about conversion. This is a great class for those of you that want to know what the best website KPA for and why.
Don and Dennis are the 800 lbs gorilla in the room. Very interesting technology that they develop with our team. Let me give you my 30K feet view:
You can now do a soft pull from every-single-form that is used in a website (soft pulls don’t require permission), and the data that you get has the customer’s current auto loan, with %, amount left, and monthly payment. So if the customer has a 2012 Toyota Corolla with a payment of $400/month at 15% rate and you can out him on a 2014 with a 6.99% therefore lowering the payment significantly, how is that for a conversation started with a simple lead that came to your site?
If you have questions or comments don’t ask me, I know about 2% of what a person needs to know about financing in the automotive industry. Come to see Don and Dennis speak and view these new technology developed with DealerLab, Dealereprocess, and Transunion.
As one of the nation’s leading BDC trainers, New Jersey based Sean Bradley will focusing on one of his latest dealer and the amazing transformation he was able to achieve.
Last and least! Yago Paramo will focus on content but specifically for the financing side of the business. Generating finance leads and traffic. I will expose some knowledge on geo targeted financing content, location based ads, and some things that we have never shared before. I will not have a power point but a conversation about the possibilities and ideas that a dealer can develop with a content based strategy.
This is a free event to all PGI and Dealer Lab customers.
Tuesday 24th–Car Dealers
Wednesday 25th–Boat and RV dealers
Long Tailed Searches out of market
The whole point of SEO is making it to the top of the search results. In the example we are searching for a “2014 Toyota Corolla Everett”. Something to note for this search is that this dealership is not in Everett and there is a different Toyota dealership in Everett. The results are obvious; the top two search results are from Magic Toyota a Content Motive customer. This search is considered a long tail search. Long tailed searches have the most untapped potential in search results and expanding your website’s search presence.
Is your dealership ready to increase leads and search engine rankings to their max potential? A Content Marketing Strategy expands your websites presence in search results far beyond what what could be possible normally.
The post Long Tailed Searches out of market appeared first on Content Motive.
Dealer Content Marketing starting under $100 per month
Website content building:
Plans include one time contracts and monthly contracts. I would suggest to any dealer to sign up for recurring monthly content. Most dealers do 10 pages per month.
Example pages:
Page – 2014 BMW M4 Finance near Hammond
Page – 2014 Hyundai Genesis for Sale near Lacey
Page – Loans for Used Cars with Bad Credit Trenton
Research Model Pages:
For dealer’s with a monthly contract we will also build you a research model page, here are some examples:
Model Page – 2014 Nissan Models
Model Page – 2014 Toyota Models
On these research model pages customers can find everything they want to know about any new model in your inventory. Some model specific topics include: trims, financing, model overviews, and leasing.
Topic Options:
Some of the topics can write on are financing, lease, special financing, used, new, service, trade-ins, and parts. No matter what your strategy, we can create content for it.
If you are interested in signing up or want to learn more contact us or call 877-622-2291.
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How World Cup Search Results Is Related To Your Car Dealership
With the FIFA World Cup just starting a couple days ago, be prepared for World Cup mania to reach all ends of the world. As you read this your Facebook news feed is probably saturated with World Cup talk and your favorite sports bar is probably already packed with crazed soccer fanatics. Every 4 years Google Trends shows a huge spike in search volume for the term “World Cup”. However, one place where the World Cup will be limited is on the paid search section of Google search results. The reason for this is because FIFA, the organization that puts on the World Cup, has trademarked terms such as “World Cup”, “FIFA”, and even “Brazil 2014″.
As a car dealership how does this news relate to you? Well, it’s a relevant reminder of Google Adword’s trademark policy. Adwords current policy allows advertisers to bid on others’ trademarked keywords; however, advertiser are not permitted to use trademarked terms in the ad text. This means that if you’re a Honda dealer, then you won’t be able to use the terms Ford, Chevy, or Nissan in your ad text. This can be quite the hurdle if you want to use PPC to help sell your used car inventory.
There is a way to circumvent Adword’s trademark policy. Google’s trademark policy regarding resellers states the following:
The ad’s landing page is primarily dedicated to selling (or clearly facilitating the sale of) the goods or services corresponding to a trademark term.
This means that if you’re a Honda a dealer that wants to write an ad for the 2011 Ford Focus in your used sales lot you’re going to need to make the landing page for your ad the product page for that specific vehicle. You could go through your whole inventory and write sets of trademark compliant ads for each vehicle in your inventory. However, you probably don’t have time for that. You’re too busy selling cars.
With Used Dynamic Inventory Based Ads you can have Adwords trademark compliant ads automatically built for every vehicle in your inventory. Ads are directly linked to vehicles in your inventory and is refreshed daily, so you’ll only advertise vehicles that are currently in your inventory. As vehicles are added to your inventory, ads are automatically generated. Imagine all the time you’ll save. Thus, freeing you up to watch team USA make a miracle run at the Cup. Fingers crossed.
The post How World Cup Search Results Is Related To Your Car Dealership appeared first on Integrated PPC.
Why your dealership needs PPC and SEM with Call to Action
Putting a portion of your valuable advertising budget into paid search is a great way to attract new visitors to your dealerships website and sell some cars. Especially when you consider that a report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau found that automotive shoppers are 71% more likely to be swayed by digital advertising than the average consumer. With digital marketing, including paid search, having so much influence on car shoppers; doing PPC is practically a no-brainer.
The decision to do PPC is a no-brainer, but the day-to-day management of a PPC campaign takes some thought and attention. One aspect of PPC where many dealerships fall short on is ad copy. Many dealerships miss out on valuable opportunities to attract and convert prospective car buyers when they fall victim mismanaged ad copy. Here are some tips to avoid some common PPC with ad copy.
Used Varied Ad Copy and Constantly Test Them
A trap that some PPC campaigns falls into is that the same ads are used for all keywords. No matter how great your one ad is, it won’t be effective with all keywords. A person searching for “bad credit auto loans” has a much different intention than someone searching for “dealerships in gotham city”. Depending on the size of the keyword list in an ad group, you should have at least 3-5 ads in rotation.
In addition to having a varied ad copy, you should also be constantly testing them. A/B testing for PPC ad copy is pretty simpler than other kinds of A/B test because there are fewer things to test. The aspects of the ad copy you’re going to want to test are the headline, the text body, the call to action, and the destination URL. All you have to do is simply duplicate an ad you want to test, change one aspect of it, and see which one performs better. Pause the losing ad and repeat the process. Think of it is PPC ad copy Thunderdome. Two ads enter. One ad leaves.
A couple things to note when testing ad copy. You’re going want to decide on the metric you’ll be judging them on beforehand. Are you going to be look at CTR or conversions? Also, you’re going to want to make an ad group level change in the account settings to rotate the ads evenly instead of showing the more successful one. This ensures that both ads get equal opportunity to be displayed.
Make Your Dealership Stand Out With Your Ad Copy
Many dealerships fall in line and have very general ad copy, even for competitive keywords. Write ad copy that stands out from the rest by providing specific information. Put information such as monthly specials, lease offers, and facts about your dealerships such as service awards in your ad copy. These facts that are unique to your dealership will set you apart from the competition and give users a reason to click on your ad.
The post Why your dealership needs PPC and SEM with Call to Action appeared first on Integrated PPC.
Clear Results with Google Webmaster Tools
Measuring Success
Between major algorithms like Panda and Penguin, and just plain old everyday Google algorithmic changes, it can sometimes be hard for to figure out why your site isn’t ranking in Google as highly as you would like. With recent changes to Google Analytics, you can no longer see your keyword search terms. Google Webmaster Tools has everything you need to know on how your website’s search results are performing in Google.
Find Your Top Searched Pages
Having more unique pages on your website will increase the amount of keyword terms you will show up for in search results. In Google Webmaster Tools you can clearly see the benefit of having extra SEO focused content on your website. In the example this dealer has dozens of its top performing searched pages are from Content Motive.
The post Clear Results with Google Webmaster Tools appeared first on Content Motive.
Dynamic Mobile Websites
Driving Traffic
Did you know that almost 40% of all your website traffic comes to your website via mobile device? Does your dealership have a mobile strategy? Is all the information on your full version website available on your mobile website? Can you create custom pages? Manage Ads? Get all these features and more with a mobile solution that works on over 1750 mobile devices!
Adaptive Website Technology
Many car dealers send customers links to their inventory, specials, rebate pages etc. However a large majority of these customers are clicking the links sent to them via email or social networking from their mobile phone. When your customers are sent these types of links and a customer clicks from their mobile device does your platform send them to the correct page on the mobile side?
Live Chat
The Dealer Lab Live Chat solution consists of three offerings and can be utilized on ALL dealer websites regardless of the vendor. We provide a Dealer Managed Solution; Hybrid Live Chat that a dealer cam “jump into” in real time. Live Chat can be Pro-Active or Re-Active. All chats are sent to your dealership’s CRM. Full reporting and chat transcripts are stored in a secured dashboard login.
3rd Party Integration
Capture more leads on your website with LeadDriver, Kelley Blue Book’s trade-in values, Purecars, Blackbook Online, Autocheck, Carfax and much more! Dealer Lab mobile websites integrate with them all!
Website lead tracking
We made a great effort last month to get all our websites to integrate with our dealer’s phone, chat, and form systems.
The result is a back end system that gives you data like what you see here with deeper view on a daily basis on where your leads come from.
Phone systems integration:
You can now listed to your phone tracking system straight from the website’s back end (no need to log in another system to check calls).
PPC mobile tracking update:
We wrote a new new script that modifies an existing PPC tracking.
Anything that was showing up as just a “call button” was not swapping out to the call tracking number on mobile sites. Thus, not giving credit to the PPC call tracking number for the lead from mobile sites with “call buttons”. The updated script fills in that gap so both “call buttons” and text based phone numbers are swapped out properly on mobile sites.
This will allow dealers to better track their mobile PPC campaigns and to see the tracking in the website’s back end.
CraigsList + eBay
For those of you posting with us on CraigsList we can now post to EbayClassifieds for free.
As an example see: http://www.ebayclassifieds.com/user/Definitive-Motor
With EbayClassifieds, there are a few limitations such as:
- We can only post 25 ads per day per account
- We cannot post any duplicates
- Ads also stay live on this platform for 60 days
- We’re only allowed to upload 8 images but the image display is very nice
The reply via email is a form which in the future may give us the ability to send more complete leads to a CRM as compared to Craigslist.
Notice that the ads stay live for 60 days so at this time we are not automatically setting up every dealership but just by request.
Advertise in your dealer chat
We recently added a small banner to the Larson Automotive Group chat box with a link to new vehicles under $20K.
Whether that is what you want to advertise or not is not the point, what I want to bring to your attention is that there are places on your current advertising that you can use to bring attention to particular areas of your business.
The chat box is a great place to add a promotion to a landing page, offer, etc.
For more questions or to create a graphic for your chat window just content your Dealer Lab account manager [email protected].
New Panda Update
Google announced a few days ago via Matt Cutts Twitter that they are rolling another Panda update.
This is significant because we tend to react to big events but not to small roll outs and Google (Panda updates started in 2011). In this article from last year you can see some time perspective and also a good video from Matt Cutts explaining what to do if you were affected by the changes.
How does Panda affect my dealership?
We believe that Panda will affect long tail searches right away and different dealers need to look at slightly different strategies depending on their situation.
Some easy to see gains are searches like this one 2014 toyota corolla everett.
For dealers like Tom Matson in Auburn where they have heavy PPC competition plus Google bringing “other” Auburn’s across the US into the SERP local content was very important (notice usually Auburn Dodge Indiana in the SERP).
Content strategies:
There is no one strategy better than other, there is a time line of strategies.
Focus on your area of business first so you show Google content and keywords for your location, then move out to other areas.
As an example on how strategies improve and change last month we launched the model line pages for our dealers doing content (other makes getting done right now).
This is a good article on strategy and optimization.
Google Search Algorithm Update: Panda 4.0
May 20th, Google released yet another update to their search algorithm. This update primarily targeted duplicate content, thin content, and low quality content. This update is estimated to effect approximately 7.5% of search results. Everyday Google is working on ways to improve their search results, trying to serve up the best possible search results.
What is duplicate content, thin content, and low quality content?
Duplicate content is when one website steals or borrows content from another website. For example an article from one blog is copy and pasted into another blog. Google gives very little value to content it recognizes as duplicate than original / unique content.
Thin content is when a webpage or website has very little content on the page or site. Google doesn’t give a number of words it likes to see on every page, but if a webpage has less then 50 or 100 words on it, there is a chance Google won’t value it very highly.
Low quality content is a mixture of duplicated content, spammy content, bad spelling, and grammatical errors. If a webpage’s content is copy and pasted from another site and then only reworded slightly, that could be seen as low quality content.
What does this mean for dealerships?
With every update Google releases the importance of high quality and unique content increases. Content Motive offers a variety of SEO and content marketing products that focus on producing high quality unique content. Not only does the content Content Motive produces index well in Google search results, the content is also invaluable to car shoppers looking for information on the cars and services they are interested in. Let our professional writers help boost your dealership’s content marketing strategy.
Estimating Your Monthly PPC Budget
When deciding to invest in PPC marketing, one of the first questions that needs to be answered is, “How much should I spend?” Since most car dealers know that they need to get involved in PPC since nearly 90 percent of people us the internet when shopping for cars. However, most people don’t have a clue when it comes to deciding how much of their marketing budget should be allocated to PPC advertising. Here are some things that you should consider when determining your PPC ad budget.
Your advertising target radius
First, determine what areas you want your ads to target. Are you going to be advertising your product locally? regionally? nationally? Or globally? The wider you cast your advertising net the more traffic you’ll be bringing in and the larger your budget to be. Having a $5,000 dollar monthly budget may be adequate for a business with a 20-mile target radius around their business, but that same amount would be spread quite thin on a state or national level. In fact, that amount probably wouldn’t last before your first coffee in advertised on a national level.
What is the monthly search volume on your keywords
Do a little bit of keyword research and compile a list of the keywords you want to target and also the most popular keywords in your specific industry. Use Google’s Keyword Planner tool to find out what the monthly search volumes are for the keywords you want to target. Set the target ad targeting in the keyword planner to get the most relevant search volume information. If there are a lot of high volume keywords on your list then you’re probably going to need a larger budget.
What is the CPC of the keywords on your list?
In the same Keyword Planner tool you can also find the CPC (cost-per-click) for the keywords on your list. The CPCs can vary depending on the keyword match type, type of keyword, and your specific advertising niche. Your branded keywords such as your dealership name will be much cheaper than general industry terms such as “used cars”. Exact match keywords are cheaper than high volume broad match keywords. Dealerships that want to bid on terms such as “bad credit car loan” may need to pay a premium to compete in this highly competitive finance niche.
Now do some math
Monthly Search Volume x Average CPC x 3% CTR = Your Suggest Monthly Budget
The 3% CTR is just an estimate. The CTR will vary depending on the specific industry and the quality of your ad copy.
If you’re finding that the suggested monthly budget is way more than you can afford then you may want to consider some things such as weeding out some keywords or decreasing your target radius until you find a number that you’re comfortable with.
Content Strategy
We started building a new type of set pages for content, specially focused on new cars.
The pages don’t look different than many other companies new car model pages, what is different are the links to content.
In this example for , you can see that besides accessing the inventory, brochures, incentives, etc (information that most dealer websites have) we also added pages with model information and trim information. The model and trim pages are build with unique content as required by the latest Google SEO updates.
These pages are not built all at once but several each month, for example you can see that has model pages but not trims yet. While it would be easier for us to build it all at once a constant flow of content signals Google that there is new material to index and therefore increases the chances of getting our website crawled and therefore indexed.
Enhancing content with video:
We also build pages for those dealers that have been working with us for a while for the . Notice that in this case we also added pages for the and that we used Toyota Corporate Youtube account videos with custom geo-located content to create .
with What’s Next Media so we open those as a layover instead of cresting a new page (we created pages with them in a different section of the site for indexing purposes). These videos have a specific branding purpose for the dealer so we wanted to keep the customer’s full attention on them.
Simple pages purely for content:
BMW is known for their remarkable number of different sub-models, however we for this dealer. Same as for this where links to their were more important than other things.
For more information about creating content please check our latest article: or go to for more dealer content marketing and SEO services.
PPC Leads Integrated with Website
In the dashboard you will now notice that leads can be classified as a paid PPC lead.
These leads will have a dollar sign $ indicating that those are not organic to the website.
Our goal is to further integrate assets like Google PPC that are external but related to your web presence.
With one quick look you will be able to see how many leads and what type of leads you get every day in the website. The different icons show where the leads originate and in some cases they can have several sources of information. In the attached screenshot you can see that the PPC click resulted in a chat lead. There are 2 other instances in this example where you can see how the system differentiates from submissions from the dealer’s mobile site.
To learn more about car dealer PPC go to Integrated PPC.
Why Dealer Lab Is The Best Dealer Website Solution
Tailored To Your Needs
A key to success in any market is standing out. With the flexibility we offer and a sharp attention to detail, we ensure that your website will be truly one of a kind. This can include everything from Carfax integration to embedded inventory videos. Customization is just one aspect of what makes a good dealer website. However, what good is the content is elusive? Our Advanced Search gives customers exactly what they are looking for. Taking advantage of a wide variety of options, customers can search, filter and sort indexed content.
A Focus On Services
While a purchase might be what first attracts a customer to your website, the services a dealership offers is what keeps them coming back. The best websites for car dealerships have expansive menus and options for customers to choose from. Not only are our websites fine tuned with the best website designs that are optimized for user intent. We simplify that process. Putting our award winning Search Engine Optimization to work for you ensures that your customers get results quickly and guarantees the highest SEO rankings available. This is confirmed via Google Analytics, which is integrated directly into the Dealer Lab dashboard providing you access to data in real time.
Strength In Marketing
Google has become a standard starting point for customer car shopping. This is especially true for those searching via mobile devices. Utilizing our methodologies, Dealer Lab can ensure that your ads will show to the right customers at the right time. Our inventory-based system syncs up with your inventory database to generate Ads for each specific vehicle on your lot. By matching customers with vehicles that exactly fit their needs, we reduce the frequency of unqualified clicks. This keeps your costs down, conversion rates high and proves we offer the best mobile websites for dealers. Additionally, we can create and share promotional deals using unique, interactive ads and promotions that are optimized to run on desktops, tablets, and mobile devices.
New Terminology In Google Analytics
Some of you astute, detail-orientated types may have noticed a while back that Google Analytics has changed the way that their data is displayed. Don’t panic, this isn’t a major algorithm that will alter the landscape of search marketing — they didn’t even give the update an animal code name such as Penguin or Panda. Here’s a rundown of what changes were made in Google Analytics:
- Visits are now Sessions
- Unique Visitors are now Users
Aside from a slight learning curve of adjusting to the new terminology, this shouldn’t affect Analytics users too much. A post-it it note on your computer would probably suffice in helping you adjust to the change while you get adjusted to this new terminology.
Some people have speculated that the change was made because the mobile industry doesn’t user terms like “visits” or “unique visitors”. This slight change in terminology could definitely be a sign of a sea change where analyzing data from mobile users is becoming more important.
Further Reading:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2731565?hl=en
Three Reason Why You Should Also Advertise On Bing
Google runs a monopoly on the search engine marketing industry. That’s evident by the fact that over here at Integrated PPC nearly 98 percent of our clients ad spend is spent on Google. Yup, a paltry 2 percent of the budget that is managed here is spent on Bingads. Apparently, Bing’s marketing blitz of “Don’t get scroogled”, a few years back, fell on deaf ears.
With 70 percent of all search traffic going through them, Google is definitely the alpha dog in the search engine marketing industry. Any business that does PPC advertising needs to be advertising on Google — such a large portion of internet traffic is too significant to ignore. Accounting for nearly 20 percent of search traffic, Bing comes in at a very distant second. Twenty percent is still quite significant and could account for millions of potential customers, so Bing shouldn’t be ignored either. Here are three reasons why you should also consider advertising on Bingads, even if you’re already advertising on Google.
Lower CPC On Bing
The cost per click to advertise on Bing is significantly cheaper than Google. The cheaper CPCs can be advantageous for those advertising in expensive niches such as the auto loan sector, where each $12 click can quickly deplete your daily budget in Google. The downside to Bing is that fewer people will see your ads. However, you may end up with a better ROI if those who do click on your ads are converting.
Bing Has More Top Page Sponsored Ads
Studies have shown that more people pay attention to the ads at the top of the page than those that appear on the sidebar. The advantage Bing has over Google is that they display more ads on the top page than Google. If you conduct the same keyword search on Google and Bing, you’ll find that at least one more ad appears above Bing organic search results than Google. This means that a fourth position placement on Bing is not only cheaper, but it also has better ad placement on the top of the organic search results.
Easy Import To Bingads
For someone looking to advertise on both Bing and Google, Bingads makes it very effortless to import your Adwords campaigns to Bingads with an import to Adwords function. With just a couple clicks you could be advertising in both advertising platforms and maximizing your search engine traffic — no tedious rebuilding of your campaign involved here.
What Dealerships Need To Know About Marketing To Millenials
Millenials, those born after 1982, are often described as tech-savvy, educated, self-involved, socially connected (a product of coming to age during the social networking era), and impatient. At 80 million strong they make up the largest generation in U.S. History since the Baby Boomers. According to industry experts they carry as much as $170 billions annually in spending power. Car dealerships and automotive brands that can develop brand loyalty early are well positioned to reap a hefty portion of the millenial’s spending pie.
Selling a car to millenials is a lot different than selling to their parents. Here are two things that car dealerships can do to market to millenials.
Get On Social Media
For many millenials, their social network is the center of their lives. It’s the driving force that keeps them updated with their peers and the world around them. In fact, some millenials don’t make a move without consulting their social network. It’s important for car dealerships to develop a social presence. This means crafting social media content that is shareable and using social media as facilitator for communications with them.
Target Them Where They Spend Their Time
Millenials came of age in the era of personal computing and have fully embraced the era of the smartphone. It’s estimated that they spend as much as 8 hours a day consuming media through various devices. Whether it’s checking their e-mail on their desktop, texting their friends on their smart phones, or reading an article on their tablet; millenials spend a lot of time online. If car dealerships want to attract millenials, then they need to invest in their online presence. This means doing PPC advertising to drive traffic to their site, making sure the dealer website is SEO optimized so that it can be found on organic search results, and crafting a user friendly website that’s easy to navigate for both desktops and mobile devices.
Why not let Content Motive’s dealer marketing experts handle your social media and SEO marketing needs for you?
New Facebook Updates Looks to Curb News Feed Spam
In the age of social networking Facebook has become a large part of any online marketing campaign, alongside SEO and PPC. Just as how Google is constantly making changes to their algorithm to alter best practices and penalize SEO tactics that moved from an acceptable tactic to a spammy tactic (i.e. keyword stuffing); Facebook is following suit with changes of their own that will affect how many businesses use social networking to meet their marketing goals.
It’s a common practice for businesses to ask for likes, shares, and comments to promote their product or business. This practice has been going on since business started using their Facebook pages as a marketing tool. Under Facebook’s new guidelines, the social networking giant is cracking down on these calls to action, referring to this practice as “like-baiting”. If a business or website continues to follow the practice of “like-baiting”, it will be much less likely that their posts will show in a users news feed.
Another tactic Facebook is looking to squash is recirculated content. It’s not uncommon for businesses to re-post the same content over and over again to promote a product or an event. Facebook finds the repeated visibility of duplicate content greatly diminishes the user experience of their news feed. They found that reducing this practice causes users to hide 10 percent fewer stories from their news feed.
Facebook says that their goal isn’t to impact pages that are genuinely trying to encourage discussion among their fans, but rather focus on Pages that post explicitly asking for likes, comments, and shares. So if your business is practicing any of these social media marketing tactics, then you may need to rethink new and creative ways to get people to like your posts without specifically asking for them outright.
Content Motive’s current social media posting strategies will not be effected by these updates. Content Motive is proud to offer unique content on each post and does not bait likes, but instead encourage people to follow on Facebook naturally.
Top Businesses For Mobile Search
In our fast paced life, users are increasingly turning to their mobile devices to access information while on the go. This is especially true for local search. According to a recent survey finding 63 percent of people are now using multiple devices to find local business. Of that, 79 percent of them are mobile phones users and 81 percent are tablet owners.
The study finds that these following businesses are the most popular in local searches on mobile devices:
– According to the survey restaurants are searched 23 percent of the time.
– The auto industry, including auto service shops and dealerships, account for 10 percent of local search.
– Art and entertainment came in at 9 percent.
If your business falls in the above mentioned categories, what can you do to appeal to mobile users and give them a quality on-the-go web experience? According to the survey, 65 percent of smartphone users said the driving force behind their mobile search was a “need for information on the go”. Mobile users don’t want to be overwhelmed with content. They want quick access to details like addresses, phone number, and basic product/service information.
For those businesses running PPC campaigns, it should be noted that mobile visitors tend to be on the higher end of the sales funnel and in a browsing state-of-mind. However, numerous case studies show that many users will start their search on their mobile when they have some down time, but will continue and possibly initiate the conversion on the desktop.
If this study is any indication of whats to come, optimizing your PPC campaign and/or website for mobile should be on the top of every business’s to do list.
The Pros & Cons of Bidding On Competitor Keywords
By its very nature, which is rooted in a bidding system for premium ad placement, PPC is very competitive form of marketing that breeds competition between brands. A PPC strategy that many business owners use is bidding on their competitor’s branded keywords. Bidding on your competitor’s branded keywords can open your business up to customers who you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. On the other hand, a shot across the bow at your competitor may cause your competitor to retaliate and bid on your branded terms – driving up the CPC for both terms. So before you decide to open the can of worms of bidding on your competition’s keywords, consider the pros and cons.
Pros:
- In general, branded keywords are a great way to attract customers who are high in the sales funnel and still weighing their options between brands. These are customers who may not have known about your brand, otherwise.
- Bidding on your competition doesn’t cannibalize your organic search listing. Chances are that you probably rank pretty high in organic search listings for your own branded terms. By bidding on your own branded terms you may be cannibalizing traffic that you would’ve gotten anyway through organic search listing.
Cons:
- Since the landing page has very little relevance with your competitor’s branded terms, you can expect low quality scores when you bid on your competitor’s branded keywords. This means you’ll have to pay a higher CPC when bidding on the competition.
- If your competitors aren’t bidding on your keywords now, then they will shortly as soon as you start to appear for their search terms.
- Using your competitor’s trademarked brand name in your ad text may draw the attention of Google and get your ad disapproved.
How to turn the “Cons” into “Pros”: Don’t target exact trademarked names, but instead the city and the make that that dealership sells. Create custom landing pages with keywords targeted not directly at your competing dealerships, but close to it. This will raise the quality score of the page, lowering your CPC.
Together Integrated PPC and Content Motive can create great landing pages lowing your cost per click and greatly improving your landing page’s quality score. What does this mean? You can save money while maximizing your profits! Click here to get started!
Reasons Why PPC & SEO Are Better Used Together
Like Michael Jordan & Scottie Pippen, peanut butter & jelly, and under appreciated R&B 70′s duo Herbs & Peaches – reunited and it feels so good – SEO & PPC together is greater than the sum of its parts.
Some people may disagree with that statement and make this analogy, “Why should I pay for the milk (PPC) when I have a cow that will give it away for free (SEO)”. This argument might be valid if we’re talking about bovines and dairy products. However, we’re not talking about free milk; we’re talking clicks and conversions. Those who treat SEO and PPC as two mutually exclusive online marketing tactics will be missing out on tremendous digital marketing opportunities.
Here are some reasons why you should be utilizing both SEO and PPC in your digital marketing campaign.
The Rules of Real Estate
Think of the SERP (search engine results page) as valuable real estate. Any screen space above the fold can be considered valuable waterfront property. Screen space below the fold on the first page is a rather nice neighborhood with a few gated communities and a Whole Foods. While anything on the second page and beyond is the wrong side of the tracks. Just as in real estate, getting clicks and impressions is all about location location location. Having top positions in both SEO and PPC greatly increases the chance that your home page or landing page will become a popular destination.
Shared Keyword Data
Running an SEO and PPC campaign gives you double the data to analyze. Determine which organic and paid keywords have the highest conversion rate, and use that data to optimize your overall strategy.
Greater Authority Figure On a Subject
Studies have shown that when businesses hold top spots in both SEO and PPC they are seen as a more trusted authority figure on a subject. So when Joe Car Repair holds top positions in both organic and paid search, he is going to be viewed as a much more competent mechanic than Gary Car Repair – yelp reviews withstanding – and much more likely to be clicked on.
Test Organic Keywords with PPC
Using PPC is a great way to refine your organic keyword strategy. As you evolve your long term keyword strategy, you can test the conversion rate of words that you want to rank for with PPC ads. You’ll get immediate feedback on the success, or failure, of organic keywords you’d like to rank for.
Greater than the sum of its parts – Content Motive and Integrated PPC when used together will help maximize your dealership’s leads and sales potential.
Measuring Blog Performance by Using Google Analytics
Whether you manage a small, yet burgeoning, blog with a few dozen readers or an immensely popular blog with a profitable Adsense account; you can utilize Google Analytics to gain insightful measurements on your blog’s performance. The myriad of data and graphs may seem daunting at first glance. However, if you know what data to look for; you can cut through the clutter and make sense of all that information. In this article we’ll point out some statistics you should consider monitoring to understand how well your blog is performing.
When it comes to blogging, content is king. Great content on your blog will get visitors returning to it repeatedly. Google Analytics allows you to see how many people came to your website once, twice, thrice, etc over a period of time. In the navigation panel go to Audience > Behavior > Frequency & Recency to see this information. Checking the number of return visitors to your blog is worth monitoring on a monthly basis to see if this figure gets better as you continue to develop loyal readers.
The Audience Overview report in Google Analytics has some valuable statistics you should monitor. In the navigation panel go to Audience > Overview to access this report. The metrics that you should monitor on this report includes:
Average Pages per visit: This statistic tells you how many pages your average visitor goes to during a session. Your blog should entice readers to explore other content within the site.
Time on site: The amount of time a visitor spends on our blog can give you valuable insights on the user experience. If your visitors are spending lots of time on your page then it may be an indication that they’re reading your content. That is great! On the other hand, if they are not spending significant time in your site then it may be a red flag for issues with your blog. Issues such as offensive content or long page load times – a likely cause for graphic heavy pages – might be some possible causes for visitors to retreat from your blog prematurely.
Bounce rate: The bounce rate is the percentage of users that visit your site, but leave without engaging with other pages. A high bounce rate can be addressed by implementing an internal linking strategy to relevant posts within your blog.
These are just a few metrics that you should consider. There are many other ways to measure blog performance. What analytics do you use to measure your blog performance?
Are you looking for an automotive blog with transparent results? Content Motive uses professional writers who specialize in SEO in the automotive industry.
CraigsList integration FREE
The CraigsList reporting tool is now available in the website’s back end.
Log in your DealerLab.com account, click on the marketing tab then click on CragsList report.
The report also provides (not shown on screenshot) the phone call records and email transcript.
We also provide a link to the live ads or in case you work in multiple areas, links to the ads on these.
The Craigslist reporting is part of an effort to get as many systems integrated during 2014 and make dealer’s log ins easier then ever.
Interested in Craigslist for car dealers. Auto Classified Solutions has a posting platform that is integrated with our Dealer Lab back-end.
Rebates tool FREE
We finally finished our rebates tool for new cars.
The tool allows you to manage blocks of rebates, apply them to groups of cars selected, and the system will calculate the new price deduction from the MSRP. The system will also send all the rebate information to the website so it is displayed in the VDP.
The tool is FREE for customers using both PGI Data system and DealerLab.com websites.
Virtual Credit Consultant is FREE
We launched the Virtual Credit Consultant last year in an effort to create a better online financing application for the dealers.
The VCC is now FREE for all DealerLab.com customers.
The VCC can be installed in:
- The SRP–See top banner
- The VDP–See “Get Pre-Approved” to the right.
- The Home Page
- It is mobile responsive (See attached image)
The VCC doesn’t just work for special financing, the tool is just a credit application, the information around it in the page makes it look one way or another. That means that it is also useful for dealers not looking for special finance customers but just for customers to apply for credit via their website.
The VCC is also mobile adaptive, if your mobile traffic is right now 30% of your total traffic this represents a 30% increase on chances to get a credit application done for the dealership. We can add the VCC to both the mobile SRP and the mobile VDP as well as the banner on the mobile home page. It also works great in tablets.
You can access your current credit applications via the Dealerlab.com back end by going to Leads::Finance::Virtual Consultant. The system will display regular credit apps from the VCC, that way you can use them for different purposes, landing pages, etc and keep track of how they produce individually.
All the credit applications are also stored in the credit section of the website’s back end for quick and easy access.
If you are not getting enough credit applications this product will work for you and it is free for all DealerLab.com customers.
For more information or to install this product contact your DealerLab representative.
What is online content marketing?
Online content marketing is any marketing done online that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire customers. This information can be presented in a variety of formats, including custom websites, custom webpages, blogs, review sites, social media, how-to guides, question and answer articles, photos, etc.
So basically, online content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers and potential customers without selling. It is a non-confrontational form of marketing. Instead of pitching your products or services, you are delivering information that makes your buyer smarter and increasing their interest in the product. The essence an online content strategy is the belief that if we deliver consistent, ongoing valuable information to buyers, they ultimately reward you with their business and returning loyalty.
How does online content marketing create website traffic?
Traffic is received through search engines and social media. Our content is written in a way that utilizes keywords that customers search for. Most of our keywords are also accompanied with local cities and places near your potential customers. Example: some one lives near Everett, WA and they are searching for a new Honda Fit. Naturally that person may search for “New Honda Fit in Everett” or “New Honda Fit for Sale near Everett”. If the correct keywords and locations are used, then your website traffic will increase. Along with these keywords, we also up-sell and educate your readers with our professionally written articles. Our articles are accompanied with call to action buttons and links, to retain the customer and keep them on your site. This leads to conversions and increased sales.
What are our content goals?
- Brand / Dealership Awareness
- Lead Conversion
- Customer Conversion
- Customer Service / Education
- Retention / Loyalty
- Up-Sell
Want to learn more about how Content Motive can help your dealership retain and get new customers? Click here for a free web presence evaluation.
CraigsList Website Integration
The CraigsList posting report system, now integrated with your dealer website backend:
(AutoClassifiedSolutions.com) has been integrated with the back end of the DealerLab.com websites.
In short: Now you can access all your CL posting budget, expense, call reports, email reports, etc from the website’s back end.
“I know that what we did here looks easy but these systems are completely different. A lot of work went into this and I want to that Dustin Moore–lead programer in the Seattle office and Dan Whiten–lead programer in the Chicago office for putting their teams together and get this done for our dealers”
– Yago Paramo, CEO of PGI Digital.
Our goal with this integration is to have more and better systems integration so dealers can access information faster and from one point of log in.
We have not linked the new reporting system to the back end yet! so there is no direct access until we test it for a few days. If you want to take an “early pick” you can log in your DealerLab.com account and you will see something like: http://dashboard.dealereprocess.com/site-[ unique number]/craigslist.
New Feature: Mobile Menu
Dealer Lab and Dealer e-Process’ rolled out its newest feature “mobile menu” across all of its mobile sites. The mobile menu provides easy navigation and access for the customer on-the-go.
Mobile Menu Grid
The grid displays on every mobile page so customers can access different areas of the site faster as opposed to pressing the “back arrow” multiple times.
Menu Tabs
When you select the menu grid, the menu expands to show all department/category tabs.
Expandable Menu Tabs
The menu tab expands to display all menu links so customers can quickly get where they need to go.
Google Plus Authorship
Adding Google+ Authorship to your custom pages is becoming a vital process for search engine results. This simple process, which adds a simple line of code to your pages (much like a byline on any article), creates a “rich snippet” in Google’s search results that comes complete with the contributor/writer’s name and photo.
Google Authorship is important for several reasons. The first is that these “rich snippets” pop visually next to untagged search results. With a photo and accreditation, these search results stand out from the crowd in a search and generate more visits as a result. Another reason G+ Authorship has been gaining traction in search results is that these “rich snippets” also allow browsers to search for more pages by a listed author.
Having Google Authorship integrated into your pages is a first step toward verified identity and helps establish what Google has termed “Author Rank” (which is not a replacement for page ranking, but a separate system with ties into page rankings).
Because Google Authorship is based on the Author’s validity and reputation, along with deep ties into general page ranking, “rich snippet” author tags may not show up in search results on every single page they’re integrated into, but instead those that Google deems the most authoritative. But they do give a page added validity with the search engine and if the content is unique enough, having an author tag also lends itself to the reputation of the tagged author as well.
Looking for help with your dealership’s search engine marketing and content marketing? Content Motive has a wide variety of products to improve your websites visits and leads.
Where does the Snippet come from?
When Google generates search results for your keywords, you’ll see a description below the page title, this is called the “Snippet.” The snippet can be an important section to optimize for driving traffic, so what can you do to optimize for that? First, let’s understand where Google looks to create your snippet.
First and foremost, Google will try to find the parts of the page content that best match the keywords you searched for, and will show snippets surrounding those parts. In this case there’s nothing you can optimize other than just having compelling content on your dealer website. Otherwise, Google will use the meta description for the snippet. In the rare case that Google is unable to crawl the page, the snippet may be pulled from the “Open Directory Project.”
This is why it’s important to have good meta descriptions on your pages. The SEO value of the meta-description is very minimal compared to a couple years ago in regard to pagerank. However, by catching the user’s eye with a compelling description, you will drive more traffic to your site.
It’s important to note that Google will also use algorithms to try to provide additional information after the snippet. For example, you may have seen organic search results that have sitelinks. These sitelinks don’t cost anything extra, they’re just pulled directly from your site. Google will also try to pull useful information from your website like the street address to add after the snippet. If your website is the official site of a publicly traded company, the stock ticker will show up.
Could your dealership be being more click throughs from SERP’s, let us optimize your results and get you more leads. Content Motive is your online dealership marketing experts.
Converting with Video
A couple weeks ago we posted about the use of video in the car sales world. Website providers everywhere are constantly trying to find ways to convert Browsing Customers into Buying Customers. Here at PGI we have stayed on the cutting edge of technology by building focused packages which pair the videos we take with powerful SEO and Distribution to give you a much higher chance of this conversion.
Converting a Customer needs to be done quickly. Usually we only have a few seconds at best to draw a person in and make them want to stick around long enough to learn the value of what is being offered.
Statistically speaking, the Online Publishers association tells us that 80% of internet users admit to having watched a video ad in the last 30 days. 46% of these visitors took some action after viewing the ad. 12% of these active visitors actually purchased the product featured in the ad.
As you can see, making videos available and visible wherever your customers see inventory is crucial to taking advantage of the video craze going on in the market today. Our goal is to transform your inventory into a full fledged moving marketplace aimed solely at Customer Conversion.
Stay tuned later this week to see our new flagship video account in action!
Why Half of Your Used Cars Won’t Sell
Digital marketing is continuing to grow in all industries and now accounts for 1.5 out of every 4 dollars spent in the auto industry. That being said, we also know that 90% of all customers that enter dealerships have done some sort of browsing on the Internet before purchasing a car. Google is predicting that digital advertising in the auto industry will quadruple over the next few years.
Looking at the numbers, 50% of all visitors that come to ANY car dealer’s website from any source, click on the “Search Used Cars” button. This is great information to know, but doesn’t necessarily tell the complete story when it comes to helping customers find the right car they are searching for. The story and question I would like to discuss is this; what is your “used car digital strategy” to get customers’ eyeballs on all of the different brands of inventory you carry? For example, when I look at most Chevrolet dealers’ inventories, I see that at least 40 to 60 % of the used cars on the ground are not Chevrolets! So again, my question is this; how do you plan on selling those 15 Fords, 9 Nissans, 8 GMCs, etc. from your inventory when most customers look at your dealership as a “Chevrolet Dealership? see the screenshot below for a typical dealership’s used car inventory (Chevrolet Dealer)
Please don’t tell me you are hoping that the 50% of the customers clicking on your “Search Used Cars” button is your strategy? Or let me guess, you have “a guy” who does search engine marketing for your dealership?
This is where strategy comes into play, and where NO dealership can pull off the feat that DIGITAL AMMP can. If I were to tell you that I could write 10 different ads per used car unit, start and stop these ads when cars leave or enter your inventory (or when too much is being spent per car), while only showing these ads to consumers on Google when looking for that exact vehicle, would you be interested? Of course you would!
Let’s put in perspective what this does for your dealership on numerous levels.
- 122 used cars in stock = 1220 new ads written daily on Google based on the data
- Know the dollars spent per used car until sold
- Know how may VDP views per car as a result of digital marketing
- Know how many leads, calls & chats were generated per car as a result of Digital AMMP
- Maximize budget – stretch your dollar further than ever before
- Landing pages determined by inventory make, model, price, inventory count, age of vehicle
Here’s the Tip: If you want to move your used car inventory, let Digital AMMP do the heavy lifting. Displaying the right ad at the right time to the right person is the ONLY digital marketing used car strategy you should have! Your “guy” cant do that!
Dave Page
Owner of Dealer e Process
What is Geofencing and how will it effect car dealers?
By definition, geofencing is a technology that can register when someone enters a predefined geographical area. This is measured by GPS or RFID. Some marketers have begun using geofencing as a way to target coupons and ads at people within a certain distance of their dealership.
Google currently does not offer a direct way to advertise using this through adwords. They do, however, offer developers an API for creating geofences. Since use of geofences is currently limited to user-installed apps, the possibilities are still somewhat limited, but 3rd party companies offer ways to make use of geofencing to deliver deals to nearby customers.
I’m not sure when this technology is going to become available for everyone, but it would be pretty impressive to be able to serve an ad or display a coupon for your dealership when a customer is nearby, or better yet, when they’re in the waiting room for a competitor.
Kevin Drongowski
Integrated PPC
SEO, PPC, and ROI for your Dealership
SEO and PPC have very different costs and results. For PPC/search advertising, your ROI is pretty clear. You spent X dollars, you got Y clicks, of which Z people converted. However, when it comes to SEO and content development, the results are much less clear.
When you put the time or money into writing quality content, you might not see any benefits in the first 30 or even 60 days. Over time, though, the more high quality articles you publish, the more your traffic will improve and the more it will benefit your search ranking.
This can make SEO very discouraging to pursue, but the results are far more sustainable. With PPC, you buy a click, and boom, it’s over. You either made a sale or you didn’t. With SEO, you are building authority and relevance, which will continue to drive traffic for months or even years. This makes it hard to convince someone just starting out that it’s worth the time and money, but when it comes to long term results, a strong SEO effort will pay dividends.
Is Link Building Dead?
First, let’s review what’s happened in 2013. Matt Cutts released several videos talking about how guest posts for the sake of link building has become a more and more spammy practice. As a result, must websites that would actually benefit you to have links on them (the non-spammy sites) are most likely going to put “nofollow”s on your links, meaning they won’t affect your pageRank. Additionally, Google has updated their webmaster guidelines stating that any large-scale link networks or article repositories will result in penalties as well.
Ultimately, the trend is toward high quality content, and fewer links from higher quality sites instead of hundreds of low quality links. Going forward the best strategy is going to be around building your brand, and promoting as if the search engines didn’t exist. Here are some good tips to determine if a link is going to look good to Google. Taken from http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2259674/Penguin-2.0-Forewarning-The-Google-Perspective-on-Links
Would you build the link if Google and Bing did not exist?
If you have 2 minutes with a customer, and the law required that you show a random sampling of your links to customer prospects, would you happily show the link to a target customer? Or would it embarrass you?
Did the person giving you the link intend it as a genuine endorsement? This is where widget and infographic links fail.
Do you have to make an argument to justify that it’s a good link? Still my favorite – truly good links require no justification.
Google still takes links into account for determining your pageRank. However, if you aren’t picking those links carefully, you could end up getting hurt by it.
Is you dealership looking to boost your search engine results and rise above the competition? Content Motive has a variety of services that will boost your dealership’s content quality and referral links.
Dealer Lab’s Advanced Marketing Report to Dashboard
The Marketing Report pulls all Pay-Per-Click (PPC) statistics from Google Analytics, Google AdWords, call tracking, and chat leads, and displays them in an easy-to-understand format so you can track the effectiveness of your digital marketing efforts. This report is the most transparent way to view and analyze the following data:
- The number of clicks your ads have received
- The number of impressions (appearances on a search results page) your ads have gained
- The total number of unique (new) visitors that reached your site from the ad campaigns
- The number of lead conversions that resulted from the ad campaigns
- The total amount of money spent on the campaigns
- Network specific data (Google Search vs. Google Display)
Campaign and AdGroup Breakdown
The information above is then broken down at the Campaign and Ad Group level. Campaign level data gives you an overview of how your campaign is performing based on your objectives for that campaign. For example, you can view how your New Cars campaign is performing relative to your Used Cars campaign. Within the campaign, you can view performance statistics at the Ad Group level, which allows you to get a sense for how the ads in each campaign are being searched. You can also see how much of your traffic is coming from desktop, mobile, and tablet devices, as well as what geographic areas your campaigns are targeting.
Inventory-Based Ad Analytics
If your inventory feed is synced with our Digital AMMP Inventory-Specific Advertising Platform, then the AdWords reporting will include another level of analysis. Since we are pulling vehicle-specific information from your inventory and are placing dynamic ads related to your inventory on Google, we can view exactly what kind of activity those vehicles generate from the time they hit a Google search page until the vehicle is sold. When you click the “Details” button on your inventory-specific campaign, you will be able to see a breakdown of every vehicle that is currently being advertised or that has been on the Google network and has since been sold.
Details Page Statistics
The Details page provides a statistical overview including Total Cost. You can also view the Top-Clicked Vehicle Details Pages, Clicks versus Cost for each vehicle, and whether or not that vehicle is sold or still active in your inventory. The Top 10 Viewed Makes and Models provide a great visual to the overall interest of your customers.
Contact Integrated PPC today and we will grade your PPC Program for free!
Where Facebook Fits In
I’ve noticed a few rumors on the web that Facebook can help your SEO, or that having more likes will boost your Google pagerank. These are (currently) inaccurate, but that doesn’t mean Facebook isn’t a legitimate way to generate traffic and leads.
Facebook falls under the “Content Marketing” strategy. Content marketing is all about putting relevant content out there for customers to find. Where Facebook comes into this strategy is providing content for the customers that have already connected with you in the hopes that they will spread the word.
The best content strategy for Facebook tends to be 1 offer/promotion to every 4 posts of useful content. The goal is to provide value to your followers so that they tell their friends, and as your reach increases, you send the offers that convince them to come to your website and convert. For each new follower, that’s another free impression you have on all future content, because your new posts will show up in their feed.
Facebook advertising can accelerate the process by putting your content in front of the people you want to target, in the hope of getting them to like your Facebook page so they’re part of your audience for future content. Alternatively, you can just have your ads take the user directly to your website.
If your dealership is interested in a Facebook posting service, click here to learn more.
Write Good Content and the SEO Will Follow
When you hear about a change to a Google algorithm, the knee-jerk reaction is usually “how will this affect my SEO?” Every day, this reaction is becoming more backwards. SEO, as a product, has been inflated by digital marketers over the past 5 years. The reason is that it’s easy to sell a magic bullet that gets you on the top of the Google results for keywords related to your business.
SEO means Search Engine Optimization, so it’s safe to say that the service should be focused on making your site the first choice when a user searches for something relevant to your site. So an SEO expert should be able to make changes to your site, and take action around the web to take advantage of Google’s search algorithms. Google has changed their search algorithms twice a day on average in 2013. So how can you possibly expect to be consistently “optimized” for them.
As the algorithms evolve, and Google cracks down on link building scams, their focus is more and more on providing relevant content for the searcher. This means that the end goal for Google isn’t to pick the site with the most backlinks, or the site with the best metadata keywords. The searcher has a question, and Google wants to answer it with the site that best covers the topic. This is primarily what the Hummingbird update aimed to do: Give searchers relevant answers.
This is where content marketing comes in. Each topic, relevant to your business, that you can cover is essentially another Google query, you’re prepared for no matter what animal Google names their next update after. Sure, keywords will still be important, but I challenge you to write an article on “replacing spark plugs” without ever saying “spark plug.” Google’s bots have gotten smarter as well, they can better understand the message of a single sentence so you don’t need to inject a ridiculous keyword string to make sure all of your bases are covered.
The future of “SEO” will still include doing the essential steps like submitting a sitemap to webmaster tools, and setting up a GooglePlus account for authorship, but the greater focus will be on having content that is useful for searchers. Having great content that you spread across your entire web presence has a much more powerful effect than just showing up at the top of Google’s search results. Great content gets shared. When your content really helps someone, they’ll pass it along to their network, which gives your content extra credibility. Now you have motivated visitors that didn’t even need to perform a search to arrive on your page.
Want to learn more about how your dealership can benefit from having high quality content? Content Motive has a variety of products that can build your web presence.
6th PGI Training and Educational Seminar
CHEDULED EVENTS
Breakfast at 8:30am, Presentations Begin at 9am
How To Build Your Dealership Around Social
– Gary May – Founder, IM@CS Doing The Basics Brilliantly
Dynamic PPC Integration & Analytics
– Nick Gorton – General Manager, Integrated PPC
Content and Organic SEO
– Yago Paramo – Founder, PGI Auto
Social Media Strategies
– JD Rucker – Founder, Dealer Authority
February 20th
Hilton Hotel
300 Lake Washington Blvd SE
Bellevue, WA
RSVP TODAY!
LIMITED SPACE AVAILABLE
ONLY 75 SPOTS AVAILABLE!
TO RSVP, Call Courtni at
(425) 379-0483 ext. 109
AWA Awards
Congratulations to Automotive Pinnacle Website Awards Winner Dealer e-Process and
Dealer e-Process and Dealerlab.com has been recognized independently as a 2014 Automotive Website Awards recipient for the Pinnacle Platforms award in the Websites category. The well-known automotive website platform was well-deserving of the award, and PCG Consulting is thrilled to honor its hard work through 2013.
The Pinnacle Platform Automotive Website Award in the Websites category sets apart platforms that make it easy to create and manage high-ranking dealership websites. Pinnacle Platform Award winners are recognized for providing websites that have numerous integrated tools, are easy to optimize, are easy to customize and that are adaptable to the latest digital marketing musts.
Dealer e-Process has always been on the cutting-edge of website platform technologies and has been recognized by the AWAs since their launch. This year, Dealer e-Process was recognized for its dedicated customer service, its customized website solutions, its integrated digital marketing tools and its commitment to create original software.
Automotive Website Awards Announced January 24th
PCG Consulting celebrated the 2014 Automotive Website Awards Friday night at the Hyatt Regency New Orleans. During the awards, the best of the best in automotive marketing were honored, with awards across categories such as Websites, CRM Platforms, Mobile Apps, Social Media, Call Training & Tracking, and others. For an in-depth look at all of the 2014 Automotive Website Awards and their recipients, please check out the 2014 AWA Buyer’s Guide where a comprehensive list of all winners has been published.
Driving Sales Award
Dealer e-Process receives a “Top Rated” Award for Dealer Satisfaction in SEM – PPC and Websites Categories
Downers Grove, Illinois – January 24, 2014 – Dealer e-Process is the recipient of “Top Rated” awards in the SEM – PPC and Websites categories in the fifth annual DrivingSales Dealer Satisfaction Awards. The awards were presented at a special event today in conjunction with the 2014 National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) Convention & Expo.
“It’s an honor to have received a DrivingSales Dealer Satisfaction award every year since its inception in the auto industry. I would really like to thank the team at Dealer e-Process for making this happen and keeping our focus where it needs to be – on great customer support and innovation for our dealers,” said Dave Page, Owner of Dealer e-Process.
Dealer e-Process’ search campaigns are designed to reach buyers in all different phases of the car buying funnel; from the highest level, exploratory purchaser, to the customer who has chosen a specific vehicle and is ready to buy. Dealer e-Process uses this knowledge to determine what ads are the most appropriate to show the user at the time of their search. This allows for a more engaging ad that will generate better click-through rates and greater results for the dealer.
“This is a big deal for us at Dealer e-Process. We recently launched “Digital AMMP”, an advanced search engine marketing strategy for dealers. This award should definitely increase our footprint. A special thanks goes out to our dealers for supporting our innovation and the industry we love so much,” said Megan Glick, Digital Marketing Director.
“You don’t work for the award, you work to be the best, but it feels good to be recognized for the efforts of the team”, said Yago Paramo.
“We congratulate Dealer e-Process on winning a ‘Top Rated’ Award in both the SEM – PPC and the Websites categories; and for being recognized by its dealer customers for high levels of excellence and customer satisfaction,” said DrivingSales CEO and Founder Jared Hamilton. “In our fifth year of presenting these awards, we feel especially proud that DrivingSales Vendor Ratings continues to help dealers make smart and informed decisions through thousands of peer reviews that lead them to service providers such as Dealer e-Process. We congratulate Dealer e-Process on being recognized for top notch performance by the people to whom their services count the most: the dealer community.”
The DrivingSales Dealer Satisfaction Awards measure dealer satisfaction with vendor products and services, and are based on cumulative ratings tallied and verified over the calendar year (January – December) at DrivingSales.com Vendor Ratings. DrivingSales.com Vendor Ratings is the industry’s only neutral, comprehensive vendor rating forum featuring real-time peer reviews and honest competitor comparisons, and provides dealerships with important information from actual customers who have hands-on experience using vendor products / solutions in their stores. Each rating is verified as coming from an actual dealership employee.
Full award results are available online at Dealer Satisfaction Awards. Award winners are showcased in the Q1 2014 issue of the DrivingSales Dealership Innovation Guide which, in addition to being distributed at the 2014 NADA Convention and Expo, is delivered to every new car dealership nationwide, as well as to the top 100 used car dealerships. For more information on the Dealership Innovation Guide, please visit: DrivingSales Innovation Guide.
Come join us at NADA
Nick Gorton and Yago Paramo will be at NADA from Wednesday to Monday (I’ll be attending the AWA awards on Thursday). Call us or text us if you are going to be there.
Dynamic Inventory PPC
Last month we introduced Dynamic PPC for New and Used inventory but what is most important, integrated with your DealerLab websites back end.
Dynamic ads allow you to target any DMA because the ads are not based on key words so you don’t use any competitor names or brands, the ads are based on inventory specific searches in Google and a matching based on IP address.
Today we show you a screen shoot of the system with the “per unit” activity report.
A few of the key features of the system:
1) Monthly budget managed in Google’s back end like a PPC campaign.
2) Reporting available on your Google account and in your DealerLab website.
3) Total budget cap per vehicle available to avoid high profile cars burning the budget.
4) Separate campaigns and budget for new and used.
5) Customized target areas for new and used.
6) Ability not to push cars with no photos (Available late Q1 2014).
We have been working hard on a system that creates unique Google ads for the specific used cars that you have in stock.
Here’s how it works.
1) Someone searches for a car in Google
2) If the search is a match for the Year, Make, Model car you have in stock an ad matching their search is shown
3) The searcher clicks on the ad and goes directly to the VDP
The reporting data comes directly from your Google Adwords account. You have full transparency into cost per click, total spend per car, even conversions from your PPC ads.
This is the most targeted, cost effective, transparent way to get your cars in front of searchers. The best part is that all of the data is in your existing DealerLab.com dashboard. One log-in to see every click, conversion and dollar spent.
New CraigsList Report System
A few weeks ago we announced a new CraigsList reporting back-end and today we announce again a new system.
We will have by late Q1 a full reporting integration with Auto Classified Solutions and your website by DealerLab.
Our goal is to have one point of entry with all your digital assets integrated.
Websites with Updated Analytics
DealerLab websites back end Google analytics integration has been updated to also include referral sources indicating the source/medium.
Our goal is to offer as much information about your digital presence as possible in one place to lower the time you spend managing systems and access.
Google Universal Analytics
What Universal Analytics offers to developers is the ability to collect data from multiple devices and platforms.
Old Google Analytics would only report website traffic, with Universal Analytics you can track actions in mobile apps, game consoles, and information kiosks. For the automotive industry, the extra device tracking is not a huge perk. However, when an account has Universal Analytics enabled, you can see details about which search engine was used arriving on the site, user behavior details like session timeouts, referral exclusions, and search term exclusions.
Referral exclusions can be useful for providing more accurate data about user behavior. For example, if your site has a sister site at a different domain, and users could bounce back and forth between the 2, you would want to exclude each of the urls so that this behavior is reported as the same session instead of referral traffic.
Excluded search terms allow you to mark organic search traffic from specific terms as direct traffic instead. If you would prefer that when people search for your company name to get to your website, they are considered direct traffic instead of organic search traffic, you could add the company name as an excluded search term.
All behaviors from these exclusions are still recorded, but the user’s intention and process becomes more clear.
Hopefully, this clears up some of the changes in Universal Analytics.
PPC DealerLab Integration
We announced this month a new DealerLab + Google integration with PPC campaigns reporting straight in the back end of the websites and here is a screenshot of how the system looks.
On a regular account you will have all the campaigns listed as you scroll down (not just the one that shows on the screenshot) including regular PPC and re-targeting campaigns. Dynamic PPC (next post) will also be included as a campaign with the additional “per unit” detail.
CraigsList posting method analysis
Case Studies:
In this study, I’m going to show information for dealers on the daily posting method and the monthly posting method.
DAILY POSTING METHOD
The daily method, is posting a set number of vehicles every single day. This can be any number, though I think at least 5 per day would be best at minimum. Best when paired with an initial upload so that the dealer’s inventory is immediately available and then augmented every day.
PROS:
– Inventory Up Every Day
– Some inventory always at or near the top of the search
– No drop-off (expiration) day for entire inventory.
CONS:
– It can be cost prohibitive
– If not paired with initial upload, it can take a week or more to get a dealer’s entire inventory posted.
MONTHLY POSTING METHOD
The monthly method is setup so that all the cars post at the beginning of the month (or when the dealer signs up) and as new inventory arrives in the dealers feed, that inventory is posted to CL.
PROS:
– Easier to manage Cost.
– Inventory up immediately without build-up budget
CONS:
– Majority of inventory could drop off and be off of CL until reposted.
– Could go days or more in between fresh postings.
MONTHLY POSTING METHOD ——————————————
Independent dealer metro area
– 54 Vehicles Posted 12/21 – 1/20
– Monthly Posting Method
– 8 Calls
– 0 Emails
– $33.75 per lead
An easily identifiable pattern is that leads occur, when fresh inventory is posted. Today, we posted 4 vehicles. We got 2 new calls.
The last time leads were received for this dealer was Jan 8th & 9th, not coincidently we also posted vehicles on both of those days.
These guys are a prime candidate for a daily posting total.
Hyundai dealer metro area-
160 Vehicles Posted 12/21 – 1/20
– Monthly Posting Method
– 16 Calls
– 0 Emails
– $50 per lead
The last time a lead was received was Jan 11th, a day fin which we posted fresh inventory. Prior to that they received leads on Jan 8, Jan7, Jan 6, Jan 2 & Jan 1. All of those dates are either the same day or day after we post fresh inventory.
This is another example of a dealer that could benefit from daily posting.
Ford dealer metro area
– 174 Vehicles Posted 12/21 – 1/20
– Monthly Posting Method
– 94 Calls
– 2 Emails
– $8.28 per lead
This is a good example of a dealer that gets fantastic results on the monthly option. A quick look at their chart in the dealer interface points to the reasoning. They have fresh inventory posted on 16 out of the last 30 days (almost every other day). So while they aren’t on the daily posting method, they are getting fresh inventory on CL very frequently.
DAILY POSTING METHOD ——————————————
Franchised dealer metro area
– 210 Vehicles Posted 12/21 – 1/20
– Daily Posting Method
– 33 Calls
– 8 Emails
– $25.61 per lead
This is the 2nd dealer we put on the daily posting method. From 12/21 – 1/12 they received 24 leads while being on the monthly posting method. Since switching to the daily method (8 days ago) on 1/13 they have received 17 leads. So, prior to switching, they were averaging a lead or less a day. Now they’re averaging just over two leads per day.
Chevy dealer outside metro area
– 81 Vehicles Posted 12/21 – 1/20
– Daily Posting Method
– 10 Calls
– 0 Emails
– $40.50 per lead
This is another dealer we recently put on the daily posting method as a trial. Of their 10 leads, 7 have come since switching to the daily method. While their lead total isn’t good, it was far worse prior to being put on the daily method.
Independent in metro area
– 420 Vehicles Posted 12/21 – 1/20
– Daily Posting Method
– 93 Calls
– 2 Emails
– $21.32 per lead
This dealer has been on the daily method for the entirety of the last 30 days. They consistently get leads. There has only been 7 of the past 30 days in which they did not get a single lead.
Dyamic PPC
Introducing a brand new way to drive traffic directly to your Vehicle Detail Pages. This is the most advanced, integrated pay per click system on the market today.
Dynamic, inventory specific, Google Ads are here! We have been working hard on a system that creates unique Google ads for the specific used cars that you have in stock.
Here’s how it works.
1) Someone searches for a car in Google
2) If the search is a match for the Year, Make, Model car you have in stock an ad matching their search is shown
3) The searcher clicks on the ad and goes directly to the VDP
The reporting data comes directly from your Google Adwords account. You have full transparency into cost per click, total spend per car, even conversions from your PPC ads.
This is the most targeted, cost effective, transparent way to get your cars in front of searchers. The best part is that all of the data is in your existing DealerLab.com dashboard. One log-in to see every click, conversion and dollar spent.
Google Display Network Advertising
Google has added a feature to their display network advertising. The buzzword here is “Viewability.” When bidding on impressions (CPM) in the display network, you can now require that the ad is viewable before you’re charged for it. The qualifications for an ad to viewable is that at least 50% of the ad is on the user’s screen for at least 1 second. This is in an effort to prevent advertisers from being charged for ads that are below the fold on the publishers page. This isn’t especially applicable to us, since we currently bid on clicks, and in remarketing clicks are more important than impressions.
source: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2013/12/just-in-time-for-holidays-viewability.html
SEO Insights
Another article had some interesting insight in the evolution on SEO strategy. The article below goes into much more detail, but the gist of it is that having a site that functions well for the end user will get an SEO boost over a site that focuses solely on keywords. Also social media plays a much bigger part now. Using social media to share relevant content that is useful to the reader, will drive traffic to your website. Share blog posts across social media platforms to increase your visibility.
source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2319176/From-Old-School-to-New-School-SEO-in-Transition
I had previously sent some news about a company called Anglo Rank being targeted by Google for their sale of backlinks in a link network. Google has ultimately penalized all sites that used their service.
CraigsList Changes
I wanted to gather a few thoughts about the 1st week in Craig’s List for the dealers.
This is a near-perfect ad:
1) Up to 24 photos per vehicle.
2) No HTML (so no links, color text, etc)
3) Formatted text is available (lists, bold, larger font, etc)
What would make this ad perfect (which we are working on as we speak):
Adding the state disclaimer (DOC fee, etc).
Adding a URL (can’t hotlink, so I have doubts about the value of this)
Inventory view:
http://bellingham.craigslist.org/search/ctd?userid=10808959
Notice that in the inventory view Craig’s List now identifies your dealer with an unique ID, in this case 10808959
Be careful having 2 companies or even an employee postings ads if you already have the entire inventory posted. Several dealers have called stating that their ads got put on hold for having the same VIN posted several times. The accounts (you as a dealer since they have your tax ID number) will be on hold for one year (this is the time that they have always used in the past to put an account on hold).
Make sure you don’t have employees posting ads in the by owner section. Craig’s List could just delete those ads but they could also identify the VIN or the name of the dealership and put it on hold. So far we don’t have news of this happening but the ‘by owner’ section has an exponential larger number of postings so I think there is a backlash coming.
Some of the people at PGI believe that based on current policies you can post a vehicle and re-post it (pay again the $5) 48 hours after the first posting. The advantage of this is that your new posting will make it to the top of the listings. First of all we don’t know if this is correct, Craig’s List may see your cars posted 8 times for the month and chose to delete your account. But secondly and most important the volume of postings is much less than half of what it was before deeming-in my opinion-the extra posting useless. If someone wants to push the envelope a little bit I would renew the ads on the 15th day mark.
New features:
Craig’s List just added yesterday the “see my other postings” feature (see the add above again and look at the top right corner). This feature indicates that they now feel about your cars as an “account” while before each posting was its own. This also shows the they are not done with changes and more updates to the system could be coming soon.
Steven Warren went as far as saying “Craig’s List is looking more and more like Backpage and adding all its features”. Only if Backpage had the same traffic Craig’s List has.
The cost of this:
$5 per ad and we charge $395/month flat to take care of everything (postings, deleting ads, updating ads, etc).
If you have 100 cars remember that you need to load all of them at once making the first month a little bit more expensive. After that we just post new cars as they renew or a new units come to the system on a daily basis.
If I was the new car manager I would put a $500/month budget towards new (we don’t charge more for managing that) and I will have at 100 units as a presence at all times.
Dealing with the CL account:
We can take care of the Craig’s List account for you or you can open the account yourself, manage the money (pre-load the account) and we will take it from there.
Sorry Edmunds & Yahoo Autos: Google Added Cars To Knowledge Graph
Google announced yesterday on Google+ that they have added car/automobile results to the knowledge graph. So now when you search for [2013 ferrari ff] (hint, who is your favorite search blogger, would make for a nice holiday gift) you will get the knowledge graph at the top right of the page:
Google doesn’t say where the data comes from but there are plenty of free data sources out there for Google to use.
As you can see, it shows name of the car, type of car, image of the car, the make, price, miles per gallon, engine sizes, other models, other configurations with a link to other searches related to it. When you click on the other cars under this one, it brings up the carousel effect, which looks like this:
The sad part is that it will take away search traffic from Edmunds, Yahoo Autos and other car sites.
Here is the mobile result, as you can see, you need to scroll to get to the search results:
On Google Glass it is even harder to get to any search results, all you get is this and when you click on it, it shows a snippet of the data as you scroll:
Forum discussion at Google+.
Source: http://www.seroundtable.com/google-car-knowledge-graph-17770.html
Google’s Knowledge Graph Update
Yesterday’s update to Google’s knowledge graph (The knowledge graph shows up on the right of search results and typically shows relevant information to the search such as a map for a location) makes it so when you search for a specific model, information about the car and its configurations and prices. It appears that the information is pulled from either an internal database or from the manufacturer’s site. There are free data sources that it could be pulling from as well. The images in the knowledge graph also seem like they come from the manufacturer’s site. Prices shown are the MSRP.
The important thing to take away from the update, in terms of strategy, is to make sure we target exact match keywords on individual models and year. Since google’s interface for this feature takes up valuable screen space it becomes very important to be in the first position in both paid search and organic search for specific models. If you do a more broad search for the make, or use an older year, this new feature is not activated.
Source: https://plus.google.com/+google/posts/Fr1mdsWGhQE
CraigsList Changing Postings
The change is finally here, today is the first day of CraigsList charging for postings in the automotive by dealer section.
You have several choices for posting;
Post one car at a time; build the template, add the car, pay the $5. For this you don’t need one of the new accounts with Craigslist, you can post with the old accounts. The only change is that at the end of the process you need to pay the $5 fee.
PGI Auto offers a tool that will automate the ad creation and data pushing making the manual process as easy as possible. Our tool is $200/month and you can post as many cars as you want (still have to pay CL the $5 per car).
Your second option is to have a posting account with CraigsList. For this you will need to set up a credit card with them, add your tax ID number, address, etc and buy a bulk group of ads (lets say 100 ads for $500).
With this type of account we can semi-automate the process so for $395 PGI Auto will post your inventory and delete the vehicles as they get sold.
Recomendations:
I have seen several companies claim that they can post an ad for $5 and then use that ad as a car gets sold to update the photos and content therefore having a second car advertised without paying another fee to CraigsList.
I don’t know how much money you can save if this is possible (a couple hundred dollars) but at this point in time when CraigsList is identifying who post, how much, etc I wouldn’t risk getting my dealership blocked.
If there is one thing I can tell you about CraigsList is that they will not care that you are blocked, as a matter of fact there will be no one to talk to about it.
If budget allows, post your new cars too. 100 ads for $500 is cheap. We don’t intend to charge more for more ads, your $395 fee covers everything (counting that CL is not IP sensitive anymore).
Is Craigslist’s charge change positive or negative?
For how we understand the world a “charge” a tax or any new form of payment can’t be hardly justified as positive but I think we need to look at where is CraigsList today and what could possibly happen once the change is implemented.
The fact that CraigsList didn’t charge for postings made the flow of cars into their system a race for volume of postings. The dealers willing to invest the most time and or money seemed to have an advantage over the rest as their vehicles will show on the first 100 ads or they will take over a search. That race brought two problems; first it forced the rest of the dealers to either leave or also escalate their posting efforts. Dealers had to post more to remain relevant. But the resulting and second problem brought by this was that searches became less relevant and frustrating to consumers as a search for an “Audi A6″ will bring the same car from the sale dealer 45 times.
Escalation of postings created a problem for customers-poor search results, a problem for CraigsList-system overload, a problem for the dealers-increased cost to post volume, and a problem for companies building the systems to post-hard to keep up with volume of postings required.
In this case, for the most part, free access resulted in creating problems that only helped one person in this equation: A dealer willing to over spend.
The $5 fee will do a few very positive things right off the bat:
1) It will limit 3rd party lead companies from posting “fake” cars to create leads then sell them to you indirectly. It will limit 3rd party lead companies from posting your own cars (yeas, your own cars) to create leads then sell them to you directly.
2) It will limit low cost systems that for example were automatically posting one low quality ads (just one image). If you are going to pay $5 you better put a relevant ad.
3) It will stop systems posting on 24h cycles (easier to post at 4am for example) which only purpose was to show dealers that they had hundreds of ads. If you are going to pay, post during a relevant search time (business hours for example).
4) It will stop dealers from posting their inventory multiple times per day (this stops excavation of volume).
5) ++
What we are going to see on December is a leaner, easier to search, and more useful for customers CraigsList system.
A few things dealers should consider:
Positives:
Craislist still a great alternative or complement to Autotrader and Cars. I’m not saying is better or worse, each market is different for that. What I’m saying is that if you are already on Autotrader and Cars, where else can you advertise that has 50 million users?
This change will effectively eliminate half of the ads and make a better site, the customers remain the same. The dealers left advertising on CraigsList may see a vast increase in leads.
The cost will remain very affordable. For what I understand with the information we have today this is going to be $5 per car per month. 100 cars will cost $500 a month. You still have to pay (or invest the time/effort) posting the vehicles, but you have to post a lot less to be relevant. I believe the increase of cost on one end will offset the decrease of cost on the other end.
Negatives:
CraigsList now needs to be managed. If the cars remain posted for 30 days as the information they have released suggests, the cars need to be manually marked as sold from their site.
Cars may be reposted after 48 hours, so a dealer willing to spend some money could potentially still hog the system.
Ads don’t have links anymore which to me was a great value based on the traffic that I saw from CraigsList to the dealer’s websites. I hope they will reconsider this as the ads are now very HTML limited and car buyers want to see as much information as possible.
A note about payment:
In order to ay for the ads you need to use a credit card with CraigsList. You can buy one ad at a time or pre-pay bulk. This change makes this system similar to Google’s Pay-per-click. You pay for the ads and a management fee to the company managing this for you. One difference is that Google provides a great system to manage the ads, for CraigsList a vendor has to build a system and maintain it to do this. Be careful to whom you give your credit card to out ads on CraigsList and that the company you do so is registered in your state to do business.
I hope this helps with all the unknowns but we will know a lot more in a few weeks. Last here is some information that CraigsList has released about the changes:
$5 fee for “Cars/Trucks by Dealer” ads starting 12/3 – FAQ
Q. What is happening on 12/3?
A. Ads posted to “cars/trucks by dealer” for CL sites in the US will be charged $5 per ad.
Q. How long will paid car/truck ads last? Can they be edited? Renewed? Reposted?
A. 30 days. Live ads can be edited. No renewals. Reposts are $5.
Q. What forms of payments will be accepted?
A. VISA, Mastercard, Amex will be accepted as part of the posting process for car/truck ads.
Q. Are volume discounts, flat rate, or monthly “all you can eat” plans available?
A. No. $5 per posting. One vehicle per ad.
Q. Can I purchase a block of postings in advance?
A. Yes – blocks can be purchased by paid account holders. Sign up here
Q. Is monthly invoicing available?
A. Not at this time.
Q. Will a bulk posting interface be available?
A. Yes. Large volume posters can request bulk access ($5 per ad) at [email protected] (please include name and phone number)
Q. Is a paid posting account required?
A. No, but they can be helpful for volume posters. Sign up here.
Q. Can ads include hyper links, templates, and external images?
A. No. Please include all relevant information for the specific vehicle being sold in your craigslist ad.
Q. Will paid ads be subject to flagging?
A. Yes, but ads will be reviewed before any removals take place. TOU violations will not be refunded.
Q. What happens if a dealer posts in “by owner” to avoid the fee.
A. They will be subject to ad removal and other remedial actions. Please flag dealer ads you see in “by owner.”
Q. What will happen to ads in this category posted before 12/3?
A. Ads posted prior to 12/3 won’t be renewable (and will be subject to removal) after 12/3. Reposts will cost $5.
Q. What if I have additional questions or want to comment?
A. Please send questions and comments to [email protected]
Yago Paramo
CEO
PGIAuto.com / DealerLab.com
[email protected]
PPC/SEM Investigation – 95% of Car Dealers Are Getting Cheated
Every month I try to bring value to our dealers by offering useful information that will help dealers stay on top of their internet strategies. Today’s topic is PPC (Pay Per Click)/SEM (Search Engine Marketing). With 2014 right around the corner and budget discussions starting, it’s time to get a better understanding of how your ad spend is being utilized and how to hold your vendor or in house marketers accountable!
Did you know that 95% of car dealers today are getting cheated out of their ad spend? The biggest issue I see in the auto industry is companies taking advantage of car dealers because of the lack of knowledge car dealers have in this area. It reminds me of SEO (search engine optimization) companies 5 years ago preying on car dealers to spend money on something that could not be measured effectively. I have audited over 300 dealers and 95% of them have a failing grade when it comes to their digital marketing efforts.
Thankfully today, PPC/SEM can be effectively measured and I’m going to show you exactly how to it’s done.
Any dealer that would like their PPC/SEM campaigns graded, please fill out the contact form below, and we will break it down for you in a way you will understand, by your GRADE!. Lets take a look at a car dealer below who has a budget for a Toyota franchise of $6,000 per month.
Here’s The Tip: 95% of car dealers are getting cheated out of ad dollars and they don’t even know it! With 2014 around the corner and budget discussions starting, its time you get your problem corrected today. If you want a free analysis of your current efforts please contact us.
Author: Dave Page – Member Dealerlab.com / Dealer e-Process
Source
VCC 60 day trial
Virtual Credit Consultant Complimentary 60 Day Trial on DealerLab websites.
Virtual Credit Consultant is a one-of-a-kind software developed specifically for auto dealers looking to pre-qualify customers utilizing TransUnion credit scores without credit impacting the consumer’s credit score or history. This application is 100% mobile adaptive!
For your complimentary 60 day trial of Virtual Credit Consultant (VCC), you will receive the Lite version of the software. The Lite version of VCC is used as a lead based application. With the Lite VCC, you will receive the contact information for each visitor who fills out the application, however, there is not a soft credit pull and therefore you will not receive any credit scores. As well as their contact information, VCC is customizable, and you can choose to require many additional fields such as Date of Birth, SSN, Down Payment, and many more.
First – DealerLab/PGI will be integrating this technology onto your website starting November 1st, 2013, free of charge for 60 days.
The Virtyal Credit Consulatant will be replacing our standard finance application on your website. All links that previously directed the visitor to the Finance Application will now link to the Virtual Credit Consultant.
Next – Enjoy the convenience and ease of the Virtual Credit Consultant application.
If you are interested about what your website company will do in the future...
If you are interested about what your website company will do in the future, you need to read this:
http://mashable.com/2013/10/10/google-hummingbird-and-small-business/?utm_cid=mash-com-fb-main-link
What Google's Hummingbird Update Means for Small Business
mashable.com
Google's Hummingbird update is changing how search engine optimization works, so businesses need to rethink how customers are using the Internet.
5th PGI Training & Educational Seminar
Mark your calendars for November 21st.
We have a new seminar on November 21st specialized on BDC/CRM training and best practices.
The 3 speakers are the among the best in their areas and they will provide intensive classes in their arena but not just for their product.
This is not a sales pitch but a learning opportunity that PGI brings to its clients. As we work with other companies and we find people that excel at what they do we are committed to bring that value to our clients. There will be no PGI speaker at this conference.
Where: Hilton Hotel | 300 Lake Washington Blvd SE Bellevue, WA
When: November 21st, 2013
To RSVP: call Courtni at (425) 379-0483 ext. 109
Schedule:
- 9am to 10am:
Doing The Basics Brilliantly: The 5 best practices you can implement today to help you sell more cars tomorrow.
By Mark McGurren PCG National Trainer - 10am to 11am:
How Does Your Dealership Measure Up?: We will take a close look at your dealership’s Internet and Phone Processes. Are your sales people scheduling appointments?
By Jerry Thibeau CEO Phone Ninjas - 11am to 11:30am: Break
- 11:30am to 12:30pm:
CRM: How to Maximize Your CRM Potential
By Hunter Swift Manager of Market Development DealerSocket - 12:30pm to 1:30pm:
Open question roundtable.
—
For information about the speakers, topics, location, etc please check our flyer or contact your PGI representative.
BDC/CRM seminar Nov. 21st
BDC/CRM seminar Nov. 21st:
Mark your calendars for November 21st.
We have a new seminar on November 21st specialized on BDC/CRM training and best practices.
The 3 speakers are the among the best in their areas and they will provide intensive classes in their arena but not just for their product.
This is not a sales pitch but a learning opportunity that PGI brings to its clients. As we work with other companies and we find people that excel at what they do we are committed to bring that value to our clients. There will be no PGI speaker at this conference.
For information about the speakers, topics, location, etc please check our flyer or contact your PGI representative.
Driving Sales & Digital Dealer
Driving Sales & Digital Dealer:
PGI's Schedule:
Yago will be there from Saturday afternoon until Thursday night. Nick Gorton arrives on Monday and Geoff Wilkins on Tuesday. The DealerEprocess team from Chicago will be there from Sunday.
You can find us at Digital Dealer at PGI booth #232 under the name DealerLab or at DealerEProcess booth #609.
We will have 2 evening gathering/parties on Tuesday and Wednesday as we rented one of the tower suites for those of you that want to enjoy a mellow evening and good business technology debates.
Find us at the booth os text us to get the suite number and the time, remember that we have to stay at the show until the booth area is closed.
Who to see at Digital Dealer:
Some dealers asked me who to go see at Digital Dealer. Below is a list of the people that I want to see myself (Guy Kawasaki for example) or people I have seen speaking before.
Guy Kawasaki http://ddce.me/GuyKawasaki
Dave Page (website performance)http://ddce.me/DavePage
Seth Barron: The digital ambush
Pierre Fiorini http://ddce.me/PierreFiorini
Jim Flint (SEO/SEM)http://ddce.me/JimFlint
Phil Sura (Video)http://ddce.me/PhilSura
Jeremy Anspach (Purecars)http://ddce.me/JeremyAnspach
Peter Martin (Email marketing)http://ddce.me/PeterMartin
Ed Parkinson (Chat)http://ddce.me/EdParkinson
Ryan Leslie (Review process)http://ddce.me/RyanLeslie
Grant Cardone http://ddce.me/GrantCardone
Kevin Frye http://ddce.me/KevinFrye
Digital Dealer Conference & Expo agenda
ddce.me
The Art of EnchantmentKeynotes■■■ Speaker: Guy Kawasaki Guy Kawasaki, Special Advisor to Motorola & Best-Selling AuthorRead moreSession infoGuy Kawasaki Watch videoTuesday 15 October, 4:00 PM to 5:20 PMLocation Grand Ballroom A, E & FGuy Kawasaki is a special advisor to the Motorola business unit of…
Driveitnow integration
Driveitnow integration:
We have integrated Driveitnow in our mobile platform both in the SRP and the VDP. With most sites hitting the mid and high 30's on mobile traffic we felt that this was a necessary integration.
Color matching integration:
We had a lot of dealers send unique colors from their DMS for new cars like 'artic bright white' where it was hard for the system to properly divide the colors and out them in a short table to the fast search menu blocks to the left of the SRP.
We fixed that by coding the regular name attached to the factory name for that table. All the available colors are listed in short form to the left menu but still available in the VDP with the long form manufacturer specific names.
Banner time stamp:
We fixed a bug where when a date was selected to delete a banner from the website the schedule didn't work properly. All ads now get deleted automatically when marked.
Craigslist updates:
Craigslist updates:
It seems that CraigsList makes updates to their servers every six months or so and during that time postings are a nightmare.
They have finally release some of the new changes:
"As of today, Craigslist no longer allows IMG, FONT, TABLE, DIV, and SPAN HTML tags in listings. Any of your vehicle posts that still use these design features will likely be flagged immediately.
Image template style is once again no longer available."
You may still see a few ads coming in and out with some of these features as they trickle down their system but they will be fully disabled pretty soon. Last night and this morning the time stamps in their system were out of order (older ads showing before newer ads for example) leading us to think that some servers are being connected/disconnected to be updated.
We expect the updates to be over by mid next week.
Your Website Is Broken and You Don’t Even Know It
Earlier this year I wrote an article titled, “SEM to Dealer VDP Pages Is Like Throwing Money Out of The Window”. This article created a small stir in the industry because of its title, although its true intention was to ask dealers to take a deeper look into their website solution.
As of September 2013, 35% of all traffic that comes to a car dealer’s website is via a mobile device. 98% of those car dealers are paying for a BROKEN mobile solution and don’t even know it. Google predicts by the end of 2014, this traffic will be nearing the 50% mark.
Mobile first, desktop second. This should be the focus for car dealers today and their internet strategy.
Being in the industry and always keeping a close eye on our competitors, let me show you some examples of exactly what I am referring to. Let it be known I am not “picking on any one provider” – I am just reporting the facts that this is an industry-wide problem hurting dealers and costing them business.
There are a variety of ways you can test your current website provider. Take a look at some quick ones using the largest website providers in the industry.
Website Provider: KPA – TKCARSITES
Search word in Google on a mobile device “Elmhurst Toyota”
Link clicked – “Preowned Inventory”
Moral of the story – This particular website is not mobile compatible, and only redirects ALL clicks to the mobile website home page. ALL clicks from search results, as well as emails opened from a mobile device, leaves customers with a poor experience trying to view a full version website on a mobile device.
Website Provider: Cobalt – (New Flex Website)
Search word in Google on a mobile device “Zeigler Chevrolet”
Link clicked – “Service Specials”
Moral of the story – This particular website is not mobile compatible and also uses a redirect to the home page strategy. There are plenty of specials on this website, but the user just can’t see them! There are a few pages like “hours and directions” that land on the correct mobile page, but 95% of the website is mobile-flawed. Another major disadvantage to this platform is the fact that the vehicle details page does not have the ability to capture a lead! Really?
Website Provider: DealerFire
Test: Link check of ALL pages available on a mobile device. (see below)
Moral of the story – This particular website fails the mobile compatibility test by looking at ALL links available to a consumer. The majority of this website does a decent job redirecting links to the correct mobile pages, but many pages do not load the mobile version. Custom pages that were built on this platform do not load the mobile version. Custom pages that have been deleted by the dealer still show up in the Google Index results (example – www.toyotaofnaperville.com/toyotathon)
Website Provider: Vinsolutions
Search word in Google on a mobile device “Ray Skillman Ford”
Linked clicked – “Click on ANY Link, NONE of them are mobile compatible”
Moral of the story – This particular website has about 1% mobile compatibility. The only page that loads correctly is the “url -web address” to this website from a mobile device – enough said. Imagine running a pay-per-click campaign for this dealer on a mobile device – can you say “nightmare”?
Website Provider: Dealer.com
Test: Link Check of ALL pages Available On a Mobile Device. (see below)
Moral of the story – This particular website only has a few pages that render properly from a mobile device while 95% percent of the pages do not load at all when doing a link test! Also, all of the advertisement slides built for the desktop version of this website could not be viewed on the mobile home page, resulting in additional lost opportunity.
Website Provider: Dealeron
Search word in Google on a mobile device “Hare Chevrolet”
Linked clicked – “ALL links do not work with exception of main Inventory”
Moral of the story – This particular website gives you a mixed bag as to what you might find when clicking on a mobile link. Some pages go to a mobile format and don’t give you what you are looking for (example – hours and directions); some pages load the full version of the website (buy here pay here), and some load the correct page (new & used car inventory). After performing a link test, 98% of this website is not mobile compatible. All custom pages built on this platform and desktop home page graphic advertisements do not adapt to the mobile version, resulting in missed opportunity and poor user experience.
If there was more time in the day, I could show numerous examples of other website providers (there are about 70 of them) with broken mobile solutions, causing consumers a poor user experience and car dealers a ton of opportunity. Ever wonder why your leads are down?
Here’s The Tip: 98% of car dealers have a website with a “broken” mobile solution. If you are looking to have one that works, then let me introduce you to the first website provider to market with an ADAPTIVE MOBILE website solution that works 100% of the time, PGI Auto and Dealer Lab.
Author: Dave Page – Member Dealerlab.com / Dealer e-Process
Up and running!
Up and running! If you can't be smarter than your competition at least you can outwork them.
Digital Dealer Conference
We will be attending Digital Dealer Conference on October 15th, 16th, and 17th.
Booth information:
PGI booth #232 under the name DealerLab
DealerEProcess booth #609
Speaker information:
Dave Page: 3:00pm – 3:50pm TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2013
You may find a complete agenda: Conference agenda
Party information:
Following what is now a tradition we will host 2 small parties/gatherings in the tower suite on the nights of the 15th and the 16th for those of you not willing to go clubbing, waiting in the lines, and bumping elbows with the young bucks in Las Vegas night.
We have an invitation but we never get the tower suite number until we arrive so text Nick, Geoff, or me or find us at the booth and we will get you set up. The suite towers usually require card access so make sure you find us.
Driving Sales Summit
We will be attending Driving Sales on October 14th and 15th.
You will be able to find us at the Dealer E Process booth (no booth numbers at Driving Sales).
Remember that on the 15th Digital Dealer starts so we will be moving between both conferences.
Watch Nick Gorton’s presentation on “Big Data & Google Analytics”
Nick Gorton on “Big Data and Google Analytics”
Reviews in Google
Reviews in Google places no longer take you from the SERP but they open in an overlay so you can go back to the SERP just by clocking out of the reviews.
PGI Seminar April 22nd
No time left, call today. We just opened registration from 75 spots to 125.
The seminar will be intense so be ready to take notes. Our goal is that you leave with action items that you can implement at your store and improve your dealer market presence.
The stronger our clients are in digital media the stronger our company becomes.
The seminar is not a sales pitch but a deep view on what we learn and how that shapes what we do. When we work one-on-one we often times follow a pattern dictated by the business that we have together or by the knowledge we think we have in common with each other. The seminars allow you to see the thinking process behind what we are doing and specially the data that we are analyzing to set what we will do in 2014.
Official seminar flyer.
8:00am. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. Registration
8:30am – 9:20am …………….Nick Gorton: How to Use Big Data and Google Analytics to Help You Sell More
9:20am – 9:30am ………………… Break
9:30am – 10:20am …………..Yago Paramo: Using Digital Assets and Content
10:20am – 10:30am ………………. Break
10:30am – 11:20am ……………Dave Page: Exploding Website Conversion
11:20am – 12:20pm ………………Lunch 2 Small Workshops:
11:20am-11-45am ……………Yago Paramo: Ultimate video VDP
11:45am-12:15pm ……………Jim Green: Service tools
12:15pm – 12:20pm ………………. Break
12:20pm – 1:30pm ………….. Brian Pasch: Facebook Revenue Introducing Wildfire by Google
Rackspace email delay
Rackspace email is experiencing issues causing up to an 80 minute delay for inbound and outbound mail. You may also receive an error message. The issue is being addressed and will update you when I have more details. Thank you for your patience.
New video tag tool
Carfax 1-Owner pages
Analytics show that 1-Owner vehicles are getting a lot more VDP views than any other group in the inventory (VS hybrids, VS trucks, etc).
We recently added a 1-Owner vehicle tab to Magic Toyota home page to help customers find those quicke…r.
We decided to build a landing page for the search instead of having a direct search (so one step longer) because the landing page is key worded to index in adjacent DMS. The 1-Owner search has so much traffic that we believe Google will index this pretty well. The page also gave us a chance to add a “disclaimer” with the fact the Carfax is the one providing the 1_owner data.
If you look at Magic Toyota you will notice that we also added a blue button with the Carfax logo at the bottom of the fold so customers will see the 1-Owner search top and bottom.
We encourage you to make this change and test the results.
4th Annual PGI Seminar
For the 4th year PGI shares the knowledge gained for the last 12 months with our dealers.
The seminar is not a sales pitch but a deep view on what we learn and how that shapes what we do. When we work one-on-one we often times follow a pattern dictated by the business that we have together or by the knowledge we think we have in common with each other. The seminars allow you to see the thinking process behind what we are doing and specially the data that we are analyzing to set what we will do in 2014.
8:00am. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. Registration
8:30am – 9:20am …………….Nick Gorton: How to Use Big Data and Google Analytics to Help You Sell More
9:20am – 9:30am ………………… Break
9:30am – 10:20am …………..Yago Paramo: Using Digital Assets and Content
10:20am – 10:30am ………………. Break
10:30am – 11:20am ……………Dave Page: Exploding Website Conversion
11:20am – 12:20pm ………………Lunch 2 Small Workshops: Service Digital Appointments & Video
12:20pm – 1:30pm ………….. Brian Pasch: Facebook Revenue Introducing Wildfire by Google
Please RSVP as soon as possible with Courtnei @ 425.379.0483 EXT 109. There are only 75 openings for the seminar.
Official seminar flyer.
DOMAINS
Domain extensions to open up. 700+ new domain extensions.
Coming Soon:
Automotive domain extensions:
.auto
.autos
.boats
.car
.cars
.motorcycles
.racing
.tires
Relevant extensions:
.blog
.website
.ads
.buy
.cheap
.deals
.coupons
.dealer
.deals
.repair
ONLINE REVIEWS
Internet Battle Plan XIV
Please join us and a group of the best speaker in the industry on August 13th-15th in Las Vegas.
http://pgiauto.com/resources/Yago_Invitation.pdf
Owner manuals
OWNERS MANUALS
Owner’s manuals are now available on the VDP’s left corner (right below the photo).
What we have depends on the make (we are missing a couple makes) and the years each make has in digital form. However now that the system to handle the PDF files and to link them to the VDP is set up, any time we can ge new ones we will enhance the system automatically.
Notice that in this example we also have a brochure for this vehicle even though is used.
The owner’s manuals will not bring any SEO advantage because they are stored in a common resources server and not under your root domain. All the files together had as much data as 8 Blue-Ray movies which will take too much server space. The purpose of the service manuals is to provide more information and engagement opportunities to your customers which increase your time on site and website usefulness.