http://www/DealerVideoProduction.com 856-546-2440
Video Example of A Car Dealership's Employee Value Package Proposition (Why You Should Work At This Dealership)
http://www/DealerVideoProduction.com 856-546-2440
Video Example of A Car Dealership's Employee Value Package Proposition (Why You Should Work At This Dealership)
http://www.BradleyOnDemand.com 856-546-2440
Car Dealership's Basic Video Checklist - Digital Marketing
Dealer Synergy Presents Tom Rocha, of LESA, offering advice and a great checklist about how to begin filming in your dealership. Tom explains that the most important things are to make sure you are in safe area and talk about what the customers will want to know. Using these tips will drive more traffic to you but boosting your online presence. If you would like to find out more about Video Services by LESA, you can follow LESA in the link below.
For more information about Dealer Synergy, visit http://www.DealerSynergy.com/
If you are interested in working with Dealer Video Production, visit http://www.DealerVideoProduction.com/
Sign up now for the next Internet Sales 20 Group!
http://internetsales20group.com
http://www.DealerVideoProduction.com 856-546-2440
Example of An Effective Video Email Template For Your CRM
EXAMPLE of an AWESOME Video Email Template for the "End of The Month". Dealerships should be creating a Video Email Template Library and programming their CRM action plans to deploy automatically. Remember a video in an email increases "read open rates" 200-300%
http://www.DealerSynergy.com 856-546-2440
Dealer Synergy Wishes A Very Happy Birthday To Franca Vidal!!
We are so happy to be able to celebrate Franca's 29th Birthday!! She is truly loved by all of our clients and the rest of the DS Team!!
Have an incredible day girl!!
http://www.BradleyOnDemand.com 856-546-2440
Top 5 Mistakes Car Dealers Make With Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
http://www.BradleyOnDemand.com/ 856-546-2440
Dealer Synergy Presents Greg Gifford, Director of Search and Social of DealerON, teaching us the 5 most common mistakes dealerships make when optimizing their content for the Web. Greg gives us advise on fixing those mistake and how to avoid them all together. Taking the time to invest in your optimization and following these 5 tips will help boost your overall traffic to your websites. If you would like to find out more about Search Engine Optimization, you can follow DealerON in the link below.
For more information about Dealer Synergy, visit http://www.DealerSynergy.com/
If you are interested in working with Dealer Video Production, visit http://www.DealerVideoProduction.com/
Sign up now for the next Internet Sales 20 Group!
http://internetsales20group.com
To find out more about DealerON, visit
http://www.dealeron.com
If you have any questions, call or text Sean on his cell 267-319-6776
I recently added this into a forum post comment and realized that some more people might be wondering about this. Where is the best place to ask for a referral? It used to be simple, after they purchase - ask for a referral or maybe give them a call a few weeks later and ask. Definitely YES, those two options are prime time referral asking opportunities but now that we live in a digital era, there are A LOT more opportunities to connect and engage with your customer. Meaning there are a lot more opportunities to ask for a referral.
I like to refer to all the best places to "ask for a referral" as touch points and I will preface this with my STRONG, STRONG opinion that a referral program is great, it's awesome, but without an offer of some kind.... some of these ideas can just fall flat... why? People are busy. The offer is the stickiness that you need to go above the competition and stay at the top of your customer's mind. PS: People prefer MOOLAH, according to a recent survey," 77% of Americans identify money as their reward of choice."
I know some dealers are hesitant/wary about the effective on ROI when combined with the reward amount but it's such an inaccurate/outdated way of thinking about it. I love showing stats and blowing dealer's minds about ROI on referrals. Just look at PayPal: "By directly paying people to sign up and then paying them more to refer friends, we achieved extraordinary growth. This strategy cost us $20 per customer, but it also led to 7% daily growth, which meant that our base nearly doubled every 10 days." - Peter Thiel - Co-founder. And not only is it cost effective, it improves your overall branding and marketing efforts, according to MarketShare, "Word-of-mouth has been shown to improve marketing effectiveness by up to 54%."
My biggest tip to gain the most traction in the following scenarios is that you ensure your referral offer/request gets to your customers QUICKLY and it is EASY for them to refer. Below are a few top touch points for a dealership/salesperson, GM or really any employee to ask for a referral.
Top Touch Points:
The most common and effective touch is point is immediately after purchase, but as we all know, our salespeople are usually a little too stoked about closing the deal to handle this.. so here are some other just as effective and awesome places to ask for a referral or promote your referral program:
Source : http://www.drivingsales.com/kristen-tepper/blog/when-and-where-should-you-be-asking-for-referrals-here-are-your-top-7-spots?utm_campaign=CUNL&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=35183361&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_gYbnkYh53LztIhwz_IkoF59qN7NHEXBN7NBp1GUgeSdIxYyNP4W-y_B_bdgFLYL3DiNrCb3idG9d-iHHAzuGv6YZjwA&_hsmi=35183361
http://www.GoogleopolyBook.com 856-546-240
Authority & link building with real-time Penguin
Google recently released Penguin 4.0, and the Penguin filter now updates in real time. Columnist Marcus Miller explores what this means for SEO and link building.
So it happened. Google finally released Penguin 4.0 — the last Penguin update of its kind, as it now processes in real time as a part of Google’s core ranking algorithm.
In this post, I want to take a look at what Penguin is, how this update affects the SEO community as a whole and how the brave and the bold can continue to safely improve their organic visibility without fear of repercussions from punitive search engine algorithms.
The announcement
After a few weeks of turbulence in the SERPs, the announcement that many had predicted was finally made.
The Penguin 4.0 announcement had two key points:
It will also be interesting to see how this fits in with the other 200 or so factors or “clues” that Google uses to rank websites. We now we have both Panda and Penguin integrated into Google’s core ranking algorithm (though Panda does not run in real time), so it’s possible that the weight of the various known ranking factors may have changed as a result.
One other interesting nugget is that there will be no more notifications for Penguin updates. Penguin now constantly updates as Google crawls the web, so tweaks to the finer points of this system will no longer be announced. Personally, I think is a good thing — folks can concentrate on doing good marketing (and SEO) rather than nervously waiting for the hammer to fall on some overused link-building tactic.
Links are still important
It’s important to remember that links are still important. Google has clarified this a number of times now, with Googlers such as John Mueller, Gary Illyes and even Matt Cutts clarifying the importance of links as a ranking signal, while also often warning of the problems of focusing on just links as a marketing and SEO strategy.
Of course, if we can step back a little, this makes perfect sense. If you have a simple five-page website, no corresponding social or PR noise, and 5,000 links… something does not quite add up there. Why would people cite that resource so widely?
On the other hand, if you have worked hard on your site and have a hundred or so great content pieces, solid reputation signals and 500 or so editorial links with wildly varied anchor text spread across the web with no discernible pattern, then this does look a little more natural. Add on some PR and social activity, and we start to see a pattern that looks like a real business.
So links are important — critically so for SEO. But links are one of many factors and should not be looked at in isolation. In fact, great links should often be the side effect of great marketing. So take off your reverse-engineering hat and put on your smart marketing hat, and you are moving in the right direction.
What Google wants
I always find it useful to briefly analyze Google’s recommendations. You can be sure those press releases and webmaster guideline pages are carefully worded, and often we can derive more clarification of what is needed.
There is a common thread here: quality. Whether it’s website quality, link quality or content quality, Google clearly wants to drive this point home.
“The best way to get other sites to create high-quality, relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can naturally gain popularity in the Internet community.”
That statement says it all. The only problem here is that Google is often a little (wildly?) optimistic. Creating great content often is not enough on its own. You have to let people know about it.
You have to build relationships with folks who may be interested in what you have to say. You want to build relationships with other bloggers and website owners. You will then want to look at ways to use these relationships to start building the kind of links that will move the needle.
High quality, in Google’s eyes, means making your site valuable to your target audience. Create something that is really, truly helpful — then let people know about it. Don’t do this the other way around and start building links in volume where there is nothing of value to link to.
This, in a nutshell, is the problem with most link-building efforts — they are tackled completely back to front. Links are built before on-site value has-been created. The solution to this is simple: Start with your site. Build something of value. Then layer your link building over the top.
Link building tactics
The following is a brief overview of some link building tactics that still have merit and are based on the thinking above.
This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, and really, I don’t like to attempt link building from a tactics perspective without having a clear and unique strategy tailored to each business. We see tactics that deliver great results for one business completely fail to deliver for another.
This game is all about determining what is right for you and adding links to your site that enrich the web and make the linking page a better place. Of course, to do this, you have to focus on ensuring your site is the very best it can possibly be so the linking site is improved by the link to yours.
Final thoughts
The best SEO often comes down to common sense. Spammy directory listings did not make sense. They were there purely for SEO. This backwards approach meant many sites were top-heavy with links with no content. All that time and effort spent, and no real value added to the site.
I talked about the psychology and history of this in a post on my own blog called “Ass Backwards Link Building” that really dives into how search engines work, the mentality of many low-end SEO agencies and how their practices are directly out of alignment with Google’s own “give, give, give” mentality.
Sure, Google shows us ads. Lots and lots of ads. But they gave us free access to the world’s information. In my mind, that is a good trade-off.
Unfortunately, though, we live in a world where we have folks looking for a cheap SEO solution, and there will always be some provider who will fill that gap — the demand for cheap SEO creates cheap SEO. Around and around we go… unless, of course, Penguin 4.0 finally puts pay to risky, low-value tactics.
I sincerely hope that Penguin 4.0 puts and end to the often daft link-building tactics of the past. Penguin may well need some fine-tuning, but link building in 2016 and beyond will mean tackling your website first — building something great, and then letting people know about it.
Source: http://searchengineland.com/authority-link-building-real-time-penguin-259584?utm_source=marketo&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_content=scap&int=intSEO&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWkdFM01EWm1PVFkzTjJObSIsInQiOiJ3d2ZscG5LWHJXc3BlTFwvRWFRRU9ZbzZDYW94SmRuanpTR3hhRm5HaEdxUlFiend1WDFZZzJrcWpcL0JNYkhZMTYzSTJoZVZqREx6MndIUmFDWnRaQWpSbkg2a0FJOU1qOTBrVEg1alFQTFJ3PSJ9
Dealership Family Values
General sales manager offers three tips for treating employees like family — without all the drama.
In our business, employees are like family. We enjoy victories and suffer defeats together. We celebrate new additions and grieve when loved ones are lost. We eat breakfast, lunch and dinner together, and we talk about our personal lives, our hopes, our dreams. Even when we’re not at work, social media and text messages ensure we are always connected.
Many dealers take tremendous pride in the fact that they have a high percentage of long-term employees. In those stores, the family dynamic is even more apparent. But as much as the dealership is like a second home, it is still a business. People get hired and then quit or get fired or laid off, sometimes without warning.
With all that in mind, let’s discuss some ways to stay close — but not too close — to our dealership families.
1. Watch the Level of Personal Talk.
We all have our kid issues, spouse issues and housing issues, and they are bound to reveal themselves at work. It’s only natural to want to lend a sympathetic ear and share advice. But as writer and radio personality Earl Nightingale once said, “You are what you think about.” The more focus you put on discussing personal problems, the less likely you are to have a successful, productive day.
This is not to say that you should cut people off mid-sentence. The next time an employee unloads on you, be sympathetic, find a positive note, and walk away. You want to be known as a good listener, but you’re not a therapist, and you cannot afford to spend your work hours trying to solve other people’s problems.
2. Build a Team, Not a Family.
Getting people together outside the store for fun and food is a great way to build comradery. Whether it’s an after-work drink, a baseball game or a company picnic, treat your staff to a good time, and remember: the more the merrier. The bigger the group, the fewer chances for deep, personal conversations. Whenever possible, ask everyone to bring their real families.
3. Make Social Media and Texting a Safe Zone.
Most of us have a large Facebook group, and most dealers encourage activity that generates “likes” for the company pages. But employees must be told, in no uncertain terms, that they must post responsibly to protect the dealership’s reputation, even when they’re off the clock.
We all know how much easier it is to send a text message than it is to make a phone call. If your employees want to text each other at all hours, there isn’t much you can do about it. But you don’t have to participate. The next time you get a drunk text or any other after-hours message, just ignore it.
A dealership family is not unlike any other family. There are ups and downs and even the occasional drama. It is OK to laugh, joke, cry and even vent. Just remember that our income is based solely on productivity and profitability. So enjoy those relationships but keep them professional and positive. Got a problem? Go sell something.
Jason Heard is the general manager at Lee's Summit (Mo.) Honda. He is a 20-year industry veteran with extensive sales and sales management experience.
Source: http://www.autodealermonthly.com/channel/the-showroom/article/story/2016/09/dealership-family-values.aspx?utm_campaign=topnews-20161001&utm_source=Email&utm_medium=Enewsletter
Hispanics Typical Car Buyers in U.S., Say Dealers
Brian Benstock gets frustrated when people point out supposed differences between Hispanic and non-Hispanic car buyers.
“We are consumers like everyone else, we buy what everyone else likes; features that make our lives better,” says the general manager and vice president of Paragon Honda and Paragon Acura in Woodside, NY, outside of New York City.
“Why would you think we’re different from somebody else?” asks Benstock, son of a Puerto Rican mother.
Clay Cooley, the dealer principal for the 10-store Texas-based Clay Cooley Auto Group, agrees. “I have not found anything different about Hispanic consumers, other than most speak English today whereas that wasn’t so 10 years ago.”
Because purchasing a vehicle is a big-ticket item, many Hispanics prefer to conduct the transaction in Spanish, so for Cooley it is a business imperative to invite and welcome this consumer in Spanish.
His dealership has been marketing to Hispanic consumers in Spanish for the last 16 years. Today, 45% of his business is from Hispanic buyers.
“We mirror our English and Spanish TV ads so when viewers see these messages on English-language TV, they see the same on Spanish TV,” he says. “This is an important trust-building step because Hispanic viewers know they are getting the same deal and treatment as everyone else.”
In the F&I office, Hispanic buyers, like other consumers, buy what they value. That includes extended-service agreements, GAP insurance, prepaid maintenance and both finance and lease options.
Many dealers don’t realize the nationwide extent of Hispanic consumers, Benstock says. “The Hispanic community is everywhere, not just in Florida and Texas.” In his market, Hispanics make up 27% of the population.
Twenty-five percent of the populations of major markets are Hispanic, says Sara Hasson, Univision’s senior vice president-automotive strategy & insights.
In Miami, Hispanics represent more than 50% of the population. In Houston it’s 40%, Dallas; 34%.
Currently, 57 million Hispanics reside in the U.S., 18% of the population. That’s expected significantly increase in coming years.
Car down payments average $4,833 for Hispanics vs. $4,779 for non-Hispanics, Hasson says.
She says the average MSRP of a vehicle purchased by a Hispanic is $29,600 compared with $31,900 for the overall population
On average, Hispanics lease about 30% of the time and buy a vehicle every 3.4 years.
“It goes without saying, dealers who wish to appeal to this market will staff people who are bilingual – and will make them welcome and treat them no differently than they do any other buyer,” Cooley says. “Hispanic customers are very loyal to dealerships that respect them.”
Source: http://wardsauto.com/f-i/hispanics-typical-car-buyers-us-say-dealers?NL=WAW-10&Issue=WAW-10_20161003_WAW-10_177&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_2_1&utm_rid=CPENT000000090082&utm_campaign=8071&utm_medium=email&elq2=246ac3d1bc1e48d7aa9c7b3c039adeae
For more information on the purchasing power of hispanics, you can read this article:
by Peter Kahn on 09/29/2016
Hispanic Heritage Month sets aside time to underline the important contributions the Hispanic community has made to the U.S. From an automotive perspective, it’s worth noting that their contribution goes beyond cultural — it’s also economic. In 2015, Hispanics alone accounted for 35 percent of new vehicle sales growth, and it was the biggest sales year to date.
The U.S. Hispanic population has a significant economic influence — 1.38 trillion dollars to be exact. But their economic influence doesn’t stop there. The current Hispanic population rests at about 17 percent of the total U.S. population, but it’s projected to reach 31 percent by 2060. As the population grows, their economic impact, and their impact on the automotive market, will continue to grow as well.
But it’s not just a growing population that should make us take notice. Their median household income continues to grow closer in parity to the general population. This trend translates into expectation for Hispanic populations: 81 percent said they expect their family’s financial situation to improve in the next year.
Needless to say, Hispanic shoppers should be a priority for dealers. Luxury dealers specifically need to hone in on this demographic. A quarter of Hispanic vehicle intenders have a luxury vehicle in their consideration set. Since 2000, there has been a 188 percent growth in Hispanic households earning $75,000 or more. With the increased opportunity to spend, Hispanics are increasingly buying luxury vehicles – luxury vehicle purchases have risen 16 percent from 2013 to 2015, compared to 5 percent for non-Hispanics.
The Hispanic population is also unique in that the median age is 30, a full decade younger than the national age average. This means that a majority of them are also Millennials, another group with significant buying power. As a result, many of the observations about Millennials’ buying habits also apply to Hispanics. Most noticeably, the importance of a strong digital presence is key to connecting with potential customers. Hispanic Millennials are also more likely to be married, have a child and have purchased their first home, putting them in a perfect position to move on to their next significant life event — buying a car.
Dealers who want to position themselves for success in the future need to align to the preferences and habits of their Hispanic shoppers. To read more about how to reach Hispanic shoppers, check out the white paper “Hispanic Car Buyers Matter — Now More Than Ever Before.”
Source: http://www.drivingsales.com/peter-kahn/blog/the-purchasing-power-of-hispanics?utm_campaign=CUNL&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=35183361&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8iAPYWikq_7AFp2fDF4FSZt7lQY-1yBH6PSr5Uc9W_UqrRYIVQER2W3RSGZTpJ6nAuQugBH_T5VCZ63-JZWgo9chqOXg&_hsmi=35183361
Written by Jason Unrau on 09/30/2016
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Like most of you that read this blog, I’ve spend years and years in the automotive industry. I’ve become immune to the sales techniques and upsells, just like most of you have. When I get my vehicle serviced or repaired, I am able to objectively make decisions about each item’s urgency.
But when it comes to our customers, we don’t usually think they’re on the same level as us. We think they should blindly trust what we tell them, because we are the experts after all. We’re surprised when they’re skeptical of the repairs we try to sell them. They decline repairs that are obviously safety related.
It’s our fault.
You see, we don’t give our customers enough credit. They’re intelligent about their cars and you can only expect their blind trust once you’ve built a relationship. To do so, you need to speak with them on your level as an expert and reach out in a way that is most convenient to them, your paying client. It’s a surefire way of delighting your customers.
Would you approve repairs without knowing the full story?
If your car is in for its $50 oil change and you’re approached about a $500 oil leak the technician just noticed, would you blindly approve the work? Probably not. You’d want to see it, wouldn’t you? Your customers are the same way. They aren’t inclined to place their trust in your dealership’s service department, especially not until you’ve given them a reason to do so.
Build that trust with your customers by providing proof of the required repairs and maintenance. Take photos or video of the problem areas, then send them off to your customer. When they can visualize the issue on their car, it’s undeniable. It’s trustworthy. And that’s when the wallet will open more freely.
Your DMS system may have something like this already built into it. Or maybe it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, find a way to make it happen. AutoVitals Inc. has a solution known as SmartFlow that is revolutionizing the service department from front to back, and it includes a slick way for technicians to take pictures and video of any issues, including a walkaround inspection. I can’t see how it WON’T improve your ability to close on sales.
Contact customers on their terms
Did you know that your customers aren’t inclined to answer a phone call? You knew that, yet you still expect them to answer when you call them throughout the day. 98 percent of text messages are opened within the first minute of receiving them, and most people respond to those messages right away. Businesspeople and those how can’t answer their cell phones at work can usually respond to a text message, making it a more reliable method of contact than the telephone.
Email is on a slight decline in popularity, although it’s still more effective than waiting for someone to call you back from a voicemail message. The additional benefit to both text message and email messages it the ability to send attachments. Have a photo or video you want your customer to see? Include it in your message! Have a quick repair quote they can authorize by text? It could save you several valuable minutes over a lengthy phone call, trying to explain what needs repair and why.
However, if you can’t implement text messaging or email communication as effective methods of customer contact, the phone is better than nothing! Be consistent, contacting customers regularly throughout the day so there’s no worry about how their vehicle is doing.
As a rule of thumb, be the one to reach out to your customer before they can contact you. If they have contacted you first, you can bet that they’ve already been stewing about the lack of contact for a while. It’s the kind of customer that is more likely to give you a bad survey response or decline repairs on the basis of principle.
When you’re timely in your communication and are able to back up your upsells and repair estimates with photo or video proof, rest assured, your customers will be exponentially more satisfied. There will be less complaints to management, higher conversion rates on estimates, and the bottom line is guaranteed to increase.
Source: http://www.drivingsales.com/jason-unrau/blog/contacting-customers-on-their-terms
http://www.InternetSales20Group.com 856-546-2440
Facebook Discusses First Party Leads For Car Dealers At Internet Sales 20 Group 9 in Phoenix, Arizona
How mobile has changed the way we search, based on 10+ years of eye-tracking studies
How has the rise of mobile changed the way people view Google SERPs? Contributor Kristi Kellogg summarizes a session from SMX East in which Mediative's Chris Pinkerton discusses the results of eye-tracking studies.
Chris Pinkerton, the vice president of business development at Mediative, has been tracking the ways viewers look at the Google search engine results page (SERP) since 2003. In that time, Mediative’s eye-tracking studies have revealed major shifts in the way users consume the SERP.
At SMX East 2016, he explored the ways the proliferation of mobile devices have deeply impacted user search behavior on both mobile and desktop searches.
Pinkerton asserts that search activity, psychologically speaking, is mindless activity. It’s mindless because of the habits that form with the devices we use.
Chris Pinkerton
Habits are a very powerful thing to start to understand. Developing a habit of consuming information on a desktop in a certain way changes the way you consume content.
Looking back at 2003, Google became the dominant search engine because it drove people to find information faster than its competitors. That created habitual behavior — people found content the fastest on Google and kept coming back.
(As an aside, Bing has implemented programs to pay people for their search behavior in an attempt to break these deeply ingrained habits and introduce a new behavior.)
In 2005, there was a Golden Triangle pattern when it came to eyeballs on the Google SERP. But in 2016, this pattern is vastly different (see below), due in large part to mobile. It’s changed the way people consume the SERP and the speed at which they consume it. Users spot-scan and find what is contextually relevant for them.
Mobile devices have habitually conditioned searchers to scan vertically more than horizontally. This has translated to desktop search as well. People are viewing more search listings during a single session but are spending less time viewing each one.
Users are looking the front end of search listings, so make sure your main message comes first. While it used to take a user 2.6 seconds to consume a SERP, that time has been cut in half, to 1.3 seconds, Pinkerton said.
Regardless of mobile’s impact, the No. 1 organic listing captures the most click activity, regardless of what new elements are presented. However, it takes 87 percent longer for the No. 1 organic listing to be first seen on a mobile device vs. desktop, he said.
Statistics that will impact your digital marketing strategy
Knowledge Graph
19% of mobile SERP clicks on average went to the top 2 sponsored ads, compared to 15% on desktop. #smx #sem @Mediative
Local listings and map
Star ratings
Sponsored listings
Organic listings
Read Mediative’s full eye-tracking report (registration required). See how user behavior has changed in just the last two years with my reports from SMX East 2014 and 2015.
Source : http://searchengineland.com/mobile-impacted-way-search-based-10-years-eye-tracking-studies-260052?utm_source=marketo&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_content=scap&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTURJeU0yUm1NV00wTm1RMiIsInQiOiI2aUtEVXVQWWZHTEtkQkZIODNKR3ZzZDVrRkE1MDUxWUpyMGFtTW14MDEzVGxBSXNHYzA0QXp5TFRyVjFMQ1pxSXpZQzFLKzBuek1BZU5iMnZhNmdhNnV1cmdBRFlyc0FOMXgwZ3pDXC94Mkk9In0%3D
Google opens the AMP fire hose
Columnist Barb Palser believes that the broad surfacing of AMP content in mobile search will expose a universe of AMP content that’s been hidden from view.
Google’s expansion of Accelerated Mobile Pages across mobile search results is underway, gradually turning the trickle of AMP traffic to a steady flow.
The September start of the “blue links” rollout, along with announcements from some high-profile participants in the AMP Project, are advancing the open-source initiative on multiple fronts.
Google’s AMP expansion
Since Accelerated Mobile Pages first appeared in Google search results in February 2016, AMPs have been mostly concentrated in the Top Stories area of mobile search results:
AMP Top Stories carousel in Google mobile search results
The current expansion, which was announced in August and started in mid-September, will surface AMPs throughout standard mobile search results, aka “blue links.” When the phased blue links rollout is complete, Google will always present the validated AMP version of a page to mobile users instead of the standard web link.
At this stage, Google is only surfacing a portion of available AMPs; a September 25 query returned a mixture of AMP and non-AMP results in the blue links area. When the expansion is complete, all available AMPs will be displayed.
AMP blue links
Along with the blue links rollout, Google made slight modifications to its AMP viewer. The user interface is now grey instead of blue and employs an “X” button instead of a back arrow to close the viewer and return to search results.
Redesigned AMP viewer
Broader, deeper AMP exposure
For news publishers, the blue links expansion will surface evergreen and long-tail content that wouldn’t have been eligible for the Top Stories area but accounts for a large portion of search traffic.
It also opens AMP exposure to commercial, vertical and non-news publishers. Essentially, any AMP-enabled content that would normally surface in search will be presented to users.
A diverse group of non-news publishers timed their own announcements to Google’s blue links rollout. On September 20, eBay announced that its AMP-enabled product pages were live after a few months of development work to resolve some feature gaps.
On the same day, Shopify announced plans to AMP-enable its merchants and Reddit announced the launch of tens of millions of AMP pages on its platform. These companies join Fandango, Food Network and other non-news publishers on AMP. There’s plenty of content to fill the fire hose.
Non-news AMPs: eBay product page and Food Network recipe.
AMP benefits in Google search
Google has stated repeatedly that AMP is not a ranking factor (at least not yet), but that doesn’t mean AMP content won’t get special treatment.
Most noticeably, Google has been building user experiences to showcase AMPs above standard search results. The “Top Stories” carousel was the first example — and now Google is working on a “Live Coverage” AMP carousel for breaking news, elections, sports and other real-time events.
These modules dominate the top of the mobile viewport, above standard results where non-AMP links appear. It’s easy to imagine a variety of special AMP-based user experiences for all types of informational and commercial content.
In addition, Google has signaled that load time in general will matter in its ranking algorithm going forward — and has contributed to the growing mountain of research establishing load time as a predictor of user satisfaction and engagement. With Google’s data showing an average mobile page load time of 19 seconds and a 53-percent abandonment rate after three seconds of waiting, lightning-fast AMPs should ace any speed-related SEO tests.
Finally, users could begin to reward AMP publishers by favoring AMPs in search results. If users begin to recognize the AMP icon and associate it with a fast page, they may start choosing AMP links (or avoiding non-AMP links) in search results for certain types of content and queries.
Over time, such preferences could manifest in changes to search performance. (In early September, Google was observed testing a darker, more noticeable AMP icon.)
Combined, all of these factors could provide advantages to AMP-enabled publishers over non-AMPed publishers, even if the ranking algorithm for general Google search results doesn’t explicitly favor AMP.
AMP beyond Google
Apart from Google’s use of AMP, new participants are bringing the broader potential of the open-source AMP Project into view.
The eBay and Reddit announcements cited speed and performance as primary reasons for adopting AMP — and opened the door to future AMP-only strategies.
Excerpt from Reddit’s blog post (emphasis added):
AMP pages look great and load fast on desktop just like they do on mobile. Maintaining good performance to pages as they change often amounts to a time consuming game of Whac[k]-A-Mole but we can be confident our AMP pages will always be fast. So, for many kinds of pages, we think the AMP version is the only version we’ll ever need.
Excerpt from eBay’s blog post (emphasis added):
Although both of them [AMP and non-AMP browse pages] are highly optimized, look the same, and share most of the code, updating both versions is still a maintenance overhead. In addition, we always need to watch out for feature parity. In the future, based on how AMP pages are performing, we may choose to have one mobile version (AMP) and serve it to all platforms.
The expansion of AMP to desktop experiences and the potential for AMP to replace standard web pages have been anticipated by the AMP Project from the start — but these are among the first large publishers to talk publicly about it.
A few days later, Bing announced AMP support in its search app for iOS and Android in order to provide a better, more consistent user experience. Like Google, Bing will link to the AMP version of a page when available.
AMP results in Bing Search app
This is something any search engine, social platform or other referrer could do — every standard web page with an AMP counterpart has a header tag pointing to the AMP version. Social news aggregator Nuzzel has been linking to AMPs for some time, and Twitter has taken initial steps to link to AMP in certain contexts.
Google’s promotion of AMP across its products is generating awareness, providing incentives for publisher adoption and driving feature development and innovation.
At the same time, the involvement of diverse participants and non-Google-dependent use cases will be critical to AMP’s long-term success and its mission to improve performance across the mobile web — not just a corner of it. The AMP format was seeded in Google’s environment but was never meant to stay there.
Source: http://searchengineland.com/google-opens-amp-firehose-259569?utm_source=marketo&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_content=scap&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTURJeU0yUm1NV00wTm1RMiIsInQiOiI2aUtEVXVQWWZHTEtkQkZIODNKR3ZzZDVrRkE1MDUxWUpyMGFtTW14MDEzVGxBSXNHYzA0QXp5TFRyVjFMQ1pxSXpZQzFLKzBuek1BZU5iMnZhNmdhNnV1cmdBRFlyc0FOMXgwZ3pDXC94Mkk9In0%3D
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Sean V. Bradley, President of Dealer Synergy Interviews Dan Moore, Sr. Director of Marketing at VinSolutions. A leading provider of Automotive CRM and other solutions. VinSolutions attracts, sells, satisfies, and retains your customers more profitably. VinSolutions consolidates data from all areas of the dealership to enhance the dealer’s external marketing and internal dealership management. An industry-leading developer of Internet-based desking, automotive CRM and Internet lead management (ILM) software, VinSolutions helps dealers find, sell and keep more customer profitably. In addition to CRM, ILM and Inventory control products, VinSolutions builds award winning custom SEO optimized dealership Web sites, mobile Web sites, uploads and brands inventory photos and videos.
Want to learn more about Dealer Synergy? Check out http://www.DealerSynergy.com
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Facebook and Google will be Speaking at the Internet Sales 20 Group 9 Plus 30 of the BEST Speakers In Our Industry - 3 Day Training Workshop
Register here - https://www.eventbrite.com/e/internet-sales-20-group-9-tickets-24790633452
AND.... We have a SPECIAL Presentation from Google on #Video
The Internet Sales 20 Group has been so effective in its design that it has literally changed the expectations dealers have while attending workshops. We have an instructional design with one clear curriculum - having a strong beginning, middle, and end. This helps all members evaluate and strategize throughout the conference. We conclude the workshop with an exit strategy so everyone can go back to their dealerships with a customized action plan to implement immediately. Our emphasis is on Internet Sales which is one of the most powerful and important areas of the Automotive Industry. Presentations will also focus on showroom sales, best practices, leadership, objections & rebuttals, processes and more. Each session is geared towards showing members what to do, when to do it, and why to do it. Simply put, the Internet Sales 20 Group exists to make its members successful!
Everything we do generates data. Data that can be interpreted, analyzed, visualized, scrutinized, and lauded over. We can then apply what we learn through that data to distill an activity down to a precise science with specific and measurable statistics.
As sales and marketing departments become better integrated, they look to these statistics to run their business more efficiently. But what stats matter most? Organizations can quantify just about anything, and a quick search of sales or marketing stats renders hundreds of results. Layer in social selling and social media statistics into your search and the results only increase. So what social selling statistics matter and why should sales leaders care? Here’s the top three stats you need to know.
Yes, these are technically two statistics, but they prove this point: social selling works. Reps and teams that leverage their social channels throughout the sales process close more and win more than those that do not. Want to go to club? Want that promotion? Want to be the number one rep, district, or region? Start social selling. People buy from people they know, like and trust. Social channels are the perfect space to start and build relationships with prospects away from sales emails and sales calls. When used effectively, social selling can help warm a lead, earn a sales call, nurture that lead, and help close the deal.
92% of buyers will delete emails and voicemails from people that they don’t know.
If your sales team is just cold emailing and cold calling prospects, then they are missing out on one of their most important channels. Leveraging social media can help you learn about your prospects and engage with them around a shared topic of interest, answer a question, or provide a valuable insight. Using social allows you to start a conversation and remove “cold” from your initial emails and calls. Sales reps and teams that leverage social to become a person that buyers know, like and trust are more likely to succeed.
82% of prospects can be reached via social media.
As a sales rep or sales leader, having access to your target market is one of the first steps toward success. If social media is where your prospects are, then that is where sales reps need to be. On top of that, reps need to be visible, searchable, and accessible. Social allows you to build your personal brand, build your product and services credibility and build the relationships that will help you close more business. The social sphere gives reps unparalleled information and access to their target prospects. Leverage it!
Social selling provides sales teams with countless data points that can all yield valuable insights and statistics into their social selling strategies and tactics. By focusing on the a few key statistics, it’s easy to see why market leaders like Oracle, IBM, ADP and BMC are investing resources into social selling training and strategy—because it works.
Source: https://insightpool.com/the-need-to-know-stats-of-social-selling/
September 22, 2015 // 8:00 AM
Maybe you think your buyers aren't active on social media. Maybe you're not sure if your boss would approve of you messaging prospects on LinkedIn. Maybe you don't even have a LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook account, and frankly, don't get what all the fuss is about.
Whatever the case is, you haven't started incorporating social media into your sales process. And why should you? After all, you haven't heard of anyone crushing their quota thanks to a social network. The day you see results is the day you'll look into social selling.
Well, that day has come. Salespeople skeptical about social selling need only to look at the 12 statistics in the infographic below to start coming around to the practice. A few choice data points sure to raise eyebrows:
Convinced? Thank Sales For Life, and get social selling!
Source - http://blog.hubspot.com/sales/surprising-statistics-on-social-selling#sm.0001nj4ot6g6nfgqz8i21tlpfifgf
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