Social media is a visual experience. Sure, there are great links. There are insightful comments. There are cool videos. All of these are important, but for the most engagement, photos rule.

The video below is a short portion of our webinar titled, "Taking Facebook to the Next Level: Advanced Posting Strategies". We go into great detail about how to do Facebook the right way, but this simple tip from the video below should help you to understand why images are the kings of Facebook.

You can use images to set up your "money posts". A picture of a hot car is great but unless it's a unique vehicle that you have on sale at your lot right now, picture posts won't help that much. However, the engagement that you get through likes, shares, and comments on your interesting photos will help your important posts with links or messages to appear higher on your fans' news feeds.

At the end of the video, I mention that you can use images to help get exposure to your links. Facebook does not like links as much, but if you post an image, then include a link in the text above the image, you won't get the same news feed penalty that direct links get. The click thru rate is lower but the overall clicks can be higher.

http://www.internetsales20group.com

Sean V. Bradley Interviews The BDC Director of Neil Huffman Imports & Honda At Dealer Synergy HQ

Over at Automotive Digital Marketing, there's been a long discussion started by Jim Zieglerabout Carfax and its place in the automotive community. I haven't chimed in because, quite frankly, I'm not needed there. The discussion is self-perpetuating and there's no shortage of opinions.

It did, however, catch my attention strictly from an advertising perspective as they have an ad out that misses on more cylinders than I thought was even possible. This physics-bending ad is intended to position Carfax as some sort of secret weapon to be used against car dealers. It isn't, but that's not the main reason why the ad fails so miserably.

First, the video itself:

Did you see the biggest problem with it?

Car salespeople are still stuck in the 80s, according to this video. The CarFax advertising team had a big opportunity to introduce the reality of today's car buying experience, and that reality is that dealers look at Carfax very closely themselves. They do not want to put out a vehicle that won't pass with flying colors. Most use it as a selling tool, a vote of confidence that they stand by their product. To position dealers as the enemy is foolish, mostly because there are plenty of people who feel that if something is considered a potential conflict point, they'll avoid it. Why would you want to make your product appear to be a point of contention during a transaction?

There are many challenges with the way Carfax is marketing, but this is the biggest. Be a conduit between dealers and customers. Don't be adversarial to one side or the other.

Solution Components:

CarClips: State-of-the-Art in used car videos: 

• Professionally produced – not stitched
• Custom recorded voice-over
• Live intros and outros, custom dealer graphics and messaging
• TV commercial quality production – cable ready

Hosted on a Custom YouTube Channel.

Video Promotion Landing Pages drive buyers to the showroom floor.

Custom designed Craigslist Ads Drive Click-Throughs to Video Promotion Landing Page.

RESULTS: 

Bottom Line:

I absolutely love the video below. It isn't that it's so useful that people will love it; as used car buying tips go, it's rather light on real zingers or anything outside of common knowledge. It isn't the production quality; this is a well-made video, but nothing outstanding compared to other motion graphics.

The thing that makes this video stand out is that it's a branding and marketing machine that will keep on giving for years to come. First, it's very sharable. It's not quite good enough to be a viral video, but it will do its job and get some views. Second, it's a search engine golden ticket. It will be visible on searches for terms like "buying a used car" and "used car buying tips" and will stay visible for a long time.

Finally, it's a strong branding message that has very little to do with the brand itself. It's loosely related, of course, but the relationship is not a part of the story. The company will reap the benefits of being found by new people for a long time.

Here's the video itself:

There's a big, fat lie in the automotive industry that has been circulating for years. The idea that many hold onto is that conversion rate is the most important number when trying to determine the quality of a website. This couldn't be further from the truth.

Here's a fact - the worse your search marketing is, both for SEO and PPC, the higher your conversion rate is going to be. This cannot be disputed. If buyers are only able to find your dealership on search if they're typing in your name, that means that the only people visiting your website are already inclined to consider doing business with you. Searches for you by name will always yield the highest conversion rates from the visitors.

As your search marketing expands and you start bringing in people from a more diverse range of searches, the traffic goes up, the total number of leads go up, but the conversion rate drops. Total number of leads, however, go up. It's very simple once you understand the dynamic.

Let's say you're currently getting the majority of your search traffic from a variation of your name. Look at your analytics to see if this is the case. With the majority of your traffic coming from searches for your name, the math may look like this:

• Traffic from Search: 5,000
• Conversion Rate: 10%
• Total Leads: 500

• Traffic from Search: 6,000
• Conversion Rate: 9.2%
• Total Leads: 550

Your goal as a dealer is to sell more cars. It's mathematically inefficient to extend your search reach and as a result your conversion rate goes down. However, the number to focus upon for your website is total conversions. How many leads are you getting? How many sales are you generating from these leads? This is the bottom line that truly affects the success of your website and your business.

Conversion rate is a great indicator that can help you make tweaks and adjustments to your current site, but look at your traffic trends when considering conversion rate fluctuations. Improved conversion rate can be good, but if it's associated with a drop in traffic, you should look at your search rankings and the keywords driving traffic to determine if there's an underlying negative that's making the numbers look good. Conversely, if your rate goes down, see if there's a correlating increase in traffic.

Get more leads that convert to more sales. That's the end goal. Don't get lost in the numbers that some are throwing out at you.

Twitter is not a challenge for most car dealers. It's pretty easy be above average as a dealership because most of your competitors aren't doing it at all. Getting to the next level isn't that hard, either, as long as you apply some basic strategies.

Hashtags are one such strategy.

In the video below, we discuss how to apply Twitter hashtags to your Tweets and posts in order to improve their exposure and enhance your messaging. There are more strategies that we'll discuss soon that are much more advanced, but starting with the basics is often enough to take a Twitter account from above average to really good.

It seems as though YouTube is usually left to the waste side due to Dealers feeling as though it takes too much time or effort in keeping up their channel, or even more so coming up with a subject to talk about without making it sound like an advertisement. Getting inspired to make a video can be as easy as capitalizing on the people and customers that surround you daily, even your inventory can make an appearance, but how?

You need to evoke emotion.

You can make a YouTube video using your smartphone or digital camera; it doesn’t need to be a fancy production, just a clean one. Try to keep it steady or invest in a tri-pod to be your camera person. Have your sales reps be advocates of the dealership by sharing which car they love the most or by sharing their story of how they became a part of the Dealership.

Tap into loyal customers and ask for reviews on their vehicles or to have them share their customer service experience on camera.

Showcase your inventory by telling a story about the car, more like what the car can do FOR you than how much it will cost or quickly going over its specs. Instead, share how to use the Ford Sync or why your form of the mini-van is great for families, walk them through it as a friend, not a salesperson.

In the following video you can learn more on how your Dealership can use YouTube with three easy steps in 3 minutes.

BY Erin Ryan

TK Carsites

Source: DrivingSales.com

Create a Customer Testimonial Video and include it in your email signature. It's a cool idea that may take some time to put together, but once you do, the response can pay some major dividends in terms of customer Rapport.

Sincerely,

Edward Tomilloso

Internet Manager

Honda of Santa Maria

Americans viewed more than 11 billion video ads in June, representing a 9.2% increase from May’s previous high of roughly 10.1 billion views, per July 2012 comScore VideoMetrix data. To put the rise of video ad impressions this year in perspective, June’s 11 billion views is almost double the 5.6 billion views from January of this year, though January had seen a rather substantial drop from the previous month’s 7.1 billion.In June, video ads accounted for 25% of all videos viewed, up almost 16% from 21.6% in May. Ads accounted for 2% of time spent viewing video online, compared to 1.9% in May.

Meanwhile, in June, each of the top 5 video ad properties delivered more than 1 billion video ads, led by Google Sites (1.41 billion), closely followed by BrightRoll Video Network (1.39 billion), and Hulu (1.33 billion). Rounding out the top 5 were Adap.tv (1.15 billion) and TubeMogul Video Ad Platform (1.04 billion).

Time spent watching video ads totaled 4.6 billion minutes during the month, up from 4.5 billion in May. BrightRoll Video Network delivered the highest duration of video ads at 805 million minutes.

Video ads reached 53% of the total US population an average of 68 times during the month, up from 64 in May. Hulu delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 52, while ESPN delivered an average of 34 ads per viewer.

Facebook Grows Video Audience; Vimeo Cracks Top 10

Among the top 10 US online video properties in June, Facebook reported strong month-over-month unique viewer performance gains, rising almost 11% to 49 million, and in the process leapfrogging Microsoft and Viacom into the 3rd spot. Yahoo maintained its second ranking, with close to 51.5 million viewers, but dropped 11% of its viewers. Whereas in May, Yahoo’s audience was roughly 13.5 million larger than Facebook’s, by June, that gap had been whittled down to just 2.5 million.

Google remained the top online video property once again, with about 154.5 million viewers, up close to 2% from 151.7 million the prior month. VEVO dropped a slot to the 4th ranking in June (46.2 million), while Viacom Digital moved up from the 7th spot to enter the top 5 with 38.9 million viewers. Vimeo entered the top 10 for the first time, in the 10th spot, with 21.4 million viewers, while News Distribution Network and Hulu dropped out of the top 10 rankings.

Google again demonstrated the highest viewer engagement, with an average of roughly 7.7 hours per viewer.

Top 5 YouTube Partner Rankings Intact

The June 2012 YouTube partner data shows that video music channels VEVO (roughly 45.1 million viewers) and Warner Music (26.1 million viewers) maintained the top two positions. Gaming channel Machinima ranked third with 23.6 million viewers, relatively unchanged from May. Maker Studios (21.2 million) and FullScreen (16.2 million) both maintained their rankings from the previous month.

Among the top 10 partners, Machinima displayed the highest engagement again, at 76 minutes per viewer, ahead of VEVO, at 50 minutes per viewer. VEVO streamed the most videos (567 million), followed by Machinima (447 million).

Other Findings:

• 84.8% of the US internet audience viewed online video in June, up slightly from 84.5% in May.
• The duration of the average online content video was 6.8 minutes, up from 6.5 minutes in May, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes, unchanged from the previous month.
• More than 180 million US internet users watched online video content in June for an average of 20.64 hours per viewer.
• The total US internet audience engaged in 33 billion video views, down from 36.6 million in May.

Source - http://www.marketingcharts.com/direct/online-video-ad-views-continue-to-reach-new-heights-22712/

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http://www.dealersynergy.com