Google has entered the New Car Lead business with the recent unveiling and introduction of the Google Commercial Unit For Cars (CUFC). There is very little information regarding this new lead program for dealers, but here's what we know:

• Essentially, Google will pull the new inventories of dealerships (those participating in the program) in the area of the consumer and display the search results 
• However, these unique search results with dealerships' inventory will only pop up when the consumer types in what Google calls "low funnel" search terms.
  • Here are an example of a few "low funnel" search terms: "New Honda Civic", "Toyota prices," etc..
• This new program is still in BETA mode, and therefore, dealerships will have to pay per lead. It is unclear/not known whether or not this will change once in the future.
  • Worth noting: Some states deem it illegal to pay per lead, so we shall see how it plays out. 

What do you think of Google's New Car Lead Program? 

Google Enters New Car Lead Generation Business

Another prediction that I wrote about has come true.  Change is in the air again at Google.  Paid Search just took a big step forward or backwards, depending on how you think.  It's called "Google Cars"

In November 2011, I wrote about a product called "Google Advisor" which will change the landscape of paid search marketing for new car sales.    It has taken a very long time for this product to get off the ground.  This type of product has been around in the mortgage lead generation business for years.

Well the Google Advisor product for automotive leads is here and it has a name: Google Cars.

I finally was able to see the product live today and so can you.  Just change your browser location to Zip Code 94301 and conduct a search on Google with this phrase:

Palo Alto Toyota

What you will see might shock you, as Google has clearly entered into the new car lead generation business.  I created a few screen shots to explain how the model works, and I am sure this will be evolving.  I would love to get your opinion on this strategy and if you would be interested in testing this new service.

San Francisco Bay Beta Test of Google Cars

Currently, this product is only available in the San Francisco Bay area.  We will find out when this will open up to other markets.   This is only for new cars and it requires a dealer to provide and inventory feed of their new cars.

Google Cars Inventory Model Results Page

When you Click on the first photo of the Toyota Camry in the red box above, you will be shown this page 

Google Cars Pricing Info

If you click on the "Google Price Info" link, you might get a chill down your spine, like TrueCar did for car dealers.  

The Google Price popup box is shown on the right.  If you click on the "Learn More" link, you can read about how these prices are determined.

The "regional price paid" data according to Google comes from data shared by dealers to the DMV in their state.   Here is what Google says:

Regional price paid tells you how much the vehicle you want tends to sell for in your area. It is calculated from real new car sales in your area over the past 90 days, as reported by dealers to the DMV.

Regional price paid is specific to the make, model, trim, packages, and options shown. It includes destination charge; it excludes taxes and fees. It may include incentives and other promotions running at that time that may have impacted the average price paid."

Google Cars VDP

When you you click on a specific vehicle, you will be taken to a VDP page that looks like this:

Google Cars Email Contact Options

And when you click to contact the dealer, you have three options.  Clicking on the "Email Dealer" choice reveals this screen.

Notice that the consumer can easily select other local dealers to quote on the same vehicle.  Today, I have no details on how this advertising product works and the costs associated with it.  Give me a few days.

Source - http://www.dealerelite.net/profiles/blog/show?id=5283893%3ABlogPost%3A305517&xgs=1&xg_source=msg_share_post

Tired of watching your boss’s eyes glaze over every time you mention a “20% increase in likes?”

Depressed from hearing your colleagues report on revenue growth while you report on retweets?

Sick of people asking you what it’s like having “the fun job?”

This article is for you.

The truth is; most social media programs today are still lacking a true sales strategy at the core. We do have a social media strategy, you may say. On Mondays, we post a funny tweet, on Tuesday we post a car picture, and on Wednesday, we post statistics.

To this, I say, an editorial calendar is not a strategy. It’s a schedule. To take your social media to the next level, you need to start correlating it to true sales metrics. The good news? You totally can.

Here’s how to do it:

Example of a Social Lead Funnel

Step 1: Create a spring campaign for a free car wash for new Twitter followers (use a service like TwitHawk to geo-target.)

Step 2: When your followers come in for their free car wash, make sure they feel welcome. Have your staff go through shaking hands, handing out lemonade and cookies, and bringing around an iPad  asking people if they’d like to sign up for your social channels for more great offers and information.

Step 3: From there, nurture them with content marketing that balances car shopping best practices (How To Speed Through the Car-Buying Process) with marketing about your dealership (Why Lola’s Car Dealership is the Best).

Step 4: Once you’ve nurtured the relationship with about 3-5 pieces of strong content, it’s time to reel them in with some urgency. Send them a deal they can’t refuse: either a service coupon that’s only good for the next three days, or an LTO hefty discount on a car that only lasts for the next two hours. Take a cue from Groupon; the shorter the window, the more people are inclined to act, so don’t be afraid to add an element of adventure and excitement with a super-tight time frame.

This is just one example of a content marketing funnel, and there are many variations you could try.

My overall point is that it’s now fully possible to tie social media to the ROI metrics your Dealer Principal or COE actually cares about: leads and sales. You now have the means to up your game from marginalized maven to basking in the glow of revenue generation with all your digital marketing colleagues. Won’t that feel great?

What have you done at your dealership to help create a Social Funnel? Sound off in the comments!

http://www.dealersynergy.com 

Source - http://www.dealerrefresh.com/likes-to-leads-creating-a-social-sales-funnel/#more-7844

http://www.dealersynergy.com 

http://www.dealersynergy.com 

Automotive Internet Sales / Phone Sales "What to Do if There is NO Phone Number or a Bogus Number"  

The hardest part of Automotive Internet Sales or Business Development is simply getting the prospect on the phone and that in part is because you might not have ANY phone number to contact them or its a wrong / bogus phone number... OR you might have a number, it could be there home or office and you can't seem to connect with them. So, what do you do? I see way too many people in our industry accepting defeat without ever trying to do something proactively to try to create a connection with a prospect.

What can you do...? 

First and foremost is NOT to accept that if there is no phone number listed or if there is a wrong phone number that "That is it". You MUST seek out an alternative... Here is a GREAT website you can go to:

* http://www.spokeo.com 

or

* http://www.anywho.com 

or my personal favorite is to call "411" and ASK for a "Reverse Look Up". 

If you can not find the prospect's phone number trying those resources then maybe you should take their email address (from their internet purchase request) and drop it into:

* Google 

* FaceBook

* LinkedIn 

etc...

The bottom line is TAKE A SHOT... try to find a person's contact information, or better contact information. REACH OUT TO THEM. Be "Proactive".

And remember, "You can not lose something, that you never have had before".

If you have any questions about this post or would like some free help... call me or email me-

http://www.seanvbradley.com 

http://www.dealersynergy.com 

(The Intro Video is from Google describing the "Brand Active Initiative") 

Making the Web Work for Brand Marketers

The first two Brand Activate solutions are rolling out today:

Active View: Advertisers have long looked for insight into whether consumers saw an ad on page 145 of a magazine, or switched the channel during a TV commercial break. It’s similar online, so we’re rolling out a technology, which will be submitted for Media Rating Council(MRC) accreditation, that can count “viewed” impressions (as defined by the IAB’s proposed standard, this is a display ad that is at least 50% viewable on the screen for at least one second).

Called Active View, this will first be available in coming weeks within Google Display Network Reserve. We’ll also be making this metric a universal currency, ultimately offering it within DoubleClick for Advertisers, as well as to our publisher partners. Active View data will be immediately actionable—advertisers will be able to pay only for for viewed impressions. Going forward, we’re working on viewed impression standards with the IAB, and our agency and publisher partners.

Active GRP: GRP, or a gross rating point, is at the heart of offline media measurement. For example, when a fashion brand wants their TV campaign to reach 2 million women with two ads each, they use GRP to measure that. We’re introducing a new version of this for the web: Active GRP. Active GRP has two key features:

• Built-in: Active GRP is built right into the ad serving tools that our publishers and marketers already use every day. Active GRP will enable real-time decision making, allowing advertisers to make adjustments to their campaigns at the speed of the web. We’ve kicked off a pilot program for DoubleClick for Advertisers clients as a first step, and will roll it out to other products, with brands able to specify a range of audience GRP segments.
• Robust methodology: Active GRP is calculated by a statistical model that combines aggregated panel data and anonymous user data (either inferred or user-provided), and will work in conjunction with Active View to measure viewed impressions. This approach overcomes problems of potential panel skewing and reliance on a single data source. This approach also has the advantage of never using personally identifiable information, not sharing user data with third parties, and enabling users, through Google’s Ads Preferences Manager, to opt-out. We will be submitting our methodology for MRC accreditation.

More to come

We look forward to bringing other measurement initiatives into our suite for brand marketers, including a brand impact survey pilot with Vizu, our brand lift measurement product (Campaign Insights) and various cross-media measurement research projects globally.

This is just the beginning of the Brand Activate Initiative, with much more to come for brands and publishers. We think that with brand new metrics comes a new brand moment - one that will encourage brands to invest in the web, help publishers show the value of their digital content, and stimulate digital media’s own golden age.

Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President, Display Advertising

http://www.facebook.com/seanvbradley

If you venture into a coffee shop in the coming months and see someone with a pair of futuristic glasses that look like a prop from “Star Trek,” don’t worry. It’s probably just a Google employee testing the company’s new augmented-reality glasses.

On Wednesday, Google gave people a clearer picture of its secret initiativecalled Project Glass. The glasses are the company’s first venture into wearable computing.

The glasses are not yet for sale. Google will, however, be testing them in public.

In a post shared on Google Plus, employees in the company laboratory known as Google X, including Babak Parviz, Steve Lee and Sebastian Thrun, asked people for input about the prototype of Project Glass. Mr. Lee, a Google product manager and originally worked on Google mapping software Latitude, mobile maps and indoor maps, is responsible for the software component and the location-based aspects of the glasses.

“We’re sharing this information now because we want to start a conversation and learn from your valuable input,” the three employees wrote. “Please follow along as we share some of our ideas and stories. We’d love to hear yours, too. What would you like to see from Project Glass?”

The prototype version Google showed off on Wednesday looked like a very polished and well-designed pair of wrap-around glasses with a clear display that sits above the eye. The glasses can stream information to the lenses and allow the wearer to send and receive messages through voice commands. There is also a built-in camera to record video and take pictures.

The New York Times first wrote about the glasses in late February, describing an augmented-reality display that would sit over the eye and run on the Android mobile platform.

A video released by Google on Wednesday, which can be seen below, showed potential uses for Project Glass. A man wanders around the streets of New York City, communicating with friends, seeing maps and information, and snapping pictures. It concludes with him video-chatting with a girlfriend as the sun sets over the city. All of this is seen through the augmented-reality glasses.

University of WashingtonBabak Parviz, who is working on Project Glass, developed contact lenses with pixels embedded in the display.

Project Glass could hypothetically become Project Contact Lens. Mr. Parviz, who is also an associate professor at the University of Washington, specializes in bionanotechnology, which is the fusion of tiny technologies and biology. He most recently built a tiny contact lens that has embedded electronics and can displaypixels to a person’s eye.

Early reports of the glasses said prototypes could look like a pair of Oakley Thumps — which are clunky and obtrusive sunglasses — but the version Google unveiled Wednesday looks more graceful. There are reportedly dozens of other shapes and variations of the glasses in the works, some of which can sit over a person’s normal eyeglasses.

People I have spoken with who have have seen Project Glass said there is a misconception that the glasses will interfere with people’s daily life too much, constantly streaming information to them and distracting from the real world. But these people said the glasses actually free people up from technology.

One person who had used the glasses said: “They let technology get out of your way. If I want to take a picture I don’t have to reach into my pocket and take out my phone; I just press a button at the top of the glasses and that’s it.”

Project Glass is one of many projects currently being built inside the Google X offices, a secretive laboratory near Google’s main Mountain View, Calif., campus where engineers and scientists are also working on robots and space elevators.

Source - http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/04/google-begins-testing-its-augmented-reality-glasses/#

http://www.seomoz.org

http://www.automotiveinternetsales.com

Why Every Marketer Now Needs to Employ a Google+ Strategy For SEO

http://www.dealersynergy.com 

How Google Social Search Has Changed the Way Dealers Do Social

http://www.internetsales20group.com

Every few months, we see a dip in sentiment regarding social media. It's been going on consistently since early 2009 and we know that it will continue. Dealers try social, see little reason to continue, and set things on autopilot or abandon it altogether. Then, something changes that makes social media more important and the searches for "Automotive Social Media" spike again.

Get ready to do the search. Social just got more important again. A LOT more important.

During the Digital Marketing Strategies Conference in Napa last earlier this month, I gave a keynote that highlighted Google's commitment to social media (as soon as Jared, Bart, and Arnold send me the video, I'll be happy to post it here... hint, hint). Google reaffirmed that commitment in a big way earlier today that will change the way savvy dealers do social media.

Google Social Search is a game changer - even SearchEngineLand, a blog that is often conservative about the impact of Google changes, agrees. It will insert links into the natural search stream based upon social connections that share and produce those links. While social search itself has been around for nearly 2 years, it has always been a side-note buried at the bottom and likely unnoticed by most. Now, it has the potential to change the search results important to us with a single Tweet, review, or blog post.

With access to Beta, I did 2 searches for "Washington DC Chevrolet." The first, I did while not logged into Google, personalized search off and cookies cleared:

Then, I did the exact same search while logged into Google:

As you can see, a post by good friend Paul Rushing popped up at the top.

What does this mean for search and social? It means that social sentiment, which many dealers are paying attention to more regularly, just got that much more important. It means that dealers who are unprepared have the potential to see their search traffic drop, particularly if a competing dealer in the market is able to take advantage of this.

It means that YOU can beat them all to the punch and start getting prepared today before it rolls out fully.

I am in the middle of exhaustive research on the subject right now, but here are some key points to think about while you wait for our next version of the Automotive Social Media strategy guide:

• - Tweets Matter. A Lot. - Imagine a potential customer doing a search for one of your makes in your metro area (the most common new car search; "Denver Ford," for example). They under one of the results close to the top your dealership's listing. It's not at the top, but something catches their eye... Co-worker Debbie tweeted your dealership URL. They click through and see that 14 months ago, Debbie bought a car there and tweeted about how good her experience was. Bingo.
• - If You Thought Reviews Were Important Before... - As Google always does when they roll out new search features, we can expect expansion. While Facebook is almost completely out of the question for integration, reviews are definitely part of the equation. Same scenario as above, except replace "Tweet" with "RatePoint." Bingo again.
• - That Pesky Blogger... - Remember the guy who thought he'd wreck your business by posting on his blog about how you low-balled him on his trade? You were smart and covered your Google page one results to keep his post off, but now it's showing up again for hundreds, even thousands of people who are either connected to him or connected to someone who shared his post on social media.
• - Your Connections. - Now more than ever, having a strong and well-maintained Twitter account is important. Do you still have an RSS feed handling your Tweets, driving potential customers to unfollow you, or are you growing your account and being interesting? If the subtle, intrinsic benefits of Twitter didn't get your attention before, how about moving your website up to the top of hundreds of searches? Still want to automate?

I'm not going to sit here and say "I told you so." Not here. Not on Driving Sales. The dealers here represent the top echelon of automotive social media knowledge so you're probably taking advantage of social media in one way or another. Don't let up. Stay aggressive. Keep up with the changes.

And don't forget to bug Jared about getting me that video. It has some information that may further change the way you do your social media.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dealer-synergy-and-review-boost-partner-to-enhance-on-line-reputation-for-automotive-dealerships-and-are-launching-dealer-review-boost-at-nada-2011-in-san-francisco--booth-4464n-114570549.html

PHILADELPHIA, Jan. 25, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Dealer Synergy has announced its newest service today, Dealer Review Boost, to provide both a proactive and reactive process to maintain and improve automotive dealers' on-line reputation. Dealer Synergy is the industry's number one training, consulting and digital marketing service provider for car dealerships. Review Boost is the leading on-line reputation company that helps companies promote their on-line reputation by syndicating positive reviews from their clients throughout the major search engines and directories.

Google Places Special Geography

Don't Abuse This Setting

• Five great photos of customers taking delivery of cars or your work in the community. Kill the building photos.
• Five great videos. Three customer testimonial videos, one welcome video, and one service video.
• Proper categories that describe your business. There is a category for every OEM brand
• Make sure one category you select is "Used Car Dealer"

http://www.internetsales20group.com

Recently Google created a Tsunami of change by integrating Google Places into organic search results. Dealers called me to ask what I thought these changes would have to their Automotive SEO strategies. I was not quick to answer because I think that Google is still refining their balancing act of SEO, SEM, and Google Places.

With that said, I am feeling much better about the changes that are in play. I was worried that the new Google Places integration would start at the top of organic listings which would favor websites connected to a Google Places page. From what I can see, Google is still rewarding exact match domain names and highly optimized websites before the “mosh pit” (in green) is displayed.

In the example below, a broad search phrase like “Los Angeles Dealers” produces a list of car dealers that have Google Maps, but before those listings, three company websites appear.

In the search results shown above, you can see that an “exact match” domain with good content, links, and relevance PRECEDES the massive block of results shown in green that are enhanced by Google Places data. You can also see the other two websites that rank above the Google Places block are not slackers at all: Automotive.com and Cars.com.

Google SERP Find Exact Matches First

I’ve said this before and will repeat it again, Google always tries to present, on a search results page (SERP), the best matching assets in its database. Google, Yahoo, and Bing all weight exact matching domains very high as long as the websites have relevant content. Redirected domains that are not hosted will never appear in search results so all those parked domains you may own are not helping you. It may be time to get those parked domains on a real content publishing strategy!

Don’t Forget The Stars

When Google integrated Google Places, the normal 8-10 organic listings were changed dramatically which created a “jump ball” once again in the search marketing Olympics.

I would like to remind all car dealers that they MUST develop a comprehensive Internet Reputation Management (IRM) strategy to increase participation of their clients to posted reviews. My recommendation is that a successful dealer should have TWICE the number of positive reviews “stars” of their nearest competitor. That may be harder in years to come but all dealers should have a few HUNDRED reviews posted from authentic customers.

Testing Search Results Start To Show A Trend

From recent testing that I have done, websites hosted on great domain names may actually have an edge over local car dealer websites. Take a look at the search listed below. The websites that Google felt were best matches and NOT in Google Places were listed first. Then the local dealers were listed.

Once again, the TOP websites above the integrated and enhanced Google Places organic listings are two heavyweight contenders UsedCars.com and Yahoo Autos. For the car industry, the bigger, more established inventory advertising websites could be getting more traffic because they are NOT in the green Google Places area and shown at the top of the page.

This trend continues as you type in even broader searches, and you can see that websites that are EXACT matching or that have high SEO inbound links on targeted keywords, appear on Google Page One before the Google Places block. So, in essence, Automotive SEO strategies are still in tact and dealers that have EXACT matching microsites with great content are getting a boost.

The Future Automotive SEO

Since I am an advocate of Automotive Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies, you would expect me to defend this marketing strategy but I will be the first to say that the changes with Google Places is still a dynamic event. I’ll keep you posted on what I find and make recommendations to take advantage of opportunities I see.

About the Author

Brian Pasch is the CEO of the PCG Digital Marketing and an active writer for the automotive community.

• Google Adwords was split on top and right shown in pink.
• Two organic listings were displayed above the new maps region, shown in green.
• That 7 spots were taken up with exploded Google Maps listings, shown in red.
• The remainder of the organics were shown under maps which were cut off on the screen capture.

Google Maps Changes SEO Strategies