On this week's Think Tank Tuesday:
- Find out what tool your website is missing
- Learn how to engage and reengage shoppers
- Determine shopper behavior
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Why Work Harder For Less?
On this week's Think Tank Tuesday:
✓ Learn how to identify your clients
✓ Find out what you need to be spending time on
✓ Determine key mistakes in your sales process
I really don't know who I'm going to offend on this one. We've been researching so many vendors over the last couple of months that work with chat, lead-gen widgets, and website platforms themselves that we haven't taken the time to explore PPC vendors. Maybe that's why I was blindsided to find out that there are at least two vendors out there charging 20% and one that we found who is charging 25%.
Is it me or is this insane? We'll put aside the 25% vendor for now. I'm hopeful that it's some sort of accounting mistake or something. Focusing on the 20% charge, it really bugs me that this may be more common than I ever knew. I've always hung around the organic side of search, so PPC hasn't been a focus. With that said, I've managed dozens of PPC campaigns over the years and I could never imagine charging anything other than a flat fee.
To me (and again, I might be on the wrong side of this argument and would be very open to some education on this one), if a dealership is spending $10,000 per month on their PPC, $2,000 of it going to management seems high. If the software is driving the bidding and the feeds are generating the dynamic ads, wouldn't it seem that very little manual effort and development costs are going into the service on a monthly basis?
I've always been a fan of flat fee PPC management because of transparency. I want to be able to recommend to a dealer that they raise their budget without them wondering if I'm just trying to make more money and I want to be able to recommend that they reduce their budget without reducing my service fee. To me, adjusting a budget is a matter of changing a number or two in the backend and I cannot justify charging hundreds of dollars more per month for clicking a few buttons.
Here's the math:
- 20% service fee
- $10,000 per month initial budget
- Dealer wants to raise to a $12,000 per month budget
- Vendor clicks a few buttons, adjust some daily budgets
- Additional monthly cost for clicking those buttons: $400/month
- Yes, that's $4,800 a year for 5-10 minutes of effort
I'll say it again. I'm willing to hear why I'm wrong. I'd love to see the additional monthly effort that goes into a bigger budget. If that's not the case, I'm open to hearing why the cost is justified. If there are vendors out there charging a lower percentage or a flat fee that dealers (or vendors) are willing to recommend, I'd love to hear about those as well.
Someone, please set me straight on this issue. It's bugging me.
Using a third-party provider for leads sounds like a great idea in theory. However you need to make sure that these leads you are getting are worth the money you are spending. Learn how to make the most out of using these other providers to ensure you are maximizing your possible leads.
Get the Hard Facts from Samantha Cunningham at POTRATZ, and learn how to provide more opportunities to convert on your website.
Do you lose more leads the farther you progress down the sales funnel? You might have this problem.
On this episode of Think Tank Tuesday:
- Find out why this happens
- Learn techniques to avoid it
- Get an Excel doc from Paul to track lead leakage
You can't have a successful business unless everyone is on board with the process. Learn how to spot the gaps in your company's strategy on this week's Think Tank Tuesday.
Does your website make shoppers feel good about their purchase? What is the advantage of buying from your brand instead of one with a better price? Learn how your website can help shoppers justify a purchase on this week’s Think Tank Tuesday.
The new business layout that Facebook will be rolling out is very important to pay attention to. There are a few alterations that will really help manage and stand out on your Facebook page.
The new streamlined look will make it easier for viewers to find the information they want. The right side of the page will have your wall posts, which means at all times on your page the viewer will be able to see your posts. The left side of the page is where the business information will be located.
The best addition to the new layout will be the addition of 'Pages to Watch' which will allow you to watch other Facebook pages to monitor how and what they are doing. This is a great way to monitor what other dealers do on Facebook and to make sure you are doing enough to stay ahead of your competition.
To read more about this click the link below!
Facebook's New Business Layout Link: ---> Click Here
One of the most amazing parts of my job is spending time reading, watching, and testing the practices of others. It's conceivable that the true secret to my success over the years has less to do with creativity and more to do with listening and deciphering. You have to listen to the channels like Google and Facebook. You have to listen to your customers. You have to listen to your customers' customers (if you're an agency like me).
The annoying part of my job is sifting through the recycled techniques and reinvented terminology that surrounds so many marketing practices. In most cases, it's the same old things repackaged into a different form or applied from a different angle. Those are valuable, but not gamechanging. Still, it's important to go through them all in order to find the hidden or not-so-hidden gems that arise. The best practices I've found over the years haven't been on the pages of Mashable, Search Engine Watch, or Social Media Today. The real winners have come from some of the least likely sources.
With all of that out of the way, let's get to the point. There are three types of marketing. Despite all of the various names - push and pull marketing, social media marketing, gravitational marketing, search marketing, influence marketing, content marketing - the easiest and arguably most pure way of looking at it is to tackle everything from a perspective of venue and intent. Where are the people going and what are they doing when they get there? It's important for me as well as business owners to look at it from this perspective because the collision of the various marketing types is forcing a holistic marketing model to outperform niche marketing techniques or specialized strategies.
In other words, if you look at venue and intent, you can craft your overall marketing strategy much more easily. We look at it as following the quest - what are they doing, why are thy doing it, and how can we be there to help them choose our clients. When people buy your products, they are fulfilling a quest. No, they're not slaying an actual dragon, but if they're on a quest to buy a car, then your dealership selling them a car is the culmination of that particular quest.
Here are the three types of marketing for 2014 (well, early 2014 at least - it changes so quickly) that we like to tackle:
Fulfilling the Quest
This is the easiest to understand and often the hardest to achieve because of the simplicity of purpose. Everyone knows that if someone is interested in buying a car, they're probably going to go to Google, Bing, or one of the various classified sites to start looking. They might go to review sites and OEM sites as well, but for the most part they're ready to seek the fulfillment of their quest, they're going to try to look for cars.
Search engine marketing of all types, whether it's SEO or PPC, gives you the opportunity to drive them to your website so they may fulfill their quest. They aren't searching for Honda dealers to have fun. They have a purpose. They're in buying mode. This is where you have to be in order to help them fulfill their quest.
Renewing the Quest
More businesses are starting to do this. Many of them tried to do it in 2009-2012 and failed miserably. Part of it was because the venues such as Facebook, banner advertisements, retargeting, and other forms of "passive" marketing arenas weren't developed to the point that they are today.
Now, the goals have come full-circle thanks to the overall availability of the internet. Mobile devices have made checking social media sites and reading websites the common activity when there are no activities to do. As people ride a bus, wait in line at the bank, or even perform other mundane activities like watching television, they are also surfing the internet. They aren't going to Facebook to buy things, but they're open to the concept. They're open to having their quest renewed.
When they go to Fox News to see what's going on and the retargeting ad pops up in front of them, they are reminded that they are still on a quest even if they aren't actively on it at that point. When the business they visited last week pops up on their Facebook news feed, they get that reiteration that they still need to buy something. It might take a dozen instances of seeing a brand and its message before they actually click through, but the statistics are showing that it's working. Not every sale is made through Google. In fact, some of the most important and actionable clicks come through other venues when they're not in active buying mode.
Creating the Quest
Of the three, this is the one that's ignored the most. It's the hardest to do and the least rewarding when not done right. However, it can be the most rewarding when companies are able to make it sing. This is one that we focus on in particular because in our industry, nobody is doing it right.
In many ways it's like good old fashioned advertising. No, it's not like the commercials that we see on television today. Think along the lines of the early days of television when brands were built by establishing a problem that people will see in the normal course of their day and then having that problem solved either in the middle of the initial marketing effort or after further research.
The reason that it's so hard today is because of attention span. We have seconds instead of minutes to get the message out through most advertising and marketing venues. There's no longer time to tell a story...
...or is there?
The art of creating the quest is about putting the right content on the right venues that will reach people and establish a need whether they're in the market right now or not. With this particular article already breaking the 1,000-word mark, there's not enough time to go into it in detail. We'll do that next time. Instead, watch the following video that shows two commercials that worked well in their day. Today, having a minute-long television commercial isn't practical for most businesses, but taking advantage of the various channels online to accomplish the same goal and better is something that we know will move the needle. It's hard. That's the point. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.
More on that next time. For now, here's the video:
Auto Industry Failing to Tap Power of Social Media to Deliver Actionable Sales Leads, Says Report by CMO Council
CMO Council Report Finds Auto Ecosystem Marketers Looking for Better Ways to Integrate Marketing With Sales Generation and Sales Funnel Activities
SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwired - Mar 3, 2014) - The auto industry ecosystem should do more to leverage social media as a platform for drivingbusiness leads into sales pipelines, argues a new report by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council. Social media is stimulating extensive auto-related conversations and content that create major opportunities to identify likely buyers and engage them based on their preferences and purchase intent, according to the report, which is entitled "Turning Social Feeds Into Business Leads."
Developed in partnership with hoojook, Inc. -- a Silicon Valley social media intelligence company focused on the auto sector -- the new report finds auto industry marketers are in various stages of adopting social marketing strategies and practices. Most see social as a potentially powerful medium for understanding and engaging consumers, but they are early in the development of marketing and business metrics, as well as processes that integrate social media data more effectively in the sales funnel.
"Social represents an important marketing frontier for the automotive industry," said Donovan Neale-May, Executive Director of the CMO Council. "Senior marketers recognize its capacity to deliver actionable, real-time insights that can help drive overall marketing effectiveness. They also see its value as a dynamic channel for influencing brand preference and purchase. Now they need to take the next step by integrating social more directly into the sales funnel and using it as a new platform for delivering qualified leads."
There is plenty of evidence demonstrating the potential of social as a marketing channel across manufacturing brands, dealerships and aftermarket products and services. For example:
- Thirty-eight (38) percent of consumers say they will consult social media in making their next car purchase.1
- Twenty-three (23) percent of car buyers say they use social media to communicate their purchase experience.1
- Eighty-four (84) percent of automotive shoppers are on Facebook, and 24 percent of them have used Facebook as a resource for making their vehicle purchases.1
- Forty (40) percent of new car purchases over the next 10 years will be made by millennials.2
- Ninety-four (94) percent of millennial car buyers gather information online.3
- Clicks on Facebook auto ads climbed from 16 percent to 39 percent between October 2012 and April 2013.1
Based on interviews with senior marketers and executives from auto manufacturers, dealer networks, aftermarket service providers and B2B automotive solutions companies such as Autonation, Costco Auto Program, Nissan, Cadillac, Car MD, KIA, Aspen Marketing Services, Express Oil Change, Mazda, Snap-on, Dealertrack and DME Automotive, the report finds that senior marketers are highly interested in developing and using new systems and processes to leverage social more effectively for lead acquisition and acceleration. However, most say they are only in the very early stages of the process and often express caution about possible brand reputation issues when overtly marketing to individuals on social.
Nonetheless, the report argues that the use of social in combination with natural language processing and big data analytics, along with social's ability to deliver meaningful content and commentary in context, has the potential to make it a highly effective medium for identifying, segmenting and engaging consumers based on preferences and where they are in the purchase cycle.
"The technology now exists to process and analyze social streams -- not only to understand broader consumer attitudes and reputational issues, but also to identify, segment and profile individual consumers based on where they are in the purchase cycle, their preferences and needs, and even psychographic characteristics that influence how they want to engage with brands and service providers," said Shauli Chaudhuri, CEO of hoojook. "Consumers are using social media to find product recommendations, access dealer reviews, voice complaints, display preference, consider peer opinions, capitalize on coupon offers, and engage in ongoing dialogues with their favorite automotive brands. We believe the auto industry will benefit greatly from data-driven analytics to identify potential customers and social content delivery systems that bring automotive OEMs, dealers, aftermarket service providers and other members of the ecosystem closer to the consumers who are looking to make purchases."
The full strategic report is available for download today and features valuable insights, including:
- Campaigns focused on cars generate much higher consumer engagement and interest than other social media initiatives, such as charitable causes.
- Reputation management is seen as potentially the most critical aspect of social marketing, with consumer-generated content and commentary having a huge influence on purchasing decisions.
- Marketers view social as most effective when integrated with other channels and marketing approaches; many view social analytics as an invaluable source of insight for other digital and offline marketing efforts.
- Facebook is widely regarded as the most powerful social channel for automotive, but marketers say other channels can be more effective, depending on the need and strategy.
To download the report, please visit http://www.cmocouncil.org/r/social-feeds-into-business-leads
Do you want to grow your business without working more? Find out ways to move the rocks in the road that are stopping you from moving forward. That's this week's tip on Think Tank Tuesday.
Do you have a strategy to market your dealership to Gen Y? Unsure of why you need one? What if I told you Gen Y, defined as those ranging from ages 18-34, make up the largest chunk of the current population? It's important to understand how to market to this generation and capture these potential sales.
Get the Hard Facts from Samantha Cunningham at POTRATZ, and learn how to get through to Gen Y.
Do you think you are doing everything you can but can't figure out why more money isn't coming in? There may be one key component missing. Find out what you are missing to reach your goals this week on Think Tank Tuesday.
Did you know that 85% of sales are influenced by women? For both sales and service, your strategy to turn women into clients needs to be different and we can show you how.
Get the Hard Facts from Samantha Cunningham at POTRATZ, and learn how it's not just a man's world.
With the increased emphasis on content in social media marketing this year, video has emerged as one of the key areas of focus. Even last year, Forbes was touting the strengths of utilising video content, highlighting the significant response rate of video over other formats. But while the numbers emphasize the considerable benefits, many businesses lack the time, resources and/or budget to create video content. Enter Vine. Vine has changed the way marketing teams look at video, expanding the options and reducing the overheads. If you’ve not considered using Vine in your marketing efforts, here are three reasons why you should re-investigate your options to ensure you're not missing out on a great opportunity:
1. Visual content significantly boosts content marketing success. All the stats show it, the marketing experts support it. Brands can achieve great reach and engagement results with visual content. A recent report from Cisco suggested that video will account for 69% of all consumer internet traffic by 2017. A Nielsen report found 64% of marketers expect video to be a key part of their strategic planning moving forward. The logic behind the numbers is clear – information can be communicated faster in video, people are more likely to share video content, a growing number of consumers say product videos make them more confident in a purchase. With video becoming more accessible via SmartPhone, its popularity has increased exponentially, and consumer expectation has also been heightened as a result. Video is a familiar and powerful medium that generally require less time commitment than written content and can generate a strong emotional response in very short exposure time. As noted in this piece from The Guardian ‘if a picture paints 1,000 words, one minute of video is worth 1.8 million’.
2. The barrier for entry is much lower than it once was. It used to be that you’d need to pay a third party video production company to shoot and produce video content. Not anymore. Vine is structured around a low-tech approach – the editing options are limited and there’re no additional filters - you shoot what you want, then send (note: it is possible to access additional editing options by using the VineClient app). The six second limit also means the cost is kept to a minimum, whilst not lugging you with the burden of lengthy production time. Vine is designed to be quick, easy and accessible to all users, from tech experts to kids. And just as Twitter changed the game on communications with its character limit, Vine’s run-time limit re-imagines the approach to video, forcing you to expand your creative thinking on how you’re going to capture attention and convey an intelligent message in such a short amount of time. These constraints have lead to some amazing content, all made for relatively minimal cost. And while the time limit is restrictive, it’s also freeing, knowing that you’re not under obligation to fill minutes or hours of content. You get in, present what you need in it’s most direct form, then get it out. This was simply impossible ten, even five years ago.
3. Brand Vines are shared four-times more than any other online videos. This is the clincher. Not only are Vine videos relatively cheap and easy to make, but they are 400% more likely to be shared than other forms of video content. That’s a pretty compelling case right there. That sharing is not on a limited scale either - nine tweets that include a Vine video are sent every second of every day. A Facebook group that collects the best Vine videos, ‘Best Vines’, now has 19 million likes – that’s more than the population of most countries. The popularity and reach of Vine content cannot be underestimated. One of the major appealing factors of Vine is it only takes seconds to watch – people are more likely to press play knowing that it’ll only take a moment, then they can get on with their day. If you can condense a clever brand message into that six-second time frame, there’s a high chance that it’s going to get seen and shared, spreading your brand message.
There are many examples of brands using Vine creatively and achieving great results (check out ‘Brands on Vine’ for inspiration). Whilst it may seem like video content is beyond the capacity of your business, if you look through the examples, you’ll find many pieces are extremely simple. You still need to create great content, but doing some research and expanding your thinking on what’s possible may lead to you having a ‘light bulb’ moment for a Vine piece. And even if you try it and it doesn’t pan out, it’s not going to blow your budget. Vine offers great opportunity for branded content and is a platform that all companies with a social media presence should consider using. Who knows, you could become the next viral sensation.
Anyone can have a dream, but why do some succeed and some fail? Find out what you need to reach your goals this week on Think Tank Tuesday.
http://www.dealersynergy.com 856-546-2440
Example Of Video Review For A 2014 BMW M6 - Video Production - Video SEO - Digital Marketing
Watch the tips featured in this week's Think Tank Tuesday and increase your profitability with your management style.
2013 GMC 2500 Denali. $45,000. Below Blue Book!!!! Why you ask? This truck may be more loaded than an Irishman in a whiskey-drinking contest, but it is no Sunday driver. It is a ¾ ton, 4-wheel drive, luxury work horse and it was cast from smelted bullet casings and stealth fighters by God’s own iron fist to be rode hard and put away wet. It may have a couple of scratches on it but that is ok. And do you know why? Because it’s a truck. And you’re a man. And together you are Maximus Meridius from Gladiator. And while women may swoon at your kind hard heart and gentile touch, underneath it all you are a BAMF who doesn’t back down from a fight and you have the scars to prove it. Because you sweat pure gasoline, and bleed oil and all you need is your 360hp Vortec chariot to get you to the promise land.
Your boats and snow machines are nothing but a light snack for this 6-speed auto, HD, demon-powered towing machine. With its Z71 Off-road package, you can enter dirt track races while towing your 17,800-lb life-size robot collection and a hot tub full of topless super models, and still win. All while outrunning the cops and mowing down zombies with your Mack truck-resembling chrome front bumper.
More technologically advanced than the Starship Enterprise, this truck will transport you in style while trusting you with all of its secrets. Wondering what your oil pressure is but don’t want go outside to check? Simply consult your smartphone and unveil everything you desire to know. Tire pressure, engine temperature, gas level, oil pressure, can all be summoned and accessible to you alone at the touch of your fingertip. Your friends will start to wonder how you became so wise and the Oracle from the Matrix will be calling to ask you for advice.
With its 6.0 liter V8, this truck will transport you to your destination faster than you can say Bad Mother Fu@#er and will arrive with about the subtlety of a tectonic plate shifting during the 1964 earthquake. Yes people will stare, my friend. Because you are always the winner in the reaux sham beaux that is your life; because rock trumps scissors, paper trumps rock, but a swift kick to the balls trumps paper, every time.
The rear automatic sliding glass window allows you to make sure that the grizzly you killed with your bare hands hasn’t come back to life. Or the sled you loaded up to high mark Mt McKinley hasn’t budged an inch. Since your 6 1/2′ bed is Rhino Lined with ¼” of near bullet-proof rubber, your big boy toys will be safely transported to the fiery inferno’s of hell and back, because that is where you go to play.
But what about the interior you ask? Hundreds of lambs died an honorable death to effectuate leather soft enough to make-up this hulk’s supple interior. The climate can be controlled to subliminal perfection by the shear omnipotent power in your callused right hand. The perpetually-complaining-about-the-cold woman in your life will be happy to know that heat can be generated at the touch of a button that will literally light a fire under her ass. In addition to heated (and cooled) seats, it’s power can be summoned from anywhere on the planet; it’s 8 powerful pistons coaxed into roaring to life for you alone, because you are the Lone Ranger, but Silver has nothing on this faithful steed. Sitting in the command center of this 2013 batmobile black, panty-dropping stallion, you will have more features at your fingertips than that kid David in “Flight of the Navigator,” but you will look like a lot less of a douche, because you aren’t flying a talking space ship 3 yards from the ground. You’re Han Solo, flying the Millennium Falcon, and The Force is for pussies.
Yes, this truck may have more options than a menu at Village Inn, but don’t let its Babylonian luxury fool you. It may have you feeling richer than a Russian Czar but it is about as tameable as a rogue wave and will chew you up and spit you out if you do not give it the respect it commands. But command it you will, and respect you will have because this truck is intimidating. Corvettes, Challengers and other gutless vehicles scurry out of its way, even when it’s in the slow lane. The pilot car in construction sites escorts it through immediately, even when it’s the only vehicle in line. It can out run the cops in 2nd gear, and does. It will park in a handicap space, then tow the tow-truck away. It will be the best man at your wedding, sleep with your bride, and never call her again. Yeah, it’s that bad.
If you like the looks of this truck but don’t think that is worth every bit of $45,000, then do not bother calling. Because this truck is the lovechild of Optimus Prime and Kit from knight Rider and if you don’t recognize its true potential, than you do not deserve to be at the helm of such an almighty machine.
Skip the dealership, all you will get there is a long-winded sales pitch. . …
For more information email, call, or text Caitlin xxx.xxx.xxxx
Who's Your Danny?
If you've participated in automotive internet marketing for long enough, you've very likely heard the concept that "content is King." It was in play back in the days when I started researching search engine optimization all those years ago and it never really stopped. There was a dirty little secret that few of us in the SEO community ever mentioned, but it's been safe to say it for a little over a year now.
Content wasn't really king. It was important, but it wasn't king - not by a long shot.
When I started at TK Carsites in 2007, I wanted to prove that point. I was given a single website that belonged to the company that we wanted to rank for the important "used cars" keywords. They had a gameplan that included creating pages for every major metro in the country, populating them with tons of unique content, and playing the game the way that it's supposed to be played. I told them to hold off for a while. This was an opportunity to do some testing.
We didn't add the content... nothing. The homepage was flash and had three words in the title tag - two of them being "Used Cars". I then went through an extremely aggressive link-building process and started attacking dozens of cities. In less than two months, we were ranked in the top 3 for over 30 major metros and #1 for a dozen. These weren't easy keywords. "Baltimore Used Cars". "Dallas Used Cars". "New York City Used Cars". We Google-bombed the site and it paid off. Sadly, we didn't develop the site very much after that, but the point was made.
Fast forward about a year and we started recognizing that Google was changing the game. I was certain that they were heading towards a set of quality-control mechanisms that would make the spammy techniques obsolete. We started shifting towards a content model that included high-value sites, blogs, and guest posting. We still used some of the lesser link-building styles such as directory submissions, but we stopped all forms of footer/sidebar/signature link building. If it could be done in bulk, we weren't going to use it. Google was catching on. I was sure of it.
2009 came and went. No major change. Content was a little more important, but link-building still ruled. In fact, our high-touch, high-maintenance technique was working but not much better than the spammy techniques some were using that we had long-abandoned.
2010 - same thing. I was getting worried. I was sure Google was close. They had to be. Unfortunately, I was getting a little pressure from the SEO team because they were seeing that the techniques that I assured were evil were still working.
2011 - Panda. YAAAAY! No, wait. It didn't address the links. The spammy techniques were still working and my expensive strategy was having trouble fighting off the bulk players.
Then it happened. Penguin. April 24, 2012. The day that I thought would be coming in 2008 or 2009 finally arrived and all of the things I had hoped for came true. Some of our competitors fell of the map, Death-Star-style... "as if millions of SEO's cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced."
Today, the strategy, a content- and quality-based strategy, is alive and well. Finally.
So what was the point of all that? Today, content truly IS king, but not in the way that most perceive it. The reason that I built a new company that focuses solely on content, search, and social is that the three are now part of the same digital marketing strategy. You cannot do well with any one of them without doing well at the other two. Content is king because the quality necessary for pure link earning and social media marketing is finally bridging the gap. Unfortunately, that's bad news for the vast majority of dealers because the boilerplate content that populates so many dealer websites is hurting you. Chances are you're not really feeling it because you've never experienced the difference; if nearly everyone is doing it wrong, then "bad" is actually average.
Here is a good infographic that demonstrates many of the connections that are associated with content as part of SEO and thus part of the holistic digital marketing strategy, via automotiveseo.org. Enjoy!
