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Many digital marketing agencies are great at sending leads to a dealership website. Typically, if sales don't improve, these agencies will be quick to say that the marketing works fine, but that the dealer isn't taking full advantage of the leads. However, a true full-service digital agency includes a vital piece of the puzzle with regards to this - performance management.

Performance management is generally not a part of the suite of services one gets from a digital marketing agency, because most view themselves as purely in the business of increasing traffic, leads and conversions. Adding performance management to their list of benefits would mean adding agency employees that are so familiar with the way a well-run dealership works that they can help dealers effectively take their leads to the next level, translating them into sales.

It is easy enough to see what days and times leads are most plentiful, but sometimes it takes performance management to indicate that this means to staff more heavily during those hours to take full advantage. Sometimes, processes are broken at a dealership, and a performance manager can spot the areas that need improvement internally and help a dealership close gaps to create a more efficient car sales process. Does your current marketing agency offer a performance management service?

CEO of Dealer Synergy, Sean V. Bradley CSP, typically hosts Make Money Mondays. This week, a special guest Chris Sondesky hosts Make Money Mondays. Chris is an internet director at Cherry Hill Triplex. From his centralized BDC he has 400+ units sold a month and $1 million in gross. How does he do this? He puts emotion back into the process. Customers cannot see, smell, or feel the car online. The key is in making customers feel good and gaining their trust. If a customer trusts you, they will do business with you, refer people and want to come back. You can even ask for reviews because you've earned them. This emotion becomes your closing tool. Make the experience you have discussed happening in the showroom, come to life. Show more emotions, make more sales.




For more training check out http://www.BradleyOnDemand.com

If you're looking for more information on the automotive industry visit: http://www.AutomotiveInternetSales.com

There are a variety of ways in which you can personalize your direct mail pieces to fit your customers' wants and needs. In this week’s episode of Hard Facts, Samantha will explain how highly targeting your mail pieces and using variable data can increase ROI.

Tune in tomorrow to Sirius XM, channel 141 at 4pm Eastern. CEO of Dealer Synergy, Sean V. Bradley CSP, is being interviewed by a legend, Dr. Willie Jolley on SiriusXM!! He has the #1 Success and Motivation channel on the entire SiriusXM platform!! SiriusXM has over 23 Million Subscribers! Topics include Sean's Googleopoly Book! Tune into the interview and order your copy of "Win The Game of Googleopoly"today!

Digital marketing can be extremely tedious when you add up the time that many tasks take to complete. On top of big projects like audits, copywriting, and promotional work, smaller tasks can add stress to days otherwise occupied by fulfilling work.

Finding ways to get tedious tasks done faster, such as using digital marketing tools, will save you from that stress and give you more time to concentrate on creative projects that drive results.

Whether you work in-house at a business, or manage many different clients for an agency, here are four examples of digital marketing takes you can automate.

Social Media Scheduling

Managing a business's social media activity might not be the most time-consuming task on your to-do list, but if you're not taking advantage of scheduling tools, you might be wasting time.

To improve your efficiency, use HootSuite or Buffer to avoid having to copy/paste messages that are going across multiple social networks.  These tools allow you to sync up accounts and schedule posts with one simple action.

And if you want to go the extra mile, try to set time aside to schedule at least a week's worth of social media content out at a time. This way you don't have to rush to fit it into your daily routine, you can create even better content, and you're better able to concentrate on other tasks afterward.

Reputation Management

While online reputation management is still in its early days, businesses do need to be taking advantage of their ability to monitor and respond to online reviews, feedback, and other comments. 

Online reviews are where people turn before making purchasing decisions, so it's important to take a proactive approach to managing what they find out about your business.

A study from Bazaarvoice reports that shoppers who see a business's response to a negative review are 116% more likely to make a purchase. That means five minutes of your time now could make a huge difference in sales later.

By using a review management service like ReviewPush, you can gather most of the major review sources into one place to make monitoring and responding a breeze.

Site Reports

For SEOs, reporting results can mean a lot of digging through analytics and time spent in Excel. But with the help of automated reports, which come as a part of services like Raven Tools, you can let software create those, and have them automatically emailed to any number of people.

So if you meet with your boss or client each month, you can set the report to be sent to them ahead of time in order to give them a chance to look it over and familiarize themselves with recent developments.

Once you set it up, you don't have to worry about it moving forward.

Citation Research

Successful local SEO campaigns rely a lot on citations. Finding new sources and editing outdated or incorrect listings, however, can take a lot of time if you're just doing searches for your business name, address, and phone number in hopes of uncovering everything.

Instead of going at it alone, sign up for WhiteSpark's Local Citation Finder. It allows you to quickly find listings that feature the information you provide so you can discover which sites have the right information, which sites have the wrong information, and which sites you need to create a listing on.

You can also do research on your competition to find out how well your citation profile is in comparison. That's also a great way to discover sites they've secured listings on that might have otherwise slipped through the cracks.

What are some of the tools you're using to automate your digital marketing tasks? Is there a certain task you're struggling with? Leave a comment below!

I am proud to announce January's Vendor of the Month award winner, Todd Dearborn at Carsdirect.com.  The site is the basis for 130 different websites, providing content to consumers.  They were able to create an automotive community that is second to none. This was done through holding the consumer’s hand all the way through the car buying process.

Since its founding in 1998, no one else has been able to do what carsdirect.com has done for consumers and dealerships to the caliber to which they’ve done it. What started just as a site for consumers to utilize for research and pricing has become a resource for dealerships as well. The site allows dealerships to be put right in front of the consumer through internet branding. This allows dealerships to target their audience for the vehicle they are trying to move.

With 110+ million visitors a month, their goal is no longer SEO (search engine optimization) because they have the exposure. Their focus is the experience for site users. Carsdirect.com is constantly up to date with trends, such as the rise in mobile. They are consistently updating their site to benefit users, by doing things like making sure it is easy to access their site via mobile.

Through their basic principle of selling cars more often and more profitably, they are able to focus on the needs of consumers and dealerships. All of the provided reasons and genuine care for dealerships and consumers are why they are second to none in the automotive community and why they are Vendor of the Month. Learn more about the Vice President of Carsdirect.com in the interview below.

I am proud to announce January's Dealer of the Month award winner, Chris Sondesky. Chris is the Internet/BDC/Marketing Director of the Cherry Hill Triplex in Cherry Hill, NJ.  Chris has learned every aspect of the trade, having been in the automotive industry for 15 years. He has had multiple positions over the years including technician, manager of sales department operations as a GSM and GM, to later building one of the biggest single point Internet Departments/BDC’s on the east coast for huge franchised new automobile dealerships.

 Chris has come a long way since his early days in the industry. Over the past 5 years he has focused on the digital aspect of selling cars, with his 7 franchises, Kia, Mitsubishi, Dodge,Chrysler, Jeep, Ram and Fiat. With the help of his General Manager they developed in depth marketing strategies to master the online consumer. As this process continued his staff began to receive 3,000 internet leads monthly!

As of 2014, Chris took his skills to an entirely new level, selling 400+ units per month and achieving $1 million in gross. Chris has become a master of internet sales for dealerships. Recently, Chris stated, “On average, our BDC/Internet Team, a very talented group of Customer Service Reps and Internet Managers, generates approximately 50% of our showroom traffic, all by appointment, leading to 55% of our sold units. Since 2010, Internet deals have closed at a higher percentage than the other half of our traffic, and for higher gross profit. We've continued this trend, now on our 5th year of double digit growth.”

In an interview conducted by CEO of Dealer Synergy, Sean V. Bradley, CSP Chris shares his thoughts on CRM, Managers, Internet Directors, Leads, Phone ups and more. Chris was able to gain all this success because he feels people are the most important factor. He notes that personality is everything and he has never hired an employee based off of skill. It is all about being fit for a team. He believes anyone can do the job with a strong training process in place.

Chris is here to tell you that you CAN make money off of internet customers. Internet deals close at a higher closing ratio and a higher gross profit than 40-50% of the rest of his business.  He believes your response time should be “right now”. Answering “right now” actually is not even fast enough. Chris believes that timeliness and having a proper process in place for your team can make a huge difference in your internet selling process. It is easier to bridge the gap between showroom sales and internet sales than you might think.

Chris recommended that if you have a customer coming in make sure you have the vehicle ready, enough gas for a test drive and wait until they get into the store to assess which sales person would work well with them.

Bottom line, the key to success and a solid close is to let the customer know that their time is valuable to you.  Whether you are in the showroom or handling Internet sales, you are the same team.

Watch the interviews provided to learn more tips to Chris’ success.  Like Chris, you too can become one of the biggest single point Internet Departments/Business Development new automobile dealerships. Congratulations again Chris! Your future is looking bright.

Women-Drivers.com recently released their 2015 US Women’s Car Dealership Report which contains the findings of their survey of over 3,450 women regarding buying vehicles and their car dealership experiences. Some interesting insights regarding women car shoppers can be gleaned from the results.

To start, women car shoppers have increased overall. The most popular vehicles shopped include Volkswagen, Ford, Chevrolet, Jeep, and Buick, while the most popular vehicles purchased include Mercedes-Benz, Lincoln, Dodge, Jeep and Chrysler. In fact, numbers are up across the board – including increased leasing and servicing completed by women car shoppers.

Where it gets interesting for digital marketers is that almost one third of women car shoppers surveyed reported that the dealership website was not helpful! Women in the survey visited on average 2 dealerships before making a purchase. Over half went by themselves in person to shop, and most of those that leave without purchasing never return. Just under half of the women surveyed went to the dealership alone to actually purchase the vehicle.

These findings send some clear signals both to dealerships and digital marketers. Women car shoppers are increasingly handling the business of buying a car by themselves, and most dealerships have just one chance to capture that buyer. Marketers should ensure that their websites take into account items that might make it easier for women shoppers to submit a lead. What changes would you make to your internal processes and/or marketing strategies to make sure that you are capturing women car shoppers?

Our company has published it’s second annual report which showcases women are having empowering experiences at progressive car dealerships in the United States.

Women are responsible for buying over 13 million cars at new car dealerships; that’s an impressive 36,000 vehicles a day. Dealerships have to literally change gears, advertising, amenities and their sales strategies to attract this powerful buying force. “It’s a very competitive industry” shares Women-Drivers.com President, Anne Fleming. “Women know they can buy a car anywhere in their respective city. It’s in dealer’s best interest to strategize and market to women. However, it takes more than just having a family female spokesperson.”

The research in the 2015 US Women’s Car Dealership Report comes from over 3,450 women’s surveys from the company’s website. From these surveys, the company generates a Women Satisfaction Index® or WSI score. The range is from a 5.0 (the highest) to 1.0 (the lowest).

Unlike other 5-star review sites, Women-Drivers.com offers women the opportunity to write a quick review and then opt-in to a ‘deeper dive’ survey to share more thoroughly about their dealership visit. Over 90% of the reviewers opt-in to the twenty-five question survey.

Fleming goes on to share, “In the past, women haven’t been asked for any real feedback by the industry, with the exception of the dutiful CSI. Through our platform, women are empowered by the opportunity to share their voice and provide productive opinions. Generally, these buyers are having more than “satisfied” visits at car dealerships; they are truly delighted by the respectful and trustworthy manners of their sales advisors. In turn, when asked to write a review, they are generous.”

Dealership groups and manufacturers use the data collected by the company to better understand, improve and shape the customer’s experience. From the analytics, trends and predictive patterns are captured to help take the guesswork out of marketing to women.

Key Findings

• When shopping for a vehicle, the overall WSI was 4.37, up from 4.25 last year. The top five rated shopping brands by women are Volkswagen, Ford, Chevrolet, Jeep, and Buick.
• When purchasing a vehicle, the overall WSI was 4.73, up from 4.65 last year. The top five rated purchasing brands by women are Mercedes-Benz (also held the #1 spot in 2014), Lincoln, Dodge, Jeep and Chrysler.
• When leasing (a subset of purchasing), the overall WSI was...Click here for more about Trends of Women at Car Dealerships.

Click Here For Your FREE Copy Of The 2015 US Women’s Car Dealership Report

In order to run a successful business you must have a solid process in place. You must reinforce it and make it a habit to avoid internal chaos. On this week's Think Tank Tuesday, learn what you can do to improve your company's process. Your customers will notice. 

http://www.GoogleopolyBook.com 

Sean V. Bradley, Author Of Googleopoly Interview On SiriusXM Saturday 1-31-15 At 4PM 

Tune in this Saturday, January 31st Eastern time to SiriusXM Satellite Radio for ‪#‎WealthyWays‬ hosted by Dr. Willie Jolley! I'm being interviewed about my ‪#‎GoogleopolyBook‬ !! This Radio show is the #1 rated success, and motivation show on ALL of SiriusXM Satellite Radio! It's CRAZY that Millions of people subscribe to SiriusXM! I'm just so honored to be invited on Dr. Willie Jolley's hit show!!

Although generally content is king when it comes to onsite SEO for car dealerships, the set text on a dealer's home, service, specials, contacts and other static pages also contributes to the site’s overall appearance in search engine rankings. While adding content via an onsite blog is a suggested SEO maintenance strategy, dealers should also be making sure that these static pages are optimized as well.

Most buyers aren't necessarily interested in the text at the bottom of an automotive dealership's home page. Google, however, scans these pages and periodically caches them. Of course, it’s optimal if these pages have slight content changes from time to time. But if not, a dealer should at least make sure that all the cities they serve and all the services they provide are summarized on the home page. It is not advisable to "keyword stuff" this text, but if key terms are worked into this text in a somewhat natural way, it can be of great benefit to a website's SEO ranking.

In order to ensure that customers interested in financing or service can find their website, auto dealers should make sure that those pages are optimized as well. Using Google's keyword planner and running some test searches and looking at suggested alternative searches, one could determine which are the best keywords to use on these pages to capture the highest amount of traffic, and optimize for those terms.

Most dealers will be hard pressed to find a blog topic that allows them to optimize for SEO with regards to their location and services. However, these static pages may have room for some improvements that could have impact on their SEO rankings. What are some ways you guys are working SEO text onto your dealer sites?

Sean V. Bradley, CEO of Dealer Synergy talks about "How to Bridge the Gap between the Internet Department, and the Showroom Sales department. There should not be any segregation between the internet department / BDC and the showroom sales department. There is ONE team; the dealership team. The internet department team are not secretaries, receptionists, or handymen. The Internet team's purpose is to drive traffic to your dealership. Show the Internet department some respect and gratitude for giving you opportunities to do business! Now, the Internet department needs the Showroom sales department in order to close the deal! How can you work together? The showroom sales department should use their expertise to teach the Internet department more about the vehicles. There should always be sales people in the Internet department to help assist leads. Work together for the most positive outcome! 

Want more training from Sean V. Bradley? Check out http://www.BradleyOnDemand.com

For more information on the automotive industry visit http://www.AutomotiveInternetSales.com

Google is the most powerful search engine in the world, and the company is growing larger each day. Small businesses, especially car dealerships, rely heavily on Google’s features, reviews, and search results to generate leads and customers. However, the more Google takes over, the more it changes. Recently, as you may have noticed, Google’s feature, the “Knowledge Graph” has become much more prominent in many of your searches. This seems to be a growing trend that has some confused and concerned.

Google’s Knowledge graph is used by Google to enhance the results by giving you a “shortcut” answer. It is a display that has been part of Google’s search engine since 2012, and details information provided about a certain topic, without actually having to click a link. Google’s purpose for having the knowledge graph is for their readers, so they do not have to go through a handful of sources to get the information they are inquiring about.

A report by journalist Stephen Levy stated, “25% of all searches done on Google show a knowledge graph related answer.”

Steven Levy has dozens of years experience as a senior editor and technology writer for Newsweek. He has had articles published in multiple publications including The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker and more. Most notably, he is considered a respected critic of Apple Inc. Per Levy’s research; he has come to this conclusion that Google’s Knowledge Graph has an effect on publishers. With Google’s Knowledge Graph in place, the process of clicking a link, and going directly to the publishers website is void, since information on the search topic is provided at glance.

If you are a publisher on the Internet, 25% can affect your brand. If people no longer have to click on a link to retrieve information, then this could affect the traffic to your website. In addition, if someone reads the Knowledge Graph of your result, you won’t get credit for that because they can’t track the ROI without an actual click.

In conclusion, people are searching for information on Google, reading the Knowledge Graph for their answer, and never clicking the link to arrive at the publishers website. Google is a powerful search engine, and will only continue to grow. The Knowledge Graph isn’t going anywhere either. With all of the evidence and information coming from Steven Levy, and other researchers, it looks like this may really impact large amounts of businesses all over the world.

It is important to manage your own analytics so you are aware of what’s going on with your accounts at all times. Do you feel like you are aware? Share your thoughts on Google’s Knowledge Graph. 

Read the original article here

In this week’s episode of Hard Facts, Samantha uncovers a cost-free way to utilize your bilingual sales staff to reach a broader demographic. Learn how you can implement this strategy at your dealership.

SEO is a complicated practice, especially if you're just starting in 2015. Things have changed a lot in the past 10 years, making it more difficult than ever for small businesses to compete against businesses with large marketing budgets. But as one of the most important parts of a business's digital marketing strategy, you can't ignore SEO.

Content is easily one of the best ways for businesses to take control of their rankings and build up authority with Google and other search engines. It's the simplest strategy, but it's also one of the most effective.

Let's explore the three reasons why your business should be serious about the content it's producing if your goal is to improve search rankings.

Great Content Attracts Links

Links make the web go round. They tell search engines how your site relates to other sites, what your site is about, and lets them know which pages on your site are the most important.

By creating great content, you'll naturally attract links from sites that want to provide their users with the best information possible. If you're just writing content to rank for a set of keywords, you're only going to see minimal results at best.

If you concentrate on providing value to visitors instead of pure SEO benefits, your work will always pay off.

Content Length Can Affect Rankings

A study by serpIQ showed that the more content a page had, the better it ranked.

Think about the content that's on your site now. Is it more fluff than substance? Is it ranking? Could it rank better?

If you're dealing with more fluff than substance, lack of rankings, or being outranked by your competition, you absolutely need to beef up your content. Not only do you need to add more content to your existing pages, but you need a schedule and strategy in place for the creation of new content.

Google Rewards Quality Content (and Punishes Low Quality)

Google wants you to create quality content. They've said it time after time, but for most businesses it doesn't seem to sink in. The search engine's Panda update cracked down on sites that used thin content, which can mean content that adds no value, recycled content with minor edits, or duplicate content .

But what qualifies as quality content?

Quality is obviously subjective, but from a search engine's perspective, quality content means the content is relevant to the target topic and user data shows they think it's valuable.

If users are clicking back to search results after just 5 seconds on your site, that tells Google that the content didn't provide them with what they were looking for or was just plain irrelevant to the original query. CTR and time on site are two of Google's biggest quality signals.

Bonus Infographic: 10 Reasons Why You Need SEO to Gain More Business

10 Reasons You Need SEO to Gain More Business | Wikimotive

MONTEREY, CA – Everyone has an opinion. Unfortunately, the people most willing to share theirs online are often the ones with a problem when it comes to a business. Even worse, online reviewing sites have increasing visibility in search engine results. A negative review might appear in SERPs before a business’ actual website when that business is searched! Assuming these reviews are legitimate, there are basically two ways that a business could respond – gracefully or with retaliation.

If someone found a negative review of their business on a site like Yelp, which allows for a management response, the first impulse might be to aggressively come back at the reviewer. These can be seen all over social review sites – business owners insulting, berating and otherwise slamming the reviewer for their bad attitude, incompetence, etc. But while it may feel great to type out and make public, a business owner would be doing themselves a disservice by falling into the trap of a vindictive management response.

These days, a negative review can actually be an opportunity for a business to show that it cares about it’s customers. The response one should shoot for is one that paints a business as apologetic of any issues a client may have had, and a willingness to not only show improvement, but to also publicly offer a customer some sort of compensation for their grievance. This approach will signal that not only is the business cognizant of it’s online reputation, it is also willing to do whatever it takes to provide excellent customer service and make things right with a customer that is feeling that they weren’t put first.

All in all, negative reviews can be painful for a business struggling to increase their profile online. What are some of your tactics when faced with a public-facing negative review?

"As an international speaker, consultant, trainer, and entrepreneur, Sean V. Bradley, CSP, is the founder and CEO of Dealer Synergy Inc., the leading Internet sales, business development and digital marketing firm in the automotive sales industry. Sean has personally trained over 10,000 automotive sales professionals. In addition to being hired by approximately 1,000 multi-million dollar automotive dealerships, Sean’s clients include publicly traded corporations like Autobytel Inc. and TrueCar, as well as billion dollar corporations like Internet Brands (Carsdirect.com). Sean’s clients outside the automotive sales industry include major label recording artists and professional athletes". Learn the importance of page one domination on Google through this interview with Dealer PlayBook.

Due to popular demand I bring you the extended cut of a recent Think Tank Tuesday where I explain my secrets to achieving digital success.