Since the rise of the Web, dealers and vendors have scrambled to find ways to use the Internet to sell more cars and increase ROI. While much has been accomplished in the past 10 years, there seems to be a growing gap between where consumers are and where dealer inventory is displayed.

A recent article published on MediaBuyerPlanner suggests that,

“More than 40% of all social networkers said they use social networking sites to learn more about brands or products that they like, and 28% said at some point a “friend” has recommended a brand or product to them.”

Few website/marketing providers today have the tools and technology in place to reach these consumers which means that your advertising dollars are not reaching the eyes and ears of large volumes of prospective buyers. They are only reaching those that consciously seek what you sell.

The priority then for dealers and advertisers is in finding ways to reach these audiences.

Much like with conventional advertising such as radio, T.V., and print where your dealership is made visible to audiences actively engaged in a car-buying quest as well as those not even thinking about it. The Internet should not be treated any differently. Dealers need to focus their marketing efforts on both spectrums - generating leads AND building their brand.

Building a dealership brand is fun and exciting and adds a whole other level of business to your cause. In a recent Nielsen study reporting that 77% of people shop online to save time, dealers can not resort to strictly lead generation if they intend to penetrate today’s buyer market.

While Search Marketing has reached parity with OEM sites and Third-Party Automotive sites as a top destination of choice for their research, there is still and always will be something to be said for marketing to your current customers to. This of course is accomplished through CRM efforts that include newsletters, direct mail, blogs, and discussion forums.

Technorati Tags: automotive marketing, internet marketing, social media, smo, search engine marketing, oem, blog marketing, blogging for car dealers, crm

Social media marketing is a new form of marketing quickly appearing on the automotive front. There is an overwhelming number of social media sites that can be leveraged by car dealers to assist with their strategy, so many in fact that it is not realistic to utilize them all. So how should car dealers discern which ones are best for them? Success in social media marketing is not an overnight thing so you want to be sure to choose your tools wisely so as to avoid wasting months of time and money.

A post was made recently on Search Engine Land that is meant to serve as a getting started guide of sorts, some of which we have re-iterated here for you with an automotive spin.

1. The first thing to consider is the functionality of the site. While most social sites offer similar features, how they are applied and the result they produce can vary. For instance, digg and del.icio.us are both social bookmarking sites, but the utility is drastically different. We use digg to network with other diggers and promote articles, but we use del.icio.us to help manage out content creation and management process with our writers.

2. What are your intentions? Car dealers want to sell cars. Service managers want to fix them. Both want to make money. If you enter into a social media site intent on your sole purpose then you will quickly become an isolated cat. Therefore when take part in a network, make sure it is an environment complimentary to your dealership and those at your dealership participating. You are going to spend a lot of time on these sites so they need to be ones that genuinely appeal to you and your team.

3. Be mindful of your network audience. You are there to promote your dealership by engaging with the interests of others. If you do not meet their core interest levels then you will have a hard time getting them to meet yours.

4. Be there because you care, not for the sake of being there. If you log on to social sites, set up your profile and then occasionally chime in to see what’s new then you can not expect to see much success. You have to really get involved with the community and get to know the audience and this take time and genuine interest in learning about others.

As a car dealer, it can be difficult to look at something like this as beneficial to your dealership. The reality is, social media marketing is going to be a challenging form of marketing for car dealers. Which is why it is important to know what you are up against before plunging in.

Earlier this month we posted a series of segments about specific uses and benefits of social media marketing. These included things such as the SEO benefits and online brand awareness. Our approach to social media marketing at web2ologies is to help auto dealers realize these benefits as a type of search engine brand marketing.

There is a form of engineering involved for your dealership to be fruitful in these things and the more you can apply these aforementioned guidelines in your strategy then the more impacting will be your results.

Technorati Tags: car dealer marketing, dealership website marketing, brand marketing, search marketing, social marketing, social media, Search Engine Land

If your dealership website is not one of the top 3 listings in searches that include your dealership name, then you need to take action on your search marketing strategy. However, for most dealerships this is a non-issue unless of course you have a generic or common name such as “Friendly” or “Courtesy”.

No matter what your dealership name though, it needs to be appearing in the top listings when people are entering it into their searches. Studies show that people do not spend too much time locating companies online because there are plenty of others from which to choose.

The best way to make sure you appear in the top of organic listings when people search for you is to build keyword density on your dealership name and the local area, and not just on your home page. You want your site to be the complete authority when it comes to your company name and this can be accomplished rather easily by ensuring search engines have no question of your dealership name and local area.

In cases where there are multiple other dealers with the same or similar name as yours, then you definitely want to target your geo market with authority by making the metro area and surrounding towns dense with keywords on your site.

In addition to this you might also want to have a some PPC advertising in place so that your dealership has natural and paid authority, which drastically increases your clicks-through according to a recent Nielsen ReelResearch study:

When a brand name was found in both the paid and organic results, the brand attracted 92 percent of total clicks on the page vs. 60 percent of clicks without paid results.

Focusing on things such as your dealership name and geo market is a form of short tail marketing, basically the idea of targeting search markets specific or even exclusive to your business.

Technorati Tags: auto marketing, dealership website marketing, search marketing, search engine optimization, short tail, sem, Nielsen, ReelResearch, organic search, PPC

The following information is provided to you almost verbatim from Dealer Marketing Magazine. Unfortunately, there is not an online point of reference to provide as it was delivered via email. However, you may request a copy of this email by submitting to us your request to do so here.

Research by Yahoo! and The Cobalt Group shows that 88 percent of new car shoppers research auto dealerships before making their first visit to a dealer lot. In fact, search engines have become the method of choice for dealership research.

According to the study, 79 percent of consumers use search engines to research auto dealerships. Not including physical drive-bys, online search now trumps all other media as the number one source consumers use when locating a dealership.

Consumers now visit an average of six dealerships during the buying process. One-third of those surveyed say they traveled more than 20 miles to visit a dealership, and online shoppers were the most willing to travel long distances to shop. This means a dealer’s sphere of influence in the marketplace can increase significantly simply by using online marketing tools effectively.

The research also uncovers a growing trend…the effect of social media outlets. These consumers are brand advocates, and it’s becoming increasingly important that dealers pay attention to them and their behaviors online.

For information about how your dealership can benefit from search engine brand marketing, please contact us today.

Technorati Tags: auto marketing, automotive marketing, car dealer marketing, internet marketing, search marketing, search engine marketing, brand marketing, brand awareness, social marketing, social media marketing, social network marketing, Yahoo!, Cobalt Group, Dealer Marketing Magazone

When optimizing your dealership website for search engines, there are two primary focuses that should be considered in your meta info and in your web copy:

1. Short tail search
2. Long tail search

Short tail search refers to keywords and phrases specific to your dealership. For instance, if your dealership name is Chad’s Ford and you are in Omaha, NE then the words “chad”, “ford”, “omaha”, “ne”, & “nebraska” are all short tail keywords on which you should have authority on in the search engines. Of course, your authority will likely be specific to more distinct phrases such as “chad’s ford” or “omaha ford”.

With a properly optimized site, or web page, the “short tail” keywords such as the company name and your geo markets should be an inherent part of the information, thus you should not have to campaign specifically for them because the search engines will pick up on them naturally, especially if the domain name contains the company name.

Long tail search refers to the idea of what we call “relative search”, which is on the lines of products, services, and other keywords related to your dealership but not specific to it. For instance, “ford dealer” or “nebraska dealer” could be considered long tail key phrases because they are related to but not specific to your dealership. Technically speaking, long tail refers more to the idea of targeting numerous low-search volume markets versus fewer high-volume search markets. More information can be learned on that by going to this blog.

With long tail search, you need to dedicate individual web pages for select and related key phrases you wish to penetrate in search. Thus, “omaha ford dealer” and “new ford trucks” should not be combined onto a single web page because there are thousands of other web pages dedicated to those search markets alone that you will have a difficult time dominating. The more narrow your niche the better when it comes to long tail search, especially if you want to penetrate high-volume search markets.

These two search emphases cover the outer shell of search engine marketing. A well-optimized site distinguishes between the two and optimizes accordingly, while also drawing distinction between related and non-related long tail SEO on a page-by-page basis.

Technorati Tags: search marketing, search engine marketing, sem, search engine optimization, seo, long tail search, short tail search, dealership website marketing, chris anderson

Last week we mentioned that a primary benefit to car dealers in Social Media Marketing was SEO. The value of this is in realizing that using social media and networking sites to promote your business is not just about engaging with your customer audience, although that is a significant aspect, but also in that when executed effectively, social marketing can also help your dealership website gain authority with search engines.

Authority with search engines is essentially a form of advertising because it causes your website to appear high in natural search listings. This of course is extremely valuable to car dealers which is why making sure this is one of the fruits of your social media marketing efforts is important.

One way to benefit from SEO with social media marketing is to properly link the keywords you reference in your articles and even in the comments you leave on other peoples’ blogs and social profile pages. Search engines scan these web pages for links and repetitive use of keywords so, if you leave 2 or 3 related comments a week on various web sites complimentary to your SEO strategy, then linking them to your site can add tremendous value to your efforts.

While it is ideal to link the exact key phrase of your targeted search market, you still want the reader experience to be natural so sometimes you have to use a variation of the key phrase. But this is o.k. because doing so also helps positively impact your relative or long-tail search marketing.

As a result of the enhanced SEO from which car dealers can benefit in their social media marketing efforts, your dealer website will become increasingly more visible to search audiences across the globe. Every word and every link you place on your site and the websites of others should be considered for its impact on search engines and for its impact on readers.

If you spend all your time writing for your customer audience without considering how search engines will respond then you could be investing a lot of time producing results that pale in comparison to what you could be accomplishing simply by applying a few simple techniques. By the same token, if you write exclusively for search engines then you will have minimal readership, if any at all, which also does not help to enhance your search engine authority and thus awareness online of your brand.

Technorati Tags: automotive marketing, auto marketing, internet marketing, search marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo, sem, social marketing, social network marketing, social media marketing, long tail search

How you present your dealership online to active and inactive car shoppers has become an important part of the Internet marketing strategy for car dealers today. In fact, in a recent J.D. Power study, it was reported that,

While all new-vehicle buyers hope to get a good deal, customers are receptive to spending more than they originally budgeted provided that the salesperson does a good job of educating the customer about the features and benefits they are receiving. Source AutoRemarketing.

With this in mind, the smart car dealer will seek to find cost-effective and time-effective ways to bring this added value to their customers.

One way to accomplish this is by way of social media marketing. With social marketing, dealers are now able to meet their customers at the virtual level and provide an added layer of service and rapport. In fact, with the advent of some social media sites such as Twitter, Pownce, or even digg, dealers can learn to speak with their customers in mass using alternative methods to email. This is not to suggest that email marketing is not useful, but that dealers do not have to limit their outreach to just email and direct marketing.

The important thing to keep in mind when utilizing social media marketing for sales and marketing purposes is to sustain a level of transparency with your customer audience. This means that you want to refrain from trying things that might come across as misleading or deceptive. For instance, when posting information on the Web in places not branded to your dealership, be sure to make it clear who you are and why you are there. This includes things like leaving comments on peoples’ profiles, or in discussion forums, or on other peoples’ blogs.

Anytime you go online in the name of or on behalf of your dealership, engage with people in a professional and honest manner. Using different nick names and screen names for various things can be ok, but the last thing you want do is give someone the impression that you are trying to trick them in to visiting your dealer site or giving you their info when normally they would not. The rapidity of these negative impressions circulating across the many social networks can become a viral catastrophe if it gets out of hand.

But don’t let risks like this discourage you from going in this direction, unless of course you have no intention of being honest.

Technorati Tags: auto marketing, automotive marketing, car dealer marketing, internet marketing, social marketing, social media marketing, social network marketing, brand awareness, brand marketing, online brand marketing, internet brand marketing, twitter, pownce, digg, J.D. Power, AutoRemarketing

Similar to social marketing for brand awareness, marketing for personal influence can also be realized in social media marketing. With brand awareness your purpose is essentially to gain increased exposure of your dealership on the Web, but with a focus on personal influence you can target what have been referred to as “opinion leaders” where your marketing message is either confirmed, negated, or spread across other the consumer marketplace by word of mouth and in this case by word of their social network.

This may be a fuzzy stretch for car dealers in social media marketing when you consider the amount of unrelated and often stale networking that occurs on some social networks, particularly on places like MySpace and Facebook where people often seek to add friends simply to have them, but by the same token, this could also benefit car dealers in that their social web presence is all the more visible to people online. Of course, marketing at the local level is the preferred emphasis for dealers and with social media sites, geo-audiences are not part of the formula in most cases.

Regardless, dealers putting an emphasis on using social media sites to meet customer audiences at a virtual level have a means for winning over new business and even new market audiences. Plus, this gives dealers and their customers a vehicle for sharing their experiences with their real friends and even their virtual network friends. A consequence that could have tremendous positive or negative effect, but where the playing field for dealer and customer is a mutual and transparent level.

Be sure to apply the golden rules of blogging such as honesty, transparency, and informational utility rather than the “best price” or “sell, sell, sell” approach and you will find your dealership winning over new business with built-in customer retention interests too.

Technorati Tags: auto marketing, automotive marketing, car dealer marketing, internet marketing, brand marketing, brand awareness, social marketing, social media marketing, social network marketing, personal influence, opinion leaders, Elihu Katz, Lazarsfeld, Columbia University, MySpace, Facebook

In addition to SEO benefits of social media marketing, increased online brand awareness is also an important fruit. Much like placing ads in magazines and newspapers, or on the radio and on television, getting your dealership to appear before online markets in visual and interactive ways can be a terrific form of brand marketing for your car dealership.

Although most social media sites are not designed at an enterprise level where individual social net workers can represent multiple brands or clients under a single user account, dealer profiles can still be created and then made accessible to numerous people interested in having an active role in representing the dealership online. For instance, you can create an account for your dealership on MySpace and then make that log on available to select people at the dealership, or even to third-party social networking providers like web2ologies, where these users can then carry out various actions and activities that ultimately benefit your dealership.

Although no true protocols have been devised in automotive marketing to measure the performance and ROI of using social media sites for networking and marketing purposes, brand marketing is one of things that is not always measured at that level and so can be an area of good and important focus for car dealers to leverage social marketing. While there will be a sense of throwing money at something to see what sticks, the SEO benefits make up for the intangible brand marketing benefits. SEO benefits can be realized if certain SEO-friendly techniques are applied, and then the general benefit of giving your dealership more online exposure is more of a bonus.

Technorati Tags: auto marketing, automotive marketing, car dealer marketing, internet marketing, search marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, sem, seo, social marketing, social network marketing, social media marketing, brand awareness, brand marketing, online brand marketing, internet brand marketing

The concept of blogging is becoming common place throughout the automotive community, and naturally the idea of social media and network marketing is now perking some ears too. The reason why is because social media or network marketing is a natural evolution to blogging.

For the most part, blogs are a one-to-all mechanism meaning that one person or party produces information meant to be read by anyone and everyone. Unlike email which is one-to-one or one-to-all, blogging requires a level of transparency and responsibility that is different from email and social networks. With social networks, success is often determined by the number of friends in your network whereas with blogs success is identified by distinctiveness of voice and readership.

So how can car dealers make use of social media and network marketing?

Brand awareness is a significant factor in social media marketing. Dealers could fund a full-time staff to run a ring of social network sites for itself, but would the ROI be there in the time frame expected? Probably not. But this does not discount the fact that there is great benefit to social media marketing.

The reason why is because success in brand marketing online for car dealers does not necessarily require full-time staff and persistent blogging on behalf of the dealership. It does however require thorough knowledge and understanding of Search Engine Marketing, Blog Marketing, Content Marketing, RSS Marketing, and Social Network Marketing, all things that dealerships can not be expected to execute.

The primary benefit to car dealers when it comes to social marketing is the SEO benefit. Dealerships can make their websites visible, penetrated, and saturated across several online search markets by incorporating a few simple strategies into their online marketing efforts.

Technorati Tags: Search Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Blog Marketing, Content Marketing, RSS Marketing, Social Network Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Automotive Marketing, Car Dealer Marketing