Automotive Search Marketing — What Are They Searching For?
We all hope for world peace. We hope for an end to hunger and famine. But what we really, really want is to be number one in Google.
Contrary to popular opinion, it’s not that hard to be number one in Google. It’s not a difficult process and it’s not as mysterious as a lot of people make it out to be. In fact, if you have a website, the odds are pretty good that your website comes up number one in search engines for something or other. But what?
The trick to doing well in automotive search engine marketing is to know what people are searching for and ranking for that. The most competitive search terms are often not what you want to be number one for.
What you really want to be number one for is the most common search phrase your customers type into a search engine when looking for something you sell. That’s it. That’s the secret to success.
For example, someone who lives in Brooklyn and wants to buy a new Nissan is not typing “cars” into their search engine of choice. They’re not typing “new cars” or “new car” or “Nissan”, either. So what are they searching for?
They’re searching for “Nissan dealership Brooklyn”. Or “where can I buy a Nissan in Brooklyn?”. Or “new Nissan Murano Brooklyn dealer website”.
Compared to “cars”, those are pretty easy search terms to rank for, don’t you think? There probably aren’t a whole lot of people who want to rank for “Nissan dealership Brooklyn”. That means almost all you have to do is try to rank for it and you’ve got a fairly good chance of success.
Remember that the key to success here isn’t being the top of the biggest pile in the world. All you have to do is be at the top of your own little pile and you’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.
One Dealership of infinite possibilties
Wanted to take advantage of message by Seth Godin in one of his recent blogs. The blog touches on the subject of how Search, or search engines, makes the infinite more finite. It’s a valid point. The masses have come to rely on search engines for helping to initiate or at least narrow down a person’s infinite number of choices. But what does this mean for businesses?
Businesses, Car Dealerships included, can not be everywhere in Search and so you must be selective about where you position your website. If you focus entirely on where your competition is then you are missing out on opportunities to reach market share where you competition is not. By the same token, if you focus solely on where your competition is not then you will miss out on a lot of your market share. Alas, you need a balanced strategy for both.
This is where data and research become important. There is data available and there are tools that are accessible for determining where and how to position your website. For instance, Axandra and Web CEO which are two of the more popular software programs for researching and managing SEO (and to some extent your PPC efforts). There are also good online tools such as Webmaster Toolkit which are good for researching Search Markets too.
Car Dealerships have two choices…they can invest time and training into utilizing these tools effectively, or else they can rely on trusting providers to assist with or even manage these things on their behalf. Regardless, someone needs to be on top of these things in order for dealerships to thrive in today’s online marketplaces. For Dealers that do rely on providers to do this, which is the majority, they still need to be responsible for where and how these providers do position their dealer customer websites.
It’s all about supply and demand and while you do want to position your site where there is an abundance of demand, you also want to position yourself where there is little supply. You can obtain a lot of market share by positioning your site in spaces that are frequented and not saturated with suppliers.
So when it comes to Search Engine Marketing for Car Dealers, remember that you do not need to be everywhere for everyone. You do need however, a well-balanced mixture of visibility within your competitor markets and the market spaces where you can be the bright and shiny star in a galaxy of infinite possibilities.
Shouts out to Andy at Vinart for forwarding the Godin article.
Puttin’ on the Ritz: Luxury Appeals to Customers
If you’ve stepped into one of your local automotive dealerships in the last couple of years, you may have noticed a change. Many dealers of luxury brands are making improvements to their showrooms to make them more attractive and appealing to their customers. If you didn’t know any better, you probably couldn’t tell the difference between the dealer’s facility and a five-star hotel.
That’s because customers enjoy luxury and style. And when they step into a place that’s all decked out, it instills a sense of confidence in the facility and the people who work there.
You can do the same thing with your online brand marketing campaigns. The more stylish your website is, the more attractive it will be to potential customers. Nobody has confidence in a company that has an amateurish website, especially in today’s world where visitors judge your company by its online presence. Here are a few suggestions for making your company’s website more professional and attractive to new and existing clients:
• Break the information up into smaller, easier-to-read chunks. Nothing turns off a webpage visitor faster than seeing a huge block of information with no spaces or breaks.
• Make your website easy to navigate. Visitors don’t want to guess about where clicks will take them. Label the links efficiently to take the guesswork out of navigating through your webpage.
• Put the most important information first. Internet users have dozens of options to get their information. Don’t make them search for it on your website or they’ll just go to a website where it’s easier to find the information they want.
• Write with search engines in mind. This is very important, because if you don’t catch the attention of the web spiders, people doing general searches won’t notice your website. Consider SEO tactics and other tools that ensure a high ranking for places like Google and Yahoo.
With these tips, you can make your company’s website the cyberspace equivalent of a luxury dealership. Cater to your clients by making everything attractive to keep them coming back for more and telling their friends about your website as well.
Fun with Customizable Reddits
Reddit is one of the more important social news websites that allows Internet users and bloggers to post links to web content. Other users then vote on whether or not they like those links or if they think they are beneficial or useless. The posted links then appear on the Reddit page based on the number of positive votes they get.
Recently, Reddit announced it was going to allow users to customize their “reddits.” According to its website’s blog, a handful of users could “play around” with some of the new features in a beta stage to see how it goes. If the feature turns out to be beneficial to users, customizable reddits will be open to everybody.
Currently, there are three types of reddits users can create:
Public
Any user can view these posted links and submit to them.
Restricted
Any user can view the posts, but only selected members can submit to them. This means either voting on them or commenting.
Private
This is much like a restricted reddit, but it goes a step further in that only members can view the posts.
In addition to these customizable features, Reddit is also offering a new support for language translation in addition to its current German and English capabilities.
If your business relies on online marketing, at least to some degree, these changes are exciting, especially the new language support. They allow a wider audience to access your message more readily. We’ll watch for any new developments to keep you informed.
Search Engine Optimization: Ten Years Later
If you’ve done any work at all with SEO, you might’ve wondered about the history of the concept and some of the changes it’s made since it began. I know I’ve wondered about that several times. Here is an article that explains some of the big changes in the last decade, but I’ve pulled out some of the highlights for quick reference.
• Minor changes in the SEO market have taken place over the years, and they often escape the notice of those in the industry. Taken as a whole, howver, they constitute major changes between today’s techniques and those from ten years ago.
• In the year 2000, Google had just over one billion pages indexed. Today, there are about 10 billion pages indexed. Of course, that figure is ever-growing. The only way the article writer could find the number of pages was to type “the” into the search box and see how many results came back.
• There is now about ten times more competition in the search engine optimization industry than there was in the year 2000.
• Search engines still look for things like keywords, key phrases, body text, title tags and frequency when indexing pages. The article writer suggests not wasting time on meta keyword tags, though, as they are of less importance today than they were years ago.
• Submitting your URL to a search engine is no longer necessary, as the spiders take care of that for you.
• Yahoo and Google are generally the two accepted search engines today, whereas there were several more popular and widely-used ones ten years ago, including Infoseek, WebCrawler, Excite and Lycos, among others.
Luckily, the fundamentals of SEO are still a major part of online marketing and other Internet-based industries. We’ll continue to see changes in the near future, but the basic concept will likely remain the same.
Online Marketing during a Troubled Economy
The search marketing industry is a fairly new concept. Although it’s been around for several years, it’s difficult to monitor how it will change or operate in various circumstances. And with the impending troubled economy, many are speculating about the future of the online marketing industry and its chances for profitability. A recent interview with a New York economist, Lauren Capp, discusses some of these concerns. Following are some interesting points she made:
• Search marketing trends follow advertising trends to an extent. But search marketing has a better chance of turning a profit in the case of a recession because it is more internationally-based than advertising.
• The advertising industry doesn’t suffer the effects of a recession immediately. This is because advertising companies typically get paid for their services well in advance.
• Search marketers will feel the effects of a troubled economy, but it will be only after consumers buy fewer products online and companies decide to stop spending as much money on online campaigns.
• Customers are less likely to cut their budgets for search marketing campaigns because they are an essential part of having a successful business.
• If you specialize in search marketing, you can generate an income by focusing on recession-proof industries like health care, food, pharmaceuticals, tobacco and alcohol.
• Some analysts say online marketing is immune to the effects of a recession.
• The upcoming elections will likely prove to be a profitable opportunity for online marketers. Candidates will probably spend more money on Internet ads this year than ever before.
You can read the entire interview here.
Increasing Brand Loyalty through Relationships
Brand loyalty is essential to any business, and this is especially true for car dealerships. Repeat customers are often the backbone of any auto brand, and when they start to fall away, the company feels the pinch.
That’s why the dealer-customer relationship is such a vital part of any brand’s success.
Two marketing groups, Carlson Marketing and the Peppers & Rogers Group, conducted a study based on this realization. It focused on the brand loyalty among customers and the relationship that automakers had with those people. To measure brand loyalty, researchers asked customers if they returned to the brand more than once for a purchase or if they recommended the brand to their friends.
Among the studied automakers, the strongest dealer-consumer relationships existed for Cadillac, BMW and Lexus.
Do you want to increase the brand loyalty throughout your customer base? How would you like to have customers that not only return for future purchases but also tell their friends and families to buy your particular brand? The study suggested three ways to increase your relationships with your customers.
- Build relationships with individual customers instead of relying on a “market segment.”
- Both parties–the dealer and the customer–must make behavioral changes.
- Dealers and customers must exchange information.
But how does a dealer put these theories into practice? Here are some suggestions from the study:
- Programs and initiatives that draw the consumer to your brand: Loyalty initiatives give customers more reasons to come back, but lower pricing and other programs attract new customers. Dealers can accomplish this through online brand marketing or through other mediums to get the word out to potential customers.
- Communicate with buyers: People want to speak with a person, not a salesman. Direct communication makes buyers feel more comfortable and likely to come back.
- Buyers want a pleasant experience and clean surroundings when making a purchase. Convenient locations, extended hours and fair prices are all part of a pleasant dealer experience.
- The vehicles themselves play a role in brand loyalty. Better features increases return customers.
-
Keep in Touch
-
Link with Us
-
Tools
