This month, Google recognized the achievements of top-performing digital marketing partners across the globe by awarding Premier Partner status as part of the Google Partners program.
As the industry’s leading automotive digital marketing agency for dealerships across the United States and Canada, Dealer.com has achieved 2023 Premier Partner status in the Google Partners program.
The Google Partners program underwent significant changes in 2022, including redefining what it means to be a Premier Partner, through advanced program requirements and offering Premier Partner benefits to promote growth and success with Google Ads. In 2023, the program continues to support its Premier Partners and their clients.
“Congratulations to our Premier Partners for 2023. These companies are among the top 3% of Google Partners in their respective countries – including the United States,” said Marcin Karnowski, Senior Director of Ads Marketing at Google. “It’s a true accomplishment, one that signals their leading expertise in Google Ads, in forging new client relationships, and in helping clients grow. We look forward to supporting them as they help their customers build smart online strategies and drive long-term success.”
Dealer.com, along with a select group of Premier Partners in the Google Partners program were awarded this achievement. This program is designed for advertising agencies and third parties that manage Google Ads accounts on behalf of other brands or businesses. Its mission is to empower companies by providing them with innovative tools, resources, and support to help their clients succeed and grow online.
And that’s a wrap for the NADA Show 2023! Thanks for stopping by the Dealer.com booth and demoing our latest innovations.
Dealer.com does more than provide websites, we’re the premier end-to-end digital marketing solution for your automotive dealership. And whether you are current or new Dealer.com customer, now is the time to get started on your digital marketing goals in 2023.
If you did not get a chance to visit our booth, no worries. There’s still an opportunity to demo the new products and enhancements we unveiled at the show. In the meantime, here’s a recap of what we debuted:
KBB My Wallet on Dealer.com Websites
Kelley Blue Book® My Wallet, a personalized shopper tool on Autotrader and KBB.com, will now be automatically integrated into all Dealer.com dealer websites. This means dealers will have even more information on consumers than ever before.
You can get everything from down payment, trade-in, and financing information – the data you need to speed up the deal-making process and get more accurate leads for your dealership.
Local SEO
Take complete control of Search Engine Results Page (SERP) beyond just your organic and paid listings as Google prioritizes local experiences when consumers search for cars. With Local SEO, dealers can promote their dealership and inventory to local car shoppers at exactly the time they are searching for your business.
New Car Customizer
With more consumers shopping online for cars than ever before, dealers must ensure their website has the tools consumers need for a seamless shopping experience while displaying a modernized web design.
Our new car customizer allows shoppers to find the vehicle they are searching for, even when dealers do not have the specific vehicle in inventory.
These are just a few of the solutions we got to share with dealers at the show. Be sure to sign up for a demo today!
To compete in today’s challenging automotive retail environment, you deserve a data-driven partner who helps create a successful digital marketing strategy with innovative tools and technology. With the NADA Show 2023 just around the corner, Dealer.com has been working hard to bring you new products and enhancements to the products you know and love.
Watch this video as Noah Lee shares a few new products and enhancements being unveiled at the NADA Show 2023, including:
• Accelerate My Deal — the industry’s most trusted and user-centric digital shopping experience.
• Local SEO – dominate the search engine results page and get improved dealer rankings for local search terms.
• Automotive Marketing Platform powered by VinSolutions–now available to Dealer.com customers to send personalized, automated marketing across the car-buying journey.
Visit the Dealer.com booth to get a full rundown of all the advanced digital marketing solutions we’ll be highlighting
Having a mobile-friendly website is one that correctly displays on mobile and handheld devices. This makes for a streamlined experience for your dealership staff and online car shoppers when viewing your website. According to Google, w hen web users visited a mobile-friendly site, 74% of people say they’re more likely to return to that site in the future.*
And as the automotive industry moves toward a more digital-first environment, many car shoppers use the internet to shop for cars, so you must make the experience as easy as possible.
Today, many businesses want their website to be fully responsive because it’s essential to have a mobile version of a website. This means the design and development of your website responds positively to the car shopper’s screen size, platform, and orientation.
But at Dealer.com, we use the latest, advanced, mobile-first technology to deliver a user-focused, search-engine-optimized experience when car shoppers visit your site with any device. We mobilize and optimize your site for any smart device.
But you might wonder what’s the difference between a fully responsive website and a mobile-first website.
A Fully Responsive Website
Today, almost everyone has a fully responsive website, meaning the browser will rescale itself to keep the user experience and look and feel across all devices — with no irritating zooming, scrolling, or resizing. Fully responsive websites are also the easiest to implement and maintain and to build a mobile experience at scale. But having a fully responsive website without having a mobile-first strategy does not fully optimize the user experience.
A responsive site only takes the desktop site and makes it mobile friendly. While it can be an adequate mobile platform, it doesn’t optimize for the best mobile experience like a hybrid platform. It also doesn’t account for behavioral differences going from a desktop to mobile device. Just because a desktop site can respond to a device and scale down, doesn’t mean the shopper wants to use a scaled down desktop site.
Additionally, responsive websites are likely to load slower on mobile devices with customized CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) because it loads the website in its entirety. Ideally, users want a mobile experience on mobile device which would require the web-developer to write additional CSS to hide/add elements to the responsive website causing search engines to crawl more code.
Dealer.com takes today’s web site experience a step further and uses a mobile-first approach that allows us to optimize every mobile experience so dealers can render a specific experience to any device.
Why Mobile-First?
Mobile devices are at the forefront of the digital revolution that has taken place in the last decade. According to Dealer.com, 62% of traffic to dealership websites comes from personal devices. That’s why it’s so essential to ensure the mobile experience for your website is uniquely optimized for each user.
We also know that as dealers, many of your sales and service staff use personal and handle-held devices to interact with customers daily.
Google announced that a website’s mobile friendliness would be a new ranking signal for grading websites. So, the more your website can adapt seamlessly from desktop to a specific personal or handheld device, the higher your website is ranked.
Mobile-first technology from Dealer.com works to deliver a superior user experience across every device while controlling each experience from an intuitive dashboard. This allows you to configure every aspect of your website, simplify site updates across devices, merchandise inventory with precision, and deliver digital deals through transparent automotive digital retailing.
Adapted to Every Car Shopper
We’re committed to using responsive technology to build mobile-first, adaptive websites for our clients— the industry’s most flexible website response capabilities. Our technology incorporates the essential parts of a fully responsive website with the ability for device-specific experiences, we are not just responsive or only responsive.
By optimizing each shopper’s experience for device-specific content and configuration, we give dealers more flexibility and customization opportunities than other providers. So, no matter if you’re shopping on an iPad Pro or Galaxy S22, we create a website specifically for each device.
At Dealer.com we believe that designing with a mobile-first mindset ensures every car shopper has the unique experience they deserve.
It’s no longer enough to simply implement digital retailing tools. To be competitive and close more deals, you have to understand the “why” of digital retailing. Why do consumers seek out these experiences? Why do they choose one dealership’s digital retailing over another? And, most importantly, why should you pay attention to consumers’ answers to these questions?
Amanda Hilerio, eCommerce Performance Manager at Dealer.com, recently spoke to dealers about how to take their digital retailing game to the next level. She discussed five talking points to help dealers attract more car sales leads and get the most out of their digital retailing investment.
Consumer behavior trends and the factors affecting consumer decisions
Why you should pay attention to these consumer trends
How to align your processes with consumer trends
Technology integrations that make your processes easier
How to connect your digital storefront to your physical dealership
Watch the webinar to see how your dealership can connect with more dealer leads through your digital retailing experience.
As the automotive sales industry shifts toward offering more digital buying experiences, dealerships need to do more to stand out from the increasing crowd of competition. It’s no longer enough to simply offer a digital buying experience. Your dealership needs to seriously consider how to be different. That means appealing to auto sales leads with a digital buying experience that’s appealing and gives them reason to choose your dealership over your competitors.
B. Malaczewski, manager of Performance Management at Dealer.com, recently spoke to dealers about the importance of differentiating the digital buying process. She offered valuable insight into what motivates car dealer leads to choose one digital shopping experience over another and how you can promote your brand to best appeal to buyers. Key takeaways from the presentation included:
A list of essential and optional steps for your digital shopping experience
How to decide which digital processes are right for your dealership and your customers
Branding considerations that will set you apart from the competition
How to maximize communication on your digital storefront for digital shopping
How to leverage connected Cox Automotive brands to differentiate your dealership online
Watch the webinar to see how your dealership can stand out from the crowd to offer a distinct digital buying experience.
By Katie Wilkins, Dealer.com Senior Director of Product Management
It’s a fact of dealership life today—vehicle inventory shortages will be with us for a while. As you adjust your business strategies, your shoppers are also likely adjusting their plans accordingly. According to a 2022 Cox Automotive UX research survey, 37% of consumers say they are postponing their next vehicle purchase.
That means your website now needs to be more than just VDPs, which today may be leading shoppers to the dead end of a no results page. Your website also needs to include ways for shoppers to educate themselves about alternative vehicle and buying options. Here are a few ways we recommend updating your Dealer.com website to optimize your shoppers’ experience.
Make the “Vehicle of Interest” form easy to find.
We recommend you provide opportunities on the search results page to easily get to a “Vehicle of Interest” form. Adding a banner to the content area on the bottom of the search results page that links to a “Custom Build” or “Find It for Me” form is a straightforward way to accomplish this. If limited results are returned or shoppers aren’t finding what they are looking for, you are giving them an obvious path to next steps.
We’ve seen that dealership websites that have multiple entrance points to the “Find It for Me” and “Custom Build” forms have a higher proportion of their visits reaching these forms. These forms often convert well, with 4% lead submission rates (2022 Cox Automotive UX Research Survey).
To support shopper requests for vehicles your dealership may not have in stock, a new “Vehicle of Interest” form allows shoppers to share details on the vehicle they are looking for. This gives you an opportunity to stay connected with that consumer while you wait for the right inventory to arrive.
Additionally, the Quick Quote tool allows your customers to select their preferred year, model, and color, and register their interest for new inventory. This is another way to generate new lead opportunities not attached to an in-stock vehicle. You can even edit content areas on this page to add frequently asked questions or details on next steps based on your dealership’s process such as the example here.
List vehicles before they arrive on your lot.
Be sure to include vehicles not yet on your lot in your inventory feed, presenting them on your website with an “in-transit” badge. You can also enable the new “in-transit” facet to allow shoppers to specifically filter searches for those vehicles.
Educate shoppers on their buying options.
Remember, you aren’t the only one who is unsure what to do with this low inventory situation. Your shoppers are likely to need some guidance too. Make sure they are aware of all of their buying options by building a page using Page Designer that explains them, like this one. We suggest linking to these pages in the navigation, as well as from the homepage and search results pages.
These paths-to-buy pages should include information on when to choose each path, FAQs addressing concerns (like timeline, price, and what to expect), a contact form, and a phone number. See examples here and here. If you use Dealer.com Managed Content and Creative services, talk to your Campaign Coordinator about campaigns targeted at this issue.
We also encourage you to consider adding chat functionality to your website if you haven’t already so shoppers have another path to contact you for help finding a vehicle. Dealer.com recently announced a new partnership with ActivEngage to give you industry-leading technology, whether you want to manage chat yourself or have ActivEngage’s team of customer engagement experts handle it. Most importantly, remind shoppers your team is there to assist them in finding their perfect vehicle.
The beginning of a new year is always an inspiring time for me. While I’m always focused on continuous improvement, there’s something about flipping the calendar that makes the new possibilities and opportunities ahead more exciting than ever. It’s a great time to reflect and set an intention for the year ahead.
I’ve been thinking about what our amazing team at Dealer.com achieved in 2021. We’ve been relentlessly working hard for our dealers, helping them market themselves more easily and effectively. That work has taken many forms, including maintaining excellence in our customer support teams, expanding our marketing channels, and updating products like Automotive Marketing Platform powered by VinSolutions and Page Designer—targeted at making our platform even better, faster, and easier to use.
We’ve also continued to embrace the rapid evolution of car buying with investments into a more flexible, digital buying process. Dealer.com’s Accelerate My Deal is an integral part of Cox Automotive Digital Retailing, a solution for dealers who want to own every purchase path, meeting consumers based on their buying preferences.
And yet, though we’ve made so much great progress on behalf of our dealers, there is so much left to do! I’ve been thinking a lot about to how to tackle the work ahead, and one common theme keeps rising to the top for me: premium consumer experiences.
The Dealer.com team shares the goal of making every experience a consumer has with a dealer—whether online, in-store, or both—an outstanding one. In today’s retail environment, those standout experiences separate the winning dealerships from the stagnant ones.
With that in mind, I’m challenging my team and my dealership partners to do everything with a singular focus: make this the year of the premium consumer experience. Here are a few key action items I’m encouraging my team and my dealer partners to take to help us all get there.
Implement Tools and Processes that Make Your Work Easier
I’m challenging my team to find and implement tools that help them complete critical projects faster and better, and I’m challenging our dealers to do the same. Think about the various digital marketing tools you use. When is the last time you critically evaluated your processes for using those tools? Have new enhancements been released that could make your job easier if you made small process changes?
As I mentioned, we’ve made some meaningful enhancements to our foundational tools this year. We’ve launched a new Page Designer that makes designing your dealership website more intuitive, expanded channels in Automotive Marketing Platform to make your marketing more cohesive and effective, and aligned and integrated Accelerate My Deal and Cox Automotive Digital Retailing to make deal workflows even smoother. If you haven’t updated your processes to incorporate these new capabilities, you’re missing out on opportunities to improve—and on opportunities to deliver the best possible consumer experiences.
Prioritize Data and Meaningful Integrations
You probably know by now that reliable consumer data is critical to success, not only for automotive digital marketing but also for overall dealership profitability. The right data enables you to generate more automobile leads by personalizing every touchpoint a consumer has with your dealership, from a display ad to deal making. In 2022, I’m challenging everyone to keep the value of consumer data in focus.
For us at Dealer.com, that means taking advantage of the breadth and depth of the Cox Automotive data network, which includes insights from two out of three U.S. car buyers (2020 Cox Automotive Car Buyer Journey). For your dealerships, it means making sure you’re set up to successfully act on all the data and insights in your systems.
You must have meaningful integrations to make data actionable. And it’s not just about integrations between marketing and sales tools (though of course those are important). You have to think about the data and system integrations between all your dealership departments. When marketing, sales, service, and operations are all in sync, you win. My team at Dealer.com is continuing to stay close to our peers at VinSolutions, Xtime, and Dealertrack DMS to continue bringing your dealership departments and data closer together.
Evaluate the Value of Your Partnerships
There’s no way around it—the right tools and the right data are critical to providing premium consumer experiences. But there’s a third critical element: the right people. Without the right people, even the very best tools and data will fall short.
As you launch your 2022 marketing plans, I encourage you to take note of the role your marketing partners play. Are they making your job easier and acting as a true partner in your success? Or are they little more than technical support?
At Dealer.com, true, meaningful partnership with our dealerships is at the core of our business. Your success is our success. With the right people behind premium consumer experiences, we all win.
I couldn’t end a post about reflection and inspiration without saying how immensely grateful we are for our dealer clients. I continue to be personally inspired by your resilience, creativity, and success, and we couldn’t be more excited to continue to drive success together in 2022.
Digital marketing is always changing, and it can be challenging to know which trends might impact your business and which ones are passing fads. In conversations with marketing specialists, industry experts, and dealers, we’ve identified top trends expected to make an impact to automotive retail in 2022.
Keep an eye out for this new technology as you start planning your digital marketing in 2022, and check out many of them for yourself at NADA Show 2022 in Las Vegas in March.
Personalization
This isn’t exactly a new trend, but personalization continues to be the name of the game in digital marketing for car dealers. Today’s successful dealers are connecting with in-market shoppers by giving them a highly personalized experience throughout their buying and ownership journeys.
With the right data and the right technology, dealerships can deliver individualized digital marketing campaigns and website experiences, targeted at specific subsets of customers. By using first-party consumer intelligence, dealerships can speak directly to each shopper—appealing to their interests, incentivizing them to buy, and keeping them progressing down the path to purchase.
This focused auto advertisingstrategy is far more personal for consumers and far more effective for dealerships than one-size-fits-all mass advertising efforts. In fact, shoppers who saw personalized website content had a 216% higher form submission rate and a 175% increase in VDP views, and were four times more likely to pencil a deal.*
Digital-First Shopping Experiences
Providing flexible shopping experiences for consumers has been a priority in auto retail for the last few years, and that trend will continue into 2022. Expect to see even more digital-first shopping experiences that give shoppers the flexibility and convenience of choosing which parts of the car-buying process they prefer to complete online.
The technology helps dealerships drive automobile leads and give consumers more of what they want—a digital, convenient, streamlined, transparent car-buying experience. For example, Accelerate My Deal, Dealer.com’s guided online shopping experience, helps shoppers structure deals with real monthly payments, explore and select F&I products, schedule a test drive, complete online credit applications, and reserve a vehicle—all online.
Advanced Data Connectivity
Most dealers today know the power of data, but expect to see new ways to harness data—especially first-party data—across departments. Advanced data and workflow integrations across technology platforms will help dealerships bring in customers, increase profits, and promote dealership growth.
Modern technologies that combine workflows across sales, service, marketing, and operations bring the entire dealership in harmony. Working together, these technologies boost efficiency, elevate the consumer experience, and give dealers more opportunity to increase profits.
Cox Automotive brands Dealer.com, VinSolutions, Xtime, and Dealertrack DMS, for example, offer solutions that bring marketing, sales, service, and operations in sync. By leveraging first-party transactional data from trusted consumer sites Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book, Cox Automotive technologies work together to give dealers a complete view of each customer. This unmatched proprietary data and connected suite facilitates workflows across departments and enables dealers to deliver the right message, to the right consumer, at the right time.
Your vehicle details page (VDP) is where customers are most likely to take action: fill out a form, call your store, start a deal, or even come into the dealership. Your VDP, where customers take the next step in buying a car from you, is also often where shoppers become dealer leads.
With so much at stake on VDPs, it is critical to nail the user experience. If you don’t, customer action can become inaction, and your flexible buying experience can suffer.
Use (Real) Big Photos
When I say real big photos, I mean recent photos of the actual vehicle being sold that are also high quality. Remember, customers like to see photos of the car they’re looking to buy. Give them high-resolution photos that help them see each vehicle in detail. With these photos, auto sales leads tend to stay on your VDP longer and view more VDPs than they otherwise would with stock photos. Moreover, real images increase the likelihood of getting a lead by 30% for new vehicles and 40% for used ones.1
Remove Brand Overlays
Real estate on the VDP is limited, especially on mobile. Your branding (as amazing as it may be) can distract from the car and frustrate shoppers. Plus, overlays featuring the dealership name and contact information are often redundant with information already displayed elsewhere on screen.
From a practical point of view, a page with multiple branded vehicle photos side-by-side can feel cluttered and be hard to scan. If you must brand photos, keep it limited to the first photo, and remove it from the rest.
Include Detailed Incentives and Discounts
This is the moment you’ve been waiting for. It’s time to talk terms. Up until now, your customers haven’t had a chance to look at pricing in detail. But your VDP is the perfect place to show detailed pricing.
Not only does detailed pricing on the VDP help assure apprehensive shoppers, but it can also pique their interest and keep shoppers focused. Break out all your incentives and discounts in your pricing stack. And be detailed, since this is where car shoppers spend most of their time.
Be as transparent as you can be with your pricing. If you’re willing to go low, show that price! If your OEM won’t allow you to display pricing below invoice without a customer’s information, utilize an instant ePrice tool that will capture those details and unlock that low price for all your vehicles. You’ll be providing a great service to your customers while keeping your OEM happy.
Create Clear Calls to Action
The benefits of a clear call to action go beyond improved dealer lead rates. It also helps create a positive brand perception. Design calls to action with high contrast and limit them to two to three options. Having too many calls to action actually decreases your conversion rate.
Give context to your calls to action, like placing pricing CTAs next to the final price on the VDP, for example. And always order calls to action on the page by engagement. According to Dealer.com research, for dealers featuring transparent pricing, “Confirm Availability” received the highest click through rate (4%).1 And for dealers not featuring transparent pricing, “Get Today’s Price” received the highest click through rate at 8.2%, “Get Our Price” received 7.3%, “Get Your Price” received 6.0%, and “Get ePrice” got 5.7%.1
The majority of these VDP best practices are already baked into the Dealer.com automotive digital marketing platform, so you’re good to go from the start. But these are just a few of the VDP best practices that you can implement on your digital storefront.
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1 The Data That Drives Good Design White Paper, August 2020
