3 Tips to Create an Efficient Advertising Strategy Smart Enough to Tackle 2018’s Challenging Marketplace

Dealer.com Display Ads

Stop us if this sounds like you:

“Overhead is up 40 percent this year, and now you’re telling me shoppers are going to buy three percent fewer cars in my local market next year? Something’s got to give here if we want to retain gross and have a shot at earning OEM performance award bonuses!”

We hear you. Margin compression is challenging, especially these days. Which is why it’s critical to engage an automotive advertising agency like Dealer.com to develop efficient advertising campaigns – messages that use data gleaned from billions of shopper behaviors in real-time and deliver ads that result in high-quality sales opportunities for your team ­­­– to maintain profitability in a challenging market.

Here’s what you must consider about advertising efficiently.

Buyers Want This to Be Easy

Mobile shoppers are far more likely to ‘click to call you’ from the search ad they see (and/or get directions to visit) if your ads address their individual desires (What’s my payment on a 2018 truck lease? How many are in stock?) especially if shoppers visited your website before. You need to consider how your ad content will adjust to gain interest from the most likely shoppers, both the message they see and level of aggressiveness needed to place it above competitors. For example, are you bidding more to deliver a specific new vehicle ad to the person who visited that car on your website last week? If you’re not, you need to be (The technology is called Retargeting Lists for Search Ads, or RLSA). Make it easy for shoppers, especially high-income, high-spending shoppers, to do business with you. Don’t limit your ad delivery to shoppers browsing Google search engine results pages.

The good news is that dealers using effective marketing practices online receive as much as four times more traffic to their online listings, an increase that drives a 15 percent improvement to their new car turn, according to vAuto, a Cox Automotive brand.

Here are three tips to make sure you run efficient ad campaigns that bring in more high-quality prospects for a lower average cost, using the most compelling content.

1. Showcase your inventory.

Highlight the unique features of your inventory with equally unique messages delivered based on each shopper’s profile. Update your most current deals, then take advantage of intelligent software to match them to the right shoppers at scale.

2. Match and draft.

Match the advertising message (payment/vehicle features/comparable offers) from TV and digital advertising to the message greeting shoppers who visit your digital showroom. Don’t forget to draft off Tier 1 and 2 national/regional event ads. Say one of your manufacturers is aggressively promoting one of its compact SUV offers. Ensure your ads deliver more specific content than the brand-awareness focus, and target net-new shoppers who are still cross-shopping the competition. Once you saturate local search demand, it’s time to use first-party shopper data from cross-shoppers to generate more interest using social networks and audience targeting.

3. Turn over hidden gems.

We get pretty obsessed with metrics, sometimes to the point of “analysis paralysis”. VDP views by model, however, is a report worthy of your attention. Having trouble selling a particular vehicle, and yet the VDP traffic volume is unexpectedly high? Check to make sure your price and pictures are sharp, then dedicate a realistic budget to advertising that vehicle so you can goose sales. Do you know which zip codes are generating the most sales of this vehicle? How aggressively are you positioning the specific vehicle in these areas versus spreading your investment evenly across a larger geographic.

Sales may plateau or decrease, but that doesn’t mean you can’t grow your sales and market share using a more efficient digital advertising solution as part of your holistic media and content platforms.

Got an advertising plan for 2018, or need help getting started? Drop us a line or comment below. We’d love to know what’s been working, and what the challenges are, for your dealership.

Joe Mescher is on the Enterprise Media Solutions team at Cox Automotive

It’s Time to Get Personal: 3 Ways a Tailored Website Experience Fuels Results

Dealer.com Tailored Website Experience

One size doesn’t fit all when it comes to the vehicles people drive so why should your dealership website experience be that way?

 

We’re in the age of the consumer; today’s shoppers expect more from their website experience than ever before. They don’t just want to see the same rotating promotional slides, or new vehicles on your lot; they want to see what you can offer them as individuals. Essentially, they demand a personalized experience. All of today’s leading consumer sites leverage this powerful technology, and it’s time for the auto industry to catch up.

 

A Personalized Car Shopping Experience at Play

So how does this apply to vehicle shopping? Let’s say you have a shopper, Caroline, on your website who looked at a Nissan Altima one morning. She continues her research on Kelley Blue Book, and while there, ends up reading reviews and views recent awards bestowed upon the Nissan Rogue. Caroline puts down her phone and heads out to lunch or her next meeting. Later in the evening, she picks up her search again by returning to your dealership website on her laptop. This is the moment when you should deliver a personalized shopping experience, one that remembers where Caroline left off, and displays relevant inventory and incentives information to her.

 

There are three ways you could be tailoring your website experience for shoppers like Caroline:

 

1. Recommend relevant vehicles in your inventory based on what shoppers were interested in. Let technology ensure you match the right car to the right person, rather than leaving it all to chance.

 

2. Use technology to automatically render personalized promotional assets. Shoppers only look at the first few slides on your website, or may deep link to a filtered listing page. Ensure you are showing specials that are highly tailored to their interests, like, for example, a lease incentive on that Rogue. Get the right deals in front of the right shoppers to increase the likelihood of purchase.

 

3. Recommend next steps or varying calls to action based on what we know about shoppers. For example, did they look at a lease incentive before? On the vehicle details page, prompt them to calculate a lease payment. Or, have shoppers already calculated payments and a trade-in? Suggest they fill out a finance application. Take the guess work out of the process and help guide your shoppers towards the sale.

 

Personalizing your consumers’ digital experience does more than just steer buyers to the vehicles and content in which they are most interested; it produces big results. Experience Optimization generally results in click through rates two to two and a half times higher on personalized content than on non-personalized content.1

 

It’s time to make your website a customized virtual showroom to provide an individually-tailored experience to every one of your shoppers. It’s time to make digital car shopping personal.

 

Katie Wilkins is the director of product management at Dealer.com

 

1 Dealer.com Homepage Personalization Test, August 2017

 

How “Hiding” Content Behind a Read More Button Impacts SEO

 

At this year’s SMX Advanced in Seattle I asked Google’s Gary Illyes if “hiding” content behind a Read More button affects websites’ SEO.

 

His answer wasn’t surprising considering Google’s stance on user experience. This practice, which essentially directs users to click a button/link that says Read More or Read On to view the full content, does have an effect on sites’ SEO, including auto retailers using Dealer.com Websites. Specifically, Google does not index content hidden behind these buttons on desktop sites.

 

This is an important distinction. Since Google currently uses the desktop version of a website as the primary source of content for its index, it impacts a site’s visibility in search results. Until Google launches its new Mobile First Index (sometime in 2018), Dealer.com recommends that dealers refrain from hiding any content on the desktop version of their websites.

 

Compared to mobile, desktop screens have real estate to spare. There’s no reason to save space by hiding content behind click for more buttons. If anything, it can seem a little deceptive, and doing so just puts websites at an SEO disadvantage since Google won’t use this hidden content to evaluate quality, no matter how relevant it is to the end user.

 

On the other hand, Read More buttons on mobile are completely acceptable since it actually makes the user experience better, according to Illyes. Just remember that Google isn’t yet indexing mobile devices first.

 

Here are my recommendations regarding this issue with Google’s current desktop indexing:

 

  • Don’t use Read More buttons or links to hide content on desktop unless absolutely necessary.

 

 

 

  • If you do need to hide content due to widget size/location, only hide content that isn’t valuable for SEO purposes.

 

 

  • Get creative with page layouts*. For example, add a second hero widget to the bottom of the homepage so that you can display all of your written content.

 

 

  • Analyze and reduce content. If there are pieces of your content that aren’t beneficial to users or SEO, remove it.

 

Comments? Questions? Reach me by commenting below. Thanks!

 

Pete Bruhn is the product manager – website platform at Dealer.com

 

*OEM restrictions may prevent you from doing this.

 

3 Ways Social Media Can Help Your Dealership Increase Search Ranking

Dealer.com SEO

It’s not news that social media and SEO are invaluable to every dealership’s marketing strategy today. SEO has long been a critical element of search engine visibility, while social media, newer to the marketing scene, has become essential to a holistic digital strategy.

Perhaps what gets lost or continues to go unrecognized, however, is the increasingly important relationship between car dealer SEO and social media, how good content reaches far beyond social platforms, and that dealers need to think about an SEO and social strategy as one and the same.

While display and paid search advertising are designed to grab attention, SEO and social media, at least in this context, support brand visibility across traditional search engines and the social media platforms consumers are increasingly using to search for vehicles and dealerships.

Since it’s becoming more and more clear that one practice cannot succeed without the other, here are three ways a strong social media presence comprising high quality and frequently updated content that is informed by analytics can help your dealership’s search engine rankings improve.

1. Target a specific audience.

Social media has become more than just general community interaction.  Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, even YouTube allow dealers to target potential car buyers based on demographics, keywords and geographical location. Just like local SEO strategy, social posts should target a highly specific set of qualified, in-market shoppers in your region.

It’s not enough to create content, hit the post or tweet button, and hope the right people will see the message. If you want to reach the right shoppers and continue to build a following, make sure you’re poring over your social data to determine the appropriate targeting strategy.

2. Create relevant content.

Here’s an exercise: do a Google search for one of your favorite major brands and chances are its Facebook page, for example, ranks somewhere not too far from the top organic listing. That’s because high-quality, relevant content has tremendous SEO value.

What’s high-quality, relevant content? It’s engaging, informative posts, tweets, articles, captioned photos, and videos that target a specific audience.

But don’t stop there. Great social media content also means linking to supporting webpages and writing using keywords and geographic terms that relate to your business. When that content also links to your dealership’s website, it may, for example, reinforce your onsite advertising efforts and integrate with your SEO strategy to help improve search engine results page (SERP) ranking.

And one more thing. Use #hashtags when relevant. While they don’t directly affect SEO ranking, timely hashtags tactically increase awareness and engagement of your social content. They’re both content filtering tools and, sometimes, a chance to expand your brand reach by joining onto something trending on the internet that might be useful to your marketing efforts.

3. Integrate your advertising efforts.

Create content that promotes your dealership’s advertising strategy such as new vehicle launches, dealership events, comparison pages, and sales promotions. This content should always link shoppers to the website where the marketing initiatives are well detailed.

Speaking of links, while those from social posts are considered “no follow,” meaning they don’t directly influence SEO, they can still influence relevancy on SERPs. Search engines like active websites, those that are being clicked on and engaged with. The volume of increased links shared through social content boosts social signals, which positively impacts long-term search visibility and ranking. Links to your website in social content won’t push SEO value directly, but Google will notice this social-originated traffic. Exponential impact can come from outside user engagement and can lead to authoritative backlinks.

The search and social platforms we once thought as islands are now clearly part of one big digital ecosystem. The trick is to use each one effectively and with strategy interconnection so as to ensure you’re reaching as much of your target audience as possible without burning out on too much content generation. Stick to relevant content creation, one with applicable keywords, hashtags, and links, post frequently, and your dealership will be “buying” up more and more of that first SERP page real estate.

Bobby Bailey is the manager, Managed Social and Chris Nichols is the manager, SEO at Dealer.com

5 Ways to Prepare Your Dealership Team for Digital Retailing

It’s where the auto industry is headed: the ability to buy a car online. More importantly, it’s what the vast majority of your customers want.

Your dealership knows this, which is why you have subscribed to Digital Retailing.

With this technology in place, your customers’ ability to complete a car purchase almost entirely online is practically here. But before things can get rolling, there are a few steps you’ll need to take in order to ensure a seamless adoption of online transacting practices.

Here are five steps to prepare your entire dealership team for the strategic and operational changes that should result from Digital Retailing, as well as the positive outcomes your business can expect.

1. Embrace deeper customer engagement.

There’s no doubt that Digital Retailing gives you finance and trade ready buyers. In addition to starting deals, shoppers spend more time on your vehicle display pages (VDPs) if you’re using Digital Retailing.

But don’t wait for Digital Retailing to go live at your dealership to maximize engagement opportunities on your website. Here’s how:

– Hold VDP activity review meetings with your sales, BDC, and management teams. If they constantly know the inventory that get the most VDP activity, they will be best prepared to effectively connect with the callers, walk-ins, and leads that are generated by those key cars.

– Workshop and share your merchandising strategy. Once you have Digital Retailing on your website, your inventory will have payments and calls-to-action for shoppers to start their deal online and save time in the dealership. This is a whole new layer of inventory merchandising. Document your entire merchandising strategy, share with your teams and ensure that you are operating efficiently.

– Recommit to focusing on your broader website performance with analytics. Once Digital Retailing is up and running, your entire website solution will perform in new ways. Get a head start on the conversations you will have by reviewing your performance based on your website, advertising, and inventory. These three are key because once you have Digital Retailing live, it’s going to create improvements and opportunities for keen insights in each of those three categories.

2. Meet with your team.

Digital Retailing is technology that can impact your whole team. Make it a positive impact by keeping your team members informed. Create awareness of the upcoming change, and even share some of the benefits that made you a Digital Retailing believer. When you share your motivations, your team will have a much clearer picture of what has driven decisions, and what your path forward looks like. Even your service team can benefit from knowing that, for example, customers can begin the appraisal process on your website.

And don’t just meet once. Make communicating about Digital Retailing a part of your regular meeting cadence.

3. Build and market your Digital Retailing brand.

It’s a tired cliché, but simply building a better mousetrap won’t drive traffic to your door. You will need to message, promote, and help shoppers create tangible emotional connections to Digital Retailing’s time savings and convenience benefits.

Remember these four key points:

– Brand your experience.

– Promote. Promote.

– Build upon successes with subsequent promotion.

– Consider in-store point of purchase.

4. Refrain from thinking of shoppers as leads.

Remember, shoppers who provide you with their trade-in and their credit application are far more close to purchase than a lead. Please don’t tread them like one. Make it clear who owns the contact, that it should be conformational and focused on ensuring that the dots are connected for shoppers so they don’t feel like they are duplicating any efforts, or not getting the full benefit of starting their deal online.

5. Include your entire leadership team in the Digital Retailing setup process.

Digital Retailing should effuse “all hands on deck” attention, especially for your leadership team during the setup process. If one of your managers doesn’t have the opportunity to see behind the scenes and get excited, then he or she is at risk of being less on board than the rest of the team.

Know that dealership business may go on. Let your team know where you are and what you’re doing. And if there is an interruption, pause the conversation and address your dealership question before continuing the setup meeting. Team members distracted during the setup call can spell Digital Retailing doom.

Growing beyond your current strengths and comfort zone is a formative process. It’s about gradual growth, process improvement, communication, and reinforcement. Remember that people and teams are naturally change-averse, and with a change that is oriented around the way that many of us have done business for decades, it will take a thoughtful, planned approach.

Questions or concerns about Digital Retailing onboarding? Reach out to us below.

Patrick Wyld is a Digital Retailing enterprise performance manager at Dealer.com

How to Sell High-Tech Vehicles Without a PhD from MIT

Dealer.com Sales Staff

It’s tempting in auto retailing to think of vehicle technology as just bells and whistles. Sure, tech features sweeten the deal, but they probably won’t make or break the sale. Right?

Not so fast. For a big percentage of today’s consumers, vehicle technology is a top consideration during the purchase process.

According to Autotrader’s 2016 Auto Tech Study, 48 percent of consumers think vehicle technology is more important than either vehicle body style or brand. That’s right. For nearly half of consumers, those “bells and whistles” matter more than the actual vehicle type. So a dealership sales process should account for that.

Teaching a sales team to sell vehicle tech effectively can be tricky. After all, salespeople probably got into the business to sell cars, not technology. But tech is just too important to today’s consumers for any dealership to ignore.

Turn Tech into Profit

For decades, Baby Boomers have dominated the car-buying market. But while boomers still have sizable buying power, Millennials are now the generation to watch.

Half of Millennials say they’ll buy or lease a car in the next 12 months. And because Generation Y is predicted to buy 40 percent of all new vehicles sold over the next 10 years, that age group of 20- and 30-somethings’ preferences will shape the market for years to come, according to the same study.

Technology is one of the biggest selling points for Millennials when deciding what vehicle to buy. They’ve grown up with tech. They expect it in every aspect of their lives, from their phones to their homes to their cars.

They’re not willing to compromise. Nearly 60 percent of Millennials would switch vehicle brands to get the technology they want.

Only 42 percent of Baby Boomers are willing to do the same. Not delivering what Millennial buyers want risks losing their business.

On the other hand, if you can sell technology successfully, the payoff among Millennials is enormous, because 55 percent of Millennial buyers are willing to spend extra to get the technology they want, compared with 38 percent of Baby Boomers.

The average Millennial will pay $2,617 more for his or her ideal tech features – almost $600 more than Boomers will pay.

Let’s play out those numbers. Say a dealership sells just 20 cars a month to Millennials. Multiply those sales by the $2,500-plus Millennials are willing to pay for the right technology. That’s more than $600,000 a year in additional revenue.

So how can you claim this potential profit and get buyers the high-tech options they’re looking for?  Fortunately, you don’t need Silicon Valley experience to be a tech-savvy salesperson. Here’s what you actually need to do.

Make Technology Look Easy

Consumers always have expected salespeople to know about the vehicles they sell, and the rise of vehicle technology hasn’t changed that. Being a knowledgeable salesperson is more important now than ever.

Although most consumers plan to research the latest technology before shopping, 44 percent still don’t know what features they want when they take a test drive. And that’s where salespeople come in.

They should feel comfortable explaining the latest tech features of any vehicle and making those features look easy to use. A third of consumers say they’d walk away from a purchase if the vehicle’s in-car technology seemed too difficult to use during the test drive, salespeople should feel comfortable demonstrating the ins and outs of tech features.

Older salespeople shouldn’t be afraid to ask Millennial colleagues for help. They grew up with advanced technology, so using these features – and talking others through them – is second nature to them. Combine that insight with a veteran’s sales knowledge and he or she is unstoppable.

Get Hands-on Experience

A great test drive is important, but 31 percent of Millennials say it doesn’t offer enough time to master vehicle technology. That skyrockets to 61 percent for older generations.

Regardless of age, 35 percent of consumers would like to learn about vehicle technology either from a dealership staffer or a dealership-hosted class. That means dealership people must get up to speed. Before you can teach something, you have to know it yourself.

So during downtimes, dealership personnel should roll up their sleeves and try out advanced features of the vehicles in stock. Once they know their way around, they should consider offering regular classes to consumers who want extra guidance. This support system can motivate hesitant consumers to invest in a more sophisticated vehicle.

Find Differentiators

Which features and options should be emphasized during the sale? That’s a tricky question, because not all technology is created equal. Keep in mind, consumers have different expectations for different features.

For example, 60 percent of consumers think features such as Bluetooth, keyless entry and blind spot detection should come standard.

Emphasize connectivity and entertainment features. Forty percent of consumers’ wish lists include vehicle features such as wireless device charging, telematics and interactive dashboards.

Because these features aren’t essential to vehicle function, they’re not as commonly available as other tech options. If a vehicle has them, it provides something out of the ordinary, something many consumers will be willing to pay for.

By knowing consumer needs and getting comfortable with the latest vehicle features, car salespeople can sell more vehicles – no computer science degree needed.

Brian Geitner is president of Cox Automotive Media Solutions Group, which includes Autotrader, Kelley Blue Book and Dealer.com

Why Flexible Inventory Pricing Displays Should Matter for Your Website Provider

Dealer.com Pricing Calculations

Click for ePrice.

Show discounts, rebates, and MSRP.

Present only your asking price.

Display all of the pricing: MSRP, discounts, and add-ons.

Don’t show any pricing and just include a “call to inquire” button.

The combinations for displaying your inventory’s prices seem practically endless. And rightly so. Inventory pricing, and how your website displays it to the shopping public, is an important part of your sales strategy.

Depending on what you would like your shoppers to do next, you’re faced with multiple decisions. Are you displaying all of the pricing information – discounts, rebates, and add-ons, to name a few – in an attempt to build trust with and empower your shoppers? Or is your goal to gather consumer information so that your sales team can close the deal once shoppers are convinced to come in to the showroom? Or, does your strategy fall somewhere in between?

Whichever your strategy, your website should have the flexibility to accommodate any pricing equation – and give you the control to make changes yourself – to effectively advertise inventory to your shoppers.

In the past, website providers have offered only narrow pricing display options and very limited control, given the complexities of dealer-by-dealer marketing strategies and states’ various sales compliance rules. But as these rules have evolved, it’s become clear that limited pricing display parameters restrict dealerships because they diminish the multiple pricing combinations that dealers would otherwise use to their benefit.

With more inventory pricing display options and autonomy, dealers are empowered to show more of the price/cost breakdown to shoppers. Here are just a few combinations which become possible with flexible inventory pricing displays:

1. A-B+C = D – Show a discount first and then an ‘add-on’ value:

Example:
MSRP: $32,000
Discount of – $1,000
Retail Value: $31,000
Add On of $3,000
Internet Price: $34,000

2. A-B-C = D – Show two potential discounts fields or combine two discounts:

Example:
MSRP: $32,000
Discount –  $1,000
Retail Value: $31,000
Discount – $2,000
Internet Price: $29,000

3. A+B-C = D – Show an add-on and a discount field; showing middle price is optional:

Example:
MSRP: $32,000
Add On + $3,000
Retail Value: $35,000
Discount – $1,000
Internet Price: $34,000

4. A+B+C = D – Show the sum of all options:

Example:
MSRP: $32,000
Add On + $1,000
Retail Value: $33,000
Add On + $2,000
Internet Price: $35,000

Your pricing strategy is your business. Giving you the flexibility and control to display your inventory pricing should be the job of any website provider.

Comment below to share how inventory pricing display flexibility might make significant changes to your sales strategy. As always, we are happy to connect for a strategic consultation.

Why Website Security Is Essential for a Consumer-Centric Website Experience

Dealer.com Secure Website Experience

Anyone walking the convention floor at NADA in New Orleans a couple months ago couldn’t miss hearing about digital transacting. Dealer websites are in the midst of a major transition from being browsing-focused, catalog sites of inventory and basic dealer information, to full on consumer applications with automobile leads solutions and more shopper-centric capabilities.

As websites make this shift, HTTPS security has become practically mandatory. Gone are the days of only securing financial information or framing in a finance form hosted on a third-party domain. Shoppers now expect security throughout their general web experiences, not only in ecommerce and email but also now in social media. Auto dealer website providers must deliver secure experiences to protect sensitive consumer information and data.

But it’s not all about the customer experience; site security is increasingly crucial from the dealership perspective as well. A fully secure digital retailing experience can help your dealership differentiate itself in your market. Additionally, your particular security configuration can even have a slight impact on dealership analytics – an impact that industry observers including Brian Pasch have recently made note of.

With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at the two primary approaches for site security today, and where the technology is headed:

When Dealer.com launched our integrated Digital Retailing solution – which included payment, finance and trade capabilities – at the end of 2014, we began launching HTTPS secure Dealer.com Websites in volume. Even just a few years ago there were a lot of hurdles to implementing SSL, including cost and a majority of third-party integrations that were not HTTPS-friendly/protocol relative. As a result, we implemented two mechanisms to secure Dealer.com Websites: full HTTPS, and a hybrid approach that uses a redirect when Digital Retailing is engaged.

Full HTTPS

Dealer.com recommends this approach for three reason: one, to satisfy today’s consumer expectations; two, to inspire shopper confidence, trust, and engagement with the website; and three, to help websites achieve better search ranking. For a more in-depth look at HTTPS, take a look at our article from January 2017. Full HTTPS is quickly becoming the standard to facilitate the type of engagement expected on modern consumer-centric websites.

Hybrid HTTPS

For dealers who choose not to enable full HTTPS on their site, Dealer.com offers a hybrid HTTPS approach. When dealers enable Digital Retailing, the system engages a redirect to a secure Dealer.com domain. The transition is seamless and does not negatively impact user experience. In fact, in our UX testing we rarely encounter users even noticing the redirect, although some do notice the secure green padlock in the URL/search bar as they begin entering sensitive information. That said, those users who have a hybrid HTTPS setup may notice what appears to be traffic inconsistencies in their analytics, since the security redirect can be measured as a separate page view.

The good news here is that hybrid approaches – and any corresponding impact on analytics – will soon be phased out. Looking toward the future, a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) will become a standard, non-negotiable feature, especially as the capability to enable shoppers to start deals online – and eventually transact online – through Digital Retailing becomes standard functionality. The majority of third-party providers have caught up and now offer HTTPS-friendly, protocol relative code for site integration. And costs have gotten far more reasonable as certificate providers and content delivery networks (CDNs) have invested in scaling HTTPS.

The future of next-generation dealership websites is very exciting as personalization, Digital Retailing, and login-enabled shopper profiles become central to an evolved consumer-centric website experience – all of which are facilitated by secure websites. Familiar capabilities from shopping and ecommerce sites that previously were not possible on dealer websites will become available, and soon become standards, thanks in large part to the shift to HTTPS.

Bob George is the director, product management, websites at Dealer.com

How to Uncover Impactful Automotive Keywords Using Google’s Search Console

Dealer.com SEO

Marketers, Internet managers, SEO analysts, and anyone else with an interest in website search visibility enjoyed full access to organic keyword referral data when it was available.

Before 2013, webmasters could log into Google Analytics to reveal every keyword that drove traffic to a site. Seeing the actual keywords, pages visitors landed on, and all the metrics about that page allowed for easy decision making. For SEO professionals particularly, it was the golden age of relevant keyword data.

In the fall of 2013, however, Google switched to its Secure Search, encrypting all searches and effectively cutting off the keyword data that website owners had come to rely on over the years.

So, what is a webmaster to do without organic keyword referral data? The good news is that there are still methods to glean some of this information once critical to car dealer SEO efforts. The best way to uncover effective keywords is to use the Search Analytics report found in the Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools). Don’t be intimidated by the Search Console; it might look imposing at first, but it’s much easier to use than you think. Along the top you can select as many or as little data sets as you choose.

*Note: 28 days is the default date range. Order is based on number of clicks. These settings can be changed to fit your criteria.

Dealer.com

To help you make sense of Search Analytics, let’s define some of the terms as they pertain to the report:

Queries – This is one of the last places Google allows webmasters to view the keywords users are typing in to search for a website. It’s limited in scope, but can help make strategic decisions. This section of the report allows you to refine queries by a given word and/or term. For instance, if you want to view how terms relating to used cars are performing simply open the filter and type “used.”

Dealer.com

Impressions – Impressions are the number times a site has been shown to searchers.

Clicks – The number of people who have clicked on your site based on the search term used.

Click-Through Rate (CTR) – The amount of clicks divided by the number of impressions. For example, if there were 100 impressions and 25 clicks your CTR would be 25%.

Average Position – A calculation based on the number of search impressions and the ranking positions on a search engine. In one search a site could be at position five and in the next at position one, giving us an average position of three.

For details around a single phrase, simply click on the term “opening data,” which includes a line graph for the given time period.

Clarification of terms within the Search Analytics report is helpful, you say, but what should you do next? Here’s how to start:

Set the queries report 90-days out and export everything to a spreadsheet like Excel. Adding a filter to the top row will allow for easier sorting given there might be over 1,000 terms.

Separate terms by average position. Look at those sitting in positions 4-10 and again from 11-15. Those hovering at the top of page two may not take a ton of effort to push into the top 10 (page 1). Consider these low-hanging fruit.

Review the keywords, put them into groups, and check the estimated monthly search volume.

Run those in the 4-10 positions the same way. From here, assemble a plan of attack based on user data.

While it might take some familiarization, deciphering the data in Google’s Search Analytics report (it’s free, by the way) can be very beneficial to your dealership. It’ll help your business create a content strategy based on actual users’ searches, and not on the sort of educated assumptions made necessary since the demise of organic keyword referral data.

Chris Nichols is manager, SEO at Dealer.com

How to Use Google’s New Micro-Moment Automotive Study to Inform Your Digital Strategy

 

Google recently adapted its highly influential Zero Moment of Truth concept to the automotive industry, calling the decision-making, car-buying journey a series of micro moments, or key behaviors that led, or didn’t lead, to a purchase.

In their research, Google determined five micro moments where car shoppers asked themselves:

­– Which car is best?

– Is it right for me?

– Can I afford it?

– Where should I buy it?

– Am I getting a deal?

For decades, savvy auto retailers and industry vendors have almost intrinsically known that shoppers are asking themselves these questions at pivotal moments along the car-buying process. Google’s study reinforces the importance of these critical moments with consumer data.

But what the industry is now adapting to a new sales strategy, one that embraces shoppers’ desire to do more of the shopping process online, and is backed by groundbreaking technology to help customers get the best possible answers to their most important questions.

Here’s how to put Google’s five key micro moments into the context of building a strategy using digital marketing and digital retailing to generate automobile leads:

1. Advertise where car buyers perform research.

Whether it’s a paid search or audience targeting campaign, the Google micro-moment study reminds us that strategic digital advertising, a service that Dealer.com offers as a sort of personal automotive advertising agency for your dealership, can help you capture the attention of shoppers who are in the information-gathering phase of the car-buying process.

2. Create content on your website that compares your models to those of key competitors.

Shoppers are looking for the right information to help them reach a buying decision. And we know that as research and decision-making has moved online, the days of shoppers having to visit multiple dealers are long behind us. If your brand and models are cross-shopped, create video and write blog content on your website and for social media that provides side-by-side comparison and analysis to tell the story of why your car is right for car buyers.

3. Use Digital Retailing tools.

Answering the question of affordability begins with payment (italicized because you’ll read that word a lot in the next sentence). The payment affordability experience should begin on your website with real finance payments and leases, the ability to search by payment, and self-pencil alternative down payments, terms, trade values and credit tiers.

4. Be transparent online and in every step of the selling process.

Digital Retailing allows you to create a unique car buying experience for shoppers that choose to save time by doing some of the work online. Not everyone will want to leverage these transactions tools – especially since as many as 43 percent of buyers see the dealership as a place to learn.

But by creating a transparent shopping and buying experience, your nurturing trust, establishing true partnership with your customers, and making great leaps into the future of car buying and selling.

5. Use marketing campaigns to drive awareness and visibility into your car-buying process.

Now that you offer an experience that differentiates your business, let it. From retargeting, to updating your brand-oriented display advertising, to slideshows, to social media, even a YouTube channel – the sky’s the limit on how to disseminate the message that your business is equipped to meet, and exceed, shopper expectations.

While other dealerships may continue to implement an outdated sales model, you can market your dealership by selling your car-buying experience, and value, and orienting your business around time savings, transparency, and convenience.

Dealers will never make every deal, or sell every opportunity. But by taking key industry research like the Google Micro-Moment Automotive Study and aligning your strategy with those learnings, you are establishing your business to continue to thrive in this digital age.

Are you using Google’s Micro-Moment Automotive Study to help guide your digital strategy? Comment below to let us know.

 

Patrick Wyld is an enterprise performance manager at Dealer.com