Best Practices

Within the past year, Maryland has been hit by an earthquake and a hurricane (in the same week!), as well as a huge snowstorm, all fairly uncommon occurrences in our state.  While DealerOn, both the office and our employees, were lucky enough to dodge any real damage, it definitely made us all think about how prepared we are for these kinds of emergencies.

DealerOn had enough warning before Hurricane Irene (and dodged damage from the earthquake) to ensure our account managers were set up to work remotely if necessary.  That way we knew that all of our customers’ dealership websites wouldn’t be affected, and we could continue to provide the exceptional customer service on which we pride ourselves.  And while we were lucky to avoid damage, many in our area were not, and are still without power.

After a natural disaster, your first priority will obviously be to ensure your friends, family, and co-workers are safe.  But after that?  Here are some things to think about to keep your dealership up and running:

Who is expected to report to work?  What if they can’t get there?  What are your leave policies for those without power, damaged homes, etc?

How will you let your employees know if you are open for business?  Does a phone tree exist?  Will you have every employee call you to report their status?

What about dealership customers that have appointments set?  Is your service manager responsible for contacting his/her customers, and a sales manager responsible for contacting theirs?

Taking the time to think about, plan, and inform your dealership staff about these things could reduce a huge headache (as well as save money) after a natural disaster.  As we recently learned ourselves, no natural disaster scenario (or two) is too far-fetched.

How prepared for such an emergency is your dealership?  For those affected by Irene, what steps did your dealership take to get ready?

Some of DealerOn’s car dealer website customers are incorporating QR codes on their sites, though it remains a technology that’s still maturing.  While others in the industry have debated the benefits of using QR codes as a part of your dealership’s marketing strategy, I wanted to share some tips for running a QR Code campaign if your dealership is going to test this technology.

Before you start any marketing campaign, including one using QR codes, it is essential that your dealership lays out your goals.  What are the business or marketing objectives you hope to accomplish with the QR code campaign?  For example, are you looking to increase your email list or increase traffic on your mobile website?  If you don’t determine what you’re hoping to accomplish, you won’t be able to tell whether or not the campaign is successful.

Make sure you test your QR code extensively.  If someone tries to use your code and it doesn’t work, it’s similar to someone trying to click a broken link on your website.  That user isn’t likely to seek out that information elsewhere on your site…they will just move on to the next dealership.  Make sure your codes are big enough, and have enough “clean” space around them.  Test them where they will appear (on a window sticker, for example) to help ensure they can be read in the environment that your customers will be scanning them.

Link the QR codes to a mobile landing page.  I’ve written about the importance of having mobile dealership websites before, but when you know people have to use their mobile phones to scan QR codes, it doesn’t make any sense to send them to a traditional website page.  These are just some basic best practices for QR codes.  Have you used any other standard processes that you’d recommend for QR Code Marketing campaigns?

Yesterday, our very own Amir Rezvani, VP of Performance at DealerOn, had the opportunity to lead a webinar with ResponseLogix.  For those that couldn’t make the webinar, I wanted to share some of the highlights from his presentation and provide a link to the slides and audio as well.

Amir provided a quick overview of how a dealer can immediately generate more leads, more appointments, and sell more cars without increasing the size of the internet team or increasing their marketing spend.  He also provided his thoughts on what areas of your online marketing to focus on first to generate the highest return on your time and resources.

First, the design of a dealership’s website.  The homepage should be clean and relevant.  Since most people read left to right, top to bottom, make sure you have an inventory search box in the top left corner.  Your specials should obvious and readily accessible on your homepage as many shoppers are looking for this information.

Dealers should also consider the length of their contact forms.  If it’s not information that your dealership needs to initiate a conversation with that customer, is it necessary?  Also, having incentives on your site has been shown to greatly increase conversion rates, so that is another option.

Amir then focused on how a dealer can get more organic search traffic to their conversion rate-optimized website.  He discussed some free website and SEO tools (due to time, he only got to some of these during the actual presentation) that a dealer can use to diagnose how well their website is performing:

1. Websitegrader.com
2. Rank Check Plug-in (https://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/)
3. DealerRankChecker.com

He also provided some tactics that a dealer can use to improve their SEO based on the keywords when they have opportunity to do so.

Amir really put on a great presentation (I know, I’m probably biased), and had a great time interacting with everyone who attended.  If you weren’t able to participate live, I hope you take some time to watch or listen to the video here.  In October Amir will be speaking at Digital Dealer in Las Vegas with Jeff Kershner on how you can Double your Internet Department’s Profit in 2012, so please add that to your schedule while there.

Thank you again to ResponseLogix and everyone who was able to join Amir on the webinar.

Last week I wrote a post about Google Local Portal in Portland.  If you’ve already read it, you might have seen mention of Google’s new service for businesses: Google Offers.  Google Offers appears to be similar to Groupon and other discount offering services — it allows you, as a small business owner, to get your business “in front of thousands of customers in your area looking for amazing deals on the best places to eat, shop and play.”

Google hasn’t given too much detail, but they have setup a group of “Google Offers specialists” to call or email.  They will “ask all the right questions about your business to help create an attractive offer that is best for you”.  Then, as with similar services, an offer will be emailed to subscribers in your area.

It’s unclear whether or not these Offers will be integrated into regular Google Local search or their integrated search results pages.  I can’t imagine that these Offer icons won’t begin to show on maps and next to Places search results in the near future, but I can’t find an example of that anywhere.  Feel free to add a link in comments if you are able to.

Here are the cities that have Offers, and those that are coming soon:

Also, Google has produced videos aimed both at businesses and consumers.  Links below.

Google Offers for Businesses
Google Offers for Consumers

Want to sign up?  Click this link to have Google contact you to participate in Google Offers BETA.

There has been some discussion on whether or not using these deal sites can be a successful endeavor for auto dealerships.  To me, unless they integrate fully with Google search results, Google Offers is just another Groupon.  Do you think Google Offers will be any different from Groupon and others?

It can be easy for ISM’s to forget that not everyone has the fastest Internet connections or the biggest monitors when looking at their auto dealer website. In order to maximize the power of your dealership website’s calls to action, inventory links, and specials, try using the Google Browser Size tool.

This webtool allows you to enter the URL of any website. Once the site loads, Google places an overlay showing the percentage of Google visitors that have their browser window set to a size that would allow them to see your site. For example, here is the DealerOn homepage:

In this screen shot, you can see the areas on our homepage that Google visitors can see without having to scroll. For example, the area in the orange section and over to the left can be viewed by approximately half of Google’s website visitors.

It’s important to have your calls to action, lead forms, inventory links, and other high-traffic links showing to as many website visitors as possible. You can use this Google tool to ensure as many people as possible are able to convert to a lead without having to scroll on your site.

While this information shouldn’t be treated as scientific, it’s a good tool to help check how viewable your auto dealer website is by the average Internet user. Keep this in mind when doing any website design work.