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Knowledge, news, and more about Automotive SEO, SEM, and dealership websites
In Search Engine Marketing (PPC)

Simple Tips for PPC Conversion Optimization

If your dealership is running pay per click campaigns as a part of your online marketing mix, one of your main goals is probably to maximize the number of sales or service leads for the dealership.  The potential complexity of running numerous, simultaneous PPC campaigns can be overwhelming, even if you have an expert managing your efforts.
Whether or not your dealership is running your own PPC campaigns, it’s important to continuously optimize and improve them.  However, testing (whether it’s a simple A/B split test or a complex multi-variate scenario) can be even more overwhelming. Here are some fairly simple tips to dramatically increase your PPC conversion rates.


Match Landing Page Content Headings to Ad Copy: Make it clear to customers who click through on your ads that they have landed on the right page by matching your landing page headings to your ad copy.  Mirror the message and goals of your ads on the landing page to help drive up conversion rates.


Use Dynamic Phone Number Call-Tracking:  Google will provide you with call tracking within all of your ads (make sure you include that data in making your optimization decisions), but you also want to track the calls that come through from visitors AFTER they click through to your site.  Make sure that you have Dynamic Phone Number Replacement Call tracking; this replaces the phone numbers on your site with a unique tracking phone number each time someone clicks through on your ad, so you can track the call back to the ad (including campaign, keyword, creative, etc).  You will typically receive 4 calls or more for every lead form submission from an AdWords campaign, so you are missing the forest for the trees if you are only optimizing your ads based on lead form submissions.


Run Tests Long Enough:  When testing any of these factors (preferably in A/B format), make sure you don’t cut the test short. For example, if you declare a winner before the length of your typical sales cycle, you can’t accurately determine which test is more successful. You have to make it through a sales cycle to truly test the effectiveness of your tests. Use the “winner” to continue to test what works best for your dealership.


One User Intent Per Ad:  Make sure you (or your PPC provider) are creating ads for each segment of consumer you’re trying to reach. PPC is not a one size fits all endeavor. And yes, this leads us directly into the landing page conversation…


Effective Landing Pages: This is huge for PPC. Having effective and relevant landing pages will not only make your ad campaigns convert at a higher rate, but can also decrease your costs (Google rewards ads with a high quality score) – start with these Landing Page Best Practices to get started:

  • Start With A Goal: What do you want people to do once they click on your PPC ad? Answer that question and build your landing page to help visitors accomplish that goal. Anything that doesn’t help visitors reach the goal you started with may not be necessary.
  • Use One CTA (Call to Action): Try not to confuse visitors with multiple CTAs. Your ad copy should explain what visitors are looking for when they reach your landing page, so make that the CTA on the page a logical next step for someone clicking through on the ad.

Combining all of these best practices can increase the overall conversion rates of your PPC campaigns, save your dealership money, and help sell more cars.

acacia.grant@dealeron.com'
In Search Engine Marketing (PPC),

The Difference a Combination Can Make

In the seven years I’ve been in the automotive industry, I’ve noticed that much of the thinking tends to be segmented – Internet Dept vs. Showroom, New vs. Used, Sales vs. Service. A lot of times, this way of thinking rolls over to the advertising and marketing your dealership does, including that of your vendors – Paid vs. Organic, Digital vs. Traditional, Print Vs Online.

 

Many industries suffer from this either/or mentality, but the more you can think in terms of “and” (especially in your marketing), the more successful your dealership can be. A recent Marin Software study explored the differences in online marketing campaigns that separated their search and social advertising and those that combined those marketing efforts.

 

Google’s “The Customer Journey to Online Purchase” found that social interactions in the path to conversion “assist” other digital channel conversions twice for each time a click on a social ad directly contributes to a conversion.  This stat alone gives cause to manage digital marketing campaigns together, not in a vacuum.

 

In fact, in Google’s “Digital Drives Auto Shopping” study in November 2013, they found that the average consumer has 24 research touchpoints (including Digital and offline media) in their purchase process.   The increasingly fragmented (and often lengthy) road to sale means that when you’re not tracking and managing social and search ads together, you could be missing opportunity and your true ROI.

 

The Marin study found two key takeaways:

  • Customers Who Click on Search AND Social Ads are More Likely to Buy
  • Customer Who Click on Your Search AND Social Ads Spend More

In fact, those that clicked on both search and social ads had a click-through rate 4X higher than those that only clicked on social ads and approximately twice the . More and more car shoppers are using search and social to find your dealership and to help choose their next vehicle.  Encouraging shoppers to interact with your ads across multiple platforms means better conversion rates and ROI for your dealership. Try parroting your social ads with search ads and vice versa; present the same branding message across both platforms to increase click through rate. Retargeting is a great example of this type of combined, cross-channel marketing.

 

Change your marketing focus from the medium you’re using to advertise, and combine mediums to focus on the consumer. How can you best reach your potential customers using all of your advertising options?

 

Interested in learning more? Check out the white paper from Marin Software, The Multiplier Effect of Integrating Search & Social Advertising, and talk to your digital marketing vendors.  Make sure that your Google Analytics accounts are set up to track multi-channel conversions.  Find out what they are doing to help your dealership reach your target audience, not just what platforms they’re running your ads on.

acacia.grant@dealeron.com'
In Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Help Stop Stolen Content From Outranking Your Dealership Website

It’s a pretty common practice for people to Google their own name. Sometimes out of curiosity, but sometimes to help ensure your name (or your dealership’s name) isn’t showing up on webpages you don’t want it to. You Google your dealership name to help ensure it appears where you want it to (and doesn’t where you don’t), but do you Google your dealership website’s original content?

Google is known for punishing websites that have duplicate content on their site, meaning the exact content appears on other websites. But in a recent Matt Cutts video, Google’s head of search spam announced that Google’s position has shifted and the search engine company is now making strides to group websites that have the same content, and showing the best of that group in search results. This helps them not punish sites that are validly quoting or referencing content, while still maintaining a cleaned up search results page.  That is why it’s so important to know which websites are using content that you created, especially if your dealership website is not the one of the sites chosen for display.

So how does Google know which website had the content first, which sites are using it after the fact, and whether or not the content is being used properly? No one truly knows how the Google search algorithm is written, but Google has now given us a way to let them know when you find your original content on another website without your dealership’s permission.

Go to the Google Scraper Report, enter the URL of the page on your dealer website which displays the content, the exact URL of the offending site (where your content is being used), and the search result URL that shows your website being outranked by duplicate content.  You can find these offending pages by taking portions of the content you or your advertising agency has created for your dealership website and search for it on Google using quotation marks around the phrase or sentence. The search results pages that show should display all sites that have that content on them. Are any of them outranking your dealership website? Use the Google Scraper Report to let the search engine giant know.

This is your best way of alerting Google to duplicate, SPAM filled websites that are using your original content to outrank your dealership website in the search results. It will also help Google improve their search results listings by helping to ensure the original content gets ranked above scraper sites.

The scraper tool doesn’t promise any resolution, but it’s a start. Check to make sure the content your dealership creates isn’t being used to help someone rank above you.

acacia.grant@dealeron.com'
In Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Don’t Neglect This Basic SEO Factor

There are thousands of things to manage in each and every dealership, including your dealer website.  So much attention is devoted to leads, conversion rate, vehicle detail pages, etc., that sometimes it’s easy to forget one of the most basic SEO factors for your website – the speed at which it loads.

According to KISSmetrics, 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less, and 40% of people will leave a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. When you factor in the immediacy of information most Americans are used to using their smart phones and other mobile devices, are you serving your dealership’s website to potential buyers fast enough?

Why a Fast-Loading Dealership Website is Important:

Google – Google made it clear years ago that they use site speed as a ranking factor – it appears that their algorithm is designed to penalize websites that are slow to load. This gives your fast loading site a leg up on your competition in search engine results.

Visitors – A quick loading website can help reduce bounce rates and increase conversion rates. The faster your visitors are able to access the content they are looking for, the less likely they are to go to another dealership website. You’ve probably designed your dealership’s website to help visitors find the vehicle they’re interested in as quickly as possible, so make sure you aren’t slowing them up with a slow load time.

 

How to Tell:

There are a number of free tools online that will test how long it takes your website to load, and most offer suggestions to increase the speed. Just enter the URL you’d like to test. I’ve listed a few below, but you can search online for “site speed test” to find more.

Page Speed Insights (from Google)

Pingdom

Another, simple way to test how quickly your car dealership website is loading is to do it yourself! Use different devices (for mobile, test on both wi-fi and the mobile network) to time how quickly your website loads.  Remember that Google factors in page speed for each type of device (desktop, tablet and phone), so make sure you test the top pages on your site for each device type.

 

What You Can Do:

Minimize the types of files that auto-load when your site is launched – things like videos, music, or animations can slow down the initial load time. When possible, simplify the design of your website. Talk to your website provider about how their websites are structured and coded, and what they can do to help you achieve your site speed goals.

In Best Practices

The High Cost of Poor Process

The lifetime value of a car dealership customer is between $250,000 and several million dollars.  Stay with me…

Far too many dealers are living in a bubble, knowing a lot, but doing a little.  When dealers fail to execute, the lost dollars add up quickly.  I speak with Dealer Principals, General Managers and various internet personnel on a regular basis that believe their processes are solid, only to find out the truth reveals the opposite.  Let me share with you a real world example where a lack of communication process cost a dealership a potential lifetime customer.

 

Toyota Dealership in Arizona

A kind, loving woman (my mom) is ready for a new car and her son (me) happens to be visiting from out of town.  She asks her son to help her through the process and her amazing (and devilishly handsome) son agrees without question.  The woman talks about a personal experience she had recently when she rented a Toyota Camry.  Since that time she has noticed more Camry’s on the road and she has browsed the internet for Toyota Camry information.  Hmm… should the rental car company get credit as the actual lead source?

Still with me?  Good, I’ll fast forward a bit.  My mom’s experience included impressions delivered by television advertising, display ads, PPC and maybe even some good old fashioned SEO, none of which were free for the dealership.  They paid for my mom’s attention and the opportunity to sell her a car.  They earned it because I went with her to pick out and purchase her new Toyota Camry.  The process was pretty smooth.  Not the best I’ve seen, but very good including how the sales person worked appropriately to encourage a woman in her sixties to write a positive review for the dealership post-purchase.  Before you give this dealership five stars, let me tell you how the movie ended.

 

Count the Cost

On the hood of the Camry my mom picked out was a small blemish that required a visit to the body shop.  The sales person made my mom very comfortable about how they this minor repair would be handled.  Unfortunately, reality proved him to be very wrong.  Not only did the minor repair take much longer than was promised, the dealership put 60 miles on my mom’s new Camry over a two day period, even though she was supposed have her car back the same day.  When my sweet, non-confrontational mother asked the service guy about the 60 miles, he delivered a condescending explanation of how they had to send her car out to someone else to have it fixed.  He was clearly irritated my mom would even dare to question him about the additional miles driven in her new car.  So, it wasn’t a service they performed at the dealership.  Fair enough, but that was never disclosed and people like to know what the hell you’re doing with their car.  So, guess what happened?  She will never go back there for service, will never buy another vehicle from them, and will never tell her friends anything but the truth about her experience.  No one wants that experience.

How much does the average dealer spend advertising/marketing each month?  On average, dealers pay over $600 to advertise each new vehicle they’re trying to sell.  It adds up fast!

Dealers, you spend too much money attracting potential customers to allow your sights to be set on anything but turning each one into a lifetime customer.  Process isn’t exclusive to the internet part of your business, so make sure you have established communication processes in your service and parts departments. If not, they may be sending the lifetime customers you’re earning to your competition.

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