Social media and social networking are great ways for companies and individuals to build a brand and develop a following.  The thing that is often overlooked is it is an engagement tool not a way just to get the word out.  Sure you can advertise using social media, companies and marketers do it everyday.  The question that I would have to ask myself before subjecting my twitter followers, who have made a conscience decision to follow me, to me sending links to promote a brand is “How does that apply to me?” or “Do I really find value in this?” and I would have to answer that question first before recommending content, not just for a little bit of payola.

Nowhere did I see Land Rover participating in the #lrny tag party.  They missed a golden opportunity to connect with others and build lasting relationship for their efforts.  The sad truth is it is doubtful that many if any of the people tweeting about the campaign went to the show or for that fact even been inside of a Land Rover.  It completely detracts from the credibility of the campaign.  Now if it were about an Infiniti G37, a car in the reach of many, it would of possibly been better received.

]]> http://netmarketing101.info/automotive-digital-marketing/lrny-was-it-all-that/feed http://netmarketing101.info/automotive-digital-marketing/lrny-was-it-all-that http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Netmarketing101info/~3/l3ubFt-cPSk/automotive-seo-malpractice-from-pcg http://netmarketing101.info/automotive-digital-marketing/automotive-seo-malpractice-from-pcg#comments Mon, 06 Apr 2009 05:33:52 +0000 Paul http://netmarketing101.info/?p=196 Read more »

The most basic marketing principals are being violated in this type search engine optimization. Consumers searching for a dealer by name do not want to see how some company worked to capture their click. Some consumers may go as far researching the company that the dealership has hired. Once they realize that they are the same people associated with Millennium Teleservices (more here) and Civic Development Group (more here) they may decide to look for another NJ Infiniti dealer.

When you are marketing for a client the last thing you want to do is steal traffic from them especailly for basic name searches.  When building links to a clients site it should be from an automotive centered website or directory style listing not your marketing site and if you do use their name in your marketing it should be done in such a way as to not optimize for the clients name just your services.

We are currently building up a blog farm with evergreen content to accentuate other link building activity for our clients.  Most of the content is about product updates and news from the manufacturers repurposed to show natural linking to the clients sites from the proper vertical.

The dealer had created for them several google maps for one location which is a violation of Google Map’s Terms of Service.  What is even worse the only verified listing has its url pointing to  a dealer micro site for New Jersey Infiniti G37.

What will this do for the dealer in the form of lost traffic once Google’s spam team takes the duplicate listings out?  Who knows but  I sure hope the only car they sell is the Infiniti G37 in New Jersey if not they just wasted a bunch of money on shoddy SEO work.

If Pasch Consulting Group did not create these spam maps they still have not properly serviced their client.  A true automotive seo firm would have already had the duplicate listings removed and the verified listing pointing to the company’s main website and would not place  SEO coupons on the clients listings.  < Which have now been removed.

This type of deception to consumers seems to be acceptable to Mr Pasch, a company he has been a partner in, Civic Development Group (CDG), has been ordered to pay millions in fines to States and the Federal Trade Commission.  One of the biggest scams that was abruptly halted after Mayor Giuliani threatened to jail telemarketers for playing playing the 9-11-01 card.

CDG nearly had conflicts with charity regulators after last year’s terrorist attacks. On the morning of Sept. 14, 2001, CDG readied a special script for the FOP that spoke of an “emergency relief fund” set up to “assist the families of the police officers who gave their lives in the World Trade Center disaster.”  - LA Times

After this happened Pasch tried to make good to the Mayor by contributing the max to his campaign fund.  Harpers December 2007  Article on Brian Pasch

Maybe telemarketers should be hired to notify his clients of the jeaporady he is placing their seo spend in and of his past business practices?

The roll out will be slow because the network needs to be in place first to help support this many properties where as the small network I have now really is used specifically for clients.  An example of these network sites will be like Domestic Auto Report.

One of the biggest mistakes I have seen is how automotive SEOs market themselves. As so elegantly stated by Chip at www.dealerrater.com

“The best non-dealer SEO’s that I know of, don’t even have websites; referrals and results drive their business.” at Dealerrefresh.com

You do not use client success stories as part of your marketing pitch in an open setting especially if it identifies the keywords you are targeting for them. This does two things:

• Competing with the client for the click - Potentially the SEO’s marketing material can compete directly with the clients and siphon traffic from them. This could also potentially alienate the average consumer and cause them to look for a different company to spend their money with. Customers hate marketing for the most part and telling them how you captured their click because of an aggressive online marketing campaign is just bad form.
• Inviting Competition -  This can happen in many forms from other SEOs and/or affiliate marketers.  An aggressive SEO could create multiple affiliate properties around the keywords you flaunt and steal your clients traffic and increase their cost.  Because most automotive search terms are localized it is not a formidable task.  This will force the automotive seo practictioner to lose their effectivness in that market area and either seek out the other site owner for links or the client does that and has to spend even more money or change providers.

Online networking is a give and take proposition and that is why the car business is having such a hard time with it. It puts people out of the dog eat dog environment and into a collaborative mode, it breaks status quo.

I have had recent experiences with some of the larger vendors that are sickening, because I dispelled a myth they preach, then after they offered to educate me have failed to hold up their end of the bargain. But then again they are still drinking their dealer.com search engine marketing cool aid!!

I was amazed when I contacted a website provider for support for a dealer client to only find out that support would take three days to add a form to a custom page, the dealer spends over $100K per year and is tied to a contract.  This was after going to top level contacts inside the company.  Another consultant experienced a website provider claiming SEO work as their own.  (See my automotive website predictions for 2009 to get the details)

In the coming year we will see some established accepted practices by automotive vendors fade from existence as dealers become more educated and learn to hold automotive vendors accountable by demanding value for their money with service levels commensurate with cost. A partner will over deliver a provider gives you widgets to work with.  Quit overpaying for widgets disguised as a partnership and a long term high priced contract should deliver more than excuses with mediocre service and results.

Paul Rushing

912-266-1629

www.ismintraining.com “Believer in all things possible”

Contact Me: LinkedinFacebookTwitter

In the automotive online marketing niche there are many products offered and belief systems in place that are limiting dealers in finding the most effective way to develop an online presence and get maximum return on investment for their online marketing initiatives.  It may be because a dealer is willing to overspend to achieve some results they do not have to manage or do not realize there are more effective ways to get in market car buyers to find them online.

Cars have become commodities today.  Car buyers know that they can find out anything they want to know about a vehicle they are interested in online and are not as brand loyal as they once were.  While at the same time dealer are having to compete not only with each other online they are having to compete with manufacturers, lead providers, regional promotions and affiliate marketers.

To top this off they have to deal with vendors competing with each other for the ever shrinking auto dealer marketing spends and this places dealer in the awkward position of making decisions on products and services they do not understand, for the most part.

In sales presentations for vendor technologies and degradation of other forms of marketing without substance or proof seems to be the way the niche works.  It is sales processes like this that further the confusion for car dealers.

With all of the different forms of promotions available online dealers need to look for ways the most cost effective ways to get in front of potential buyers at all levels and cut through the BS being dished up in the niche.

Dealer search marketing and search engine optimization are just the basics for car dealer online marketing and just scratch the surface and place the dealers marketing initiatives in jeopardy if not executed properly.  They both have their place and can compliment each other if executed intelligently, however seo trumps search engine marketing in cost and effectiveness.

Contrary to statements made by vendors in the dealer online marketing arena SEO is not free.  It cost either time and knowledge, which most dealers do not possess, or money to have someone execute it properly.  On the other hand search engine marketing via pay per click can and does provide value if you understand the demographic of the “heavy clickers” and create proper assets to convert them to leads.

Here is some excerpt from a study done by Starcom USA

The study illustrates that heavy clickers represent just 6% of the online population yet account for 50% of all display ad clicks. While many online media companies use click-through rate as an ad negotiation currency, the study shows that heavy clickers are not representative of the general public. In fact, heavy clickers skew towards Internet users between the ages of 25-44 and households with an income under $40,000. Heavy clickers behave very differently online than the typical Internet user, and while they spend four times more time online than non-clickers, their spending does not proportionately reflect this very heavy Internet usage.  Heavy clickers are also relatively more likely to visit auctions, gambling, and career services sites – a markedly different surfing pattern than non-clickers.

See it is studies like this that are not presented to dealers before they are sold products that are designed to be a dominator in search engine marketing.  It would show that the quality of leads delivered via pay per click will typically be lower income, in the prime age demographic and basically looking for something for nothing or a job.  However all is not lost for an effective search engine marketing campaign for car deaelrs if pay per click is looked at in the correct light.

no correlation between display ad clicks and brand metrics, and show no connection between measured attitude towards a brand and the number of times an ad for that brand was clicked. The research presentation suggests that when digital campaigns have a branding objective, optimizing for high click rates does not necessarily improve campaign performance.

Which says that ppc may be effective for online branding and optimizing for high click through rates may not be the most effective use of this medium unless you are presenting a very low price and the ability to help get this lower demographic in a car.

This is a very profitable demo in the auto industry if the dealer has outlets for secondary financing and ignoring the majority of buyers, while at the same tme not delivering the same volume of traffic an intelligent search engine optimization campaign can deliver.

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Personally I have contacted BZ Results customer support to add a form capture to a page built on their platform and was told under no certian circumstances that it could not be done in less than 72 hours and there was no one that could tell me how to get their native form code in less than the same time frame.  This was for a dealer group that spends over $100,000 per year with BZ Results.  I even leveraged my network with top level contacts to no avail, my contact tried but I kept winding up on the wrong path.

In the first example if Cobalt would of been providing value for the fees they were changing the dealer for their search engine optimization services they would not of had to respond in a reactionary way to try and cover their tracks.  In my interactions with BZ Results if they would of been my website provider they would of been fired on the spot just as an employee that I pay $100,000 a year would of been when I was told it would take three days to fulfill a simple request.

Dealers have been force fed this for years now and with all of the education being delivered to them they are starting to see through it.  Some things you can do to to insure you receive value for your car dealer website spend or to use during your research for a web site provider:

• Is your traffic increasing - While dealership website traffic is also affected by many variables but your search engine traffic should be increasing relative to market conditions if it is properly optimized.
• How many other same franchise dealers in your market area do they represent?  If they represent even one how can they represent you without a conflict of interest?  You need to ask them if they will give you an exclusive in your marketing area before buying from them.
• Other than design what are the cost? Design is cheap and CMS licensing should be as well.  That is all you are really paying for.  Hosting costs are more of a nuisance than an expense.
• How many other on same server? - With dedicated server cost available for less than $600 a year you should be on your own server with your own IP address not a server crammed full of other dealer’s websites.

I predict over the next year the current dealer website offerings will see a drastic overhaul.  Here are some changes that I feel like will take place because car dealers will demand it and other market influences will dictate:

• Long multi-year contracts will disappear - Dealers will look for design services on various CMS platforms and push their cost down.  With a full fledged highly custom design and content running in <$3000 range and hosting as described above.
• Dealers will need to leverage multiple online properties to win on the search engine optimization front with the current changes being made in search engine algorithms.  Dealer micro sites and mini sites will have more value if implemented properly.
• Mass deindexing of some providers platforms by Google. - Dealer.com and Vinsolutions platforms spam the search engines with individual inventory listings without taking the steps to remove these listings from the search engine results pages.  This goes against Google’s webmaster guidelines.  Both platforms have a very distinguishable footprint which means they will be easy for Google’s search engineers to detect and ban.  I know that one of these providers are in the que for a manual review by Google based on another post I did about Indexed Car Dealer Inventory.
• Small website providers will flourish and the big providers will lose market share because they can not adapt fast enough to meet the ever changing algorithm changes marketing paradigms.
• Automotive websites will become publishing platforms versus static content with just a few customizable pages.

Please feel free to add your coments and predictions -

These wordpress based site will be mini sites that can be tailored to what ever the marketing push the dealer is running or around specific models.  With the current changes in process with Google’s Universal Search the static aberrations created by others micros site vendors will no longer be able to have the search engine relevance they once enjoyed.  It will take regularly updated content to win or they will have to rely on dealer search engine marketing or automotive pay per click for traffic.

The automotive online marketing space is about to be turned on it’s head.  Will these sites help dealers reach more people via the search engine without spending a to of money?  I seem to think they will.