How Imporant Is Bounce Rate In Determining A Websites Performance?
The bounce rate of a dealer’s website seems to be the biggest concern lately. There are a few things you must understand, especially if you hired an SEO Firm to optimize your website. If they did a good job, you will find that your bounce rate increased. On the surface that doesn’t sound very good right? It actually is good, and I’ll tell you why.
Look At Your Dealer Stats:
You may be proud that your bounce rate is at 20%. I don’t want to rain on your parade, but look at your top 10 keywords. I would bet that most of them contain your dealer name right? This searches are looking for you, so you can be assured they will not become a bounce. I’m sorry to inform you, but you cannot really credit that with your internet department. These are people driving by your dealership, or perhaps someone who saw your TV ad and forgot what your domain name was. Now I would hope that you rank first on all of your dealership’s queries, but you really can’t count that as seo. That’s a gimme.
The more organic traffic you get, the higher your bounce rate will be:
Here’s the problem. Yourself or a good SEO company will obviously optimize your website or misrosite for local traffic, using city and state related keywords. It wouldn’t make sense to target the word “Chevrolet Dealership”. Not only would it be costly, but why would you want Alaska traffic going to your website if you’re located in Miami Florida? If it was an easy keyword to rank on, I’d say go for it. That would be a great Google Map Phrase to advertise with the local business center, but to rank on that keyword phrase in searches would cost 10’s of thousands of dollars.
The reason why your bounce rate goes up is simple. The more you optimize your website, the more organic traffic you get by accident. This morning, my Orlando Dealer got a visit from a user that searched for light blue toyota sienna 2009 on Google. There was no mention of the word “Orlando”, or “Florida”. Here is another example:
The odds that this click was from the Florida area is pretty slim, therefore this will be a sure bounce. The more of these impressionsyou get, the higher your bounce rate will be. This unique long-tailed search term was number one on Google out of 3/4 of a million websites.
This was an accidental visit, and the odds of that person being located near Florida is pretty slim. That keyword phrase even shows up in Google’s UK Servers. So the odds of this visitor becoming a bounce is favorable.
How a bounce is calculated?
“A bounce occurs when a web site visitor only views a single page on a website, that is, the visitor leaves a site without visiting any other pages before a specified session-timeout occurs. There is no industry-standard minimum or maximum time by which a visitor must leave in order for a bounce to occur. Rather, this is determined by the session timeout of the analytics tracking software.” – Says Wikipedia
This makes it obvious that you have to be careful which stats program to use. Never trust stats that a vendor gives you. Always use a third party program like Google Analytics. If you use a vendors stats, they can set their bounce rate to be “anyone who enters and stays for more than 2 second will not be a bounce”. I have also found that many stats programs count spiders as visits. That is so wrong! You know how many spiders are out there crawling around? Some shady SEO Companies can write bot codes to crawl your site too, to make it look like human traffic.
This is what Google says about their bounce rate:
“Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors.” —Says Google
Now if you were selling CD’s which could be shipped anywhere, this wouldn’t be applicable to you, but you are selling a high dollar items. Cars that many people just won’t buy without kicking the tires, or seeing it in person. Why would somebody from California buy a car in Miami Florida? Unless it’s Jay Leno, I don’t see it happening.
There are factors in other niches as well:
“While bounce rate is a useful tool for e-commerce sites, it is of more questionable value for sites such as news and information, where many visitors go to scan headlines and conduct research, and can find what they want immediately on the entry page. Indeed, for any kind of informational site, sophisticated users are likely to bookmark a page within the site, which then becomes their personal entry page, check it (e.g., for sports scores, the price of pork bellies etc.), then bounce right off. The page will have done its job, but might still have a bounce rate above 80%, bringing up the average for the whole site. For such sites, metrics such as returning visitors vs. new visitors might be more informative and should be used to understand the overall picture better.” —-Says Wikipedia
Read more about Bounce Rates on Wikipedia here.
Our New Google Adwords Image Ads Will Start Next Week
This is what the image ads will look like
Our new Google Adwords Image Ads will start next week, and you will soon see them all over Florida. Many car dealers opt out of the Google Content Network because of the amount of impressions and clicks. It typically accounts for 60% or more of a dealers PPC Budget.
The content network is more of a branding tool, compared to opting into the search network. This tool will create a better branding presence because people just love photos.
I’m most excited about seeing the cost per click and impression reports. From the existing Google Adwords Content Network, there is an absence of car dealers utilizing the image ads, so we are hoping for a very low cost per click.
Each image ad will pull an image from the actual car listing, and overlay a price. If the article is about a Dodge Ram, the software will find a Dodge Ram in the dealer’s inventory and display the appropriate ad.
I am really excited about this! Once this is done, we will finish our Facebook Ad Application which will basically do the same thing.
How To Create and Manage A Google PPC Campaign For Car Dealers The Right Way
Our Google PPC Campaigns have been performing so well I thought I would make an updated video. This video will show you how it’s done and it will give you a few tips if you want to try it yourself:
Our Google Adwords Tool Expanding To Show Inventory Images On Ads
Since we launched our automated Google Adwords tool, our participating dealers have been on top in their areas for Google searches for their entire new and used car inventory.
Many websites who participate in the Google Content Network display image ads. The fact is, image ads cost less and there aren’t many companies utilizing it, especially car dealers. For this reason, we are launching a new photo image tool for car dealers and Google Adwords.
This tool will generate photo ad campaigns for a car dealer’s entire inventory (new and used). Let’s say MotorTrend writes an article about a 2007 Ford Mustang. Our software will create an image ad that will actually pull an actual image from the dealers website of the vehicle and display it.
This software will create image ads with your actual inventory photograph and display it through the Google Content Network. NOTE: This isn't one of our ads, it's just an example where you ads will show.
We also plan on making this work for Facebook ads as well. The tool is almost done, and it should be up and running in about 2 weeks.
Park Automall in Tampa Bay Florida will be the first dealer using our new tool. They have been using our regular Automated Google Adwords Tool for about 4 months now, and they know the value of it. For this reason, we are creating another website for them that will compete with our existing site, and it will be using the image ads with the regular text ads.
If you don’t know about our current Google Adwords Tool, you should look into it. Google gets 80% of the internet searches. It is the first place every dealer should try and be.
The reason is simple:
Most people search for “Ford Mustang”, “Used Ford Mustang” and “Preowned Mustang” plus a few other search phrases. A car dealer can hire the best SEO Company in the world and try, but you will not rank on keywords like this…ever.
Don’t you think it makes sense to show up on Google every time a user searches for your new and used car inventory?
Think about it. You’re selling cars right? There are thousands of people searching for every make and model you have on a daily basis.
Check Out These Stats:
- Their ads showed up 5,004,061 different times in the past 30 days. Over 5 million impressions!
- Just the phrase “Ford Mustang” was searched 6,617 times. 252 people searched for “Ford Mustang For Sale”. The total count for all search strings related to a Ford Mustang was 629,464. If you’re not on that page you are missing the boat.
- Park Automall has over 200 vehicles in stock, so check out some of the other phrases they owned:
- Suzuki Forenza: 127,111 impressions from all Suzuki Forenza Related Search Strings
- Jeep Wrangler: 292,555 impressions from all Jeep Wrangler Related Search Strings
- Ford F-150: 323,395 impressions from all Ford F-150 Related Search Strings
I could go on and one, but I won’t. It sounds like common sense doesn’t it? The ownership at Park Automall is aggressively involved in all of their advertising. He’s a visionary, and he does things no other dealer does. That is why they lead Tampa Bay in car sales.
His secret weapon is the Google Adwords Campaign. He uses AutoTrader and Cars.com, but only the basic packages available. The Internet Director over their wants to can them both, but the owner believes that every dealer should be listed on their.
Be sure to subscribe to our updates (up a little to the right) so you can see out finished product is dome for our new image ads.
You can also learn more about fishing where the fish by watching this video:
When You Advertise With Google PPC, Should You Opt In To The Content Network?
Everybody has a different opinion about the Google Content Network. When you pay for clicks using Google Pay Per Click, you can choose to have your ads displayed in Google Search and/or the content network.
The content network is a collection of news sources that display Google Ads, and every time the ad gets clicked the advertiser gets a piece of the action.
Personally, I feel the content network is a great way of branding. One of our dealers in Tampa Florida received an astounding 4,448,514 impressions. Out of that number, all but 152,562 came from the content network (the rest came from actual searches).
When I dug a bit deeper to see what kind of websites are in the content network, I could clearly see where each visitor was coming from. My most important metric is pages looked at per viewer from each source.
In order, here are the best performing referring websites:
youtube.com
automotive.com
allpar.com
internetautoguide.com
motortrend.com
automobilemag.com
automotix.net
autobuyguide.com
ehow.com
about.com
cars.oodle.com
ford-trucks.com
autos.aol.com
autos.kosmix.com
automotiveforums.com
nytimes.com
squidoo.com
trucktrend.com
amazon.com
epinions.com
autoguide.com
Google does not charge you for impressions, that is the great part. I compiled all of the data for all of the car dealers that use our inventory adwords tool. I did some simple math, considering how many clicks they had.
Tips To Make Your Own Campaign More Successful
If you want to try create your own campaign, follow these simple tips:
- For each ad group you make, be sure to have the keywords in your description.
- For each ad unit, be sure you are linking either directly to the vehicle page or to the vehicle category page. If you choose to send them to just your homepage every time you will have a very poor quality score, which could double your cost per click.
- Be sure each landing page is optimized. This highly affects your quality score.
- Be sure to include keyword or keyword phrase in url Google asks you for. When you set up each adgroup, Google will ask your for the actual url, and what the url will display. In this field, enter your keywords like yourdealer.com/Toyota-Camry.
You want to make your life easier? We will give your actual inventory (new and/or used) 1,000 impressions in both networks for only $2.00. That’s right, only 2 bucks. All of your inventory will show up on Google Searches and networks in your area. These impressions will only come from vehicle related searches and articles, they are simply the best you can get.
Here are the rules:
- You must use our landing pages (we get better quality scores)
- You must send us your inventory feed
- All leads will instantly go to either an email address or your lead management tool
- Minimum amount of impressions desired must be at least 500,000 (This will cost $1,000.00)
- You should provide us with a trackable 800 line for tracking purposes
- You select your radius (25 miles, 50, 75 or an entire state)
Questions? Send an email to mike@showroomlogic.com
AutoTraders Trade In Market Place A Great Way To Get Leads And Quality Cars
One of the dealers I service signed up for Autotraders Guaranteed Trade-In Marketplace last month. They wanted my help in promoting in for the Orlando Florida area.
I currently run 2 blogs for them, plus a microsite. Each blog post I do performs well in the search engines, plus each post is sent out as Facebook and Twitter Updates.
I was a bit skeptical at first, because I felt it was AutoTrader’s way of getting backlinks from many dealers to further juice up their website. Lately, Autotrader has been getting their butts kicked in the serps from companies like Cars.com and LemonFree.com.
Before I did anything I checked out where the affiliate link would go. I was relieved to discover that it went to a page with no external links or internal links pointing to AutoTrader.com. On the second page of the process there were some links, but they were using Java Script so I wasn’t worried about giving them any link love.
If they were doing this to get backlinks, I would of included the “nofollow” tag. For now, everything seems legit…but they can always change it later on.
After adding it to their car blog and a few other places, I noticed some decent traffic from the keywords I selected. Last week when I was talking with the internet sales director, I expressed my concern about “due credit”.
If I am going to flow traffic to this program, I hope AutoTrader isn’t going to get all of the credit. I sincerely hope that AutoTrader monitors where these leads actually come from, and offers the data to each dealer.
So far, it seems like a great program. They’ve received some quality leads and purchased some decent vehicles from the public. I think it’s a great idea, for two reasons:
- Autotrader will guarantee the amount to the dealers if there is a miscalculation.
- The prospect doesn’t have to trade in the vehicle, they can just sell it outright if they wish.
I would definitely recommend this program. At a cost of a bit more than a G a month, I see big potential in this. I would love to see some comments or concerns from others about this program.
How To Add Vehicle Inventory To Facebook Fan Page Or Personal Page
This is an example of what your Facebook Fan Page will look like if you follow these directions (Click to see it live)
Facebook is currently the second largest website in the world. Next to Google, it can be a very powerful source. The great thing about Facebook is it’s price, which is free.
This post is designed to help internet sales managers beef up their fan and inventory pages. Before I proceed, I want to share the numbers that Facebook shares on their press page.
- Facebook has more than 400 million active users
- Half of them log on to Facebook EVERY DAY
- More than 35 million people update their Facebook Pages every day
- A total of 60 million updates occur every day on Facebook
- There are over 3 billion photos uploaded to Facebook every month
- More than 5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week
- Only 1.5 million local businesses have active Pages on Facebook
- More than 20 million people become fans of Pages each day
- Average Facebook user has 130 friends
- Average user sends 8 friend requests per month
- Average user spends more than 55 minutes per day on Facebook WOW!
- Average user writes 25 comments on Facebook content each month
- Average user becomes a fan of 4 Pages each month
- There are more than 100 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
- People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
I really hope you’re getting the big picture by now. Facebook is a great way of networking, and if everyone at your car dealership gets involved you could see a spike in sales.
Think about this. Besides your internet department, you have numerous amounts of sales people. Chances are, many of them have personal Facebook pages. As the stats above mentioned, the average Facebook user has 130 friends. If your dealership has a team of 10 salespeople and they all get involved, this will result in your inventory being displayed to 1,300 different people every week. The great thing is these aren’t just “people”, they are friends of your sales staff.
There are many conflicting ideas from social media sales consultants as how a dealer should utilize Facebook. Many feel they should simply have a tab on their Facebook Fan Page to display a link to their inventory.
I strongly disagree with this. The problem is simple. When you build a Fan Page the hardest thing is to obtain fans. Let’s say you work hard and get yourself 300 fans. How do you plan on getting them to come back to look at your inventory? You are forced to send them all emails when you have something cool to share. But, how often is that? Weekly, monthly?
This is why I am a big fan of inventory status updates. Most car dealers update their inventory on a weekly basis. If you automated your new inventory with your status updates, your inventory will be in the face of those 1,300 people plus all of your Facebook Fans every single week.
Whichever Facebook solution you like best, I will show you how to do it. I would recommend using both methods.
Facebook Directions:
1) Before we even start with your inventory, let’s beef up your page a bit. Facebook allows your image to be 200 pixels wide by 494 pixels tall. If you have access to Photoshop or Gimp, you can easily do this yourself. Gimp is a free open source graphics editor, and you can download it here.
Note how Park Automall took advantage of this taller image: Park Automall’s Facebook Fan Page
2) Now lets work on your inventory tab. This particular dealer likes to promote just one vehicle, with hopes that they will click to the website. If a user clicks any of the smaller images that is exactly what will happen. The visitor will now be on their microsite.
The first step is to add the tab to your Facebook Page. Here are some easy directions:
- Log on to your Facebook account. If you’re adding this to your fan page, go to that page.
- In the Facebook search page, search for Static FBML, then click the Static FBML application link (or click here)
- Now click the “view application” link on the right.
- Close to the top on the left hand side (under the little logo), click “add to my page”.
- The box that appears will show you your personal page, and any Fan Pages you are an administrator of. Click your desired account.
- Now you can simply go to that page and click “edit page” on the left.
- Scroll down a bit and you will see FBML listed under application. Click “edit”.
- Now you will see a big empty box. In the small field on the top, name it accordingly. Whatever you call it is what the tab will be named when viewing your page.
This large box is for FBML Code. Known as Facebook Markup Language, it is very similar to HTML. If you ever built websites in the 90’s using Microsoft Frontpage or Dreamweaver, you will find those programs once again to be very helpful. So now, you have 3 choices:
- Use your Craiglist Posting Tool if you have one. Copy the code to your clipboard and simpleypaste it into the box (press control and “V” or right click over box and click “paste”). There is one number you will need to find and change. You want the page to fit on your Facebook Page, so you will have to find it and change it yourself. In this case, it was towards the top of our code that the Showroom Logic tool generates. By default it was “750″, meaning 750 pixels wide. I manually changed this to “550″. 550 pixels is the perfect width for your Facebook page.
This example shows that your FBML code will look like
- Use an old version of Microsoft Frontpage or something similar. Generate your own html and paste it into the box. Remember, you won’t be able to upload any images, so be sure to properly link to any images you include.
Here is an easier example. I hosted this image on a Wordpress Blog. Click to see the Dealers Fan Page)
- Use an online WYSIWYG editor. WYSIWYG stands for “what you see is what you get”. There are many free ones online, including this one. Play around with it. When your done, click source on the top left of the box and copy that code. Now paste it into your FBML box.
Click save and you’re done! Now test it out. This is what ours looks likes when finished:
The Finished Product. When any thumbnail is clicked, the user is now on your website!
So that wasn’t so hard was it? Now let’s create status updates with your inventory and or blog posts. I like this feature because it updates other people’s walls as well, and it’s great in your face advertising.
This can be done on a personal Facebook Page or a Fan Page. There are 2 ways to accomplish this. If you want to use a free third party application like RSS Graffiti, you can read about that here.
Otherwise, you can utilize your “notes” feature on Facebook. Ultimately your Facebook Fan Page will look like this:
This is an example of what your Facebook Fan Page will look like if you follow these directions (Click to see it live)
The important thing to note is the fact that these updates will also appears on your Fan’s wall.
So, let’s do it:
- Be sure you are logged into Facebook, and click here.
- Simply copy your RSS Feed url and paste it into this box. That’s it! Save it and your done.
This example shows how we mashed 6 different RSS Feeds into 1 using Yahoo Pipes
We go a bit further with our clients, and you can do this yourself as well. We not only include their inventory, but their blogs. To accomplish this from more than one source, just create a Yahoo Pipes Account and you can mash 2 or more RSS feeds into one. For Napleton, we use their inventory RSS, and 2 different blog RSS feeds. You can even include your YouTube RSS feeds!
Just play around with pipes for a while, you should be able to figure it out. After you mash them together, Yahoo Pipes will give output one RSS Feed for you to paste in your Facebook Notes section.
If you have any questions, feel free to comment below. Private questions can be sent to mike@showroomlogic.com.
Our Google Adwords Tool Performs So Well It Is Now Guaranteed By Showroom Logic
Since the inception of our automated Google Adwords tool for car dealers, we have come to realize how powerful this tool really is. We have had the opportunity to see stats from previous marketing companies hired by dealers to manage their Google Pay Per Click Campaign.
After the initial 30 days of tweaking, our campaigns perform so well all of our dealers pay less than half per click than they’re used to paying. During this short month of February, one of our dealers received over 3.8 million impressions. Their average cost per click was only $1.10, having received a total of 3,625 clicks.
If you do the math that’s almost $4,000.00 in Google Fees. Are they complaining? No! They actually called me and asked me to increase their campaign to a 75 mile radius. This campaign alone is selling over 30 extra cars a month!
There are a few companies that try our method, but they don’t have the secret weapon we have. Our secret weapon is co-founder of Showroom Logic Patrick Bennett. You can see him in person speaking at The SMX West conference in March.
Now that we have this program fully tweaked, we are prepared to offer our guarantee. After 60 days, if our campaign doesn’t outperform your current or past Google Adwords Campaign you can use it for FREE Until it does. Here are the facts:
- The reports we match must be actual reports from Google itself (no Marketing Company Spreadsheets)
- Budget amounts must match (We recommend always starting with a $2,000.00 monthly budget).
- We guarantee that our cost per click will be less than what you pay now.
- Our software can be used with your current website, or a Showroom Logic microsite.
- Our software is only $500.00 a month (no contracts)
Most people go to Google first, it’s a fact. Get the traffic for every new and used car on your lot before anyone else does.
Call Mike direct at 863-666-0130 for more information.
My Opinion: Dealer.com Is The Best Website A Car Dealer Should Be Using
Showroom Logic does not build car dealer websites, so I am able to give my opinion openly about the best and the worst websites for car dealers. Although it may appear that we do, we simply don’t. We build microsites to work in conjunction with the main website a car dealer uses, and our microsites appear to be a simple classified listing. We do not brand the dealership at all, we brand their cars.
Showroom Logic is a consulting and a car dealer SEO Company, it’s that simple. When we sign up a dealer our results are so great that they call us back to see what else we can do.
I’ve been wanting to write this article for a while now, but this morning I saw a cool thing that Dealer.com does with their urls.
While servicing one of our newest car dealers, I was looking at my live stats to see how their microsite was doing. I noticed that we just got a visit from a VIN search.
I was suprise to even see that because we do not target VIN numbers for searches. Anyway, we came up second on a Google search (Car Fax was 1).
I noticed the third listing was a dealer website, and I could tell by looking at the url that it was an actual vehicle listing on a car dealer’s website. I went ahead an clicked it and POOF, I was redirected to the homepage of the dealership.
Do you know what a 301 redirect is?
Think about this. You have a car dealership that typically sells 100 cars a month. When those vehicles get sold, the listings are eventually deleted. You must realize that all of your inventory will be indexed in Google, Yahoo and Bing. Even if it only ranks on page 50, it’s still indexed. So what happens when the Google Bot or Yahoo Slurp comes back and spiders your website to find new listings to index?
I’ll tell you what happens. They find broken links and 404 errors. Search Engines hate that! Dealer.com appears to create a 301 redirect back to the homepage. Another words, when a user clicks the link that is no longer there, the 301 tells the search engines that “this vehicle moved here” and it redirects it.
We’ve been using this technology for a long time, but it’s cool to see someone else doing it (Especially a dealer website provider). We handle our redirects a bit differently, but I cannot say what we do because that’s out little secret.
There are other things a like about Dealer.com websites, but the one other thing worth mentioning is their automated Google Adwords tool. It’s great to see a dealer website provider offering this, and it can save you thousands of dollars a month from marketing company fees to manage and run these campaigns.
Showroom Logic has a tool like that, and we can use it with any dealer website, so if you are stuck in a contract with one of those other website providers you can contact us and we’ll set you up.
I wish there was another website provider that I could compare to Dealer.com, but there isn’t one. Here is my opinions on the others:
- Cobalt: They haven’t changed a thing in over 2 years. Same old templates, nothing new to mention. If you want to stay ahead in this business you need to constantly make changes and roll them out to everybody. One of the largest volume car dealerships in Florida uses Cobalt, and they are so naive they love it. I have been doing extensive keyword research in my area and they are nowhere to be found. I feel they could be selling another 50 – 75 cars a month if they tried something new. My dealer in Tampa Bay sold over 120 used cars alone in the Tampa Market, and I am proud to say that. If you are a Dealer.com rep in Central Florida, contact me and I’ll tell you who they are.
- Izmo Cars: They make great looking websites, but they don’t rank for inventory listings. Until they make a massive change in their coding, they never will. One of my dealers uses Izmo for their main website, and I was shocked to learn they don’t even have a backend to log on to and make changes. You have to call your rep every time, in INDIA!! I am doing some SEO work for a car dealer that uses Izmo for their main site. Last month I found a microsite they were using that was a Dealer.com site. I switched all backlinks to that website instead of their main Izmo site because I know I could juice that one up better.
- BZ Results: I worked for a dealership that used them about 2 years ago. They were stuck in a very expensive 3 year contract, and it was by far the worst possible website provider out their. Needless to say, the 3 rooftop dealership went out of business about 4 months ago. Whoever sold that contract made a killing. They put $150,000.00 down and had to pay $8,000.00 a month for three years.
I did see some new companies at the NADA Convention in Orlando, but I haven’t found anyone using them.
Did I miss anyone? Leave a comment and let me know.
If anyone represents any of the website providers above, I would love to debate. Everything I said is my opinion, and I don’t pretend to know everything. But…I’ve been doing this since 1994. I’ve been around to see how everything evolved in many different industries. I’ve sold printing online, seafood and cars. Now I only work with car dealers.
Private debates are welcome. Email mike@showroomlogic.com
Park Automall Using Showroom Logic’s Lobster Trap Theory
This comparison was used for one of our car dealers. They had 2 different campaigns going at the same time, from us and another marketing company. They had a small budget, but the results were still impressive. (Click to Enlarge)
Showroom Logic has always been about microsites, and the effect is best described using our Lobster Trap Theory. If you were a lobsterman, how many traps would you set?
I don’t think anyone would say one. The best answer would be ‘as many as possible”. The more lobster traps, the more lobster. The same will go with leads and sales for a car dealer.
We like to think each miscrosite is a lobster trap, plus social media websites like Facebook, Twitter & Linked In. There are even more free lobster traps available for car dealers like Squidoo and Hubpages.
Many car dealers fall for the quick buck some marketing companies make in setting up a microsite for them. They will set it up with the proper keywords but the microsite will fail. Without backlinks pointing to it, it won’t do much good. Backlinks is what you need, so you either hire an SEO Company or do the work yourself. You could have the best optimized website on the planet for your niche, but if you lack backlinks you will get a tiny amount of traffic.
Showroom Logic first built a microsite for Park Automall in Tampa Bay Florida about 6 months ago. During the launch we set it up to rank on thousands of keywords. Park Automall understands that it is impossible to launch a website and obtain rankings in Google, Yahoo and Bing overnight.
It takes time for any website to rank, so we utilize that time to broadcast their inventory. We automated their Twitter and showed them how to obtain thousands of local followers, we automatically update multiple Facebook pages (personal and Fan Pages) and we embed a car dealer’s inventory RSS Feed into any website that will take it.
Park Automall took advantage of our exclusive Google Adwords tool as well. Without even mentioning the word “car” or “dealer”, we obtained 2,849,994 impressions throughout Google’s Search and Content Network so far in the month of February alone. Out of those millions of impressions, we lured 2,679 relevant clicks at an average cost of only $1.10 per click. This cost the dealer $2,945.00 in advertising on Google. Sounds like a lot of money right? It’s not when you realize last month they sold over 120 cars and trucks, and their closest competitor sold about 75.
As a car dealer, you need to remember what you sell. Thousands of people are looking for cars like a “Ford Mustang” and “Dodge Ram” every day in your area. A car dealer will never rank organically on a Google search like that, so you are forced to use Google Adwords to reach the searchers. David Ingold is the Internet Director over at Park Automall, and he properly interviews each up.
“How did you find us?’, he asks. “the internet”, says the customer. “Where on the internet may I ask?” 50% of his customers say Google.
Many dealers use vendors like Autotrader and Cars.com. As consultants, we highly recommend both. As long as you monitor your leads properly and you are confident the money spent is resulting in not just leads, but sales.
What you must understand is simple. Most consumers go to Google, not AutoTrader or Cars.com. Having a proper Google Adwords Campaign will allow you to let these consumers see your inventory first before the dealer down the street who pays thousands of dollars for spotlight ads gets them.
Showroom Logic sets up campaigns for every new and used car a dealer has in inventory. When a vehicle is sold, the campaign is deleted. When a vehicle is added to their inventory, we create a new campaign for each vehicle.
Many dealers have tried this, but they soon realize that they would need a dedicated skilled full time employee to handle it. Showroom Logic’s complete Google Adwords tool costs as little as $500.00 a month, and the clicks can go directly to a dealer’s current website or to a Showroom Logic miscrosite.
Now that Park Automall is reaping the benefits of proper internet advertising, we are building them a second miscrosite. We cannot divulge too much information, but we had a three hour meeting the other day and planned a great strategy.
As a vendor, I won’t be satisfied until they sell at least 175 cars a month. My plan is to do everything I can to make this possible. Although we have a lot of automation I still spend many hours building backlinks to all of their lobster traps, including link wheels. I even go one step further and sporadically list their inventory on Craigslist.
Showroom Logic can only service one dealer per city with our miscrosites, so if you’re in Tampa, Orlando or Pensacola Florida we cannot service you. Dealers who want to use our Google Adwords tool with their existing website are welcome anywhere.
If you want to own your city anywhere in the USA, contact mike@showroomlogic.com for more information. Our Google Adwords services are guaranteed.