Certified Google Adwords Partner

During the past year, Showroom Logic has been collecting and storing massive amounts of data regarding Google Pay Per Click advertising from our AdLogic software. Some important metrics collected were cost per click (CPC), Click Thru Ratio (CTR), Average Placement and conversions.

From our own Google Adwords accounts, this data comes from over 896 million impressions and $4,402,084.75 dollars spent.

To make our product even better, we recently obtained the largest scarcity index in the automotive industry. We cannot tell you from who, but this will be announced in the near future (hopefully in time for the NADA in Las Vegas next month).

Now that we had so much pertinent data, we had to figure out what to do with it. Last month we hosted a think tank with qualified people from all over the car business and outsiders familiar with other industries. After a couple of days, we came up with this:

Showroom Logic's New Algorithm

This week we brought all of our programmers to Miami along with the most respected Google PPC Guru in the United States. Together we finalized our new algorithm and it will be up and running by February 1st for the 2012 NADA Convention in Las Vegas.

If you want to learn more about our product please contact Matt Weinberg at the phone number above right to arrange a meeting at the NADA Convention. If you don’t plan on attending please contact Matt to schedule a phone call or webinar. We also invite you to visit the Homenet Booth at NADA to learn more about it.

There are many car dealers out there who manage their own Google Adwords Accounts. Here are a few reasons why you should allow Showroom Logic to manage your account:

1. Direct Technical Support From Google: We have a team of 4 from Google that helps us manage our clients accounts. We have direct phone numbers and email addresses, so issues can be resolved quickly.
2. Google Adwords Certified Teams: Our teams are well trained and Google Adwords Certified.
3. Transparency: With AdLogic, you will have full access to your Google Adwords Accounts, giving you the freedom to enable your own campaigns if you’d like. If you ever cancel AdLogic, your Google Account is still yours.
4. HIGHER Click Through Ratios & LOWER Cost Per Clicks: Many people don’t realize the complex ranking system Google has. This is known as a “quality score”. Every keyword and phrase you bid on is examined by many different factors, including the landing page, the CTR of the ad and many other factors. To the average user it may seem like a simple auction because Google asks you how high you want to pay for each click. Google cares about it’s user experience, so this is not true. If you have a better quality score than your competition, your add will appear before them AND you will earn a lower cost per click. Our algorithm can save you thousands of dollars in just one month.

Showroom Logic is always working to make our products better, and below is a perfect example. This particular car dealer was doing their own Google PPC campaign for used cars until they hired us. We added our campaigns on December 31, 2011 and they paused their campaigns on December 26th of 2011.

Comparing AdLogic To Traditional Google PPC

If you compare the data you will see how much money we already saved them. They paid $904 in just 10 days of running ads on Google. We came in and produced the same amount of clicks for a little over $300.00 in the same amount of days.

Our next blog post will be about tracking conversions properly and how Bounce Rate in Google Analytics is irrelevant in the car industry.

After reading about Google’s latest algorithm update, I started poking around to see if any major car related websites took a hit. Although I’m not a big fan of Alexa Rank, I do visit Alexa.com to see other data.

What I found was interesting:

30% Of Internet Users Come From Google Before They Visit AutoTrader, and 29% Go Back To Google After They Visit AutoTrader

Now it’s common knowledge that AutoTrader dominates as far as traffic goes, and they’ve secured the number one Google Organic Serp listing for “used cars” and other highly relevant search terms. For obvious reasons, a car dealer should at least have their inventory on AutoTrader. It’s well worth the money.

So what advertising should come next? Cars.com or local newspaper classified sites? In my opinion you should be advertising on Google. Matter of fact that should be the first choice, because it’s no secret that 80% of car buyers start out on Google.

If you look at the above screenshot, 29.85% of AutoTrader’s visitors go back to Google after they visit AutoTrader.com. If you think about it, that’s a lot of people.

Here’s another interesting screenshot I took while researching Cars.com:

Cars.com Data Was very Similar

For this reason alone, you should be advertising on Google with Google Adwords. I’m sure most dealers have attempted to create and manage their own campaigns, but without a lot of research and conversion data the cost per click will usually be twice the amount as an AdLogic Google Campaign.

Another important factor is support. Have you ever tried to call Google for help? Good luck if you haven’t, it just won’t happen. We are lucky to be a partner with Google, and with that we get 4 Google reps that we can call directly with any issues or questions.

Every 3 months we either visit Googleplex or they come to our Miami Office and share some very valuable data with us. This allows us to continuously improve AdLogic.

We have some huge changes in our algorithm coming on January 1st, 2012. Some the the features include:

1. Better New Car OEM Campaigns: We’ve been collecting data from millions of searches, and we now know what keyword phrases convert into a lead or phone call better than ever. Now we can adjust the bid on every single keyword depending on the conversion rates.
2. Scarcity Index: We have exclusive rights to the automotive industries largest scarcity index, and we rolled this into our algorithm as well. Now we can adjust bids depending on the popularity and price of a dealer’s vehicle.
3. Aged Inventory: We can also give our dealers the flexibility to stop running ads on vehicles that have been on their lot for any X amount of days.

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.

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:

1. Their ads showed up 5,004,061 different times in the past 30 days. Over 5 million impressions!
2. 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.
3. 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:

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:

1. For each ad group you make, be sure to have the keywords in your description.
2. 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.
3. Be sure each landing page is optimized. This highly affects your quality score.
4. 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:

1. You must use our landing pages (we get better quality scores)
2. You must send us your inventory feed
3. All leads will instantly go to either an email address or your lead management tool
4. Minimum amount of impressions desired must be at least 500,000 (This will cost $1,000.00)
5. You should provide us with a trackable 800 line for tracking purposes
6. You select your radius (25 miles, 50, 75 or an entire state)

Questions? Send an email to mike@showroomlogic.com

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.

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.

80% Of Internet Traffic Comes From Google

Showroom Logic has now simplified our Google Adwords Tool for New & Used Car Dealers. Many dealers are proud of their existing website, and would rather not have an additional microsite.

Using our Google Adwords Tool for Car Dealers, we can now automate your campaigns and send traffic directly to you dealer website. If you’re a car dealer using Dealer.com, Izmo Cars, Cobalt or the hundreds of other dealer websites available we can now have all of your traffic sent directly to these websites.

Our Google Adwords For Car Dealers Guarantee:

• Impressions: Some dealers manage their Google Adwords In-House, and some hire marketing companies. If Showroom Logic does not get you more impressions for the same budget as your existing campaigns we will not charge you until it does.
• Cost Per Click:  Stop paying 2 or 3 dollars a click. Our software allows you to have a higher Google Quality Score, resulting in reduced click costs over 100%. Our current dealers used to pay over $3.00 per click. Showroom Logic can get your clicks for a little over $1.00. After 60 days, if you’re not paying less than you were before we will not charge you for the tool until it out-performs your previous Google Adwords Campaigns.

In case you’re not aware of our tool, I’ll keep it simple. We take a car dealer’s new and used car inventory and create a Google Adwords Campaign for every single vehicle you have in inventory.

As your new inventory rolls in, we create a new campaign. As each unit is sold, the campaign is removed.

As a car dealer you must understand that there are people searching for your inventory on a daily basis. Let’s sat you have a 2005 Ford Mustang in your used car inventory. Anyone who searches for “Ford Mustang”, “2005 Ford Mustang”, “Used Ford Mustang” and thousands of other keyword phrases your inventory will come up.

When clicked, the ad will bring the user directly to the actual vehicle page. This is how we get high quality scores, resulting in less money spent.

The clicks are also cheaper because chances are, there isn’t a car dealer in your city bidding on their inventory like that. Everyone bids on the same general keywords like “used car dealer”, “new car dealer”, Chevrolet Dealer etc…

So now you have 2 options. Get a microsite to get more organic or PPC Traffic or simply use out tool and have all traffic directed to your dealer website.

Claim your area. Target a 30 mile radius around your dealership or more. You can even target an entire state.

I’m sure you have some questions. Call Mike at 863-666-0130 or send me an email, mike@showroomlogic.com. Let us help you own and dominate your city. We already have dealers dominating Tampa and Orlando Florida. These are 2 of the hottest car related internet markets in the world. Now we can help you own your city!

Click here to see our Google Adwords stats compared to other marketing companies.

Google Adwords Vs Search Engine Optimization

It doesn’t matter how much money a car dealer pays a professional SEO Company. Your dealer website will never rank organically for search terms like Ford Mustang, Dodge Ram, Chevrolet Corvette and other vehicle types. As much as we love SEO, you have to accept the fact that the only way you’ll show is if the user puts in your city or state name. The fact is, they don’t!

The woman who called me mentioned that they had estimates and stats from 5 different marketing companies throughout the United States. I really wasn’t sure what to expect, so I gathered my stats and met with them yesterday.

When the 2 hour meeting started, the first thing they did was show me what the “best” of the 5 could do. As soon as I saw the report I knew the gig would be mine.

These are the numbers they showed me from the marketing company they were considering:

Pay Per Click Campaign Report For This Month (Competition)

When I produced our numbers, the sale was easy:

Showroom Logic PPC Report

It’s pretty obvious who wins this stats game, that’s why the meeting lasted for 2 hours. If I was to have stopped our campaign at 547 clicks, it would of only cost $607.17.

• Clicks: Our campaign netted $1,883 clicks. The “major marketing company” netted only 547 clicks.
• Impressions: Every time the ads displays somewhere counts as an impression. The great thing about impressions is that they’re free, Think of it as branding. The competition obtained 67,338 impressions for their client. Showroom Logic obtained an astounding 2,059,548 impressions. Basic math will tell you the difference.
• Click Through Ratio: Our ads don’t only show up in Google searches, they show up on car related news stories from websites like the New York Times and Motor Trend. The impressions are so high that this is what to expect for the click through ratio.
• Average Cost Per Click: The marketing company’s dealer paid an average of $2.71 per click made. Showroom Logic’s dealer only paid an average of $1.11 per click.
• Total Cost: Basically, the other dealer paid $1,482.48 for 67,338 impressions and 547 clicks to their website. Showroom Logic’s dealer paid $2,080.98 for over 2 millions impressions resulting in 1,883 clicks. All of our dealer’s traffic and impressions came from a 50 mile radius surrounding the dealership itself.

Showroom Logic only performs pay per click campaigns for car dealers. The reason our results are so impressive is the fact that we have our own software that makes this happen. Many marketing companies advertise that they are an “authorized reseller of Google Adwords“. We are not only because we do not resell the product. We set it up for our car dealers as their own account so they have full control over their campaign, including pausing it, changing bid prices and selecting different areas to target.

Showroom Logic’s services are so unique we can only offer these tools to one dealer per city to avoid a conflict of interest. For more information on our amazing software, call Mike at 863-666-0130 or email mike@showroomlogic.com.

We look forward to working with you. White Labeling is also available for marketing companies.

This Dealer Received 1.5 Million Impressions In 3 Weeks From a 50 Mile Radius Of Their Dealership, resulting in a spike of an additional 30 sales

Many car dealers have a bad taste in their mouth when it comes to advertising on Google. The story usually is the same, they spent a lot of money without getting anything in return.

The problem with this is all about keywords, and choosing the right ones. Some car dealers have tried the campaign themselves, and some have hired specialty marketing companies to set up the Google Adwords Campaign.

Finding the right keywords to bid on is the challenge, and if you’re too vague then you will spend a ton of money with little results.

Remember, a car dealer sells cars. If you are a Chevy Dealer, forget about bidding on “Chevrolet Dealer”. That’s what Google Local listings are for, and they’re free. You need to focus on your inventory.

Let’s start with the Chevy Tahoe. It is now 2010, but I’m sure you have some 2009′s out there. You would want these keywords:

• 2009 Chevrolet Tahoe
• 2010 Chevrolet Tahoe
• 2009 Chevy Tahoe
• 2010 Chevy Tahoe
• 2009 Chevy Tahoe LS
• 2009 Chevy Tahoe LT
• 2009 Chevy Tahoe LTZ
• 2009 Chevrolet Tahoe LS
• 2009 Chevrolet Tahoe LT

OK, I think you can figure out the rest. You need to do this with all of your models. As you set up each campaign, be sure to create separate ones for each model. It’s important for the text to read “Chevy Tahoe”. Not only will you get more action, you will achieve a higher quality score from Google. The higher your quality score, the lower you will have to pay per click.

The screenshot above is what a proper campaign that performs will look like. I remember paying $1,200.00 for 50,000 impressions from a local newspaper website when I worked for a car dealership. Now I can get well over a million more for the same price.

Another important part is to link to the proper page. When you set up the Tahoe Campaign, be sure to link to your Chevy Tahoe Page on your website. Don’t just link to your main site and make the user have to go fishing, because they won’t. Having the link go to the proper place will also give you a better quality score.

It may take you a half a day to do this, but it’s well worth it.

Now, let’s focus on your used. Used cars will bring in more UPS than new vehicles. Let’s say you have 75 used cars, and we’ll start with the first one.

We have a 2006 Corvette. Lets create a separate campaign for Corvettes. We need these keywords:

• Used Corvette
• Used Chevy Corvette
• Used Chevrolet Corvette
• 2006 Corvette
• 2006 Chevy Corvette
• 2006 Chevrolet Corvette
• 2006 pre-owned Corvette

Be sure to stay on top of these campaign, and delete each as a vehicle is sold to avoid wasting your advertising dollars.

This can be tedious huh? What if I told you that Showroom Logic can automate the process? We can take every new and used vehicle you have and automatically create a campaign for each. As your new inventory rolls in we can set up each car automatically, and as each vehicle is sold we can delete each campaign.

The screenshot above is what a proper campaign that performs will look like. I remember paying $1,200.00 for 50,000 impressions from a local newspaper website when I worked for a car dealership.

This dealer received over 1 and a half millions impressions in three weeks, and paid only 1 cents for each. The bottom line is simple, most people go to Google to look for vehicles. Not third party companies, not Yahoo and certainly not Bing.

Car Dealers need to start fishing where the fish are when it comes to the internet. You have 200 cars on your lot, and their are people searching for each one of them on a daily basis.

If you want to learn more about our product, check out this video of our tool in action.