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The Phone is not ringing??

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Eley Duke

Eley Duke

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Nov 30, 2009
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Eley
#1
There has been some great discussion on DR this year about tracking numbers and how it affects SEO. I am starting to wonder if I made a blunder becasue our phones are not ringing like they use to! We made a switch in phone tracking software back in June after being with another company for 5 years and had to get all new numbers.

Our primary website is our dealer.com site, that has a dynamic tracking number. We have different numbers on Google places, cobalt website, dealer rater, Bing, Facebook, Craigslist, YP, and thats about it for digital.

Calls are recorded for training, and other than reading the reports where the traffic is coming from, number of calls, unique calls, answered vs not, minutes and avg talk time I really dont pay that much attention to the tracking software. I know we get the most calls from our web site, #2 - Google, #3 is our Cobalt site, #4 are our emails, #5 Craigslist, and it funnels on down.

I know there are a lot of opinions this year on this topic. But I am hoping some of you have some good advice for me. Do I need to do away with all these tracking numbers, go to one number for all the web, perhaps not a 800 number? Do I need to do away with the dynamic tracking number and have the same number as our web and as our Google Places number?

I am about to pull what little hair I have left out over the the fact the phones are not ringing. Any advice is much appreciated, I got to get the phone ringing off the hook again!

Thanks,

Eley
 
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#4
I used both with excellent results. We became an Alpha, premium dealer (new and used) with AutoTrader and our ROI improved with each package we purchased. I'm convinced that it is either premium or nothing. Because of the lower cost, Cars ROI was really strong. Often, I would have a customer that came in on our website but after questioning, they clicked through from one of those.
 
#5
Stick with your tracking numbers. You might regret it if you don't

I use Century Interactive (contact me direct if you're interested - I have a nice deal worked out with them) and one of the features I LOVE is the ability to set up instant email alert per tracking number/campaign.

We've all heard from the GM "What's AutoTrader getting us?" or "That direct mail piece this month didn't do much".

As soon as I start hearing this, I turn on the alerts for these ad sources and blow their phones and inbox up with instant alerts. As soon as a customer hangs up after dialing the number and speaking with someone, CI sends an email right away with a link to the recorded call that you can listen to right from your phone. Top of mind awareness that the campaign or ad source is working AND they can hear how bad their sales people and managers are on the phone.

It's not the ad source that isn't working - it's your phone skills!
 
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#6
Hey Jeff, we are using CI as well, great stuff! Yesterday they said everything looks fine and we are doing what we should be. Also, we have worked with Jerry since March, we monitor our phones daily and with Jerrys coaching we have a good handle on it. He has been fantastic and his coaches have helped our crew a lot! Its mainly sales calls that have fallen off recently. We did have the hurricane which messed our traffic up for about a week on the web and 2 weeks on the floor traffic.

I think I figured something out. Back in early June, I asked dealer.com to dial back our geo area for our paid search to just Suffolk and concetrate on our market area to try to dominate the search then expand out. Well, Suffolk doesnt show up in Google key words search like Norfolk and Virginia Beach, significant difference, there being my problem, I made a stupid mistake.

I looked at our DDC web traffic, its been up and down but no significant drops that seem out of place. Then I looked at our phone traffic, that has had a 32% increase since Apr according to CI. Then I looked at Google Places activity. Our impressions have been on a steady rise since Feb. On June 10th is when the DDC changes to search campaign were made, that big drop in "actions" starts June 14 to 16, next to nothing! Yet the impressions kept going up until July 21st, that highest spike, but started to be more consistent traffic then started falling off, that was the Google review change date! That big dip in impressions was Hurricane Irene.
GP 6 month data.JPG
I am thinking that paid search change was the issue, but I am not 100% certain, I am assuming it had to do something with the dip. GP will not let me in to see my edit history, tried for two days. DDC has since reversered what we did as of Sept 18 and I am just waiting to see what happens.

Any thoughts?
 
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#7
Everyone I've ever talked to has recommended against using tracking numbers in local listing services. Here's why:

"Do not provide phone numbers or URLs that redirect or “refer” users to landing pages or phone numbers other than those of the actual business."

- Source

"Google and the other search engines scan the Internet looking for information about your company. If the information is available in lots of places, and is consistent across those places, that helps confirm that they have the right data regarding your business. Other factors equal, if Google is confident your data is correct, it will be more likely to rank your business higher in its local search results.

When phone call tracking numbers are thrown into the mix, your data starts to look confused. Google picks up a variety of phone numbers for your business – and may lower your ranking as a result. The search engines may even think you are operating multiple companies, listing your business more than once – which often results in an even more substantial decline in rankings."

- Source

EDIT: I'm also seeing other articles that indicate that it doesn't matter. So I'm not entirely sure who to trust here.
 
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#9
Here's my understanding of what I've read others say -- Google isn't necessarily looking to see whether or not you use a toll free number vs a local number. They're comparing the actual number that your provide to various sources across the web. For instance, Google has access to my dealership's listing on Google Places, Yahoo, Edmunds, AutoTrader, Cars.com, Yellow Pages, etc. If I have the same number listed across all of these platforms, they have reason to believe that the number in my Google Places listing is accurate.

While this makes sense in theory, it seems as though people are using tracking numbers and not seeing any effects. Jeff, can you confirm?
 
#10
sweece said:
Here's my understanding of what I've read others say -- Google isn't necessarily looking to see whether or not you use a toll free number vs a local number. They're comparing the actual number that your provide to various sources across the web. For instance, Google has access to my dealership's listing on Google Places, Yahoo, Edmunds, AutoTrader, Cars.com, Yellow Pages, etc. If I have the same number listed across all of these platforms, they have reason to believe that the number in my Google Places listing is accurate.

While this makes sense in theory, it seems as though people are using tracking numbers and not seeing any effects. Jeff, can you confirm?
Click to expand...

It's so hard to say. I've seen dealers get away with having an 800 tracking number and nothing go wrong. I've seen it when it all goes wrong. I've had the best and worse happen to me on Google places.

I know dealers spending thousands a year on directories with no way of knowing how effective they are.

From my findings, your are safe if you use the same number across all listings / directories - online and offline. Changing this number across all the listings is a nightmare and you better be willing to monitor your Google places page daily, heck hourly.
 
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