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Freed up some budget, what should we add?

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JesseJ

JesseJ

Boss
Mar 22, 2011
113
5
First Name
Jesse
#1
I am finally on the same page with the GSM at our dealership. We are going to scale back our print advertisement greatly in the next couple of months and reallocate those funds back into the Internet Department. Music to my ears. :)

We recently added Hook Logic but we've had the same base now for a year or two as far as lead sources, programs, vendors etc go.

We have an efficient flow of 3rd party leads and I feel we don't have any wasted money in that area at the moment.

I'm personally thinking by far the best add-on and biggest need would be some sort of PPC, SEO, SEM service. I inquired on this previously and was referred to Dealer.com and Haystack. Dealer.com only provides this service for Dealers who use their websites. Not us.

Haystack was recently bought by Autotrader if I'm not mistaken. I was curious if anyone had any feedback on their current service. I think driving as much traffic to our website is clearly the way to go but I want to make sure it's done right because I'm sticking my neck out here.

Disclaimer: Please do not hammer me with vendor phone calls.
 
#2
Depending on how much budget you have, do you have your inventory on listing sites such as AutoTrader, Cars.com, CarGurus etc? I would start there before moving on the PPC/SEM.

I have 3 of our stores using Haystak and we are very happy with their service and how the campaigns are performing. I recently had a presentation on the new PPC product that PureCars is offering. I love it and think it is a good product. My only drawback is their minimum monthly spendable budget, over and above the admin fee is $3K per month. Depending on the size of your inventory and your goals for PPC, $3K might be a bit too much to get started in my opinion based on the inventory on your website. If I found the correct Latham Ford online you currently have 35 used and 171 new in stock. Maybe some others could chime in on this opinion.
 
#3
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#4
Awesome choice on dropping some of your print budget. My wife is a journalist, and I still have no love for newspaper advertising. As for what you should spend your added budget on it really depends.

Are you satisfied with your current conversion rate? Have you done any testing with your VDPs to check impact on conversions? Improving your conversion rate can be an easy win for more leads/sales.

Have you gotten an audit on your current keyword rankings? Do you know which keywords you should be targeting? It's possible you don't even need SEO. The good thing about SEO, though, is that it is an investment in your company. Just on a quick check, you are outside the top 5 for "Used cars Albany NY," which has over 1000 searches a month.

Are you currently doing PPC? As much as 30% of clicks end up in the paid section of search, and PPC can be a great way to boost your traffic/leads/sales.

Are you doing any remarketing? Remarketing is where you continue to advertise to people that have already been on your site. Amazon does an amazing jobs with this.


As for companies to talk to about all of it, I would give Cuneo Advertising a call. They are associated with Carsoup.com.
 
#5
@Bill The monthly budget is my one hang up as well. I'm not sure where the cap is going to be yet but I'm sure it will be on the very low end of these type of programs.

@Joe Great ideas. I wonder if I can implement any of that without spending extra $. The new car photos probably wouldn't be feasible without help. Is there any data showing the impact of new car photos? I'm not sure about video vs still pics. I was thinking about doing video walkarounds. Can't hurt. As for incentives, our OEM website, while generally pretty lousy, does include incentives on new vehicles. I'll have to find out if it's something our current website provider can implement.

@cmjerry I hear ya. My degree is actually in journalism and I worked as a sports writer for three years. I even did some ad sales. I know first hand that it's not the way to go. I haven't gotten an audit on our keywords. That could be a good place to start. No PPC at the moment. Thanks for the ideas. I think I'm on the right track.
 
#6
As you can see in my signature SEO is what I do, but if I were in your place I'd actually start with PPC. I'm making a big assumption, but you are probably looking for a quick way to show that the internet is going to be a better spend than print. If that is the case, then I would definitely go with PPC first. SEO can take months before you see a real impact, but PPC is immediate.

I believe Joe's son has tons of experience with Automotive PPC. You might be able to coax out some contact info from him as well.
 
#7
cmjerry4531 said:
I believe Joe's son has tons of experience with Automotive PPC.
Click to expand...

I keep hearing the same thing too ;)

Hey JesseJ, I'm familiar with Latham Ford. I'm a UAlbany alumni and I used to drive by it sometimes when I was a student. Feel free to ask or send a PM to me if you have any questions about automotive PPC campaigns and strategy. I do automotive PPC independently now and I've had many clients in the Upstate region, so I'm familiar with the area and market.
 
#8
Looking at your website do you have a blog for your website? I see a huge need for SEO and 2014 model landing pages. You should have the 2015 mustang page up and should be blogging about it. Also add embedded video on your landing pages, and some true custom Video Marketing in and around your competitors markets.
No pitching zone for sure here, but this will be your greatest ROI. You should start seeing results in 14 days with video seo, by 30 days 40% of the search engines will start driving your first party lead traffic to your website. Look for a vendor or firm that will work with only your brand and give you a exclusive 70 mile market. You should be killing it in 90 days!

PS Social bookmarking and syndicating all your fresh content is a must too.

Good Luck!
 
#9
mwpistell said:
I keep hearing the same thing too ;)

Hey JesseJ, I'm familiar with Latham Ford. I'm a UAlbany alumni and I used to drive by it sometimes when I was a student. Feel free to ask or send a PM to me if you have any questions about automotive PPC campaigns and strategy. I do automotive PPC independently now and I've had many clients in the Upstate region, so I'm familiar with the area and market.
Click to expand...

Small world. I'm also a UAlbany alumni.
 


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