Joe Pistell wrote:
I agree Joe that there has to be a place in our overall strategy for the listing sites. Whenever I see a conversation like this thread it reminds me of a strategy discussed by Duncan Scarry at a conference last year. I cannot find the slide from his presentation but my notes of the steps from the slide titled "Six Parts To A Digital Marketing Strategy"
1 - Website - Optimized, photos, videos, descriptions, custom content
2 - SEO Optimized Website
3 - 3rd Party Portal Sites
4 - SEM/PPC
5 - Retargeting/Display
6 - Social Media
The key part of Duncan's message, IMO, is to follow that strategy in that order If your website is a mess, why spend PPC money sending traffic to it? If your website is not properly merchandised, pics, comments etc, why be on 3rd party portal sites with your inventory? When you have steps number 1 thru 3 optimized then its time to start playing in the rest of them, but not before. And lastly if the first 5 steps are not in order why are you spending money on social media? In our group I see a couple of our stores being talked into the manufacturers "social package" when they have not given any budget to to the first five steps. Drives me nuts! Don't get me wrong, I am a fan of social, but not before the other more important areas. You want an easy way to determine your digital budget, start at step one and allocate your money from most to least for each of these steps.
With Google telling us that consumers use 18+ sites during the shopping cycle, I believe that dealers should be found in as many places along that journey as possible. All 18+? No way, thats impossible. But I do think there is enough data telling us that there is a place to justify have CARS/ATC/Gurus and the others in our budgets and part of our strategy.
A loosely attributed quote from the "Art Of War "Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat." Pardon the philosophical quote from an ancient war leader but it sure makes sense when we talk about what our strategies should be in our stores.
