Ever heard of Search Engine Intuitive Marketing aka SEIM? Probably not, because it's a fancy name my local ad agency came up with... so they say. However, I'm sure there are dealers who practice this form of marketing and I would like to know what you think.
Basically, they take our used car inventory and purchase keywords that match specifically to those vehicles so that when someone searches that vehicle in Google's search box the vehicle pops up in the paid search results and links DIRECTLY to the vehicle itself. I've heard others call this "dynamic inventory marketing". At first I thought, how many people actually search the vehicle of interest straight from Google... But the reports they have sent me shows that this does work. I have received many clicks on my vehicles directly from the search results page on Google. At the moment we are only doing vehicles with less than 60k miles. They can also do it for new cars.
So I'm at a fork in the road. I have to get more traffic to our website. At the moment I'm debating on where to put the bulk of my budget, and who to spend it with. My choices are Cobalt, who host our website, or our local ad agency. The local ad agency is currently doing our SEM and the "SEIM" for us. However, they are concerned about us being part of the IMR digital marketing package with Cobalt which allows GM to buy our name and geo to serve display and text ads. It seems that we have competing campaigns so the local ad agency is telling me to move my money from SEM with them and put it into behavioral targeting and also spread out the budget for SEIM to all used cars and possibly new cars as well.
But wait a minute. You can't tell me that what GM is doing for us as far as SEM goes is the best that can be done. I'm sure it's minimal and they are doing it for most other GM dealers as well so that doesn't allow me to stand out. So my theory is to continue doing SEM with the local ad agency but not target the city I reside. Let's target the BIG city 20 minutes away from us and other surrounding cities since GM is only buying the geo I reside.
OR... should I pay Cobalt to match the SEM GM is doing for us and do the behavioral targeting with the other guys as well as the "SEIM" and used and all new cars. Or should I just cancel my SEM efforts and just have the GM / Cobalt SEM campaign running. My ultimate goal is, of course, to drive more traffic to our website. Quality traffic that converts into leads. Right now we get around 4000 unique vistors per month. I would like to increase that by about 50%. I want to receive around 120 to 150 email leads per month from the website and increase the phone calls as well. Currently we get between 50 to 75 email leads per month. Am I being unrealistic?
Basically, they take our used car inventory and purchase keywords that match specifically to those vehicles so that when someone searches that vehicle in Google's search box the vehicle pops up in the paid search results and links DIRECTLY to the vehicle itself. I've heard others call this "dynamic inventory marketing". At first I thought, how many people actually search the vehicle of interest straight from Google... But the reports they have sent me shows that this does work. I have received many clicks on my vehicles directly from the search results page on Google. At the moment we are only doing vehicles with less than 60k miles. They can also do it for new cars.
So I'm at a fork in the road. I have to get more traffic to our website. At the moment I'm debating on where to put the bulk of my budget, and who to spend it with. My choices are Cobalt, who host our website, or our local ad agency. The local ad agency is currently doing our SEM and the "SEIM" for us. However, they are concerned about us being part of the IMR digital marketing package with Cobalt which allows GM to buy our name and geo to serve display and text ads. It seems that we have competing campaigns so the local ad agency is telling me to move my money from SEM with them and put it into behavioral targeting and also spread out the budget for SEIM to all used cars and possibly new cars as well.
But wait a minute. You can't tell me that what GM is doing for us as far as SEM goes is the best that can be done. I'm sure it's minimal and they are doing it for most other GM dealers as well so that doesn't allow me to stand out. So my theory is to continue doing SEM with the local ad agency but not target the city I reside. Let's target the BIG city 20 minutes away from us and other surrounding cities since GM is only buying the geo I reside.
OR... should I pay Cobalt to match the SEM GM is doing for us and do the behavioral targeting with the other guys as well as the "SEIM" and used and all new cars. Or should I just cancel my SEM efforts and just have the GM / Cobalt SEM campaign running. My ultimate goal is, of course, to drive more traffic to our website. Quality traffic that converts into leads. Right now we get around 4000 unique vistors per month. I would like to increase that by about 50%. I want to receive around 120 to 150 email leads per month from the website and increase the phone calls as well. Currently we get between 50 to 75 email leads per month. Am I being unrealistic?
