Search Engine Marketing has reached Stage 3

[Alex Snyder]

Search Engine Marketing has been around since the early 2000s and has quickly become a billion dollar advertising system for eCommerce.  It is one of the most measurable and cost-effective advertising medias available.  On the dealership side of the automotive world, Search Engine Marketing is still in its infancy.  Many dealers think it is some sort of fad and I've heard over 50% of the dealerships in America do not engage in any kind of Pay-Per-Click advertising model.  Those guys probably aren't on Dealer Refresh, so let's forget about them for a minute.

If you've been involved in paid search for a while you are probably familiar with the different stages it has evolved from.  Originally, there were no paid search vendors.  You had to go directly to the source (Google, Yahoo, etc), create your own account, and build your own campaigns.  Stage 1 was very time consuming and reserved only for the most advanced eCommerce individuals....or those guys who worked at small highline stores with nothing but time on their hands <cough><ahemm>some people</excuse me>

Companies like Reach Local pioneered the second stage of handling your entire campaign on your behalf.  You could just send them a check and wait for the monthly reports with the results.  This is the stage we're
mostly in right now.  In this second stage, SEM has evolved a little further by allowing some campaign customization through a SEM vendor. Customization is basically how you want your campaign to go -
placement, verbiage, time and some vendors are even able to forecast an outcome for you.  The downsides to that model are having to pay a large cut (typically one you really don't know despite what a vendor might tell you - there is no way to really check this) and you have to wait for a report.

We are now heading into stage 3 of automotive SEM where it is a mixture of the first and second stages.  You have a vendor who provides the working environment, but you control the campaign from soup to nuts.
Dealer.com's Total Control Dominator (TCD) is the first product like this that I have seen.  It has predictive measuring that will show you how much to invest on a particular campaign based on nationwide
performance for SEM campaigns targeting the same brands and locations. For example:  you want to buy the main keyword of "Honda" with variations on how it is used by a consumer in a search phrase ("Honda Civic", "Honda Accord", "Used Honda") and target a 10 mile radius around your dealership, TCD will show you that you're going to need to spend $500 to get 1,000 clicks and x number of leads.  Over time, you can adjust your campaign to target and position the keywords that are getting you a more impressions and higher conversions.  This is nothing new, but it shows you instantly - without you having to contact a rep
at your SEM vendor's HQ.  Next to what a click costs is what a lead conversion will cost.  This is where the dynamic changes.  Instead of buying paid search engine placement by the click, you are looking at what it costs as a conversion once they're on your website.  This is where stage 3 is defined and becomes revolutionary!

 

[Billy]

It's funny you used 2 companies I've researched recently. I certainly have my opinions of both.

Will address Total Control first. IMO, there is no software that can accurately predict what you'll receive. To define this, accurately means a quality click addressing a specific search. All any software can predict is predetermined by the information search engines like Google supply them. I find that Google's predictive info is wrong on a daily basis. Small changes within a PPC campaign can skew results drastically. Increasing or decreasing the radius around your store, the pocket areas you target, keyword/phrase misspellings, your competitors' actions are all aspects of human interaction that make predictive measuring impossible to be accurate.

As for ReachLocal, I'm all for my competitors using them for their SEM. The shotgun approach to Search Engine Marketing is much like the radio, TV and newspaper blitzes of yesteryear. It's a great way to spend a ton of money for very little ROI. The Ford store next door should do very well being at the top of the sponsor results in Google for the term "Honda Accord". The Kia store down the road will do great coming up 3rd in sponsor results for Kia Phoenix. We're in Atlanta.

Basically, if you can't find a company that can give you specific, quality targetted results in your DMA, hire someone in-house that can. Or, do like another store down the street and throw 50K a month at it.

Something has to stick.

 

[mikedececco]

Thanks for the stunning article Alex. You're right, we are the first to pioneer this type of ad buying in force. It really is a revolution in paid advertising and we thank you for the kind words.

To billy's point: "Will address Total Control first. IMO, there is no software that can accurately predict what you'll receive. To define this, accurately means a quality click addressing a specific search. All any software can predict is predetermined by the information search engines like Google supply them. "

This statement isn't entirely true although I can see your point and understand where you would get that information. Most companies do rely on what Google tells them a campaign will expect. We're different. We're using data that is based on the thousands of campaigns we have run for our clients and based on actual results of paid searches coupled with our websites. It's based on years of real world actual usage cases not on what Google tells us we should expect. Very different.

Also, this is a great place to point out that as far as I know we're the only company in the space that actually has Google's teams visiting us up in VT on a regular basis because they feel our technology platform is so advanced. It's pretty exciting to be part of something that!

Thanks again for the great post Alex and your comments billy.

Search is still a hot topic and with dealers continuing to spend the vast majority of ad dollars in media that is statistically proven to be ineffective, its impact will only continue to grow!

Thanks,

Mike DeCecco

 

[tomwhitejr]

I should probably just write my own blog post about this subject, but here are my "two cents."

First some caveats:
1. I don't work for a small highline store.
2. I don't have a bunch of time on my hands.
3. I firmly believe in SEM as a means of growing traffic and, more importantly, sales.
4. I am NOT a programmer.

Here is the problem with SEM providers as I see them:
1. Everything I do with advertising revolves around dominating my marketplace. I rarely use print or other, what I consider to be, outdated marketing methods. SEM allows me to target specific keywords, competitors, et al. This means that if I get hot and bothered about a specific keyword, I will pay whatever it takes to own the position (read as 1 through 3). I really don't care what the cost per click is as long as my cost per sale is in line.

I don't have to worry about keeping several other dealerships in my market area happy. Maybe I am compulsive, but I want my piece of the pie and everyone else's as well. How does a firm market via CPC to dealerships in the same DMA ethically? It's impossible if you think about it. While they can "promise" certain search results for certain phrases, they can't do it for all the relevent keywords or phrases. In a nutshell, I find it to be a complicit conflict of interest.

The only way to make SEM work is to do it yourself. It's really not that hard. There is so much available information over the Internet regarding this subject that you can get up to speed relatively quickly. I did...

2. Just because you can pay for clicks and rank in searches doesn't mean squat. I could pay to get your website at the top of the paid searches overnight and, as a matter of fact, anyone can. The challenge becomes what does the consumer do when they click on your ad? If your site sucks, you WILL NOT convert the click to anything more than an expense. No one wants to talk about setting up landing pages, micro-sites, blogs, etc. The SEM expert companies I have talked to have spent 5 minutes talking about the site design of the website they are advertising and hours on how they can get me ranked high. It's madness. If your site sucks, no amount of SEM is going to get you the results you want, PERIOD!

My advice is to spend the time it takes to truly learn how the SEM business works. You might find a company that will provide you with everything that you are looking for at a price that makes sense. Don't fall for false promises and the "black magic" that many sell. This isn't rocket science. You can learn how to do this yourself and really dominate. If nothing else, you need to know what is real and what is snake oil.

As always, just my two cents.

Tom

 

[Joe Pistell]

I am in SEM early phase 1. Doing SEM is easy, doing SEM right is NOT EASY. I have so many irons in the fire I can't find the time to get a handle on it all, so, paying for a tool makes sense to me. Here are a few of my problems.

We sell just about every vehicle under the sun. I need keyword help. Does the dealer.com TCD supply a keyword database AND a phrase database to work with?

Does TCD help me optimize the ad copy with multiple ads for the same keywords (like GOOG does now?).

Sleepless in SEMville,
Joe

 

[Paul Rushing]

@Joe

There are plenty of tools out there that will let you do that without having to pay a monthly fee for them. I have one that I use for affiliate marketing that will even let me spy on my competition and help me develop a keyword list based on several recommendation tools and help you with keyword phrases (longtail) cheap clicks!!

 

[Joe Pistell]

Paul,
Toss me an email or a phone call when time allows. I need to get out of the SEM Stage1 dungeon.

thnx,
Joe

 

[CS]

Pay out, pay out, pay out. It's like changing your oil every 3,000 miles because Castrol told you to.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Geesh Alex, what's up with the cheap shot? Do I need to fly down to VA to show you how to run an effective PPC campaign?

It's like the DJ that now mixes MP3 and uses a program to find the BPM so they can effortlessly put two songs together cause they never had the skills nor the finesse to work the wax.

I miss the old days of TT's and "small highline stores with nothing but time on their hands".

HAHA!

Jeff

 

[mikedececco]

Tom: Great points in your post. If you want to do PPC yourself and be able to accurately measure your results, you should check out TCD. I know.... shameless product pitch... Sorry Jeff. ha!