Utilize the latest technology to drive traffic to your dealership's Website

Why is it that some dealerships are able to sell ridiculous amounts of vehicles online when other dealerships can barely sell any? Let’s get a little more specific here. How is it that some dealerships are able to book a high number of special finance deals each month when others can barely book any?

The answer to both questions is a simple one: Successful dealerships find ways to generate quality opportunities to do business. In this article, I’ll explain what search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (also known as search engine marketing or SEM) and video search engine optimization (VSEO) and are all about, and how they can create sales opportunities for your dealership.

Get your online campaign under way

We all know you need several elements in place to be successful with subprime customers, such as:

• The right inventory
• A network of diversified banks that buy across a broad credit spectrum
• Trained special finance staff who can handle the process from A to Z

I’m sure you have read about these “basics” in various forms from various authors. Let’s assume you have all of the above, and perhaps a buy-here, pay-here operation as well. Most dealerships in the subprime business use traditional methods to drive special finance traffic. These include using direct mail and buying leads from third-party providers who often charge a lot of money. Most dealers still do not actively generate opportunities in-house. Yet in-house lead generation is extremely powerful and yields the highest quality leads and the highest closing ratio.

Recent market research concludes that only 8 percent of leads generated by third-party providers turn into closed deals. More importantly, over 70 percent of the traffic that is generated from third-party Websites originates from search engines such as Google and Yahoo! The same research shows that, on the other side of the spectrum, 16 percent of the leads generated by a dealership’s own site result in a sale, and with higher gross profits than leads from third-party providers.

I’m convinced that digital advertising is a more powerful and accountable advertising medium than traditional vehicles such as print, TV and radio or billboard advertising. In my experience, online campaigns also offer a greater return on investment.

Start with conventional SEO

When a subprime car buyer goes to Google and searches for “bad credit car loan in Indiana” or “first-time buyer program in Philadelphia,” the search engine generates one or more pages of search results. Your goal should be to be in the top 10 results. Unfortunately, it’s not easy. “Organic” or “natural” placement takes approximately four to six months to achieve. That means if you launch a custom special finance Website or an SEO campaign, it will still take a long time for customers to find you. Here is what happens:

• You build your custom special finance Website, focus site or microsite
• You, your Webmaster or your designer “submits” the new site to all the major search engines, including Google, AOl,  and Yahoo!, and all of the minor search engines will pick them up as well.
• Once the site has been submitted, it takes its place in a “queue” and waits for the search engine’s spiders to crawl the sites and then rank them.

There are several reasons search engines follow this process and why it takes so long to complete. First, there is a massive number of submissions every day, and it takes time for the search engines to get to each one. Also, the search engines are constantly changing their rules for ranking results, also known as algorithms, because so many people are always trying to beat the system and manipulate it for their benefit.

It’s like your local highway speed trap. The police have to track highway speeds for drivers and they use radar or laser detectors to see who is exceeding the speed limit. Then technology comes along to track the radar and alert drivers so they can slow down before they get a ticket. There will always be newer, more advanced radar guns, and the other side will continue to develop better radar detectors to circumvent them.

Additionally, the search engines are constantly striving to better serve their users. They want to make sure that when people are searching for something, they are going to get exactly what they need. Sometimes people don’t really know what they want or need at the beginning of a search. The engines are trying to make it easier and as productive as possible for the searcher. Another reason is the fact that, every day, more and more Websites, focus sites, and microsites are being launched, and each changes the game. Depending on the content and relevancy of the new sites, the search results will change. SEO is definitely a constantly moving target.

Bottom line: Organic SEO is the best, but it takes a long time to get the results you would like. For a dealership, or a special finance department in particular, waiting three to six months for a campaign to kick in is not really a good strategy, and it will never serve as a tier-one initiative for your digital marketing plan.

Don’t rely on SEM

Our next point of discussion is search engine marketing (SEM), also known as pay-per-click. When a search engine user gets his or her results, the return page will often include several links at the very top of the page that are labeled “Sponsored Links.” The advertiser has paid a premium to appear at the top of the list, and they’ll be billed each time a search engine user clicks on the link. So it must be valuable, right? 

Here are some facts about SEM that may surprise you:

• Only 20 percent of searchers will click on the “sponsored” links. That means over 80 percent of people will skip your expensive ad and go straight to the organic listings.
• After a user clicks your SEM link, you have no long-term search page presence. After the initial click, there is zero residual value for your campaign. It’s only live for as long as you have money in your account for clicks. After you spend your monthly budget, the high ranking you’ve enjoyed simply disappears. At least with organic SEO and VSEO, you and your potential customers know your site earned its ranking.
• A lot of players are in the SEM game, and many are third-party special finance lead source providers. They have large budgets to allocate toward SEM campaigns, which allow them to maintain positions above those of most dealerships. For an independent dealer, trying to play the SEM game is like taking a knife to a gunfight.

Anything you can do to drive traffic to your Website is beneficial, but as The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People author Stephen Covey says, “First things first.” You don’t want to rely on SEM as your only digital marketing program, or even as your primary online initiative. I know dealers who have spent thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars a month on pay-per-click programs, and I find that very disheartening. I believe that SEM is somewhat overvalued in our industry. Many vendors are making millions of dollars from dealers who don’t know any better. 

Take it to the next level with VSEO

I firmly believe that video search engine optimization is the most powerful way to drive Internet traffic. It will almost certainly yield better results than organic SEO and definitely has the edge over SEM. When video is properly optimized and uploaded to video search engines, social media networking and video-sharing sites, it can reach a large viewing audience for a minimal investment.

More and more Web users are searching for video clips on general-purpose search engines, video search engines and social networking and video-sharing sites. This is causing a shift in the SEO paradigm from primarily text-based content optimization to optimization of integrated media components such as video and images.

It’s important to have good-quality video and to post your clips in a way that will achieve the maximum impact. Do your research to find the right VSEO partner to initiate your video marketing, and you could find your videos at the top of the search engine pile very quickly.

Regardless of how you choose to deploy your digital marketing strategy, don’t delay. More and more car buyers are going online to find a good deal or an opportunity to repair and rebuild their credit, and your dealership should be at the top of their list.

Search engine basics

• The most popular search engine is Google, which is visited by nearly 80 percent of all search engine users.
• Less than .5 percent of all users go past the first page of results, according to Google.
• Each search engine has a unique set of criteria for how it ranks search results. These are called algorithms, and they change constantly.
• Whereas results ranking was once based primarily on meta tags and keywords, search engines now tend to rely more on back-end links, link popularity and site relevancy.
• Google states that  the more relevant sites that link to your site, the higher your site will rank. For example, Courtesy Chevrolet in City, State has more than 17,769 outbound links from other sites that link to its main site. No wonder it sells hundreds and hundreds of vehicles out of its Internet department.
• Content is king. If you have a lot of relevant content for the search engine’s spiders to pick up when they crawl and index, the more likely they are to find you.
• Sites that are built entirely in Flash will not fare as well as sites that are built in HTML. However, an experienced flash designer may be able to make your site more search engine-friendly by creating HTML content to run parallel with your flash content.
• Sites such as Edmunds.com, Kelley Blue Book’s KBB.com, Automotive.com, Invoicedealers.com, Carsdirect.com and Cars.com always seem to come up in automotive searches. The reason? They all have a ton of content, such as the inclusion of every make and model in existence, plus page after page of inventory, specs, reviews and comparisons. That’s what search engines love: data, data and more data.