Posted by Shawn Ryder

Voice Search

May 23, 2020Automotive Marketing, Dealership Tips, Digital Marketing, SEO 0

Future of Voice Search

Is voice search for the future of mobile search? The jury is still out, but Google says that 20 percent of all searches on mobile are now voice searches – and that number is growing.

While you currently can’t target voice searches directly, if you are interested in driving conversions from voice searches, here are some tips to consider for moving forward.

Understand what makes voice search different

Voice search queries tend to be longer. In 2004, most searches were 2 or 3 words. Today, search queries can be 27+ words. Voice searches also tend to be more specific (for example, searching for “find the closest open store that sells men’s black leather cowboy boots ” instead of just “cowboy boots”).

Analyze your longer tail keywords to find patterns

Since voice searches are usually more natural and conversational, keyword optimization should fit this new long-tail landscape.

Use modified broad match keywords

Modified broad match lets you specify that specific broad match keywords or close variants (such as +pizza +Chicago +delivery) must appear
to show your search ad. So even if the voice search is 30 words, as long as 3 of those are “pizza,” “Chicago,” and “delivery” your ad will appear.

Negative out keywords that aren’t driving customers

As you test and refine your keyword list for voice search, be sure to negative any words from a modified broad match that indicate the searcher is not a potential customer.

Be sure to give voice searches the option of calling

People use voice search because it is easy and hands-free. It makes sense that a voice searcher would want to keep using voice to engage with a business – and that means a phone call.

Speak in the language of “mobile.”

Since these ads will only be seen by people on their smartphones, your ad language should reflect it.

Tell searchers that operators are standing by to take their call. Use mobile-specific calls to action such as “Shop our mobile site,” “Buy on your phone,” “Find nearby stores,” and “Call us now.”

Posted by Shawn Ryder

The New Way to Connect with Automotive Customers

May 19, 2020Automation, Automotive Marketing, Digital Marketing, Sales, Text Marketing 0

Text Messages

Did you know that while many emails go unopened and unnoticed, the majority of text messages are opened within just five minutes of being received? That means that text messaging, also known as SMS, is a highly effective and immediate way to communicate with your customers. An automated text message solution makes it easy and efficient to personally connect with customers. So now that you know, what are some of the best ways you can use text messaging to stay in touch with your customers and bring in more business?

How to Get Customers to Sign Up for Texts

Getting customers to sign up is the first step. You should advertise the benefits of signing up for your text message marketing campaigns everywhere: on your website, at the physical location of your business, on your social media pages, and in your email marketing campaigns. Also, think about this: why would a customer want to sign up? Advertise the benefits that will entice people to want to receive your text messages.

Text Examples

Never miss an automotive appointment again with our convenient text message reminders.
Receive instant text message notifications as soon as your vehicle part arrives.
Gain access to personalized text message promotions and exclusive contests!

Engage Customers from the Very First Text

Once customers have signed up, your automated text message solution should send them a thank you text, confirming their subscription and offering them a special promotion to get them interested. The promotion can be small, for example, a 15% off coupon for an oil change or tire rotation. The main idea is to provide immediate value and reassure the customer that signing up was a smart idea.

Provide Helpful Automotive Tips

A great way to build trust and loyalty with your customers is to send them helpful text message tips they can actually use. These tips serve to keep you connected throughout the year, even when the customer has not been into the shop in a while, and to establish your business as one that is always thinking about its customers’ needs. These can include safety tips, maintenance advice, links to buyers’ guides or industry news, and so on.

Send Automatic Maintenance Reminders

Text message reminders can be sent automatically to each customer based on their vehicle type and history, date of the last appointment, and time of year. Reminders make your customers’ lives easier because they don’t have to remember when to book an oil change, routine maintenance, or inspection. They will be automatically notified at precisely the right time. These text messages encourage repeat business. Once the appointment has been booked, the customer will get an automatic reminder on the day of the appointment so they don’t forget, reducing no-shows and increasing your revenue.

Offer Personalized Promotions

Customers love to feel like they are getting an exclusive deal. Personalized promotions bring in more business and also grow customer loyalty and satisfaction. Your automated text message solution will keep track of each customer’s birthday, purchase date and other individual data so that promotional messages can be sent out on important dates.

Try using an automated text message marketing solution and track how much additional business comes in due to personally targeted text message campaigns.

Posted by Shawn Ryder

Outwit Your Competition

May 19, 2020Automotive Marketing, Dealership Tips, Local SEO, SEO 0

Outwit Your Competition On-Page SEO

On-Page SEO has to be understood before you can go and turn your new-found knowledge into cold, hard cash.

To make this term a little easier to understand imagine a finely-tuned engine that has several components to perform at its best. The same principles apply to On-Page SEO. It’s not just ONE thing you have to put into action, but several. Don’t worry, after reading this chapter you should have gained a good understanding of what to do. Let’s start with title tags.

Title Tags

The first thing you need to do is include your target keyword in the <title>title<title/> tag of your site. I suggest you use the keyword in a sensible form and maybe even consider using a long tail keyword to match. That way you will get more traffic. The best option, of course, is to incorporate your main keyword into a long tail keyword that gets actual searches.

Some webmasters use their keyword in their title tag (as is) which can actually repel visitors. Make them user friendly and you can’t lose, as long as your keyword is in the tag. This little tip alone can increase your search click conversions by 100% or more.

Page Headings

The next thing you need to do is use your keywords in the site’s page headings. By using <H1>, <H2>, <H3> tags you can further increase the keyword relevancy of your page.

If you use WordPress make sure the theme you use has these heading tags properly coded.

Some themes don’t and failing to pay attention here could lose you a substantial amount of search traffic over time. If in doubt, use an SEO plugin to help you rectify any possible issues.

If you worry about keyword density here, don’t. It’s more important to use the keyword in these tags and if possible incorporate long tails and keyword variations to help build your site’s authority.

Keywords in Content

Whenever you write content for your site be sure to use the keyword in the title, in the first sentence of the first paragraph, several times throughout the text and in the last sentence of the last paragraph. If you do this consistently, besides adding title and page tags you will see incredible results.

Another trick is to apply the following to your pages; every time you write new content do this once per article/post:

Bold the keyword
Italicize the keyword
Underline the keyword

This will strengthen the authority of your site because when you mark keywords like this they will stand out to the bots who crawl your site. But PLEASE, don’t do this excessively or you will get banned. Once each on every page is enough.

Keyword Density

Too many people worry too much about keyword density. While it is worth a mention here, you should be more concerned about publishing quality content that is actually user friendly. If you use bots and automation software to publish content you will eventually be excluded from Google’s index – guaranteed! Google is dedicated to clean their search engine from spam and crap and they do so aggressively all the time.

I have always done well by aiming for a density of around 2-3%. This means your keyword is featured twice, or three times for every 100 words of text. Just focus on writing quality content naturally, spike your content with keywords and most importantly use related keywords (LSI) and you will do well.

How Long Should Your Content Be?

In recent months, search engines have started to rank long content above short, spammy- looking content simply for that reason. You are best advised to opt for at least 500 words.

Optimized Images

Every single page on your domain should ideally feature one optimized image. This little On- Page SEO addition can help you outrank a competitor with his own optimized site if he fails to optimize his images.

You do this by placing your keyword into the image’s <alt> tag. You can see these tags by looking at the HTML code version of your website. In WordPress you can do this from within your post and page WYSIWYG editor at the top right hand side corner.

Optimizing your images will also give you more traffic since many people use image searches on Google to find relevant content.

Internal Linking

You’d be well advised to always use internal links where possible. When linking to your sub pages make sure to use the keyword of that page. So if you optimize that particular page for the keyword: how to buy pink widgets in new york, make sure to use the exact keyword to link. The resulting page would become a sub page of your domain.

Another thing I have found to work really well is to use the long tail keyword on sub pages and link it back (anchor text) to the home page (also called index page). This can get you a double listing on Google. More on those later in this eBook.

Outbound Links

Outbound links are links you point to pages outside your domain. In order not to dilute your Google juice you want to make these <nofollow> using the appropriate tag. The more <dofollow> links you use to point to websites outside your domain, the more “juice” you will lose in the process.

It’s the fastest way to dilute your site’s existing authority.

Posted by Shawn Ryder

Ways to Drive More Site Traffic

May 18, 2020Automotive Marketing, Dealership Tips, Digital Marketing, Email Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing 0

Drive More Site Traffic

As we know, SEO is short for search engine optimization.

This is the very complex yet very visible way of accessing automotive web sites within the organic or non-paid realm of Google search results.

Simply put in its literal sense, is that the more visits or “hits” the more visible the dealer site would be when a search is applied.

Here we are going to review some ideas to help your dealership with traffic to your site.

Create a Facebook Page

Studies have shown that people are spending more time on Facebook than any other website on the internet. By being in front of such potential customers, you have the best chance of being seen. Create a Dealership Facebook Page for your website and install a “Like Box” into your website so that your visitors will know you are on Facebook and join as a follower on your Facebook Page.

Write a Roundup Post

A roundup post is an entry that speaks about a group of people in your dealership niche. This strategy is used to build relationships with influencers. Let them know that you are reaching out to them and promoting their content. More often than not, this leads to them returning you the favor by blogging or tweeting about you. If they are indeed influential in your niche, their return of favor will be sending massive traffic your way.

Produce Videos on YouTube

One of the largest search engines other than Google is none other than YouTube. Therefore, it is crucial to include YouTube in your arsenal of dealership traffic strategies. Create your own YouTube channel. Produce and upload automotive original videos with interesting content for your YouTube channel.

Using the “annotation” feature while editing YouTube videos, you can add a call to action for viewers to go to your dealership website URL.

Another strategy is to interlink your videos with annotations so as to pick up more views and more traffic. Optimize your YouTube channel by including a link back to your dealer website in the profile information on the left panel.

Write Guest Posts

Many bloggers or webmasters have audiences to their websites amounting more than just your own. Approach these people and ask them if they would like for you to write a post for their blog. This could focus on a particular model, vehicle, service or something related to the dealership.

Not only will you possibly get traffic flocking to your site, but it will also get you quality backlinks that will boost the ranking of your site on Google in the long run. In addition, you would have made a friend or friends and build relationships in the process.

Build an Email List

Building an email list enables you to drive traffic at the click of a button to a specific list. With a substantial number of automotive subscribers in your email list, you can also build a community around your site or even your vehicle niche and eventually will make sales after you have established a relationship with the individuals on your list.

However, it takes time, effort and the right strategies to attract people to subscribe to your list. Also, it is essential to use an email marketing service to build your email list.

Create Epic Content

This may seem somewhat obvious, but people love to read content that delivers immense value to them. Therefore, to attract the bulk of traffic to your website, your content must be well thought out and researched, outdoing dealership competitors’ efforts in a particular area.

Give Away Free Stuff

One very effective way of making your dealer content viral is to give away free stuff. You are able to drive massive amounts of traffic to your website, generate leads for your business, and even make sales later by giving away high-quality free stuff on the front end of your sales process. People love contests to win free water bottles, key chains, manufacturer focus trinkets, and maintenance services at the dealership.

Use Keywords in your Title Tags

If you want to get more traffic to your dealer website, it is crucial to know where all that traffic is coming from. The majority of online traffic finds content on search engines using keywords hence the first step to getting found on search engines is to include keywords into your website.

We call this process On-Page Search Engine Optimization. One element to include keywords in is in your title tag, the title of your website. There are many other elements to search engine optimization.

Retweet Contest

If your dealership is active on Twitter, you might have seen some of the marketing tactics in Twitter campaigns. One idea is that you could hold a contest to make the entry based on tweeting a certain link. Using backlink tweets, you can track those who have tweeted your link.

Setup Events On Facebook

Facebook events is an awesome application on Facebook that helps you to organize dealership events.

It is a great way to get more traffic because by leaving all the default settings the way they are – that is, allow guests to invite others, upload photos, write on the wall, etc., every one of these activities creates news items that go out into the feeds of those individuals and their friends. This means that your content or event will go viral very quickly on Facebook.

Add Your Site to Directories

Most online directories offer the free option to add your dealership URL to their listings. You will be able to pick up some high-quality backlinks by adding your site to directories. This is to get your site ranking well on Google.

Conduct Proper Keyword Research

Keyword research helps you to find relevant keywords that are high in demand but low in level competition.

Use the Google Keyword tool to gather this information and then use it for search engine optimization or cost per click campaigns to get your dealer website ranked to be found by prospective automotive customers.

Google AdWords

Pay Per Click advertising is also very effective in getting more traffic to your site. It is highly recommended if you have a sales funnel that more than pays for the cost of the traffic. Avoid PPC advertising if you do not have a product that you are already making sales with.

Facebook Ads

Facebook ads allow you to target your specific market according to their demographics, geographical residence, and the users’ preferences. As a result of Facebook’s large user base, you have a large group to market to even if you narrow it down to your own dealership.

Set your Dealership with Google My Business

97% of consumers search for local businesses online. Therefore, your website will get
more traffic if you were to list it with Google My Business.

Give Out Swag with Your URL

If you are looking for an offline method to promote your dealership, consider giving out swag. Everyone loves swag. Make the swag you dish out as cool as possible so that people actually wear it.

Post Content on a Regular Basis

To generate a regular readership on your website, produce content regularly. Try to get your next few posts on standby so that you can always get your automotive content out on the same day even if your week gets crazy and you don’t have a chance to create new content.

Link to your site in your Email Signature

You can get traffic to your site with every email your dealership sends. Therefore, set up a custom signature with a link to your website for everybody in the dealership. In addition, have it as an anchor text with the title of your site, because in that way, there is a good chance that it will get clicked.

Customize your 404 error page

Suggest other content on your site to visitors with a custom designed 404 page. This is
so that even if they accidentally land on that page, they don’t bounce from your site. In most cases sending them to the homepage works best for dealer web sites.

Interlink your Pages

Create links that link internally within your dealership site because the more links you have within your content to other content on your dealer site the better your site will rank in Google. This will also mean more traffic for you. Hence, interlink the pages on your site as often as is relevant – meaning vehicles, models, services, and more!

Create a post “100 _____“ on anything

We all love lists. Examples of lists include 100 ways to improve fuel milage or ranking lists like the top most popular songs etc. Create lists on anything or to make it more effective, create lists of a topic that is currently trending and obviously fun.

Speed up your Website

When we talk about the internet, we are always talking about speed. When a dealership website takes more than a few seconds to load some potential customers will leave simply because they are impatient. Therefore speed up your website – it is key.

Optimize your images

Optimize your images by compressing their size, label their alt tags and title so that they
can be found by image search engines, such as Google Images, quickly and easily.

Build Backlinks

Link building is one of the surest ways to get your site ranked on Google so that you can direct massive amounts of traffic to your dealership site. However, when building backlinks, always keep in mind that it is the quality of links over the number of links.

One link from an authority site can do more for your site than 1,000 low-quality links.

Title Tag Optimization

Ensure that your title tags include keywords you are trying to rank on the Google search engine. By doing that, you increase the chances of ranking in Google and getting more traffic from searches containing those keywords.

Choose a Smart Domain

A domain name that contains the automotive keywords you are optimizing for actually gives you an advantage over everyone else trying to rank for those words.

Submit your Site to Search Engines

Again, may seem obvious but manually submit your new site to Google, Yahoo, and Bing to inform that to crawl it on a regular basis. For a WordPress blog, install and set up the Google XML Sitemaps plugin to enable crawling spiders to check out your site regularly.

Review Google Analytics and Optimize Your Site

Review Google Analytics to track variables that will give you insight into how to optimize your site. For WordPress bloggers, use the plugin Google Analyticator to easily install the Google Analytics tracking code.

One tip is that by looking at the exit paths of visitors, you can see which dealership pages should be tweaked to prevent people from bouncing from your site.

Often visitors end up on the site and look at particular vehicles – keep them engaged with other content to build a brand for the dealership. Next time they are think about what dealer to find their next vehicle, be top of mind!

Spy on Your Competitors

Find your biggest competitors by searching for your keywords in Google. Take the top results from there and spy on their backlinks. Copy your competitor’s URL and paste it in the yahoo search bar in this manner: link: pageurl -site:domain.com

This will show you the links that are pointing to this page so that you can attempt to improve upon them.

Put Your Website Everywhere

Get your dealership website URL known by doing a little “Guerilla Marketing”.

Some ideas: Give out business cards with an incentive for people to visit your dealer site on them and leave them everywhere. You can also get a decal of your URL for your dealership cars. Do whatever it takes to get people to your site!

Ask Your Customers for Feedback

Don’t be afraid to ask for opinions from people about what they think of your dealership site. Because the better you can create your site to be, the more visits you will get over time from repeat visitors. These visitors turn into sales and long term service customers!

Posted by Shawn Ryder

Sales Managers – Communication Skills

May 17, 2020Automotive Marketing, Dealership Tips, Sales 0

Automotive Communication Skills

Successful automotive sales managers understand the benefits of effective communication skills to help set appointments. These skills are critical on the phone, internet lead emails, and as well as in person.

In physics, opposites attract. In sales, opposites repel. In business, customers buy from people who are most like them.

For automotive sales professionals, this becomes an opportunity to talk less and listen more. Find out as much as possible about the customer’s needs when it comes to their next purchase decision.

That puts particular emphasis on the skills of listening and asking proper questions.
Different ways of asking questions.

Open-Ended

Ask for as much information as possible, require you to “filter” what you need; often begin with “what,” “why,” “how,” or “please explain.” Used to gather basic information – short question for a long answer.

Closed-Ended

Are answered with fewer words, often “yes” or “no.” Use to demonstrate your understanding, draw out quiet or shy customers.

Clarifying

Use to probe for clearer understanding, gauge customer reactions to your presentation, or to prepare the customer for confirming the decision. “You must have a good reason for feeling that way. Please tell me why?”

Objective-Driven

Usually open-ended, help focus the discussion and direct talkative customers towards an agreement. The question often contains the words you would like the customer to use in his or her answer. “What would you like to accomplish today?”

Appointment Settings

An effective appointment setting should involve an easy-to-follow, logical approach, every time we answer a sales call. Practice the dealership scripts and use them. Don’t be hesitant to give an example of terrible calls that you have heard either.

Before Attempting the Appointment

You must be prepared.
You must have a definite plan of action.
Smile! A smile can actually be heard over the phone.
Introduce yourself confidently to the customer.
Take good notes and politely ask the customer proper open-ended questions.
Let the customer know this is a great day to call, and an even greater day to come to the dealership.
Motivate prospects to want to set an appointment. Give them a choice of dates and times.

Things to avoid (Inbound calls)

Avoid answering the phone when you are in a hurry.
Avoid the urge to get the name and number too quickly.
Don’t be in a hurry to get the name and number just so you can hang up and call back to get a busy signal.
Don’t discount any lead.
Never pre-judge a customer’s ability to purchase.
Avoid using industry jargon.

Always be the professional – whether speaking to the customer in person, through email, web site chat or on the phone! What the customer hears on is the only impression they can have of you.

Make sure it is positive and lasting!

Posted by Shawn Ryder

6 Ways to Get Traffic to your Dealership

May 16, 2020Automotive Marketing, Business, Dealership Tips, Digital Marketing, Email Marketing, Local SEO 0

How do I get more traffic to my dealership?

The age-old question has always been “how do we get more appointments?” to just get them to the dealership. There has always been a thought process of just get them into the dealer, test drives a vehicle, and then have a good shot at selling them – with a turnover to the Sales Manager to close the deal. Times have certainly changed with the digital age – not counting on the recent Coronavirus but in the last few years of digital dealerships.

So with that here are six ways that I think we can look at for getting traffic – digital and in-person to your dealership!

#1 Social Media

Some dealers are still not comfortable with using social media to its full potential. Building trust for a dealership is certainly key in bringing folks to the dealership. One of the best and most relevant ways is to share your “story” on social media. This means building excitement and consistency in messages on social media. The platforms include Facebook, Instagram (including Instagram Stories), Twitter, and even the newest one TikTok.

For example – delivery pictures and having the customer tag themselves when appropriate – get them to share the picture. It is a strong message to have a customer show where they bought a car, what they bought, and by a simple picture of why they purchased from that dealership!

Another idea is to highlight your team members – people buy cars from people…. so doing something to differentiate from other dealerships on why their team should have a chance to earn the customers’ business.

#2 Targeted Email Campaigns

While a lot of dealers conduct mass email blasts to leads that were received or customers that had purchased. But taking it to another level will help drive specific traffic to your web site and in turn dealership. Using email platforms allows you to do custom lists that are generated from the names, interactions, and current status.

A dealership collects leads from various sources, new and used leads, then broken down to specific models.

Using strong email campaigns allows for targeting based on all of these factors. For example, if you have a manufacturer promotion on a particular model then you can target leads that had shown interest in that specific model. Then track the interaction they have with the email – taking it to the next level how they interact with the web site. So put a landing page on a web site with the promotion, a lead form and also track how the viewer goes through the web site – page by page and who they are specifically.

#3 Local Search Engine Optimization

Local SEO (Local Search Engine Optimization), sometimes referred to as local search engine marketing, is an incredibly effective way to market your local dealership online. It helps businesses promote their vehicles and services to local customers at the exact time they’re looking for them online in the local market.

This is achieved through a variety of methods, some of which differ greatly from what’s practiced in standard SEO, and some of which are far easier to manage using Local SEO tools and can require specific local Search Engine Optimization services.

Whereas anyone in the world with good enough SEO and authority can rank for a search query like “how to fix a blocked drain”. When the query has much more purchase intent behind it, it becomes “car dealers near me” or “best dealership in [specific location]”.

When building content for the dealership web site focuses on the models sold by the location, along with the local market. That way it helps Google connect that dealership with the models sold in the local market.

#4 Targeted Text Marketing

Text marketing campaigns may seem outdated to some, but they are an invaluable marketing tool for others. Last year, on average 456,000 Twitter tweets were sent every minute of the day. A pretty impressive number, isn’t it?

But it’s a measly looking figure next to the 15.2 million text messages that were sent every minute. And that doesn’t include app to app messaging!

Texting is the most effective direct marketing channel. It has the best engagement rates – and is a lot less annoying than a phone call. The open rate of text messages is as high as 99%, according to some reports. This is much higher than email marketing, which has an average open rate of 32%. Thanks to a lack of spam filter and the fact that people check their phones more obsessively than their email inbox, companies can yield a great return using text marketing campaigns.

One of the best ways to do this is to make sure you segment your audience so you can send them targeted messages. This way your texts are more likely to be welcomed by your customer and lead to a conversion.

#5 Local Citations

Local citations positively impact local search engine rankings for a dealership. The number of citations a dealer accrues, the accuracy of the data they feature, and the quality of the platforms they exist on all influence rankings. Search engines like Google amass data about each business. If what they encounter is accurate, the search engine trusts the validity of the data, which is believed to strengthen the dealerships’ chance of ranking well. However, if the data search engines encounter is inconsistent, this trust is eroded, lessening ranking opportunities.

Local citations either positively or negatively impact consumers. Accurate citations help people discover a local business, which can result in web, phone, and foot traffic, culminating in sales, and more service department customers. Inaccurate citations, however, can misdirect customers, leading to a loss of reputation and revenue.

#5 Google My Business

Google My Business is a free tool that lets you manage how your business appears on Google Search and Maps. That includes adding your dealership name, location, and hours; monitoring and replying to customer reviews; adding photos; learning where and how people are searching for you, and more.

Google My Business doesn’t just make it easier for customers to find you physically, but digitally too. It can vastly improve your search visibility in Google.

Not to mention, when prospective customers are looking for local businesses, they are generally ready to make a purchase (or at the very least are highly interested in making a purchase).

Folks don’t Google, “dealerships in Toronto” to read a blog about vehicles… they do so because they’re looking for a vehicle and want to hand over their hard-earned money to whoever has the vehicles they are looking for in Toronto.

Add as much information and media as you can, including a dealership profile photo, the market you serve, your dealership hours, attributes (e.g. “wheelchair accessible,” “free wifi”), the day and year you opened, and a public phone number and obviously website URL.

According to Google, businesses with photos see 35% more clicks to their website and 42% higher requests for driving directions in Google Maps to get to the dealership.

#6 Dealership Reviews

Dealership reviews not only have the power to influence consumer decisions but can strengthen a company’s credibility. Dealer reviews have the power to gain customer trust, and they encourage people to interact with the sales and service departments. Customer interaction ultimately leads to improved profits for the dealership.

One of the best ways to encourage future customers to leave positive reviews? Respond to current ones. Not only does leaving an appreciate response show the original reviewer you’re thankful for their support. But it also makes that positive review stand out on your listing and influences people to leave their own reviews.

You should also respond to negative dealership reviews to show you take them seriously and placate the unhappy customer. But make sure you’re extremely courteous — attacking them back will only make you look unprofessional and their review more credible in the eyes of the reader.

Conclusion

I hope that this list helps you with some thought starters on how to drive more digital and foot traffic to your dealership. Tackling all of these can be difficult for sure so take it one step at a time. Obviously, if you need help with any of these subjects or ideas – contact me anytime!

Posted by Shawn Ryder

What is TikTok?

May 16, 2020Automotive Marketing, Digital Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing 2

What is TikTok?

Today we’re talking all about the app TikTok, which launched in 2016, and in 2018 the application gained popularity and became the most downloaded app in the USA.

TikTok is one of the most popular social media apps on the planet allowing users to upload 15-second videos that they can share with the world.

Trends include lip-syncing to an archive of popular songs dancing and collaborations allowing the user to do it with someone by replying to their video.

So look how does it work? Well it’s really simple you just download the app like what you
would any other platform and then create an account you’ll have to come up with some kind of user name. Really no different to Facebook, Instagram, or anything like that.

Watching TikTok Videos

Now once you’re logged in you can instantly start watching everybody’s videos and there are so so many videos on TikTok. This is one of the most random apps you’ll ever see. You open up the app on your phone and then it will take you to a 15-second video and that 15-second video will just loop.

If you swipe up it will take you to the next one, so on and so on and so on. There’s a bit of a lot o when it comes to what you’ll land on when you swipe up because it really could be anything.

What you see on TikTok

Now the more time you spend on the app the more you will tap into the algorithm so
we’ll start to show you videos that are related to stuff that you’ve liked and engaged with.

From an automotive perspective, there is a lot of content added on the platform – will highlight some of the well-done ones on here as well!

But apart from that it really is just a smorgasbord of weird creative amazing bizarre videos I’ve ever come across ok then let’s talk trends so look there are definitely trends on tick-tock and just to name a few there is the Adele trend.

There’s another one when you use a finger gun no lip-syncing is a huge part of tick-tock okay it’s what a lot of people use it for lip-syncing to a song or lip-syncing to a quote from a film.

There are also some really creative people on there are artists, there are people that dance. It’s just a really random app full of really random things so as a consumer there’s plenty of
content for you to sit there and watch.

But as a creator what can we do what kind of videos can we upload to TikTok now they make it incredibly easy to shoot edit and upload a video all within a few minutes.

TikTok Experience

There’s a huge archive of music to choose from and there are different video effects you can add to your footage but what’s it like to use this app as a Video Creator.

Well, I thought I’d find out now once, so opened an account I thought I’d upload my first video now I put no thought into this just to be really clear I literally uploaded the first video that I found on my phone and within a week of that video had over 50,000 of views.

Which was just insane to me but just as an example let’s compare tick-tock to YouTube okay I upload a 15-second video on my phone and it gets 50,000 views to look at the views on this video as an experiment okay but it’s nowhere near 50,000 views right getting that amount of views is actually really difficult.

I upload a video 15 seconds long which is just hanging around on my phone and I get
50,000 views so with the first video getting so many views are put on experiment and upload some more so in the last week I’ve uploaded six videos and as you can see they’ve had varying degrees of success.

TikTok – Facebook Videos

So my first video as I mentioned did pretty well it got fifty-nine thousand views I then uploaded two more videos that you would have seen on this channel before I used these as Facebook profile videos they didn’t do very well one only got 567 views the other one got
147.

I then uploaded another video that also did terribly 158 views and then uploaded another one that did pretty well that got over 7,000 views but then I created a video specifically for tick-tock the rest of these videos were just videos that I had sat on my and that video I used one of the trending hashtags it was the finger gun and that got over 23,000 views by being
on tick-tock, for just one week I managed to get there than 93,000 two views which

I’ve got to say I’m really impressed with tick-tock I guess to sum up you could say minimal effort maximum results if you’re looking to get eyes on your content and to grow a following quickly then honestly TikTok could be one of the easiest and quickest ways to do that.

Example Automotive TikTok Videos

@jamesonlikescarsShould I make a pt.2? ##videocall ##ButterGlossPop ##strengthtraining ##cars ##car ##cardealer ##luxurycar

♬ original sound – thepeepeepoopooboys

@hotnfresh4uTexas Check!! ##fyp ##foryou ##foryoupage ##texascheck ##denton ##texas ##cardealer ##cars ##trucks ##gmc ##SnickersFixTheWorld ##boss ##dealership ##texastiktok

♬ Paper Planes – Instrumental Hip Hop Beats Crew

@abrahamurcarfriendWhat brand of car is the best investment for you and your family? ##foryou ##fy ##foryoupage ##cardealer ##salesman ##toyota

♬ Patatak – mihnea.craciun

Posted by Shawn Ryder

Automotive Text Marketing

April 29, 2020Automotive Marketing, Dealership Tips, Digital Marketing, Text Marketing 1

Automotive Text Marketing

For automotive dealers that are saying you’re not yet using SMS marketing and sending text messages to your customers, ouch you are missing out big time.

Let me explain why today I want to open your eyes to one of the most powerful communication technologies available for your dealership text message marketing with an average SMS open rate of 98% compared to 20% for emails.

A 45 percent response rate for SMS compared to only 6% for emails you can see why your dealership absolutely needs to harness automotive text marketing is the perfect complement to your email marketing strategy.

But the edge of text marketing doesn’t stop at open rates it takes the average person 90 seconds to respond to a text while it takes the average person 90 minutes to respond to an email that’s because 95% of all text messages are read within three minutes.

Average Read Time

Most on average being read in under five seconds and think about it nobody deletes a text message without reading it now don’t take me wrong I’m not dissing email marketing it is still one of the three most powerful marketing tools to drive traffic and sales for dealerships but SMS marketing is a necessary complement to your email strategy.

This will strengthen some of the inherent weaknesses of an email campaign need an additional kicker to get you onboard with text automotive marketing

This statistic from a digital marketing magazine claiming that 75% of people would like to have offers sent to them via text. So, your dealership’s customers want you to send them text messages now. For obvious reasons, the importance of text marketing rides on the coattails of the rising popularity of mobile phones.

Mobile Phone Capabilities

With the growing list of mobile capabilities and functions added to mobile devices daily, you know mobile technology is not something going anywhere anytime soon.

In fact with the meteoric rise of mobile phones, you know most of your customers will have their device in their hands or pockets when you send them your text message.

Which is a marketer dream warning be prepared for some rough replies now if I’m the one hand you have 75% of your customers who would like to get offers by text messages be prepared for some course replies from some members of the other 25% SMS marketing is very personal.

With email, people are used to getting newsletters invoices corporate communications and even some spam in their email inbox but text messages are still mostly used for friends,’ family members, and colleagues.

For this reason, don’t be surprised by some of the harsh replies. You’ll get from some individuals who don’t want your dealership on their phone don’t take it personally and don’t let these few negative voices detract you from your text marketing gameplan. Why would you want to take away from most of your customers something they want because of a few bad apples? Just make sure you always follow the laws and regulations
that are in effect in your dealership area.

Always provide recipients with a way to easily unsubscribe from your distribution list once these people are off your text broadcast list you’ll be left with a captive audience who will embrace your SMS marketing efforts.

Ready to send your first text broadcast? Well, keep it real when creating your text message don’t make the mistake of using a corporate voice as if you were talking to the masses picture one customer in your mind.

Write the text for him or her using simple language just like you would when texting a
friend or family member keep in mind that each text is a hundred and sixty characters long so if your message is longer than 160 characters even by one letter you will be charged for a second credit by your automotive text provider.

I personally like to use the equivalent of two text messages or just under 320
characters I don’t feel that 160 characters or enough to create curiosity communicate.

Call to Action Texts

My call to action and provide the recipients with the ability to unsubscribe just make sure you factor the costs when deciding on the length of the message if your text broadcast
technology allows it you can use merge fields or tokens to personalize your text messages but I haven’t found it improves conversions for our dealers.

What does improve conversions is when you keep it real and stay away from the usual boring corporate tone make sure you also use links to landing pages where people can learn more about the opportunity that you’re communicating just make sure the pages are mobile-friendly and designed specifically for being viewed on phones.

Text marketing and technology when it comes to technology find one that will allow you to manage your unsubscribe lists easily that’s a critical component.

You’ll also want a technology that will allow different members of your team to
respond to people engaging in a conversation. From a cloud-based back-end where your whole team can share it 24/7 you don’t want all those replies going to one single device.

You also want a technology that will allow you to adjust a throttle of your broadcast if you’re sending a few hundred or even a few thousand text messages you want them to
trickle out at a speed that will allow your team members to manage the requests.

Remember most people will respond within seconds I personally like to adjust the throttle to around 25 text messages every 15 minutes you also want a technology that will allow you to adjust your broadcast schedule.

You don’t want to be sending text messages to your customers in the middle of the night or the wee hours of the morning they will not forgive you I find this sweet spot to be between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. and the best response rate to be around lunchtime and right after dinner if you’re using small lists you might also want to look into a text marketing platform.

That provides bot technology this will allow you to automate the dialogue with your prospects in the early stages of the conversation need some help if you require help building your dealerships text marketing strategy.

Posted by Shawn Ryder

3 Things for Better Automotive SEO Results

May 16, 2020Automotive Marketing, SEO 0

Better Automotive SEO Results

SEO refers to search engine optimization. It is a process to increase the organic search rankings of a website. There are millions of searches being done online. People search for almost every imaginable thing from how to care for their pets to particular vehicles and services at a dealership.

While searching, people enter some words or phrases in the search box. These are known as keywords or key phrases. A dealership website owner’s aim is to have high rankings for a lot of important keywords related to the site’s niche.

The advantage of high rankings is that you can get thousands of free visitors to your website without spending a dime on advertising. And this traffic will keep coming to your website automatically as long as your site is still ranking high on the search engines.

What’s more – your site will be getting visitors even while you are sleeping, eating or enjoying time with your family.

In order to enjoy all these benefits, we need to optimize our website in a certain way so that it stands a good chance of ranking highly in the search engines. Each search engine is different and gives priority to different factors.

It may be almost impossible to optimize our website keeping all the search engines in mind. Thankfully we don’t have to do so. If we focus on just the top 3-5 search engines, it should be sufficient for us to get thousands of free targeted visitors.

Start Your Automotive SEO Efforts from Here

Let us discuss 3 important areas you have to focus on first in order to optimize your website for higher rankings.

Pay Attention to Post Titles

Each automotive webpage has a title. What you place between the title tags is very important from the Automotive SEO point of view.

You should place your most important keywords which you are targeting in the title. The keywords should be placed in the title is such a manner that it should make sense to humans also.

Our webpage titles should appeal to search engines as well as human visitors. If your title is just a bunch of keywords without much sense or appeal, then people will may not click to visit your site even if you have a high ranking in the search engine.

Pay Attention to Header Tags

Header tags are like subtitles of your page. Again, header tags are important from human as well as SEO point of view.

Header tags should also contain your important keywords so that the search engines understand what your page is about. These header tags are also important for human visitors to your website. If someone is just scanning your article, he/she can read through the subtitles to decide whether the article is of their interest and deserves to be read further or not.

Pay Attention to Content

Your articles should be of good quality and useful to the reader. They should serve some purpose.

The article should contain your important keywords written in a natural manner so that it makes complete sense to human readers also. If you write high-quality content and spread your important automotive keywords throughout the content then stand a good chance of impressing the search engines as well as human visitors.

These are the 3 most important parts of your webpage you should pay attention to if you want to gain high search rankings. The benefits of top rankings are immense. So start paying more attention to your blog post titles, subtitles as well as the actual content.

If you do so then you can reap the benefits in terms of good search rankings as well as high conversions from website visitors.

There are many other factors that need your attention in order to improve site rankings, but all efforts should start from here. You should first and foremost try and optimize your content then worry about other factors.

Posted by Shawn Ryder

Automotive SEO Basics

May 16, 2020Automotive Marketing, Sales, SEO 0

Automotive SEO Basics

Understanding Automotive SEO basics is vital to ensure that you know how search engines like Google work for car dealerships. When you know how they work, you’ll be able to get your dealer website and blog posts online ranking high on Google.

One of the first things you need to know is that Google ranks websites based on what they scan through whenever they visit a site.

So, if they see a website that has specific words on the site, Google will basically try to put that website on the search engines for that specific keyword.

This is to ensure that those who want help or information in that area will see your web site, as Google only wants to help people find what they really need.

Of course, even if your site says all of the specific keywords over and over again, if there aren’t any backlinks generated for the site, you won’t see the site climbing up the rankings. This is called off-page optimization.

You need to make sure that you have other websites linking back to your site. Google only wants to rank high quality, authority level websites that are popular online with other sites.

How do you get your site to be popular and authority level in Google’s eye? By having other sites linking back to yours.

This can be done by leaving your URL on other blog posts, leaving your URL on other sites, writing posts online, and putting your URL at the bottom, along with many other kinds of ways.

In addition, you need to make sure your page is optimized for search engines. This is called on-page optimization. Your dealership site title, description, and keywords should include your main keywords/key phrases you’re targeting.

Now that you know how it works, start broadening your understanding on the topic of SEO. Continue to learn how to use SEO tactics into your marketing, and don’t be afraid to make mistakes if ever your site doesn’t rank high right away.

Content With Automotive SEO In Mind Increases Sales

Once you’ve done your research on keywords for your dealership, you’ve already gotten started on a good foot. It doesn’t mean you’ll end up with high paying advertisements though, even if you use Google. That’s because you still haven’t written the copy to make sure that the Google advertising server understands which keywords you are targeting. So, it will serve up whatever it wants, regardless of whether it is high paying or not. You get much better results when you also target keyword phrases that have a high CPC too.

When you write copy for the Google search engine, you want to include the keyword phrases in the title as well as the body of the copy. Certain areas in the content are weighted more than other in the algorithms and the title is one such area.

Another area is headings for chapters. Anything bolded, like a subheading, generally receives more attention. Finally, if you use the keywords across the entire article or blog post, that will increase the probability that you’ve optimized in a density that doesn’t trigger any keyword stuffing alerts on Google’s side.

If you are writing blog posts as your website, you want to include the keyword phrases in any tags or categories too that you might be posting for people. Indexing your content with keywords is a great way to make sure they are picked up by the Google search engine. This strategy doesn’t just increase your potential monetary payout, but it also increases traffic significantly.

Original content is also important when you are trying to get noticed by the Google search engine. If it sees duplicate content across the web, the Google search engine will penalize such a site that uses duplicate content excessively.

That’s why many people actually contract writers for original content because duplicate content can do more harm than good for Internet marketers. Even if you are only duplicating your own content across multiple sites, Google won’t differentiate that from plain old plagiarism. So, it is possible to plagiarize yourself on the Internet. Your best bet is to have fresh, original, content for all your web sites either by hiring writers or by writing your own.

Search Engine Optimization and Advertising

In today’s net-savvy world it has become common for any business to have a website which they use mostly for advertising their products and services. With the advent of search engines, it has become even easier for the customers to search for the stuff online. For a website to be successful its link should land in the first three pages which the search engine brings and the rank of the page should be high which means many visitors come to the site. This can be achieved by applying search engine optimization or popularly known as SEO. This is a marketing strategy that increases the quality and quantity of traffic flow to a particular website via search engines.

Automotive SEO not only affects the search engine results but also image search, video search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. It determines how a search algorithm functions and searches what is popular with people. When a website link is submitted to a search engine, a spider crawls through a page to gather links that lead to other pages and stores those pages on the server of the search engine. The information collected from these pages is sent to the indexer, whose job is to extract information from those pages such as the keywords and their weights, the location of the page, and other links that are stored for the spider to crawl in future.

In the beginning, the search engine optimizer algorithms were dependant on the keywords, Meta tags, and index files provided by the Webmaster. Meta tags provided information about a particular page, but using them for indexing the pages didn’t prove to be successful as some Webmasters added irrelevant Meta tags to increase the number of hits and earn huge ad revenue. They even changed the HTML of the web pages to achieve a good rank for the page. But this was a case of abuse as it fetched irrelevant pages.

Search engines then began utilizing complex ranking algorithms, which was difficult for webmasters to manipulate so as to provide web surfers with genuine results. The rank of the web page was calculated mathematically by functions using the strength and quantity of the inbound links. The higher the rank of the page the more chances it had to be viewed by a person. Later algorithms were developed which considered various other on-page factors such as rank and off-page factors such as hyperlink. Since the webmasters couldn’t manipulate the page rank, they began exchanging, selling, and buying links, which lead to link spamming and even creation of numerous sites dedicated to this purpose.

Algorithms became more complex by every passing day and top search engines kept their algorithms a secret. As the cost of Automotive SEO increased, advertisers were roped in to pay for it, which finally resulted in high-quality web pages. Although investing in Automotive SEO is very fruitful, but at the same time is risky because without any prior notice the algorithms being used are bound to change and the search engine will stop directing visitors to the page. Many consultants are available in the market that provides SEO services. They manipulate the HTML source code of the web site like menus, shopping carts, and sometimes even the content of the website to draw more traffic. Search engines like Google have algorithms that extract pages not according to the page rank but according to the cost per click or set fee, that is if an advertiser desires that the page containing his ad be displayed, he is expected to pay money for it. This is a point of controversy, as only the big businesses will be able to increase the number of hits of their page but not the small business who might be having a better quality page.