I read this article on Searchengineland.com the other morning. The basic point is this: brick-and-mortar stores that have ecommerce websites (so that they can conduct actual click-to-sale transactions online from their paid search advertising) receive $6 worth of OFFLINE, IN-STORE sales from their paid search spending for every $1 they receive in click-to-sale revenue online.

I find that to be a truly startling statistic. If a brick-and-mortar business that sells online is only looking at click-to-sale ROI, are they under-counting the return on their paid search by a factor of 600%?

The ramifications for car dealers are tremendous. If you are only evaluating your PPC from the website leads and subsequent sales that your ad budget is generating, you may be dramatically mis-evaluating your program and mis-allocating your marketing budget.

According to NADA Data 2011, only 24% of the average franchise dealer’s 2010 marketing budget is Internet-related spending. The average dealer spent $6,600 per month in online advertising in 2010.

Here’s a quick breakdown of Dealer Spending by Marketing Channel in 2010.

As you can see, while online spending is higher than any other single channel, it is still not even a quarter of a typical dealer’s total spend. I wonder if dealers aren’t spending more online because they are under-valuing the return on their paid search budgets by only tracking form submissions. I always recommend to our dealers that if you are doing paid search advertising, you should ABSOLUTELY use call tracking so that you can account for the phone calls you’re driving with your ad spend.

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In February 2010 Google made a presentation to a select group of industry leaders about their foray into automotive lead generation. I was not in attendance but I was briefed on the program at the show. I never heard any more about the details until today’s post in Automotive News.

I am sure that Google has briefed the major automotive vendors that run Adwords campaign for thousands of car dealers about this change. However the larger community needs to know about this major shift in new car lead generation strategies.

In my opinion, this is a major SHIFT for the Google Automotive team which has not gone into direct vehicle lead generation until now. I look forward to interviewing and discussing this new program with the Google Automotive Team at the 2012 Digital Marketing Strategies Conference.

Lead Generation Is Not New For Google

Google has been running lead generation campaigns for other vertical markets, like mortgages. If you look at the screen capture below, Google is running their own PPC ads to capture leads:

These ads are labeled “Comparison Ads” and these ads are competing with other PPC lead collectors. When a consumer clicks on the PPC Comparison Ad for mortgages, a landing page for lead collection is displayed:

Lead Generation For Dealers

According to the Automotive News article written by David Barkholz:

“Google will establish a Web page for vehicle shoppers. Dealers will bid, through a Google auction, to be one of about three dealers listed on the page when shoppers fill out a discounted price request for, say, a 2012 Toyota Camry with some specifications. The shoppers choose which of the listed dealers will receive the lead and provide the price…”

This will be a game changer for businesses that use PPC for lead generation. Companies like Edmunds, Autotrader, and new comers like TrueCar that all use PPC as part of their lead generation strategy for new car buyers will be impacted.

Competition for new car leads just got more interesting, and for some, maybe more expensive.

This offering will need to be examined in greater detail when this official launches this in the Bay Area. We will have more details on this new offering after we get a briefing from the automotive team at Google.

How do you see this impacting your dealership?

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That title might be slightly inaccurate, as it really should say DEATH to cable.

I cut cable TV out of my life about a year and a half ago.  It is all Internet for me.  Admittedly, it has driven my chicken wing and alcoholic beverage consumption up because I have to go to the local sports bar to catch a game, but I’m not complaining.

I’m not writing this article to talk about my experiences in relying solely on the Internet to deliver anything and everything to my TV – you can catch that here.  I’m writing about how the TV was my last connection to the 3 big boys of traditional local marketing (Newspaper, Radio, Television).

Yes, I agree with you, I am a bit ahead of the norm.

As more and more people shy away from our marketing comfort zones how are we to get our messages out going forward?  Sure, there is PPC, SEO, billboards, display ads and all that jank.  But what we should really be talking about is a revolution in marketing.  This is a revolution that is going to rip advertising to its core.  It isn’t about shifting mediums; it is about a complete and utter shift in delivery.  And guess who isn’t in control anymore:  you the marketer.

Today’s marketing is about Push.  Tomorrow’s marketing is about Pull.

Today we push our message to a broad group of people as far as we can reach.  It doesn’t matter what media it is, we are simply trying to get as many eyeballs on our message as possible.  That has been the basic way marketing has been practiced ever since we were able to purchase ads.

Consumers are shying away from this method.  Supply is plentiful, deals are only a few clicks away, and your loud voice is just an annoying interruption.

Tomorrow’s advertising will be more about public relations than what we call marketing.  It will be based on your deeds.  It will be based on your image; your brand, and it will be shaped by your customers.  We’re starting to see the power of consumer reviews.  For car dealers, the power of reviews is still in its infancy.  For restaurants, it is full bore.

But there is another piece we can’t see.  It is a piece that lives behind privacy and topples governments.  It is social media and it is mostly Facebook.  For the first time individuals can quickly and easily rely on a lot of their friends to help them make purchase decisions.  These aren’t just decisions about cars.  Your friends are asking for advice on virtually everything.  Think of some of the questions as practice for when they really start looking for suggestions that have massive impact on the way local businesses are viewed.  If you’re on Facebook, you’ve seen your friends ask for advice.  I see it every time I view my news feed.  People flock to the most influential; the one with the most “klout” on that particular topic.  This is the person you’re going to see marketers flock to as well.

It is just the beginning.  Be cognizant of it.  As marketers, understand this is going to reshape the messages we send.  Don’t be the next Middle Eastern dictator.

P.S.  Have you ever noticed how DealerRefresh has had some major impact on various automotive vendors?

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Mobile Visits to your Dealership are on the Rise

This isn’t news. We know that more and more mobile devices are accessing the web on a daily basis. What might news to you, however, is the coming mobile tidal wave reports are predicting. Cisco’s spring 2011 study cites 2010 mobile data traffic nearly tripled (2.6x) for the third year in a row. A Tech Crunch article states mobile traffic is expected to rise 40x in the next 5 years. Fortune’s August 2010 article sums it up: “The numbers don’t lie: Mobile devices overtaking PCs.”

The coming tidal wave of mobile devices is turning into a tsunami. As such we need to evaluate how mobile users are engaging with our virtual storefront.

Your Mobile Visitors

Have you looked at your site’s mobile traffic? Here’s how to with a Google Analytics account:

1. Log in to your Analytics account.
2. Once logged in, you need to look on the left hand column for “Visitors.”
3. Under “Visitors,” click on “Mobile.”

You will then see statistics of people who viewed your site with mobile phones.

Chances are you’ll be surprised at the number. Even more interesting – look at how that number has increased over the last few months. DealerRefresh focused on this topic in May of 2010 – read the comments section from participating dealers.

Hosting a weekly video series “Mobile and the Dealer” allows me to chat with dealers around the nation. Dealers are consistently reporting 15-20%+ of total web traffic coming from mobile devices. This has increased ten fold for some over the last 12 months!

Bouncing or sticking?

Take a look at how mobile visitors are behaving on your site. Specifically look at bounce rates of mobile visitors and compare them to traditional visitors. If you’re like many, you’ll see sky-high bounce rates on your mobile visitors. In this podcast: Eric Hanson talks about mobile visitor bounce rates of vegas.com and how optimization strategies effectively lowered those stats.

Understanding Mobile Visitor Behavior

More and more reports are showing different behavior patterns for mobile visitors vs. desktop. This only makes sense, but we are now seeing data to back it up. What’s clear: giving a mobile user a desktop experience results in bounces and decreased conversion, if any.

Time on site metrics for traditional desktop users continues to be higher than metrics for mobile devices. Mobile visitors are on the go. They consume information many times in sections rather than a single sitting. The essence of being on the go doesn’t allow for prolonged spans of attention. An interesting study by ClickTale, puts some numbers to the speculation that mobile users don’t like to scroll. Long loading times, scrolling, zooming,: – all of these functions are turns off and contribute to bounces for a desktop formatted website.

Capturing Mobile Visitors

Top dealers are providing a mobile-optimized experience for their customer. These dealers are using mobile sites and mobile apps designed to capture the customer, providing first the information they are seeking, then spurring them to action. If you buy a mobile site or mobile app from a quality vendor serving the dealer market, you’ll see a lot of attention has been placed on channeling the customer through a specific set of processes.

Now that dealer apps can be downloaded right from the dealership website, dealers are using apps to create long-term relationship channels with the customer from pre-sale to post-sale service and incentives.

As mobile device traffic increases, make sure your marketing strategy doesn’t forget your mobile customer.

What is your dealerships mobile marketing strategy for the near future?

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Recently I was in a plumbing supply store.  I needed a small, custom part for my kitchen faucet.  This is what greeted me:

That’s right.  A bunch of white guys in dress shirts and ties, answering phones at desks with paper catalogues, and wood panels on the walls.

Seriously.  I had to check my phone to make sure it wasn’t 1980.

Wait.  It gets better.  After being gruffly greeted at the counter, my helper spent 20 minutes asking 3 different guys before finding the reference to the part I needed.  Then he went in the back of the building to their warehouse only to return and declare that the part wasn’t in stock, had been discontinued, and couldn’t be acquired any longer.

Now that’s extreme, but it got me thinking:  Surely we’ve done a better job in the car business keeping up? In my days back in the late 90′s I remembered the end of the parts microfiche days.  Don’t know what that is?  Go on a quest to find out.  I always find the exploration of the technological or cultural references backwards to be insightful.

Think your dealership is up to date?  Would your customers say so?  Consider:

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