As Jeff mentioned, now OEMs are dictating what you can and can’t use inside domains which limit microsite strategies.  

Micro sites / pages still have their place and can be effective at the right moment. Micro sites miss out when they only geared towards the form conversion only.

Manufacturers have also tightened up since this article was first written. Most not allowing micro sites, nor anymore than 1 URL. Heck, I cant even have a dedicated Service Site for my Toyota dealership.

With regard to the expense of building a micro-website WordPress is a great platform. You can get hosting for $10 per month to test.

With regard to auto dealers having to pay through the nose for services, the auto industry has painted itself into a corner.

Here’s my take: Back in 2000-2001 I worked for a pre-dot-com crash company pioneering VoIP and click talk technology. Our test bed were auto dealers across the country. We even participated in the nation-wide roll out for MBUSA.com

We tried to offer the service to dealers at just $25 per month to pilot test with us. Most dealers balked at the service as the price was too low. Once we came out of testing and the price went to $150 for the low end package dealers signed up left and right.

Most GM’s won’t give a company the time of day if a service appears to be cheap. On the other hand, with effectiveness of online advertising I don’t understand why dealers will pay autotrader.com or some other company $6,000+ per month to market their inventory.

In a test I conducted with a local micro-site, we outperformed traffic from autotrader with just organic SEO alone.

Quote: Ryan Lucia

“Leads from your site are the best or close to it. Response time is critical. Most people submit a lead to more than 2 places before visiting a store.”

Ryan is dead-on. As a company that generates leads for auto dealers nation-wide micro-sites have reduced lead costs for some of our test dealers by 25-30%. Response time to leads will be a critical factor in 2009. We have seen in some cases where the same individual hits 5 of our sites and submits the same lead within minutes. (no loyalty until you earn it)

This will make you different, easy to work with, and you get that instant gratification you always want from your clients. At the end of the conversation you will know where you stand.

Funny that you mention CMS sites. I am actually in the process to create my own platform based on an open source CMS. The great potential here would be to create a platform that allows me to create content seperate from lead creation ( e.g. create content that you can combine with a form that makes sense for that content) Now we have to create a content page and then link it to a standard form page. This means you lose visitors with the extra click. I want to create a platform that allows a dealer to place different pieces of content on one page. Give me about 3 months and I will be done. Have the layout and basic design done, just need to put all the pieces together (new inventory feed, used inventory feed, flexible forms, etc)

These vendors get to set in telling dealers how it should be done eventhough they all used to work at a dealer themselves and most have no clue.

Regarding the pop up and pop under. Call dealeron (dot) com and tell them that you want to try this tool. It definately increased my conversion ratio ( I had dealeron place this tool for free on my dealerskins site which gave me an increase of 1-2% conversion, which equated to about 50-100 leads)

With dealerskins I converted about 5-6%, now with dealeron site I am converting 9-12% and with dealerskins it included service appointments and with dealeron it does not, so the difference is even bigger.

I will keep working on this open and flexible platform for dealers so you can change themes with the click of a button, add content with the click of a button, seo friendly, etc…

How do those pop-under and over coupons work for you? I havent tried it and I’ll try anything as long as it sells cars.

Joe

—I would prefer to see a vendor that allows me to build my own marketing messages on my website, and allows me to add a form to this page with the fields I want, and allows me to optimize this page based on what my marketing message is. That is basically what you want with a microsite, but our website providers do not allow us to do with our own website.—

Ahhh… music to my ears. We speak the same language! This is one of my pet rants. It’s July dammit, why can’t I have a July sales theme? Why does my site look the same when we’re running a huge campaign and when we’re not?

What you (and I want) is a CMS site (Content Management System). It has been done to near perfection by Alex at CheckeredFlag.com. For us mere mortals Jeff K has recommended Joomla.com that is open source. Get yourself a personal Joomla hack and your off to the races.

I am totally rebuilding UsedCarKing.com from the ground up. It is a SEO engineered CMS, built in CSS so I can change the look and feel without an act of congress to get it done.

Stay tuned…
Joe

I just do not see the value in them other then creating very focused messages to your potential customers. That is exactly where the problem is. All of the website providers for car dealers are very inflexible and do not allow you to create mini advertising campaigns on your own site.

I would prefer to see a vendor that allows me to build my own marketing messages on my website, and allows me to add a form to this page with the fields I want, and allows me to optimize this page based on what my marketing message is. That is basically what you want with a microsite, but our website providers do not allow us to do with our own website.

Content is King and putting the content on multiple sites instead of one does not help you. Instead of creating multiple micro sites, I see more value in creating one non branded website next to your own dealer site. This way, you can go after traffic that you are not getting now.

Regarding price. In order for a microsite to successfully index organically in the search engines, you need at least 3-6 months, thus you are paying $1000 plus $200 per month. So let’s say $2,000 to get started and then you have to maintain your keywords, content and keep track of your results. I created the sites myself with a cost of about $90 per year and I still did not see the value. It is too much work. As for the person that commented about getting 5,000+ leads a month from microsites (don’t believe it). Please show me what you did and I will give you a big fat check!!!

First, I do not claim that Ralphs success is due to us, why would I? I merely claim that Ralph is not the only reason OUR efforts are successful. Like I said, RP asked for a particular site, and it was up to us to design, build, optimize and market the site organically. At the time, RP was one man asking us to build a web site for something and make it successful. It takes a certain skill to rank your site naturally/organically on the first page of Google, especially for multiple brands and multiple markets.

It is always good to hear that a dealer is knowledgeable in SEO. Do you remember when you contacted us for Micro Sites last year in May of 2007? At the time you were working at a dealership. We spoke several times about SEO back then. I am the type of company that remebers its clients or potential clients, and is ALWAYS just an email or phone call away. We provide a valuable solution for dealers at a very affordable cost.

Here are some examples.

Example of a Non Dealer Micro Site 2 pages
One such non-dealer micro site we built is in the mortgage industry. We built a 2 page micro site and in 3 months it has received about 10 leads. It ranks on the first page of Google with no other advertising, not even PPC.

For Example: Keyword M&I Bank Construction Loan
Page #1 – Position #1
For Example: Keyword M&I Financing
Page #1 – Position #3
For Example: Keyword Scottsdale Lot Loans
Page #1 – Position #1
And so on…

Micro Sites work so well for dealers in particular because when a potential customer is researching a new vehicle, they usually type in the following combinations of keywords:

“year, model” or “year, make, model” or “year, model, location”.

Take the 2007 Tahoe site we built a couple of years ago. Our statistics show that customers are finding the site by Googling the following terms:

2007 Tahoe: position #3
2008 Chevy Tahoe: position #10
New Tahoe: position #2
2008 Tahoe, Phoenix: position #1
and so on…

McCombs in San Antonio built several micro sites with us, and one of them, RedSaysYes[dot]com has high organic raking for the following:
bankruptcy dealers: position #1
bankruptcy dealerships: position #1

To answer what you claim is my tactical error:
We are just one dealer solution provider in a sea of many many choices dealers have. RP now working at one of the biggest companies in this industry does good for what we provide, but does nothing for me directly. RP promotes what ADP/BZ does not what we do. If RP promotes one of our micro sites, his next sentence is, “We (ADP) or I(RP) can do that”. I really don’t think it is in RP’s best interest to promote another companies wares when he is paid by ADP to promote that same service. Other dealer web site providers have approached us to partner with them in the micro site arena and we have approached others too. ADP is not the only solution provider. Before RP joined ADP, ADP refused to even consider Micro Sites. If any bridges were burned, it was by RP claiming those sites as his own and as a BZ site by ONLY changing the copyright notice and then promoting them to dealers as an ADP/BZ solution. It would be like me taking your site and using every word and image and putting it under a new domain name and copyrighting it as my own. No dealer would want the exact same site being used by a competitor, oh wait, BZ does do that already.

Bottom line Joe, we have been in the web development industry since 1995, and for Dealers, we specialize in building micro sites and provide online marketing via SEO & SEM.

David