Long before we ever built our first website, Dealer Inspire started out as an SEO Agency. It was through those early experiences when it became clear that trying to implement SEO best practices on websites built with other automotive web platforms was not very efficient, and oftentimes not as effective as it could have been due to technical limitations. The natural next step for our company to take was clear — we needed to build our own web platform so we could provide our partners with optimal SEO, UX, and conversion optimization.
So whether you’re receiving our SEO services through an OEM partnership, or you’ve signed up à la carte, you can rest assured knowing that you’ll be receiving a holistic SEO strategy that’s tailored specifically for your dealership, your region, and your goals. This is super important, because when it comes to SEO, there are two truths that you can count on:.
You can’t be cookie-cutter with your approach to SEO. Each dealership is unique, and what works for one, may not work for another.
There are no shortcuts or magic bullets that’ll instantly shoot you to the top of the SERP. Effective SEO that returns a positive ROI requires research, market analysis, and patience.
So with that out of the way, I want to share six real and timely case studies from our dealer partners that show how our collaborative and custom approach to SEO provides proven results that drive a positive ROI.
1. CAPTURE ORGANIC PRE-ORDER INTENT
With the ongoing inventory shortage affecting the entire automotive industry, our client at Dependable CDJR wanted to fill their sales pipeline by taking more pre-orders from in-market shoppers. The only problem was they didn’t have the proper content or site structure for search engines to understand that their dealership was the most relevant answer to related “order” searches for their brand of vehicles.
In an effort to establish their authority for these keywords, our team created and published a pre-order landing page on their website that explained in detail how the process worked and why a car shopper would want to customize their vehicle and order it directly through their dealership.
60% increase in order keywords 30 days after page was published 65% increase in conversions YoY
After publishing the new landing page, the next step was to ensure that it was easily discoverable by both search engines and real people by linking to it in the main navigation menu, in addition to creating other carefully selected internal links to the page.
The results of implementing this pre-order focused SEO tactic was impressive. Dependable CDJR saw a 60% increase in keywords containing the word “order” driving traffic to their website, in addition to a 65% increase in conversions year over year!
2. BE THE VEHICLE ACQUISITION SOURCE
Aside from increasing the importance of having a pre-order strategy in place at your dealership, having a comprehensive vehicle acquisition campaign is pretty much required during the prolonged inventory shortage.
Morrie’s Auto Group was on the forefront of implementing this strategy, and they took it to the next level by opening up dedicated car buying centers across three states. To help build their website’s authority for related “sell my car” and “trade-in my car” keywords, we started with a singular landing page that explained the process and allowed consumers to get a value for their vehicle.
237% Increase in keywords 30 days after page was published 296% increase in organic traffic since location pages were added (Jan 20, 2022)
Because Morrie’s had three buying centers in three different states, we wanted to make sure each center could have hyper-local relevance to consumers in those areas who are searching for where they should trade-in or sell their vehicle. To accomplish this, we created locations pages for each of their buying centers using the primary page as the parent.
Since we added those location pages, organic traffic to all of the pages, including the parent page, is up 296% and they’ve also enjoyed a 237% increase in total keywords that their website now ranks for.
3. ENHANCE YOUR CONTENT WITH ORIGINAL VIDEO
When the Dealer Inspire SEO Teams plans future content with a client, we always try to align our recommendations with the dealer’s stated goals and missions. For Triple J Guam, one of their missions was to enhance the relevance of the content we were creating for them even more by including their own custom created videos.
To that end, we now collaborate heavily with Triple J team based on what models they have in stock or what new models are arriving soon so they can go out and physically shoot videos on those vehicles that can be embedded on the page at the time of publishing.
20% increase in total website keywords MoM 11% increase in total organic traffic YoY 18% increase in total organic ROI YoY
The chef’s kiss to this model specific content strategy is making sure that all of the content is easily found (and crawlable) for users (and search engines too!). To do that we created an informational hub page that neatly organizes the content that’s available on the site by OEM.
Since implementing this collaboration and overall technical structure, Triple J Guam is seeing a 20% increase in keywords, an 11% increase in organic traffic, and an 18% increase in organic ROI.
4. FLEX YOUR FIXED-OPS ADVANTAGE
For years, the most progressive car dealers in the industry have partnered with Dealer Inspire so they could achieve their goals using the most flexible platform on the planet. Sussex Honda is one of those dealers who is constantly looking to do things differently, and we’re always thrilled to partner with them to see those goals to fruition.
In light of the global pandemic, Sussex Honda wanted to reinvent the way area residents could visit their service department in a safe and convenient way. To do that, they installed Express Self Service Kiosks outside of their service lane that allowed customers to drop-off their vehicle for service, and also pick it back up when service was completed.
Their SEO Specialist took the information that was provided, and immediately began researching how to best make an impact in the organic SERP. After reviewing the keyword data, it was determined that targeting variations of “service kiosk” keywords would be more effective due to having good search volume and an attainable difficulty score.
23% increase in keywords 30 days after page was published 158% increase in organic goal completions YoY 30% increase in organic sessions YoY
From there we created their Honda Express Self-Service Kiosk landing page that included detailed information teaching customers how to use the kiosk, and the benefits of doing so. We also made sure to include their custom how-to videos that showed folks exactly what to do when they arrived at the dealership.
That page is seeing a 23% keyword increase along with a 30% increase in organic sessions. The total performance of the entire website has benefited as well with a 158% increase in organic goal completions. This is just another great example of how creating content to help educate users already on your website can also turn into a leading source of organic entrances to your site as well.
5. GET MORE TRAFFIC WITH LESS CONTENT
Have you ever wondered to yourself, “is there such a thing as having too much content?”. It’s a fair question to ponder and on the surface it may seem like an easy “no” for an answer — especially if you’ve been taught over the years that “Content is King”.
Well, believe it or not, there is such a thing as having too much content, and it’s something you need to be aware of so you can look for the warning signs and ultimately prevent any deciline in your organic traffic.
While content on your website can be evergreen and still maintain high quality and relevance many years after it’s published, sometimes your content can become outdated and cause your keyword rankings to wildly fluctuate.
That’s what was happening with our client at Biggers Chevrolet. They had years and years of custom content published on their website, but as those pages became less relevant due to age, organic positioning and traffic began to fall off.
42% increase in keywords over a 90 day period $18,000 SEMRush Traffic Cost ROI Calculation
Knowing that there was an opportunity to regain organic impression share, the SEO Strategist assigned to Biggers Chevrolet took a deep dive into their content library to identify which content was no longer driving traffic and could be removed from the site. From there they set up mass redirects of the old content to more relevant pages on the site, and cleaned up all the previous internal links to prevent presenting unnecessary 404 errors to users.
Undertaking the technical audit of their website and implementing the proper fixes has paid off in a real big way. BIgger’s Chevrolet has seen an 42% increase in organic keyword positions 1-3 and enjoy a monthly SEO ROI of $18,000 and climbing. This proves that you don’t necessarily have to add more content to get more organic traffic. Sometimes you can just clean up what you already have and get even better results.
6. IMPROVE YOUR NON-BRANDED PRESENCE
All dealers are going to see a mix of branded (keywords that mention your dealer’s name) and non-branded (keywords that don’t mention your dealer’s name) keywords driving organic traffic to your website when you inspect your analytics.
The goal is to have a solid mix of both so that you’re able to maintain organic visibility both for people explicitly searching for you, and for people searching for the products and services that you provide.
If a majority of your traffic is coming from branded search, that means you’re not providing additional value and relevance to searchers about other aspects of the car buying and ownership experience. And if you skew too far into non-branded search traffic, that could be a signal that you haven’t done an effective job of marketing your dealership in general.
Our amazing partners at Toyota of Cedar Parkfound themselves struggling with their non-branded traffic, and being close to a major metro market like Austin, Texas ranking for non-dealer name terms was a priority.
1114% increase in non-branded traffic Q2 2020 vs. Q4 2021 229% increase in organic conversions YoY 237% increase in organic sessions YoY
To help address this imbalance, we developed a strategy to heavily focus on model research so they could connect with higher funnel shoppers who may not have discovered their dealership yet. In our research we found that the local competition in the Austin area wasn’t doing a very good job of providing informational content about Toyota vehicles in general. So we hyper-focused our content strategy on research and high funnel topics to capture the attention of shoppers early on in the research process.
Taking this collaborative approach to Toyota of Cedar Park’s content strategy worked. When looking at the breakdown of traffic during the most recent quarter compared to when they started SEO services, they have seen a 1114% increase in non-branded traffic, a 237% increase in organic sessions, along with a 229% increase in organic conversions.
GROW YOUR ORGANIC RESULTS
When it comes to choosing a provider for your dealership’s SEO services, be sure to partner with one who provides a holistic and collaborative SEO strategy that aligns with your goals – not some off the shelf, cookie-cutter strategy that’s not tailored to your needs. Our SEO Team at Dealer Inspire would love to collaborate with you on the best approach to start improving your organic presence today. Drop us a line and let’s talk!
The combined effects of the pandemic and global chip shortage have drastically (and maybe even irrevocably) changed the landscape of the automotive retail industry. The resulting inventory shortage that began in early 2021 continues into 2022 with no tangible signs of easing up this year.
As a result, we’ve seen a shift in consumer behavior amongst car shoppers. After decades of being able to just show up on a dealership’s lot and then drive off a couple hours later with the exact vehicle (or close enough to it) they wanted, car shoppers are discovering that with the lack of inventory, that just isn’t possible today — unless they’re willing to settle.
And when it comes to the second largest purchase most people will ever make, “settling” is not at the top of a lot of people’s list of things they want to do.
Like many other advancements that became popular as the result of the pandemic — such as curbside pickup and at-home delivery — placing a pre-order for your next set of wheels at your local dealership is the newest trend among car shoppers
What that means for you is that when it comes to your marketing strategy, you can’t just rely on campaigns targeted to shoppers who are displaying active buying intent based on vehicle year, make, and model, or being classified as “in-market”. You also have to expand your reach to make sure you’re able to make an impression with local shoppers who are exhibiting “pre-order intent” too to ensure you’re reaching those people with a highly relevant message that meets their intention.
We recently dropped a new show on Inspire+ called You’ve Got Pre-Orders that’ll walk you through what it takes to execute a holistic marketing strategy focused on filling your sales pipeline with pre-orders.
But if you’re at work right now and can’t kick back to watch the show, don’t sweat it because I’m going to give you some of the best tips from our expert team right here, so keep on reading!
OPTIMIZE THE USER EXPERIENCE ON YOUR WEBSITE
If a shopper is just coming into the market for the first time in four or five years, there’s a real good chance that they may not be aware how much the car shopping experience has changed in the past two years. That’s why it’s important to update your website with pre-order messaging so it’s front and center on all of the most visited shopping pages on your website.
From your homepage and main menu, to your VRPs and even your chat tool, it’s critical you show your visitors that they can order exactly what they want from you, regardless of where they may be on your website.
But the real question you need to answer is this: What is the user experience going to be like when a shopper on your website engages with your pre-order messaging? Are you going to take them to a landing page that explains the process, along with a CTA to contact you? Or can you provide an even better experience that’ll deepen the connection between the shopper and your dealership?
While a landing page + CTA is a classic marketing combo, that’s not necessarily going to fulfill the need for instant gratification that we’re all accustomed to in our shopping experiences these days.
The preferred solution is to let that customer actually build the exact vehicle in your lineup that they want — right on your website — using the Build & Price tool that’s available to install on your Dealer Inspire website.
If you’ve ever configured anything online, like a new computer, the latest iPhone, or an Ikea kitchen, then you know that feeling you get as you dial in all of the specifications to meet your specific needs. It’s a non-stop dopamine rush as you tick off your options and upgrades. That’s exactly what’s in play when shoppers use our Build & Price tool. With each selection they make, starting from model and working their way down to trim, options, and colors – shoppers are not just getting excited about their next vehicle, they’re mentally committing themselves to seeing the order through to completion.
Once their vehicle is built, a shopper will be able to see the price as configured, and then you’ll be able to reach out to them to confirm their vehicle preferences, and work through the rest of the details for completing the pre-order.
CAPTURE ORDER INTENT IN THE SERP
Once you’ve prepared your website to convert visitors into sales opportunities, then you can begin marketing that experience. Like most questions that need to be answered, a majority of people will turn to search engines to get the information they need to make an informed decision. We can see the increasing trend in searches related to ordering a vehicle steadily increasing year over year, so it only makes sense to make sure that between your SEO and SEM efforts, you’re able to capture the attention of searchers exhibiting both Research and Ready to Act search intent.
ATTRACT THE RIGHT BUYER WITH SEO
Today, car dealers who focus on optimizing their website and related content around pre-orders have a chance to get out to an early lead over their competitors. When it comes to SEO, it’s best to make sure you’re covering both types of intent through your content, on page optimizations, and your off site signals as well.
The SEO team at Dealer Inspire discovered that Google will return top local results for Ready to Act search queries (i.e. Order a new Make) tailored to the specific location of the searcher if there’s relevant content available from a local source (hint: like your dealership’s website).
And that’s why local signals are really important for these types of queries: the proximity of the searcher to your dealership is going to be a top ranking factor. But at the same time, if you don’t have quality and relevant content that answers the shopper’s question, then you won’t show up at all.
So if you don’t already have a landing page that details all aspects of placing an order for a vehicle with your dealership, that’s the first place you’ll want to start. The page should be a comprehensive piece of content that’s optimized not just for keywords and user intent, but provides relevant and engaging content that’ll drive the visitor down the funnel to conversion.
If you want to create a pre-order landing page that cracks the top of the local search results, then follow these best practices:
Match your H1, Title, and Meta Description to user intent
Use visually appealing imagery
Provide a video that explains the process
Embed reviews on the page from customers who’ve ordered from you
Include a comprehensive FAQ that directly answers all related ordering questions
A CTA to engage with your dealership’s order process
Remember, the goal isn’t just to have relevant content that ranks, you want that content to convert those visitors into real sales opportunities. So whether you’re using our Build & Price tool, or have a different user experience, be sure that you have a prominent CTA in place on your landing page to encourage each visitor to take that critical next step toward placing their order.
MAKE A GREAT FIRST IMPRESSION WITH YOUR SEARCH ADS
On the flipside of the SEO coin, is your SEM. Here we’re only going to focus on campaigns that cover the Ready to Act intent versus the Research intent. You’ll want to have search campaigns set up in Google Ads specifically to cover these types of searches.
Again, aligning your ad headline, copy, and sitelinks to match exactly what the searcher is looking for is the best way to encourage the searcher to engage with your dealership’s experience.
Also think about how you can provide a more optimized ad experience. While your ad’s main CTA might take the user to your newly-created, information-rich pre-order landing page, you can also remove that step and use a sitelink like “Build Your Honda” to take that shopper directly to the Build & Price tool with just one tap.
Starting with your base search campaigns in, you can also run your pre-order campaigns across social, display, and video platforms. Check out You’ve Got Pre-Orders on Inspire+ to get the comprehensive breakdown on how effectively reach shoppers looking to order their next vehicle across all channels and devices.
PERFECT YOUR PRE-ORDER FOLLOW-UP
As you effectively implement your pre-order strategy, it’s critical that you design a specific follow-up process for these sales opportunities. While your CRM is probably programmed to automatically follow-up with all leads that originate from your website, I’d highly recommend creating a specific drip campaign for pre-order leads — or even shutting it off entirely.
Remember, your customer just spent quality time on your website building the perfect vehicle of their dreams, so if the first outreach they receive from your dealership is an automated email from your CRM that’s providing basic information about the car they’ve already built and asking when they can come in — well, that’s a fail.
The first thing you should do once you receive that pre-order lead, is to follow up immediately with a text confirmation to continue the conversation while it’s still fresh and exciting in your customer’s mind.
The goal is to confirm the details of the vehicle that they just built, and go over next steps to set expectations for timing and delivery.
Once you have that order placed with your OEM, it’s imperative that you maintain regular contact with your customer as they wait for their vehicle to arrive at your dealership. This is where an email drip campaign can be most effective. Send out weekly or bi-weekly emails that include additional information about your dealership and the vehicle they ordered to keep them excited about its arrival. You can also supplement those emails with additional text or email messages that contain information about the progress of the build as you receive them in your system..
Then lastly, once your customer’s vehicle has been delivered, you’ll want to follow up again and ask them to share their story about pre-ordering a vehicle at your dealership with an online review.
Remember, shoppers just coming into the market for the first time in five years may not know that ordering a vehicle is even an option. But what we do know is that they’re going to read the reviews of dealerships that they’re considering doing business with before deciding whom to contact. That’s why it’s important you get those positive reviews that specifically mention how easy it was to order a vehicle from your dealership.
From there, you can then complete the circle by using quotes from those glowing reviews on your website and in your marketing to drive even more engagement with your pre-order process.
LET’S TALK PRE-ORDER STRATEGY
As placing an order for a new vehicle becomes mainstream, it’s critical that your dealership doesn’t miss the opportunity to make connections with these shoppers. The team at Dealer Inspire is here to help you launch a holistic marketing strategy that drives relevant traffic to your website and convert it into more sales opportunities to fill your pre-order pipeline. Drop us a line and let’s talk about how we can work together.
So, you’ve won over the customer of your dreams. They are smart, easy going, funny…and you’ve already put their birthday in your calendar to remember to text them on their special day. But what if we told you that there’s only a 1 in 3 chance that they will be loyal to you when it comes to their NEXT car buying relationship? 💔 🥺 😭
I don’t know about you, but to me…that really hurts. Why does having a meaningful relationship with your customers have to be so hard?
Building a loyal customer base, like any true relationship, can be tricky, and a ton of factors are at play here. When you’re only buying a car every 3-8 years, most people want to at least explore their options out there, especially if there’s been a change to their lifestyle during that time.
Think about it like this: Each time a shopper enters the market, it’s sort of like using a dating app — does this vehicle fit my standards? Does it come with all the features I need? Will it let me pick the Spotify playlist on a road trip?
And while an in-market shopper might feel loyalty to their current vehicle model, make, or OEM — maintaining a connection with your dealership falls squarely on your shoulders. So how do you earn their loyalty and develop a long lasting relationship?
The first thing you can (and should) do is watch our recent webinar, How to Achieve Next Level Loyalty. Our team of experts will show you how you can build a retention marketing machine across channels to efficiently keep more of your own customers, and drive more reliable revenue.
But if you’re more of a reader than a watcher, keep reading for our best tips that’ll help you build serious relationships with your customers starting today.
THE LOYALTY EQUATION
We know how much effort you put into each and every deal from the first lead all the way up through delivery, so seeing only about a third of them come back is worse than a breakup.
Now before you decide it’s a good idea to stand outside of your customer’s window in the rain holding up a boombox…let’s talk about what it really takes to create a loyal customer for life.
When you look at the Loyalty Equation above, you’ll see that building a loyal customer base goes beyond just providing a great in-store customer experience on the showroom floor or in the service department.
It’s the other half of that equation — your marketing and your brand communications — that allows you to actually strengthen the connections with your customers to keep them engaged with your brand.
I’m just going to assume that your CSI scores for your dealership’s in-store sales and service experiences are top notch. Where I really want to focus is on how you can improve your marketing and communications with your customers in a way that’ll make them brag to their best friends about your relationship and scribble “Katie’s Kia” (in hearts, of course) on their notebooks.
‘SHIP-TIP #1: SEND A TEXT WHEN THEY NEED YOU
I know you might be old fashioned like me, and you like to actually use your phone to make…well…phone calls. It pains me to say this *sigh* but nobody will answer their phone anymore if they don’t know who’s calling. So instead of experiencing that rejection of leaving message after message on your customer’s voicemail and never getting a call back — engage them with a text message instead!
Not only are you more likely to make that connection, but you’re actually communicating with your customers in a way that they wish more businesses would. You’re showing that you’re laid back and there to help them on their terms.
And I’m not just talking about following-up with new sales leads. At Dealer Inspire we encourage dealers to take a text-first communications approach with our solutions throughout their customer service.
Have a customer’s car in your service bay and you need to explain an issue that your tech found when performing a multi-point inspection? Text your customer a video to show them the issue, explain the fix, and break down how much it will cost to perform the repair (or how much you’d give them for it in trade value). Handling a touchy situation like this in a personal way is going to lead to more closed RO’s than a voicemail ever could.
Want to increase your lease retention? You can use Online Shopperto proactively connect with your previously sold customers who have soon-to-mature leases. Just text them a reminder with a “magic link” to instantly open their personalized digital garage, filled with a few upgrade options for their next vehicle. Check it out.
The long and short of it is that your text game has to be strong if you want to keep your customers engaged, happy, and only thinking about you when it comes to all of their vehicle needs. So embrace it, and use the tools you have at your disposal to nurture those customer relationships!
‘SHIP-TIP #2: SHARE YOUR FEELINGS (IN YOUR REVIEW RESPONSES)
I think by now we all know how important having fresh reviews are. We’ve even dedicated a most excellent webinar to the subject. While providing a review-worthy experience at your dealership is the foundation of any great relationship, that review won’t mean as much if you don’t take the time to respond to it.
You see, when you respond to a review, you’re not only letting your customer know that their experience meant something to you too, but it also solidifies your connection for future appointments all while showing in-market shoppers the kind of customer service they can expect when choosing to work with your dealership.
And what you say in your review responses is super-important too, as 71%1 of shoppers are more likely to buy from a business who responds to their reviews.
And since your review responses are pretty much open love letters to your customers that everyone is going to see, you really should make your replies stand out. Here are a few quick tips:
Be Genuine: Be a human being with emotions, not a cold-hearted copy & paste robot. Address your customer by name. Write a thoughtful response, and show them that you care about their experience as much as they do.
Acknowledge Their Unique Experience: Every shopper’s journey is different. By writing a response that’s specific to to the reviewer, it will show the world what a great listener you are. And who doesn’t want to work with someone who listens?
Sign Off With Your Name & Title: A great tip for any relationship, be it business or personal, is to just be yourself! Always sign your reply with your own name and title so shoppers know that there are great people behind your brand that they can work with to buy their next vehicle.
Follow those simple tips, and you’ll be giving your future customers an early case of the butterflies that’ll push your dealership to the top of their list.
That said, I know responding to each of your reviews across platforms for all of your dealerships is time consuming, but don’t all lasting relationships take time and effort?
The good news is that unlike a personal relationship, there’s a tool you can use to ensure that all of your reviews are being responded to in a timely manner by real people. With AutoResponse™from DelaerRater®, a team of real-life expert reputation management specialists will personally respond to every review for you to help you build your brand loyalty, show future shoppers your great customer service, and give you back valuable time to focus on the experience that generates your great reviews in the first place.
‘SHIP-TIP #3: STAY IN TOUCH THROUGHOUT THE OWNERSHIP LIFECYCLE
The best relationships are the ones where there is open and honest communication. If you’re only texting your customer when you need something from them (like their trade-in) or when there’s an open recall on their vehicle, then you’ll be in serious danger of your customer forgetting who you even are and all the special times you already had.
It’s imperative that you’re not a stranger in the months and years between service visits and purchases. But if you over-text your customers, you’ll be at risk for being left on ‘delivered’ forever. So what’s a car dealer to do?
For those times when you need to stay in touch, you can use automated email drip campaigns that spring into action the day a vehicle is sold, allowing you to deliver personalized reminders and offers throughout the ownership cycle.
For example, let’s look at Doreen Green here. She just purchased a 2021 Ford Edge, and you want to make sure you’re able to predict her vehicular wants and needs throughout the ownership experience.
To do that, you’d create a series of emails that would be sent from your CRM are timed to specific events or milestones of her ownership experience. For example, here is what a 36 month drip campaign could look like:
DAY 2: Thank You Email From The Owner
DAY 7: Review Reminder
DAY 30: Intro to Service
6 MONTHS: 7,500 Mile Service
12 MONTHS: 15,000 Mile Service
22 MONTHS: Check Your Tires
30 MONTHS: Replenish Your Fluids
36 MONTHS: Trade-In Outreach
Now, you can go longer than 36 months. What you see above is just an idea to get you started. But you know what’s an even better idea??
We went ahead and created fully customizable drip campaign templates that you can download and tailor for use in your own CRM. Just fill in some blanks, tweak the copy to fit your dealership, and you’ll be getting your first drip campaigns set up in no time!
As you’re customizing these email templates, keep in mind that you want to personalize them for the customer. Don’t make them feel like they are just another customer in some CRM on some email list… Make them feel special! Valued! Like a VIP!!! 🤩
Your CRM probably lets you include a {{first_name}} variable in the subject line and email copy, so make sure you’re doing that for all of your outbound email campaigns to get a boost in your open and conversion rates.
And lastly, you’ll want to create 1:1 conversation starters in your copy, and include clear CTA’s so your customers know exactly what to do next. The last thing you want to do is have your customer scratching their head wondering what your email was all about and then clicking that unsubscribe button because they just can’t take your awkward email blasts any more.
‘SHIP-TIP #4: MEET YOUR CUSTOMERS WHERE THEY ARE ONLINE
Let’s not lose sight of the fact that only 36%2 of customers stay loyal to the dealership they bought their car from, and it’s only natural for shoppers to visit Cars.com to play the field and see what’s out there for their next ride, even if they are perfectly happy with their vehicle and you as their car dealer.
Human nature aside, that doesn’t mean you have to stand passively by on the sidelines while your customer searches for their next vehicle. What if I told you that you could meet your customers both in the search results and in their social feeds when they’re in the market to buy or service a vehicle? And not in a creepy stalker way, but in a totally helpful way that makes them wonder how you always manage to be so thoughtful.
By exporting a list of your sold customers from your CRM, you can power your loyalty based search engine and social advertising campaigns so that you’re there for them, even if they weren’t thinking of you at the moment.
FUEL: Search & Display will automatically bid-up on searches made by past customers that illustrate high buying intent, and deliver a personalized ad.
For instance, you can create a list of customers who purchased a vehicle 4+ years ago from you, and use that data within a “Trade-In” Google Ad Campaign within FUEL: Search & Display — our dynamic inventory advertising platform. Then, when one of those customers is using a low funnel search query “Honda Accord Trade-In”, FUEL will automatically bid up to win that number one ad spot in the SERP based on the high intent, low funnel, shopping keywords in their query along with the fact that your customer was identified as the searcher.
Again, the idea here is to ensure that you’re not losing out to your competition when your customer turns to search first instead of you. It’s this kind of technological magic that allows you to be present during your customer’s time of need — welcoming them with a warm message, and then reminding them why they chose you in the first place.
On the social side of things, using your first party data can also come in handy to help retain your customers with maturing leases. So you’d simply export that list of customers from your CRM who have a lease due to mature in the next 3-6 months, and include that audience in your social campaign.
As your customer is scrolling through their Facebook feed or flipping through their Instagram stories, BOOM, there you are! Your dealership makes a thumb-stopping appearance right there in their feed with a compelling offer tailored specifically to them! Before you know it, they’re back on your website and in shopping mode looking to get out of their current lease, and into a new one. Crazy (in a good way), right?
‘SHIP-TIP #5: WELCOME THEM WHEN THEY COME TO YOUR HOME(PAGE)
Sometimes your customers will be away from you for months at a time, and that’s okay because absence makes the heart grow fonder, amiright? But nothing rekindles that old flame like greeting a VIP customer with a personalized message when they come back to visit your website.
One of the most powerful tools on the Dealer Inspire Web Platform is our Personalizer tool that lets you create user experiences based on a multitude of mix and match rules. Think back to when we talked about those email drip campaigns. It just so happens that one of the rules within Personalizer is UTM_Campaign.
So going back to your email drip campaigns, you can include a UTM code within all of those links in your emails, and when your customer clicks through from an email to your website, Personalizer will recognize that UTM Code, and welcome them with a message like, “Thank You For Being One of Our Best Customers!”. Or better yet — show them that Exclusive VIP offer you just uploaded for an oil change and tire rotation. Doesn’t that just make you all warm and fuzzy inside?!
Aside from welcoming your returning customers with open arms, you can also adapt your website messaging to show what a shopper’s future ownership experience could look like if they choose to begin a relationship with you.
Setting the expectation for ownership through homepage sliders, VRP banners, special loyalty incentives, and even a landing page dedicated to winning over customers with what it means to be a VIP at your dealership now and forever is the perfect way to begin winning their affection.
Everyone wishes they knew someone in the car industry to make it easier, and faster. You have the opportunity to BE that person. Express it on your website to show your customer that you’ll treat them like your personal referral each and every time.
When your retention marketing is strong, the bond between your dealership and your customer goes beyond the delivery by giving them that “new car happy” feeling long after they’ve driven off the lot.
GET THE RELATIONSHIP COACHING YOU NEED
At Dealer Inspire we strive to provide you with the tools and support you need to build long lasting connections with your customers. We’re even available to help you think strategically about your dealership’s loyalty building and retention marketing efforts. We’re just a thumb tap away from chatting about how we can work together so you can keep more of your own customers. Talk to you soon!
Brian Pasch recently dropped a comprehensive report exposing that stunningly few sales opportunities are being generated from the massive amounts of money car dealers are investing in SEM.
The biggest revelation was that, after analyzing 1 million phone calls which originated from call extensions on sales-focused Google Search Ads, only 12.8% of those hard conversions turned out to be actual sales opportunities — with the vast majority going to dealerships’ service or parts departments.
Considering that the report estimates that nearly 93% of all Google Ads budgets are paid for by variable operations (sales), and not fixed operations (service & parts), you can see how uncovering this data would have an unnerving impact on car dealers.
OUR REACTION TO THE NEWS
At Dealer Inspire we take a lot of pride in our ability to maximize ROI for dealers on search — we started out as a search marketing agency! — and we’re proud to report that we still got it. Our team and tech are effectively turning our dealers’ investments in sales campaigns into sales opportunities, just like the doctor ordered.
In fact, our results were totally flipped from the report. 88% of the engagement on our new and used sales campaigns are leading to new and used sales actions.
This isn’t about bragging rights though. Brian’s report was, as usual, a really insightful and important look at how dealer budgets are being wasted by poor digital marketing execution — and whether you’re with us or not, we want to help.
So let’s break down why this is happening, and how you can fix it.
WHAT AGENCIES ARE DOING WRONG
There’s a lot to unpack here. We’re going to stay high-level and talk about the broad keyword targeting that burns through budgets, but there are many variables throughout the journey that add up — from ongoing campaign optimization, to the relevancy and quality of the ads themselves, to the landing page experience, to your website’s engagement tracking, to your “conversion” reporting, and then back to the beginning as those “conversions” feed back into your optimization.
Bottomline: you need a partner that:
Handles your campaigns with love and care
Has the technology and data to target ready-to-buy shoppers
Can ensure seamless experiences and attribution from your ads to your website
Can transparently report on the real-world outcomes of your investment.
Let’s get into the specifics.
GOING BROAD IS BURNING BUDGETS
So what does a wasteful search ad look like? It probably looks like the one below.
On the surface, it seems pretty legit, right? That’s because it is. It’s not the ad itself that’s the problem here. When you dive deeper into the campaign, you’ll see that this dealer is bidding on the very broad term Hyundai Dealer Near Me. Now, don’t get me wrong, that’s a keyword you’d want coverage for if you can meet the following conditions:
You’re already maximizing your paid search budget for low-funnel, ready-to-buy keywords
Your Fixed Operations department is helping cover the budget for that campaign.
Because you don’t know the intent behind a broad search like that, you need to understand that the searcher could be looking to buy a car, but they’re just as likely to have a service related question.
With over half of the calls from the ads in these broad “dealer near me” campaigns going to service, running a 100% sales focused ad, powered only by the budget of your sales department, reduces your ROI by taking away valuable sales opportunities from your sales team.
You obviously want to be present in the SERP for broad queries like Honda Dealer {City} or Honda Dealer Near Me, but unless you can afford to pay for all those searches forever, the top of the funnel is where you want to rely on strong SEO and Local SEO services to earn those clicks for free.
With a holistic SEO Strategy in play, you can achieve top rankings in Google’s Local Map Pack and Organic Rankings, giving you the highest level of visibility possible for applicable queries without running ads. The more you invest in your organic presence, the more efficient you can be over the long-term.
WE HAVE THE ANTIDOTE TO WASTED AD SPEND
So you’re probably wondering, when it comes to paid search advertising, what is Dealer Inspire doing different from everyone else? Well, it really comes down to the fact that our tech and team are able to dynamically focus on really low-funnel searches that indicate a shopper is ready to buy, and then match them with vin-specific vehicles in your inventory, in real time.
We’re so dialed in with the intent behind what a searcher is trying to accomplish with their query, that there’s very little room to mistakenly have a conversion result in anything other than a sales opportunity or engagement.
“Sales campaigns should be optimized for your cost per sales opportunity (CSO). So wait at the bottom of the funnel for shoppers that are just about to buy a vehicle that you have in stock, and then pounce. Our tech makes that snap decision in real-time. ” –
Cara Garvey, Digital Advertising Director @ Dealer Inspire
On top of that, we also have a secret weapon that allows us to get even more precise with our targeting. Because we’re part of the Cars.com family, we have the advantage of being able to inject Cars.com’s in-market audience data directly into our SEM campaigns.
We can use Cars.com’s high-quality in-market audience data to power your SEM campaigns, ensuring your dollars are going to real high-intent sales opportunities.
We know that when people are on Cars.com, they’re searching to buy a vehicle, not to service one. Combine that with the knowledge that half of the shoppers on Cars.com plan to buy within the next 30 days, and you have yourself a high-quality audience that compliments your new and used vehicle campaigns that’ll yield a higher click through rate, and lower cost per lead, than any other in-market or search audience.
In the report itself, Brian covers in-depth how a third party marketplace like Cars.com is going to consist of an audience that is ready, and more likely to buy, than those who are using Google search — so why not make that connection?
FIND THE SALES OPPORTUNITIES BEYOND SEARCH
A car shopper’s buying journey can begin anywhere, at any time, on any device. While some have already zeroed in on their favorite model and use search to find a dealer to buy it from, many others start their high funnel search for the right vehicle on Cars.com and discover your dealership in the process.
Not only does Cars.com receive over 26 million monthly visitors, but 92% of those shoppers are undecided on what vehicle to buy, and where to buy it from. That means having a presence on a marketplace that is 100% focused on driving sales opportunities can be more impactful than just trying to capture people’s attention in Google search results.
But beyond the shopping engagement that takes place within the Cars.com ecosystem, there is also that first party data I mentioned above. Not only can you inject Cars.com data into your Google Ads campaigns with us, but you can also use it to transform the ROI of your advertising by targeting that same audience across platforms and devices with omnichannel video advertising and social inventory ads.
START WINNING SALES OPPORTUNITIES
Dealer Inspire is your trusted partner for implementing a search strategy that maximizes your ROI. If you’d like to learn more about how we can help you improve your search campaigns, reduce wasted spend, and connect with more local, in-market shoppers — please drop us a line. We’d love to connect with you!
You may have heard Google is notoriously cagey when it comes to naming each of their 200+ search engine ranking factors and how much weight each carries in the search algorithm — but you don’t need to be an SEO expert to know that a search engine can’t rank what it can’t find.
In this article, I’ll be breaking down backlinks to help you understand the role they play in a modern search engine optimization strategy, and the best practices for growing your website’s backlink profile.
But before I get too deep into it, let me just state for the record that even though they’re important, the total number of backlinks that a domain or webpage has does not equal an automatic “win” button for SEO.
John Mueller of Google has confirmed this to be true many times over.
There is no fixed number. There's a lot more to search than just backlinks.
The truth is — it’s not the quantity of backlinks you have pointing to your website, it’s the quality of a backlink that matters most. One backlink from a relevant and reputable website will be way more beneficial for your organic web presence than a couple dozen backlinks from sketchy websites no one has ever heard of.
Why? Because Google knows the difference between good and bad backlinks. Your website will get the appropriate amount of “link juice” for the good ones, and no benefit at all from the bad ones.
So if you’re talking to an SEO provider, and they’re promising they can deliver an absurd number backlinks, then my personal recommendation is to not even engage in that conversation because it isn’t going to be worth your time or money.
Real Backlinks, Real Results
While there are shady entire businesses built around chasing after backlinks, quality content should be the foundation of any backlink strategy.
Good content targeted toward searchers’ needs has no trouble earning backlinks on its own. We can prove that to be true as Dealer Inspire SEO clients see a 404% increase in natural backlink acquisition after 24 months of service, which is pretty darn fantastic if you ask me!
Here are just a few examples of how brand name websites have backlinked to content created and published by my fellow Dealer Inspire SEO Strategists:
CAR & DRIVER 🔗 DON JOHNSON MOTORS
Car & Driver’s article breaking down the definition of a “Quad Cab” includes a backlink to a content piece we published for the Don Johnson Automotive Group that explains the difference between quad and crew cabs.
WIKIPEDIA 🔗 MIDDLETOWN HONDA
In this Wikipedia entry covering the history of the Sedan, a content piece our team published for Middletown Honda that explains the difference between a sedan and a coupe is cited as a key reference that informs the article.
I can’t state it loudly enough — these links weren’t bought, traded, or begged for. The respective authors of those articles that included backlinks to our client’s published content did so because they felt those pages were accurate, thorough, and helped provide additional value to their own content.
How Much Should I Focus on Backlinks?
As an SEO Strategist, I get asked a lot of questions about all things SEO, not just questions about backlinks. A bunch of my teammates and I recently held an “ask us anything” style webinar where we answered as many SEO related questions as we could, and I’d definitely recommend you stream the recording on-demand to take an SEO deep dive with us.
That said, a question that wasn’t asked during that webinar, but we still hear quite often, has to do with just how much you should focus on backlinks as a part of your holistic SEO strategy — so I’ll answer it here.
As you read above, quality backlinks that you earn through your content can pay dividends in the organic search results. But also like I mentioned earlier, silver bullets, they are not.
So if you’re just beginning your SEO strategy, or aren’t quite sure how to prioritize your efforts, then there a number of SEO best practices you should look to first. By doing the five things below, you’ll set your platform up for greater success, and get more bang for your SEO buck:
1. Create Quality Content, Regularly
This is the #1 thing. If you don’t have relevant content on your website that helps answer a searchers questions, then all the backlinks in the world won’t matter one bit, as you won’t have any content worth ranking on page one of the SERP in the first place.
2. Create a Healthy Internal Linking Structure
Another thing you can do before you think about backlinks, is to focus on your website’s internal linking structure. Not only do natural links between relevant pages help provide your visitors with additional context and information, but they also act as a map that shows search engines the relationships between all of the published content on your website.
3. Correct Technical Issues
SEO isn’t just keywords and links. There’s an entire discipline known as Technical SEO which is all about optimizing your website so it’s faster and easier for search engines to crawl and understand the content on your website. Identifying and fixing things on your website like broken links (internal or external), missing alt-text from images, and duplicate or missing H1 tags will go a long way to improving the technical health of your website, which in turn can improve your overall organic rankings.
4. Update Meta Descriptions on Valuable Pages
While meta descriptions aren’t SEO ranking factors, they are still important because they’re essentially ad copy used to describe a webpage to users as they scroll through the search results. A worthwhile endeavor is to look for opportunities to re-write the meta descriptions on your valuable pages so they entice searchers to tap or click your link in the SERP over the other available results.
5. Google Business Profile Optimizations
With search results increasingly being driven by personalized factors such as a user’s proximity to a business, having a Local SEO strategy in place is certainly worth more of your attention than gaining a backlink or two. A properly optimized Google Business Profile is the foundation of Local SEO. Proper setup and ongoing maintenance of your GMB listing will help you become a local authority in the eyes of search engines and real people — all while helping your business rise to the top of the results for local searches.
The Backstory on Backlinks
Ok, at this point in time, you may be wondering how we even got here in the first place. Why do backlinks get so much attention, why are they perceived to be so important? In order to understand that, you have to go all the way back to 1997 where you’ll discover that the earliest incarnation of Google’s search engine (fun fact, it was originally called BackRub) relied heavily on links between web pages — aka backlinks — for its web spiders to discover, crawl, and index across the World Wide Web.
Before it became Google, it was a project called “Backrub”
When the web was still relatively young, backlinks weren’t just a way for Google’s robots to discover new webpages to add to its index, these backlinks each acted like a vote of confidence for the pages that the referring domains were linking to. The more votes — aka backlinks — a web page received from different domains, the more “popular” it would become in Google’s early algorithm.
This was important because Google set out to disrupt existing search engines like Alta Vista, Yahoo, and Lycos which were quite vulnerable to early Black Hat SEO techniques and would often present a set of top results to users which were nothing more than pop up ad infested web pages, or worse, a computer virus waiting to happen.
The vision for the search engine that became Google was one that would surface only the highest quality content that was most relevant to the user’s search intent, and couldn’t be manipulated by those with less than noble intentions.
By having backlinks be a crucial ranking factor in its algorithm along with content quality, Google’s founders felt that would make its index more useful to searchers of a rapidly expanding web, while also building in a high level of protection against the shifty Black Hat SEO’s of the world.
And for the most part, it worked….until the bad guys found new and creative ways to manipulate backlinks too.
Link farms, link wheels, link exchanges, link networks, link schemes, buying links, guest posting networks, and general link manipulation soon became an underground marketplace where for a few bucks per link, someone, somewhere, would find a way to create dozens or even hundreds of links to your website to give you that “link juice” you needed to hold the #1 position in search for your desired keywords.
So what started out as a pure and simple way to gauge relative popularity between web pages, soon turned into something more sinister.
Fast forward to today, and the A.I. and machine learning that Google now uses in its algorithm is so good, it has become pretty adept at determining which backlinks are natural and should count toward a webpage’s ranking, and which ones are manipulated and should not count even the tiniest bit.
Do Backlinks Still Matter Today?
The fact that Google’s algorithm can quickly and easily determine which backlinks are legit, and which ones aren’t, has many in the search industry musing if the pursuit of backlinks is as critical as it was a decade ago.
Make no mistake, search engines still need to be able to find your content and know whether or not it’s valuable. Backlinks not only help cover those bases, but they can also impact how long SEO takes.
As I mentioned earlier, much like the references on your resume, it’s the quality of your backlinks that matters most — not the quantity. The more authoritative the referring domain linking to yours, the greater the value of their “vote of confidence” in you and your site.
So do backlinks still matter? Yes! While the overall impact of backlinks has changed over time, they do remain an important ranking factor to this day.
Car Dealer SEO Done Right
Implementing a comprehensive SEO Strategy that covers all aspects of your business isn’t something that should be taken lightly. The expert team at Dealer Inspire knows search inside and out, and we’re always up for talking SEO with our car dealer partners. Drop us a line, and let’s talk SEO!
