What dealers hate to see happen with their craigslist ads

Everyday we are contacted by car dealers who have tried to use craigslist to generate leads for their dealership, the most common problem that we hear is their ads are flagged and no longer show.  Once the flagging starts it may be impossible to get your ads live again unless you take some proactive measures.  Here is a list of quick tips:

• Stop allowing multiple dealership employees to post ads on craigslist.  Craigslist looks at the IP address postings are coming from and if more than one account is created on your stores IP address then it looks like you are spamming their service.
  

  With a client of our craigslist service we ran into a situation where all ads for two stores were flagged off craigslist. After several hours of trying to determine the reason why we discovered both stores shared the same IP address. Once determined the problem we were able to take corrective action and they now have 100% of their inventory live on craigslist.org

• Pull your identifiable information out of the text display – If your competition is aggressive in flagging your ads off you need to make adjustments to your ad templates so it will be harder for them to locate you ads in craigslist searches.  You can do this by creating images that has your contact info, phone number and dealership name where human eyes can read it versus text.
• Don’t over post – Craigslist has terms of service in place that limits the number of cars that a dealership can post in one day.  This limit is determined by your individual market area.  If you go over this limit your ads will come down.  One of the biggest mistakes dealers can make is trying to post all of their inventory each day on craigslist.
• Don’t use your inventory providers hosted images – If you use images hosted by your inventory provider then it establishes a footprint that is easy for craigslist and your flagging competitors to identify.  While there is nothing wrong with using the images you already have you need to host them on a different domain name.

This quick list of tips to help curtail flagging of your ads at craigslist will help however it may not solve your problem completely.  If you wish to know more about our service that works to help dealers get around flagging and keeping thier inventory live on craigslist visit our craigslist service page.

If you have any other suggestions, tips or questions leave them in the comments below.

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False representation of Automotive SEO Services

Part of the pitch they use to sell this service is a shell game and weak representations of results.

29.6% Average Increase in Traffic:

While this number may accurately represent the increase of web traffic their service  delivers they make the claim without providing accurate benchmarks.  Sure a website that has some very basic optimization services provided will see a 30% increase in search engine traffic but that small jump can be accomplished with a one time event, not a monthly ongoing cost and maintained with basic content updates.  A disciplined search engine optimization strategy should increase traffic on an ongoing basis where over time it will bring in increases of traffic and additional keyword targeting.  You should see increases month over month relevant to market conditions and statistical analysis.

The Shell Game:

51.7% increase in form submissions and a 23.2% average increase in conversion?

Web form submission is the definition of conversion on a car dealer’s website with the other variable being calls to the dealership.  It’s double talk at it’s best.  If you saw a 51.7% increase of form submission then you should see a 51.7% increase or more in conversion ratio.  The numbers given by the provider of “Dynamic SEO” are attempting to define the same metric with different measurements.

If you are a dealer who has fallen victim of hype being defined as “Dynamic SEO” all is not lost.  You can opt out of this service and have found an automotive seo provider that produces month over month results.  We take a proactive approach to researching your market area and competition as well as we have researched ours.

Some other smoke and mirror representations in Automotive SEO pitches:

1. Indexed Inventory – It can help bring additional traffic to your website but having 200 cars indexed in the search engines does not mean they will rank well for the keywords that convert.
2. On site Video Optimization – Search engines do index video but having an on site video indexed takes a spot away from your your website in the search engine results pages.  It would represent that you only have one or two offers that the search engine user may be interested in thus the dealership missing more opportunities than it may receive.
3. Sitemap Creation – HTML sitemaps are not what the search engines look for when using it as a map to index your site.  They require it to be delivered to them in a different format for them to keep coming back to reindex your content.  If your content is not dynamic or they are not notified of changes then it provides no value.
4. Reporting – From what we have seen all reporting by other automotive seo vendors is a recap of history based on traffic that is delivered.  Keywords that will bring traffic to your site that have yet to deliver any traffic are not identified nor can goals be set to optimize for them.

Just as important as your dealership website in the search engines is other properties that contain the dealership name and or products and market area.  Your automotive seo provider should also work with you to lock down the dealership’s online reputation by incorporating these assets in their efforts and pushing other 3rd party lead gen sources out of your space.  you do not want sites like Autotrader, Edmunds and Cars.com competing with searches for your name and you defiantly don’t want Rip Off Report, Pissed Consumer or even Dealerrater.com occupying these spots.  Even if all of your ratings are positive on dealerrater.com your traffic and brand name could cause the surfer to seek out other offers in your market area and it will happen with the other entries on lead gen sites as well.

To find out what a difference a diligent seo strategy and our no competitive representation strategy for your dealership use the contact form below or give us a call at 800-406-1794.

Platforms Dealers Use That Could Benefit from our Services

(scroll to see them all)

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The list of speakers and things discussed will give dealership operators valuable information that they can bring back and put into action.  This conference style is unlike any dealers have seen in the automotive marketing space and will set the precedence that other conference organizers should follow.

We will be blogging from the event so make sure you subscribe to our feed to get up to the minute updates.

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Consumers are immune to most print advertising and revenues are declining for this media.  Other bloggers are predicting a Major Consolidation due to the declines in revenue.  The numbers are all over the board all pointing down in circulation numbers and revenue for print editions while online editions are seeing sharp rises in circulation and ad revenue.  The numbers are still lopsided though as far as the percentage of spend online revenue for online print publications is around 5.4% of their total revenue but closing the gap at an alarming rate.

With the industry pushing to be green in it’s initiatives it is still surprising to see the huge full page ads in print that only reach a very small portion of people who want what we are offering.  Online advertising allows us to prequalify our customers by reaching only those that want we have to offer.  Versus the spaghetti marketing techniques of print advertising and save trees at the same time.

Nathan Scripps offered a great way to look at media spends at Drivingsales.com in their Automotive Strategy Section on how to reach our target market at the time they are looking for us, when they are ready to buy.  Concentrating your advertising dollars that reaches the most people that want what we have to offer versus interrupting the masses that don’t.

Traditional advertising mediums still allows us to build our brand however; if every raw impression that we deliver in these mediums is an in your face pitch it may do more harm than good.  These mediums will allow us to tell our story now we just need to balance our pitch to reach those that want what we have now.

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Three quick questions

1. Do you know what is being said?
2. Are you using the information if you do?
3. How do you deal with it?

Lets try and give you some answers for these questions.

Obviously a few of the review sites are monetizing their site by having you pay to be notified of new reviews of your dealership. Sometimes you can get the chance to reply before it gets posted. This can be advantageous if you can react and correct a problem but trying to be a member of all the possibilities and with more coming on line almost daily it can become expensive.

As long as they are all competing and no true market leader has appeared this probably is not your best resource. There are two free resources that should be used by every dealer.

Google Alerts

Technorati

You can set up an alert for any name or term and Google will email you as soon as their spiders find anything new. This way you will know exactly what is being said about you almost as soon as it hits the net. (Or at least as fast as Google finds it and that can be quite quickly.)

I prefer to set up a separate Gmail account just for alerts as that allows me to keep my research in one place. You can keep track of anything this way including your competitors. Think that can be valuable information?

I have added a good video I found that will show you how to use both Google Alerts and Technorati to keep track of what is being said about you on the web.

Now that you know what is being said what do you do with it? It is great to know what is said but what you do about it is the real key.

If you are seeing complaints about your process look at ways to improve it. This can be in any of your departments. If you are not using the information that customers are adding to the internet about you and your competitors to find portions of your process in both sales, service and follow up to improve you are missing valuable intelligence.

This can be both positive and negative information. Dealing with the negative information is what most people leap on first but…

The positive information can be more valuable as it can help you develop a unique positioning in your market but is often overlooked. These may show you things that should be added into all your promotional efforts and they already have social proof behind them.

You will need to be transparent on line to use the internet effectively. We have earner articles on transparency and transparency part 2 that you should check out so we won’t cover the same information here.

If there is a problem you need to fix it. Addressing the problem and dealing with it can gain you much more than trying to ignore it. Make sure that you are taking part in the conversations about you in a pro active way.

If you are reacting positively and just as important promptly you can gain much more web credibility with future customers even if it is a problem that you just can’t fix but can address with your side of the story. If you can fix it and do promptly this is the absolute best result.

Ever notice that the customer with a problem that is promptly fixed can become your best evangelist?

Hiding your head in the sand and ignoring it like an ostrich will only make it worse. Go out of your way to create evangelists and ask your satisfied customers to add favorable reviews to the site of your choice.

Don’t try and scam the system though as this will back fire on you and will hurt you in the long run.

Now go get the intelligence that is freely available but more importantly take action on it today and everyday.

It will improve your business.

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What is social bookmarking?

If you have ever used the bookmark feature of your browser you should understand the basic concept of using the social bookmarking sites. You save the sites you want to remember but in this case you do it online. You also tag what you save and you share it with other members.

On most bookmarking sites others can also vote as to whether or not what you saved is valuable.

Each of these bookmarks can create an extra listing on the search engines that can help drive traffic to the site you bookmarked. As Google tends to like some of the bigger bookmarking sites quite often your bookmark will rank higher than the page you saved. At least initially.

Using sites like Digg, Propeller, and Stumble can result in quite a bit of additional traffic if you have a popular bookmark.

The important thing to remember is that this is a community. If you are not contributing by bookmarking sites of value that aren’t yours you will be seen as a spammer and the community will not support you.

This needs to be something that you do regularly and not just for your sites. Add the little favorite icons to your browser and any time you see an item of value in the course of your normal surfing you can quickly bookmark it.

Bookmarking along with using the long tail of search can bring you great benefits. Check out this article on using the long tail for automotive seo for more ways to drive very targeted traffic.

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• Does your web site work for you? Do you only have one?

There is a great point made there but it needs to go further. The point is that your web site either works or it doesn’t. PERIOD.

Your web site generates people through your front door or it does not. It does not matter how pretty it is, how flashy the graphics. That does not matter. The key is it generates people through your front door or it does not.

That answers the first question but brings us to question number two.

In the online world you soon won’t be able to survive with only one site. Here is why.

For this example you have a Ford dealership called John Smith Ford located in my area (the coal region of Pennsylvania). You rank #1 in Google for John Smith Ford but….

I am a buyer looking for an Expedition (I know there aren’t many of them with gas at $4 + a gallon) and I am going to use the web first to start my shopping. I seriously doubt that the first thing I am going to enter is John Smith Ford.

It is much more likely I am going to search for something like “discounts on Ford Expedition“. See I also know you don’t have many buyers looking for the big SUV’s either. I may have even narrowed it to an area with a term like “discounts on Ford Expedition Central PA“.

Now I have been working on line and looked at numerous web sites fro car dealer’s and other off line merchants. Very few understand and take advantage of the way the web works.

This is the most likely way that people will find you and unless you have multiple pages all optimized for the various permutations that people will be searching for it is unlikely that you are getting the vast majority of people that are in buying mode to a page that you control.

This is why the large vendors like Cars.com and Autotrader.com will show a positive return on investment. They use YOUR inventory which you are paying them to do to cover and own these search terms then monetize it to their advantage with affiliate offers. Don’t believe me check out the white paper at www.Digital20Group.com.

The other reason that you need multiple web properties is that you have to worry about people that are unhappy with you. How much would it cost you if the number 3 listing for your dealer name is YourDealerNameSucks.com. If you want to find out check out this article at ISM In Training.

Using a variety of web platforms like micro sites, Squidoo lenses, blogs and Hub Pages can make it extremely hard for anyone to get on the first page for your name unless they really understand SEO. (That is a person you don’t want to upset .

So check and see if your web site is doing its job and if you haven’t started adding other sites you need to before your competitor does.

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Right now the never ending conversation about Autotrader.com going on over at Jeff Kershner’s Blog and their never ending battle to gain market share with a bad business model, for dealers. Here is a report worth reading at www.Digital20Group.com

Dealer Micro Sites seem to be a hot topic inside of a social network set up by Ralph Paglia. This seems to be a self serving topic as most of the participation is by the vendors trying to hawk their wares to the limited number of dealer employee participants. This marketing tools time has passed in it’s current form. (more on this later)

I have discussed CRM/ILM vendors issues at my other blog about being an Internet Sales Manger and their lack of compliance with the CAN SPAM Act and deliverability issues. Read where I talk about problems with the BZ Results BuzzTrak and their non compliance at www.ismintraining.com.

Now for the real killer…….

In steps www.DrivingSales.com, the first automotive social network created by a dealer for dealers, to help the industry get the real deal on the vendors in the automotive marketplace and to share ideas with each other to help better the industry in it marketing efforts.

Dealers and their employees have generally played their cards close to their vest when it comes to sharing ideas with each other. Now the relics who have held on to these old principals will need to step up and get into this century to remain competitive in todays information age. Consumers are empowered with the wealth of knowledge that is available to them. Now dealers have the opportunity to work from a level playing field just as consumers do when it comes time to make decisions and have real feedback on vendors that service them.

It is time to get on board today start by joining www.DrivingSales.com today.

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If you are selling anything anywhere you need to be the focus of your offering, online or off.  The first step in the road to the sale sale is to establish rapport and how you do that online is to be completely transparent and encourage the conversation about you, your business and your offerings.

While Jon’s blog deals mostly with the “make Money Niche” of online marketing the message still applies very much to the automobile industry and our marketing efforts.

Lead with you, then your offerings, cause others to seek you out, become the hunted not the hunter!!

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I have also seen this work the other way around too. A prospect that was worked in our showroom leaves and continues shopping and the internet department winds up with the lead after customer continues to shop online, usually through a third party vendor. To save that customer is a formidable task.

The consumer is placed in a bad position if it is discovered and may even decide to shop elsewhere or completely remove themselves from the market. A bad proposition for all parties concerned.

What does that have to do with “Transparency”?

Everything and nothing.

Almost daily the used car manager will request that I change prices on a car on the website or even delete it if the consumer has completed a transaction, which is done by default via the nightly DMS updates. Their is usually a huge disparity in the pricing online and those offered by the “lot lizards”.

Can this have long term effects on your business. Probably not!! It can have short term moments of panic for those the most affected by it. Long term it will push more consumers to the interwebs. Oh, that is already happening!

Not listing a price on an inventory item online, not giving the price of your service upfront and not worrying about others online conversation about you in your every interaction with a customer or potential customer is as antiquated as hiding behind “handles”, sending unsolicited emails and cloaked SEO tactics.

Eventually it all becomes known, so why doesn’t everybody get on the same page and become completely open in their dealings? The move is in that direction what are you doing to become more transparent at every level?

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