As for the hard work and time involved a lot depends on your overall dealership’s commitment to establishing an internet presence in this competitive digital age and your current personnel’s in-house capabilities. No matter what approach your dealership takes the more time invested into establishing an automobile internet presence the greater your return on investment.
Let’s review 3 possible scenarios dealers may take, concerning hard work & time investment;
1 – Worse Case:
A dealership says; “Ya-Ya-Ya” and invests the bare minimum amount of time, research, and work.
After studying many of these dealerships that took this approach what has been determined is that at a bare minimum those individual dealerships have a manufacturer-mandated website or have signed on for the basic cookie-cutter manufacturer website and do very little site maintenance, thus degrading the dealership brand and image. Now, this approach may appear at first to be the least costly and time-consuming approach but in fact could be an extremely costly approach, costing the dealership tens of thousands of dollars. How’s that possible? One there is still a monthly automotive web service provider fee that can add up to thousands by year-end with zero return on investment. Secondly, even though it is difficult to measure the potential online vehicle purchaser lost sales and gross profit throughout the year that your competitors have attracted online and sold (80% of vehicle purchaser’s research online) it can be easily assumed that if you lost 1 sale per month at an average gross of $ 1700 the lost revenue equals over $ 20,000 yearly.
Total Cost to the dealership: Approx. $ 25,000. Total Time committed: Approx. 100 hours, reviewing, contact negotiations & signing, initial setup time.
Immediate correction required; Review your dealership website and at minimum improve it so that if it is located online it doesn’t degrade your dealership while providing the basic information needed. Address, Location, and Phone Number. Start a simple Search Engine Marketing (CPC) campaign on the major search engines with your dealership name and name spelling variations so that if an individual is attempting to locate your dealership they will find it. Not just your competitor or an internet lead provider.
2 – Slightly Better But Not The Best:
This dealership has invested some time into their Web site but lacks a few of the key components due to it being a one-person show. The problem I’ve seen is the person has demonstrated an over-emphasis on one particular department within the dealership or has developed “Tunnel Vision” and forgot that an automotive dealer Web site brands a complete dealership online. Now, this Web site has some real potential, it simply needs to be reviewed by all dealership management to prevent an overkill approach and maintain a professional dealer image.
3 – Best Effort Visible to Date:
This auto dealership has spent some time developing a clean, crisp, informative site, allowing the automobile consumer to develop an interactive relationship with their online digital storefront. No, immediate pop-up coupons in their face – this I never understood, the consumer hasn’t even seen your product and you’re asking for personal information. They start their presentation with the non-intrusive fundamentals such as; a professional digital image, location, phone numbers, and product highlights. Their site offers simple site navigation features allowing the consumer to locate precisely what they may be searching for with one or two clicks.
They’ve incorporated the complete dealership, offering the services of all available automotive departments. Daily or Weekly product specials are offered, yet don’t overpower the individual, understanding that many individuals may not be interested or searching for a special, but one of the other hundred products that an automotive dealership may offer. They’ve taken the time to review their complete site and make sure each and every web page has some form of useful search engine content on it, no blank pages or generic, useless, boring content.
The dealership has taken the time to make sure that their site will appear online during a consumer search for their dealership and location at a minimum, either contextual or by utilizing simple CPC -.Search Engine Marketing techniques. You wouldn’t believe how many dealerships I’ve researched by typing in their exact auto dealership name into a search engine bar and still can’t locate it because of all the third-party lead providers fighting for top placement. At a minimum, a dealership should make sure they can be located by utilizing a simple CPC campaign.
With a little additional research, I’ve also determined that these auto dealerships are not afraid to invest a mere ten or fifteen dollars to purchase domain name variations that redirect to their core Web site or are useful automotive Micro-sites, an example being their Name_Used_Vehicles.com. Click here to read more about keyword domain names, variations, and suggestions. These dealerships have also realized the importance of backlinks to their website by insisting that locally purchased advertisement media link back to their web page, such as radio advertisements or local newspapers which have a respectable digital online presence.
Overall Recommendation to improve online presence, simply follow the “Eight Key Requirements to Succeed” and promote your dealership website in a professional manner. Assemble and mandate an internet development team within your dealership that requires the participation of all departments, Sales, Service, Parts, and Accounting to attend a scheduled dealership meeting. Do not accept the common statement; “I don’t have the time”, make time, the internet is here forever, just like local print ads. You may even want to occasionally include some of the “Common People” such as a Mechanical Technician, Receptionist, or an Outside Vendor, and simply ask that to tell you what they like and dislike about the dealership website without recourse. Creative ideas and digital marketing go hand-in-hand and no idea should be dismissed unless tested.
