Google Looks to Become a Major Player in the Car Industry with Google Cars

In recent months, Google has shown that it is willing to extend its reach into a variety of markets. From Google Fiber to the new Google Chromebook, no industry is safe from the most powerful search engine on the planet. Not even the car industry. Under testing by dealers in the San Francisco Bay Area since early last summer, Google Cars is Google’s latest attempt to become a more significant player in online car shopping. Since 90 percent of car buyers start their research online and Google comprises over 70% of all searches on the web, clearly this is not to be taken lightly by car dealers and the industry as the whole.

The concept behind Google Cars is actually quite simple. Rather than having to click through specific websites to find prices and inventory for a certain make or model, consumers can navigate to Google Cars and have a convenient list of inventory available all on one page directly in the search results. Similar to pay per click marketing, Google Cars works by using a bidding system in which dealers can bid a certain amount, up to a cap, for a specific lead. This allows for plenty of flexibility and planning when pursuing leads but, it also has drawbacks. In order to protect consumer information much like Craigslist does, dealers are only given a name, phone number, and email which come from a proxy source and can only be contacted a maximum of six times, thus diminishing the effectiveness of a lead. Also, without content like car reviews or automotive news, it may be hard to pry customers away from existing sites that do provide information rich material that users want to see before making a purchase. Furthermore, experiences with Google Cars have also varied greatly. Some Bay Area dealers reported an increase in leads while others admitted that they had only converted one lead to a sale in the past seven months.

Even though the true effectiveness of this system has yet to be seen, the implications cannot be ignored. With the sheer size, resources, and consumer data at Google’s disposal, Google Cars will undoubtedly edge its way into the market one way or another. With the launch of Google Cars in the rest of California imminent, it is only a matter of time before car dealers and consumers alike will see the impact it has on the industry for themselves. Read More →

Target the Right Customers and Get More Conversions with Remarketing

For car dealers and small businesses alike, the term “remarketing” has become a hot topic in the marketing field. But what is remarketing and how exactly does it work?

Remarketing is a method of reaching back out to people who have already visited your website, opened one of your emails, or even clicked on a Facebook ad. By tagging pages of your website or emails you send out with a cookie that attaches to a visitor’s browser, potential clients can be shown a banner ad on subsequent sites they navigate to that points back to specific content on your website. For example, if a visitor was looking through your new car inventory, filled out an online form without hitting submit, or opened an email containing a special coupon, remarketing allows you to post specific ads on the side bar of certain sites that they visit based on their previous interaction with your company. If they were looking at a specific car, that specific car will be remarketed to them. Or if they show interest in finance and special offers, they may get an ad that features rebates and incentives.

Thus, remarketing can be quite an effective way to reconnect and close out deals with those who have already expressed interest in your products. Since over 80% of people research online before committing to buy, remarketing focuses on advertising to those who have already taken the effort to find you and your business rather than spending time on someone who may tune out your ads. By pursuing these particular customers, it’s easy to see why conversion rates and the return on investment can be considerably high.

Taking all of this into account, remarketing can have quite the impact on increasing impressions, enhancing your perceived presence on the internet, and maximizing conversions. Some best practices to maximize the effectiveness of your remarking campaign include using custom banner ads with matching color schemes and unique ad text to enhance brand recognition. Additionally, spending time to monitor the campaign and research current trends will make sure that your ads are visible on the most effective pages. Lastly, tracking your data on everything from the click through rate to the number of calls generated by the campaign will show you just how well it’s working. Target the right customers, maximize your ROI, and expand your internet reach with remarketing! Read More →

Who are Millenials and Why is Social Media Necessary for your Business?

Although the social media revolution is a hot topic on everyone’s mind, car dealership owners and managers still fail to realize how gravely important social media is as a marketing tool. Especially when budgets are tight or it seems that resources need to go elsewhere, the power of social media is often overlooked. However, in an insightful slide show called Why Millenials Aren’t Buying Cars-And What You Can Do To Fight It, Lindsey Kirchoff of HubSpot Media Relations tries to illustrate the generational change that is happening in the automotive market and what it means for the future of car sales.

What is a Millenial, you might ask? A Millenial is anyone born between 1980 and 2000, which accounts for about 23% of the total population of the United States. By 2025, Millenials will account for 75% of all vehicles purchases, but they are also showing a steady decrease in how much they value cars. An article published by the New York Times states that 46% of 18-24 year old drivers would rather choose the internet over their car while only 15% of the previous generation made such a claim. This shows that a serious shift is starting to occur in the short span of a generation.

What is causing this dramatic change then? You guessed it, the internet. With the ability to find, purchase, and ship just about anything online, the need to leave the house for certain items and services is decreasing. Coupled with a growing shift towards public transportation amongst Millenials, many dealers will not only have to convince them to buy their car, but to simply buy a car in general.

Although the outlook may look bleak, there is hope! With Millenials visiting an average of 25 websites before buying a vehicle and showing a disregard for traditional marketing mediums such as TV advertisements, mail, and phone calls, the internet has become the new showroom. This means that interactive websites and education via the internet is becoming the best way to reach out to potential customers. If you still aren’t a believer, click here for a fact filled video. At Autofusion, we provide a wide range of tools to help your dealership keep up with these changes. From our mobile sites to Facebook apps and SEO/SEM, we want to make you visible on the internet. Contact us today and we’ll help you take your business to he next level! Read More →

Local Citations are the New Link Building

Car dealers realize the importance of local SEO in targeting their customers and increasing visibility.  In local SEO, any business benefits from having the most optimized listing possible through link building. Simply put, link building is the process of getting links back to your website from other websites. By creating high-quality, relevant, organic back links to your website, you are more likely to frequently appear on the top results of a search engine query. However, a new kind of link building, called citations, is emerging as a prominent factor in local search.

What is a citation you may ask? A citation is similar to a listing found in a business directory, like Yellow Pages, Yelp, and Citysearch, and they hold value and trust among search engines. Being able to spread a consistent NAP (name, address, phone) over various sources across the web will add credibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).  However, having inconsistent citations can adversely impact SERPs, making it difficult for search engines to rank your business highly. You can even go hyper-local with citations, using Getlisted’s resource tool which breaks down the best citation sources by U.S. City. Since local citations live in an ecosystem amongst others, with most citations referencing another, it only stresses the importance of consistency in practice.

There are many facets to the local search ecosystem and applying the value of consistent NAPs over a variety of authoritative websites will only prove to be beneficial in the long run. Especially for car dealers, as more and more customers use local search, visibility is the only thing standing in the way of more business and better leads. Don’t let your competition dominate SERPs, focus on getting those consistent citations on Google+ Local, Bing, and Yahoo!  If you are interested in a free analysis of how your dealership stacks up, click on this link. Read More →

Get More Leads and Sell More Cars with Autofusion’s Craigslist Inventory Marketing

With a total of 700 sites across 70 countries, 50,000,000 daily queries worldwide, and 40 million new ads posted each month, Craigslist has replaced traditional newspaper classifieds as the place to reach your target audience. Additionally, it has quickly become one of the top ten most viewed websites in the United States and shows no signs of slowing down. So, what does this mean specifically for car dealers? 80 million car listings posted each month and 9.2 million used car ads viewed on Craigslist will tell you that it has become an incredible, free resource for any car dealer looking to increase their leads and sell more cars.

However, as many dealers know, inventory marketing on Craigslist isn’t always as straightforward as it seems. Many times your dealership IP address can be blocked, your account flagged, or even worse, you can be banned for over posting and duplicating content. This comes as bad news for a car dealer because with a large inventory of used cars, you will have to post similar content multiple times in order to get a number of your vehicles listed on Craigslist.

Fortunately, at Autofusion, we have an answer to this problem. Our unique cloud based solution allows us to market your entire inventory daily and automatically! Our clients receive an average of 130 phone calls a month, with top clients hitting almost 400 phone calls a month. With dealers in major Craigslist markets getting 10% or more of their web traffic from Craigslist alone, these same dealers can expect to sell about 10-12 units a month that they wouldn’t have otherwise. It is time to start using Craigslist to your advantage. Contact us today and let us take care of everything for you!

For reference:
http://www.statisticbrain.com/craigslist-statistics/
http://blog.autorevo.com/2011/08/top-10-craigslist-faqs-for-car-dealers/
http://www.autofusion.com/craigslist-extreme/#thesolution
http://www.autofusion.com/car-dealer-craigslist.html
Read More →

The State of the Internet

Published On: December 19, 2012

What does this mean for your business?

2012 was an exciting year for technology. Christmas lists across the world will be filled with a wide range of smart phones, tablets, and new gadgets that were either unaffordable or simply not available until this point in time. As the year 2012 draws to a close, it is important to reflect back on these advancements that have been made and their implications for the future. As shown by this must see slide show by Mary Meeker of Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, and Byers,  web traffic is steadily increasing, mobile internet and smart phone use climbs daily, and instant gratification is becoming the new norm. In the span of a few short years, the face of business and society in general has undergone and is still experiencing a number of revolutionary changes.

This new age of information and technology has steep implications for marketers of any kind. Where and how are potential customers going to be searching for and buying your products? How are you going to reach out to them and stay connected? Can you provide the immediate satisfaction to which this new market of users is becoming accustomed? As the internet and technology continue to advance on a rapid scale, so too will marketers be forced to evolve and adapt with the changing times or be left behind.

Fortunately, Autofusion has the answer to many of these questions. With mobile searches on the rise, we can provide the technological edge to ensure that customers will always have access to your dealership from their phone’s home screen, wherever they are. With our mobile websites and mobile apps, customers will be a click away from browsing your inventory or getting in contact with your sales team. You can also enroll in our SEO and PPC to stay ahead of the competition in organic and paid search engine listings. For even more information, feel free to contact us directly for a free website evaluation. The future of your business starts today! Read More →

The Importance of Google+ in SEO

Published On: December 10, 2012

Why Google+ is becoming vital for the presence of your business on the internet

When Google+ was first introduced in June of 2011, there was a lot of controversy between its relative strength compared to Facebook as a social media player. And with a search engine’s goal to provide users with the best and most relevant content possible, it has become well known that popularity of a page and sharing via social media can also directly impact its rank and therefore search engine optimization. Now take this power of social media and pair it with the number one search engine in the world that has about 70% of the market and you have Google+. Simply put, Google+ is not just another social network, and here are two reasons why.

1. Although seen as potentially monopolistic by some, Google has decided to give a higher priority to Google Plus pages when returning search results. In many instances, Google+ has taken the top rank for many people and businesses with the intent that people will switch over to the new format. Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz highlights this aspect of Google+ best in a helpful whiteboard presentation.
2. In an effort to weed out spam and improve result quality, Google+ introduced a +1 button. Much like Facebook, this +1 button essentially tells Google that you found a page’s information both relevant and helpful. Every +1 that a page gets gives it a “public stamp of approval” and has the effect making it more visible to others in your circles when you are signed in or simply providing more validation that a link is relevant even if you are signed out. You can read even more on this story by clicking here.

Both of these points show how important Google+ is for any business that is trying to optimize its listing. If you don’t rank well on Google, then your business might as well be invisible. The difference between being at the top or bottom of a search result can determine the number of website visits, popularity of your product, and even the number of potential customers. This is especially true for local SEO for car dealers since internet visibility can be difficult if there are many dealers in a relatively small area. In addition to a better internet presence, Google+ also gives you a forum to stay connected with customers as well as share inventory and upcoming offers. The importance of Google+ cannot be overstated so get on it today or your business is missing out! Read More →

Friday Links Every Internet Sales Manager Must See

Published On: August 31, 2012

Links About Upcoming Google Updates and PPC Advertising

Savvy internet sales managers know that the online marketing game is an ever-changing sea of unpredictability. Sure, you can follow the right people on your favorite social networking sites to get the latest news on Google algorithm updates and other developments, but sometimes it’s just nice to see a carefully curated list of links to choose from. After all, it is easy to get swamped with simply too much information. Stay abreast of shifting tides and surf the Internet with zen-like focus by checking out these 5 links every Internet Sales manager must see: Read More →

New Trend Update: Google AdWords for Mobile

Published On: April 13, 2012

How the Rise of Mobile Browsing Changes PPC for Car Dealers

Over the past few months, Google has made significant moves that show the company aims to become a dominant player in mobile advertising. Starting with the creation of Android and producing new smartphone devices, Google continues to expand by acquiring Motorola and releasing Google Wallet. While many online marketing professionals in the automotive industry have begun to discuss the ZMOT study, what isn’t often discussed is why Google chose to publish the study in the first place. What’s also interesting is that Google has continued to push its GoMo initiative to spread awareness about why businesses need mobile websites. All of these pieces reveal a larger trend: Google is preparing for higher search traffic from smartphone users.

Ever since the first iPhone came out in 2007, a consistent upward trend has been in growing mobile Internet use and apps. Google has now been working closely with AdWords pay-per-click management companies to help businesses advertise using Adwords for Mobile. Read More →

Will Google’s “Overly Optimized” Penalty Affect Car Dealers?

Published On: April 11, 2012

Three Tips to Fine-Tune Your SEO and Maintain Search Rank

The SEO community is abuzz about recent comments made by Google about their new penalty against “overly optimized” websites. The penalty is aimed at websites that are heavily optimized for search engines but provide little or no value for users.

Over optimizing a website is quite simple: all you really have to do is load your content and title tags with keywords, and create one-way backlinks from other websites using keyword-targeted anchor text. In the past, this practice would help your website rank higher on search engines, and it was part of intermediate outbound SEO strategy. Read More →