Monthly Archives: June 2014

In the fantastic Spike Jonze film “Her” a lonely man falls deeply in love with his smartphone’s operating system. We’re not at that point where love could blossom from conversations with a smartphone. Human to computer conversation isn’t quite a two-way street yet. However, with an increase emphasis on hands-free voice search on mobile devices that conversation channel is definitely a one-way street — with us doing all the talking.

Google recently announced that all Andoid powered devices will now respond to the hot word ‘Ok, Google’. Users can initiate a search, control, and carry out any device function by saying the magic words ‘Ok, Google’ first and then asking a question or command such as “Call mom” or “Find the nearest Honda dealership open past 7pm”.

It’s not out of the question to think that voice control/search will soon be the primary way users interact with their mobile devices. With mobile search consuming a larger part of the search traffic pie every year it’s important to prepare your paid search campaigns to deal with this new paradigm shift of how we interact with mobile devices.

Voice control conversational search is very different from traditional typed search queries. With a typed search query a user may search for something like this: “like new 2011 Chevy Malibu”. This same search query as a voice control search may sound very different, but have the same intention: “find me a 2011 Chevy Malibu with leather seats and less than 30,000 miles”.

With type searches we omit various keywords and the ordering of the words may not always have a natural, cognitive flow. The opposite is true for voice search with additional words such as “a”, “for”, and “me” inserted into the search query.

In paid search campaigns this can lead to misses on exact and phrase match keywords. The broad match keywords may cover this , but you may be missing additional context of the search query and may not present the best ad copy or landing page for the voice search query. This could affect metrics such as CTR, conversion rates, and onsite engagement for voice search query searchers. To target for mobile devices it’s important to take into account voice search queries. This mean creating specific ad groups and campaigns for long tail keyword terms that are conversational.

As our interaction with devices continue to evolve it’s important that our PPC strategies evolve along with it.

Selective Posting Interface

Auto Classified Solution’s new interface will allow the dealer to select which cars they want posted to Craigslist. It works for both new and used inventory.

This will useful for budget conscious dealers that want to select a group of used cars but also for new car managers that want to advertise just a small group of new cars.

I can think already about many scenarios where this will be useful to a new car manager:

You can run a 20 truck campaign ($100 for a month) on F-250′s diesel if you have a heavy rebate on those and compete with dealers selling ‘current -1 -2 models’.

I also see it very useful for VW running the $199 Jetta lease or Honda in the Civic.

Non Prepaid Areas

We now have the ability to post to any area within the United States whether you can buy prepaid blocks or not. 

For more information please contact Jim Gillen [email protected]

Radio spots or TV advertising have been considered the go-to avenue for businesses to increase their brand awareness. Traditionally, search advertising brings its value through clicks, impressions, and conversions. However, a recent study by Google brings new insights into the effectiveness of search ads. The results may surprise you.

The Study
In 2013 Google ran over 60 search experiments to understand how search ads can affect brand awareness. The subjects of the study consisted of 800 US consumers who participated in the simulated search scenario. The participants were placed into either the control group who were shown a search engine results page (SERP) or the the experimental group who were shown a Test SERP spotlighting one of 12 categories: apparel and durables, auto, B2B, classified and local, consumer packaged goods, education, financial services, healthcare, media and entertainment, retail, tech, and travel.

Participants were asked to perform a search for a specific category keyword (for example, “used cars” or “bad credit loan”) on their desktop. They were then shown either the actual SERP or a Test SERP. Those in the Test SERP group would see the test brand’s search ad present at the top of the search results page.

The Results
According to the study results, search ads do in fact have a positive impact on brand awareness. When study participants were asked what was top of mind about a specific category, Google found the following results:

• 14.2% in the Test SERP group named the test brand
• 8.2% in the control group also named the same brand

Overall, there is a 6.6% increase in brand awareness when in the top search positions. Each of the categories studies got slightly different results in brand awareness increases. Most notably, the auto category saw a 9% lift in top-of-mind brand awareness.

Chicago based Maria Espinoza will focus on what are the best conversion points in a website. After looking at over 1000 websites she analyzed the averaged sales leads per form and brought all this information into a powerful presentation about conversion. This is a great class for those of you that want to know what the best website KPA for and why. 

Don and Dennis are the 800 lbs gorilla in the room. Very interesting technology that they develop with our team. Let me give you my 30K feet view: 

You can now do a soft pull from every-single-form that is used in a website (soft pulls don’t require permission), and the data that you get has the customer’s current auto loan, with %, amount left, and monthly payment. So if the customer has a 2012 Toyota Corolla with a payment of $400/month at 15% rate and you can out him on a 2014 with a 6.99% therefore lowering the payment significantly, how is that for a conversation started with a simple lead that came to your site? 

If you have questions or comments don’t ask me, I know about 2% of what a person needs to know about financing in the automotive industry. Come to see Don and Dennis speak and view these new technology developed with DealerLab, Dealereprocess, and Transunion. 

As one of the nation’s leading BDC trainers, New Jersey based Sean Bradley will focusing on one of his latest dealer and the amazing transformation he was able to achieve. 

Last and least! Yago Paramo will focus on content but specifically for the financing side of the business. Generating finance leads and traffic. I will expose some knowledge on geo targeted financing content, location based ads, and some things that we have never shared before. I will not have a power point but a conversation about the possibilities and ideas that a dealer can develop with a content based strategy.

This is a free event to all PGI and Dealer Lab customers. 

Tuesday 24th–Car Dealers

With the FIFA World Cup just starting a couple days ago, be prepared for World Cup mania to reach all ends of the world. As you read this your Facebook news feed is probably saturated with World Cup talk and your favorite sports bar is probably already packed with crazed soccer fanatics. Every 4 years Google Trends shows a huge spike in search volume for the term “World Cup”. However, one place where the World Cup will be limited is on the paid search section of Google search results. The reason for this is because FIFA, the organization that puts on the World Cup, has trademarked terms such as “World Cup”, “FIFA”, and even “Brazil 2014”.

As a car dealership how does this news relate to you? Well, it’s a relevant reminder of Google Adword’s trademark policy. Adwords current policy allows advertisers to bid on others’ trademarked keywords; however, advertiser are not permitted to use trademarked terms in the ad text. This means that if you’re a Honda dealer, then you won’t be able to use the terms Ford, Chevy, or Nissan in your ad text. This can be quite the hurdle if you want to use PPC to help sell your used car inventory.

There is a way to circumvent Adword’s trademark policy. Google’s trademark policy regarding resellers states the following:

The ad’s landing page is primarily dedicated to selling (or clearly facilitating the sale of) the goods or services corresponding to a trademark term.

This means that if you’re a Honda a dealer that wants to write an ad for the 2011 Ford Focus in your used sales lot you’re going to need to make the landing page for your ad the product page for that specific vehicle. You could go through your whole inventory and write sets of trademark compliant ads for each vehicle in your inventory. However, you probably don’t have time for that. You’re too busy selling cars.

With Used Dynamic Inventory Based Ads you can have Adwords trademark compliant ads automatically built for every vehicle in your inventory. Ads are directly linked to vehicles in your inventory and is refreshed daily, so you’ll only advertise vehicles that are currently in your inventory. As vehicles are added to your inventory, ads are automatically generated. Imagine all the time you’ll save. Thus, freeing you up to watch team USA make a miracle run at the Cup. Fingers crossed.

Putting a portion of your valuable advertising budget into paid search is a great way to attract new visitors to your dealerships website and sell some cars. Especially when you consider that a report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau found that automotive shoppers are 71% more likely to be swayed by digital advertising than the average consumer. With digital marketing, including paid search, having so much influence on car shoppers; doing PPC is practically a no-brainer.

The decision to do PPC is a no-brainer, but the day-to-day management of a PPC campaign takes some thought and attention. One aspect of PPC where many dealerships fall short on is ad copy. Many dealerships miss out on valuable opportunities to attract and convert prospective car buyers when they fall victim mismanaged ad copy. Here are some tips to avoid some common PPC with ad copy.

Used Varied Ad Copy and Constantly Test Them
A trap that some PPC campaigns falls into is that the same ads are used for all keywords. No matter how great your one ad is, it won’t be effective with all keywords. A person searching for “bad credit auto loans” has a much different intention than someone searching for “dealerships in gotham city”. Depending on the size of the keyword list in an ad group, you should have at least 3-5 ads in rotation.

In addition to having a varied ad copy, you should also be constantly testing them. A/B testing for PPC ad copy is pretty simpler than other kinds of A/B test because there are fewer things to test. The aspects of the ad copy you’re going to want to test are the headline, the text body, the call to action, and the destination URL. All you have to do is simply duplicate an ad you want to test, change one aspect of it, and see which one performs better. Pause the losing ad and repeat the process. Think of it is PPC ad copy Thunderdome. Two ads enter. One ad leaves.

A couple things to note when testing ad copy. You’re going want to decide on the metric you’ll be judging them on beforehand. Are you going to be look at CTR or conversions? Also, you’re going to want to make an ad group level change in the account settings to rotate the ads evenly instead of showing the more successful one. This ensures that both ads get equal opportunity to be displayed.

Make Your Dealership Stand Out With Your Ad Copy
Many dealerships fall in line and have very general ad copy, even for competitive keywords. Write ad copy that stands out from the rest by providing specific information. Put information such as monthly specials, lease offers, and  facts about your dealerships such as service awards in your ad copy. These facts that are unique to your dealership will set you apart from the competition and give users a reason to click on your ad.