PPC Marketing - A Dealerships Answer Affordable Advertising

We all know that floor traffic is down, way down. With gas prices sky high and money getting tighter by the day people are less willing and less able to visit a variety of dealerships before they make a purchase. So the question is how do we get top quality leads into your dealership for less than traditional media costs? The answer is simple, Pay Per Click.

PPC marketing offers you a lot of advantages over traditional marketing outlets. For instance, with Pay Per click you only pay for the ads that people click on, so your ad could receive 200,000 impressions a month and it may never cost you a penny. This varies greatly from traditional media such as radio where you have to pay just for having your ad played, the more it's played the more you pay. In traditional media you are also restricted to a specific publication date or time slot, but on the Internet your ad is working for you whenever the searcher is working. The cost per click is also a lot cheaper with PPC, usually pennies on a dollar. If a keyword is hot, give it more money, if it's not kick it to the curb.

The bottom line for your bottom line is that Internet marketing can reach a greater variety of leads for a lot less money. The average is ~70.00 per person who walks into your dealership or less than 20.00 on average per lead.

Google Adwords Update -Slow Pages Will Hurt You

This week Google announced that they will be making a change to their quality score algorithm. If you are not running your own adwords campaign then call your ad agency and ask them to review and recommend changes to improve load times. Most auto dealers use a template designed to load quickly and are fine, but it never hurts to check.

Here is the full release from Google for your reading pleasure.

PS. Don't forget to celebrate International Day of Awesomeness (maybe with an Awesome special on detailing?)

Pagerank: Why are Dealerships Wasting Their Time?

Every other day I hear from a dealership who wants to use PPC to raise their Page Rank and each time I wonder where they are getting the idea that this is a valid use of their time. To this day I can only guess that they found a blog post or two (or three dozen) touting the need to raise page rank to get more traffic. While that is fine and dandy if your dream of growing up to be Andy Beal or Darren Rowse or even Jason Falls this isn't going to work for you.

Why?

Well first off your PPC campaign will not raise your page rank. Page Rank is a vote, and each link to your site counts as a vote. Think of this as voting for your homecoming queen in high school. PPC campaigns by their very nature do not add links to your site, so they don't weigh in on the vote. Page Rank is a great way to measure a bloggers success, or how "trustworthy" a site is. However, it is link based and updated maybe 4 times a year so for your purposes it isn't very relevant.

The second reason this is a waste of your time is because you have a brick and mortar store with actual inventory. You have a reputation not only online but in your communities where it really counts. People are going to buy cars from you because you have a great website that is easy to navigate, a clean show room, helpful sales staff and great prices. The average person wouldn't know a page rank if it bit them in the ankle, and even if they did, the customer would absolutely rather buy their new car from the guy offering 3 free oil changes then the pr 6 website. Guaranteed.

As an aside if you know where people are getting the idea that dealerships should be worried about page rank please let me know in the comments! :)