While digital marketing experts try to predict which channels and platforms are going to best serve the auto industry, no one can deny it will still be on the back of the Google Search Engine and dominated by those who manipulate it the best. Social media is great for branding but it’s yet to prove itself as a bold sales platform for auto dealers.
Many are even paying good coin for display advertising thinking it’s well-filtered from bot fraud when in truth, the battle for clean, convertible web traffic via display is still waging. How would a dealer even know if the display traffic was scrubbed unless the entity selling it to them told them it was? While local search is still predominant in driving traffic to the dealerships, it’s where that search takes the car shopper that really matters.
A clean, search engine optimized (SEO), easy to navigate site that displays the inventory in an effective way is crucial. Gathering lead data and responding to it quickly is essential to moving that prospect through the sales funnel and getting conversions effectively. Many dealers have such a system and many do not. Even the dealers who are buttoned up aesthetically have a hard time interpreting what the traffic is telling them. They have no idea how to read the backend analytics and rely on pretty, favorably edited reports generated by third party lead and SEO vendors to educate them. Following where the traffic goes on a website is incredibly important. Tracking the behavior of those who visit your site and adjusting the site architecture and content to optimize their experience will lead to better sales. It’s all in the tracking, even before the prospects arrive on your website(s).
What if you used Google search tracking data to create a domain network that could drive thousands of active car buyers to your site? Quite frankly, it would cost you tens of thousands if not millions of dollars to develop. Just imagine having inventory listed on 350 behaviorally targeted, classified listing sites based on the most common search terms Google has tracked to date in the automotive industry?
It Gets Better, Just Read On
Instead of paying expensive subscription fees to large listing sites for leads or conversion-less impression counts, you are actually getting high quality, high-quantity, bot-free, bottom of the sales funnel car shoppers clicking to your site. Case in point; www.bestpriceusedcars.com is a commonly used search term, in fact, it’s one of the most used search terms used by car shoppers today. Now, imagine being listed on another 349 similar sites that drive huge volumes of traffic such as www.cashforcars.com, or www.autodealersforbadcredit.com? There are thousands more to choose from and all of these domains are spoken for by one company!
The key to the kingdom is in low cost, high-quality volume traffic. The aforementioned approach is actually in play. To date, only a few hundred dealers are onboard this particular network that is averaging 5-star reviews and is rapidly becoming the #1 “lead gen” provider for those lucky enough to be early adapters to the platform.
