As many dealership marketers know, search campaigns are a necessary part of a multi-channel marketing strategy. The danger with search campaigns is the potential for pay-per-clicks to become very expensive, which tends to happen when marketing vendors use a single strategy for all dealerships, and set up campaigns as…

When consumers search for vehicle service options in your area, does your dealership’s website appear on the search engine results page (SERP)? For most dealers, ranking organically for search terms is difficult because their websites are optimized for sales and not necessarily for service. Additionally, it’s difficult to compete with aftermarket service centers that have…

If you utilize paid search, you’re probably paying “Google Tax” without even realizing it.

So what is “Google Tax?”…

It’s time for a reality check. I’d like to begin with pointing out the fact that more often than we realize, the correct solution to a problem is both obvious and…

I sat down recently with one of our Digital Performance Managers, Kelly, to get an inside look an inside look at her daily life and best practices.

Kelly was asked what she feels as the most important aspects of her job, which she stated, “I think the most important part of my job is helping our clients. We play a role in generating leads for them. It's just…

With every year that passes, we’ve seen consumers increase their research and online activity exponentially and it has become increasingly difficult to discover true attribution when analyzing exactly what drove a specific customer into a dealership.

Marketing today mandates an omni-channel approach. No longer can you simply rely on a website and traditional…

There have been several studies in the automotive industry that have conclusively answered this question with hard data and compelling reasons why it is the way it is. Unfortunately, these "conclusive" studies often point in opposite directions and always seem to be conducted by companies that lean in one direction or the other.

Which is better for search PPC,…

In the world of digital advertising, there are three primary components: targeting, messaging, and landing pages. So much emphasis is put on targeting such as PPC keywords or display ad placement. After that, the focus is often placed on the landing page, particularly with the debate over whether to point visitors towards a specific landing page or directly into…

Over the last month, there has been a lot of noise about the lack of transparency between some SEM companies and their automotive clients.

Showroom Logic founder Patrick Bennett provides an insightful look at why it's critical for a dealer to have access to have more than just access to their Google Analytics account - they need access to their Google Adwords and Bing Ads accounts, as well.

He discusses why Adwords tools such as Quality Score need to be actively monitored by…

I spend a lot of quality time with auto dealers, and am often surprised at the state of their online marketing programs. Sometimes I am even downright outraged at how some online marketing…

Every now and then I find the automotive digital marketing controversies and handwringing on sites like LinkedIn, DealerElite.net and others to be both humorous and disturbing.

Humorous, because it’s really not all that complicated (yet some people insist on adding drama to everything); and disturbing, because no matter what the issue, the bad advice always seems to outweigh the good. (Usually because those creating the…

When you have two people who have combined for over two decades of working with automotive website providers, you would think that they the company they would build together would be another website provider. It wasn't. There's a reason for this.

Search and social are the marketing venues we chose to pursue for one big reason: minimal parody. Car dealers have…

Watch Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYE5nvtYJ40

Car News Network - At the 18th Digital Dealer Conference, president of T3, Stan Thomas, conducts vendor to vendor relations and is at Digital Dealer 18 looking for new technologies for his company's…

We've been very careful with how we approach inventory marketing on dealer websites. On one hand, we know that a dealer's inventory is the primary lead and sales driver for dealers. On the other hand, the concept of driving everyone directly to inventory is a flawed one. Sometimes, it's better to put people on an appropriate landing page rather than push them directly…

I really don't know who I'm going to offend on this one. We've been researching so many vendors over the last couple of months that work with chat, lead-gen widgets, and website platforms themselves that we haven't taken the time to explore PPC vendors. Maybe that's why I was blindsided to find out that there are at least two vendors out there charging 20% and one…

Consumers today are increasingly becoming finicky about where and how they want to communicate. While the past may have seen a traditional print ad performing well on its own, that’s increasingly not the case. Data supports the fact that consumers are all over the place and successful marketers know that their message needs to be at every potential touch point possible. The…

To paraphrase the immortal movie icon, Ferris Bueller, "The Internet moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

That seems to be the case with many digital marketing practices, particularly in the realm of advertising versus marketing. Oddly enough, it wasn't too long ago that I was preaching the reverse;…

What? WHAT!?!? There have to be required fields on contact forms, right? There have been required fields on contact forms for two decades. Nothing could have changed so quickly that they have become unnecessary, right?

Actually, they're no longer necessary. In fact, they're a hindrance. Here's why:

People aren't stupid

Seriously,…

The next age of advertising is right around the corner. With Google's announcement of +Post ads, we…

Let’s first take a moment to let the cover image of this story wear off a bit. It’s pretty freaky, I know. Once that’s done, let’s talk about how the evolution of search marketing has come to the point that we need to use freaky images to get your attention.

SEO and PPC are very different…