In an era of rapidly changing digital marketing opportunities, one particular group of automotive retailers in the U.K. is making tremendous strides. L & L Automotive Group operates Mercedes-Benz and smart dealerships in Stevenage, Hertfordshire and Bishop’s Stortford. The group has been making substantial gains in online visibility, and particularly in its organic SEO results.

The gains are the result of The Group Marketing Manager at L&L Automotive, Mark Whitworth and his team. Mark has extensive experience as a marketing manager and is the visionary who anticipated the seismic move to digital marketing several years ago. While many in his industry were focusing their time and spending a large amount of funds in traditional media. Mark pushed a significant share of his marketing budget into digital platforms. He then steered his team and his agency to get the most out of their online investments. Those investments are paying off.

Inspiration Inc. is the digital agency for the group, and their efforts, along with those of Responsive Digital, are being credited with much of the online success for the auto retailer. The group has also benefited from the skills and knowledge of Digital Marketing Executive David Newman. David is the hands-on member of the team and was employed due to his background in SEO and automotive digital marketing.

How successful has this team been? Here are some of the impressive numbers since the launch of the L&L Automotive website:

• Organic traffic from Google has increased by over 275%.
• Total overall traffic has increased by 150%.
• Online enquiries have rocketed up over 400%.
• Time spent onsite has increased 32%.
• The site’s bounce rate has decreased 15%.

The greatest growth came from the presence on their website of product keywords. The greatest of these results came from newly launched Mercedes-Benz products such as the A-Class, the A45 AMG, CLA, CLA 45 AMG, the new S-Class and the new E-Class. Other areas of growth have come from the presence of used car product keywords.

Responsive Digital created the brilliant architecture of the L&L Automotive website, with continued input from Inspiration Inc. For his part, David serves on the front lines of the strategy which includes:

• Keyword analysis to identify the most valuable keywords for the website, and determine their effectiveness using Google’s Keyword tool.
• SEO website audits to determine search engine accessibility and relevancy.
• Content strategy to insure that page text is relevant, has the appropriate amount of key search words, and is updated.
• Boutique outreach with a variety of related automotive websites and placement of uniquely written articles.

In addition, the marketing team makes sure there is a sufficient flow of press releases regarding the dealerships and the Mercedes brand. These press releases have included information about Brand Ambassadors, special events, model introductions, technological advancements, and local tie-ins.

The digital efforts of this team is working in concert with Mercedes-Benz focus on targeting a younger demographic through the introduction of new models. It also walks side-by-side with the brand's recent marketing campaigns using digital and social media to extend their reach.

L&L Automotive and their marketing team continue to advance their online presence with an innovative vision, solid strategies, focus, and hard work. When one looks at the numbers, it certainly appears that these efforts are paying dividends.

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This is a guest blog – about the author: David Newman works in digital marketing for L&L Automotive, marketing on a retailer level a wide variety of franchised brands including Mercedes-Benz, AMG and smart. In the past David has also worked in marketing on a retailer level for a variety of other franchised brands including Vauxhall, Citroen and the late Saab. David's passions are split between all things digital, automotive and sailing. Follow David on Linkedin, Motor Trade Book, and Google+.