Dealer digital marketing trends that you will find useful this summer...
Here is a bunch of relevant dealer digital marketing tips and tools for you to use to kick start your summer 2015.
Mobile Search - Is your website mobile friendly?
As you are probably aware the new mobile search algorithm from Google has now changed the way they rank your website on mobile.
Car dealers need to ensure they have mobile-friendly websites. There is a really simple way to see how your website performs on a mobile look, with Google’s Mobile-Friendly Testing tool.
Ensure that you have put together a mobile website strategy as traditional mobile friendly websites strip away key features of a website limiting the functionality for your customers. Additionally ensure the content you want your users to see is mobile searchable to ensure your users don't reach your competitors instead of you.
You will notice that mobile friendly websites are labelled on Google when you are on a Google search results page. If yours isn't, find out why not.
Search MarketingContent is more important than ever on your website. You need to ensure the content on your website is relevant to your audience, is on brand, evergreen and engaging.
Google uses an algorithm called Penguin that looks at external sites that your content is on and an algorithm called Panda that looks at the content on website. The Penguin tool links up to your Google Analytics and will help you understand how customers are arriving at your site and when Google makes any updates to their search engine.
Two important things to ask yourself before adding any content to your website are "Is it share-worthy?" and "Is it link-worthy?" If your answers are "No" then you may need to re-think your strategy.
Find out what your competitors are ranking for by using the Bright Edge tool. This tool will also help you structure your site. Another great tool to use is Screaming Frog Spider Tool. Screaming Frog crawls your website and captures SEO data. The Screaming Frog SEO Spider allows you to quickly crawl, analyse and audit a site from an onsite SEO perspective.
The last tip this month for Search Marketing is to make sure your blog is not on a sub domain. Having your blog on the same domain as your website will ensure that this content can be found by Google and is associated with your website.
Social Media - building relationships
There is no need to be active on all social networks if your customers are not there. It will be most beneficial if you focus on being great on the ones that you find your customers are using. Ensure that the social networks you are present on are frequently updated.
To optimise your social profile a great tool to use is - Search Engine Watch.
There are plenty of tools out there to keep track of users, feeds and topics, a great one that we use on Twitter is Tweet Deck, a powerful engagement tool.
Data-Driven Marketing - better customer experience
Data-driven marketing has great advantages for you as a dealer as it means that your competitors aren't likely to be marketing to your customers yet.
These leads are potentially more valuable than leads that you have never dealt with and may have a higher closing rate on average.
Unlike traditional marketing, data-driven marketing succeeds at inviting your customers to buy again and earlier than they would otherwise. Ensure your marketing campaigns are relevant to each individual customer and personalise the campaigns as much as you can. This is a time-consuming task but worth it in the long run.
Buying DecisionsDid you know that almost 39% of buying decisions in 2015 take place in the kitchen and 28% in the car?
To engage with these potential customers you need to understand their buying journey and what is most important to them. Ensure that the payment options and service you are providing to your potential customers are relevant to them and that you increase the likelihood of them buying from you rather than your competitors.
