People ask me all the time, “Dave, what’s the number one mistake people make when working on SEO?” And I’m like, “You want me to pick just one?”
Oh, you do? Alright.
Well, there’s a lot to pick from but, if I’m pressed, I would say that the leading mistake isn’t found within their actual SEO, it’s caused by their failure to own their data and analytics.
Why?
Because every marketing company is going to have an account manager whose job it is to update you on “how well things are going”. The problem that we’ve found is that, on average, most auto dealers aren’t overly familiar with their own analytics. They’re not naturally predisposed to questioning what they’re being told, to determine if it’s factually correct.
Well…now that we’re firmly in the era of GA4, that paradigm needs to shift.
The quickest way that you can end up wasting a lot of marketing spend, time, and energy is by not actually knowing what’s going on. Traditionally, dealers are focused on their business – and rightfully so – but that means they’re likely to be unplugged from their digital analytics. But when you’re spending thousands, perhaps tens of thousands a month on marketing across many different forms and verticals, not having your own handle on “how well things are going” puts you at massive risk. You have no means of quantifying or validating what you’re being told by that marketing account manager.
Digital marketing is not “set it and forget it”. What’s been done isn’t going to work forever. Through analytics data, you need to monitor and audit your efforts regularly to determine that it’s performing how you’re expecting it to, and accomplishing what you’re demanding of it, so that you can have the piece of mind of getting what you’re paying for.
So, let’s recap. There are countless mistakes that are commonly made in SEO, but not owning your dealer data and analytics might be the most problematic. To increase marketing efficiency and eliminate wasted spend, you need to have a critical real-time relationship with your analytics data. Put a ring on it, Beyonce…it’s time to get serious.