Automotive Marketing, Automotive SEO, Social Media Marketing, and Reputation Management
“So, basically…ChatGPT is the equivalent of a 10-year-old with access to the internet.” The summation was a simple one, made during a workshop focused on the promise, prompts, and perils of the AI platform as it relates to automotive marketing. But once uttered, the silently-attentive room of dealer marketers, sales managers, GMs, and dealer principles stirred in unison, sharing in […]
Hey dealers, Josh from Wikimotive here…with a reminder that Independence Day is right around the corner. So, before you fire up that grill and set off those fireworks, let’s make sure your dealership’s Google Business Profile is updated to reflect your holiday hours. Okay, so there’s two things you’re going to want to do (i) set your holiday hours, and […]
So your direct traffic has been climbing, climbing, climbing, and you’re not sure why? First of all, let’s define ‘Direct Traffic’. At its core, direct traffic most frequently indicates that somebody navigated directly to your website URL without (i) performing a search, or (ii) clicking a paid ad, or referral link. It’s a bucket of traffic in your analytics that […]
What’s the difference between a vehicle listing ad (or ‘VLA’) and paid search? It used to be that you bid on a keyword (something like ‘Ford dealer’, ‘Toyota dealer’, ‘dealerships near me’, ‘used cars for sale’). In contrast, VLA’s bear more similarities to dynamic used paid search in that (rather than being keyword based) they’re based on the inventory you […]
Performance Max (or ‘P-Max’) ads are an ad type within paid search that has become very popular in 2022 and 2023. Think of them as a bucket that Google holds out and says, “Pour some money in and we’ll get you performance!” and then try to maximize that performance per dollar in terms of traffic. Hopefully, that traffic generated is […]
Disclaimer: Due to the rapid evolution of ChatGPT this blog (an intended transcript of the video) has been enriched with additional information to ensure its timely accuracy as of the 5/23/23 airdate. So, you’ve spent the last few months hearing a lot about Chat GPT, and you might be asking yourself, can I use this to scale my SEO content? […]
GA4, What’s all the fuss about? Well, the fuss exists for good reason, and it’s probably going to continue through 2023 and into 2024. For those not aware, Google Analytics 4 (or “GA4”) is the new version of Google Analytics. It’s existed since 2020 in some form or another, has matured a lot through late 2022 into 2023, and will […]
Did you start getting a lot of out-of-state traffic in 2022? If so, were you wondering why? Well, you could have attracted out-of-market traffic via blog articles that are informational (as opposed to transactional). As we’ve discussed in recent weeks, this means blog articles that attract people who want to learn more about things like towing capacity, or trim levels, […]
Much of the work of technical SEO is performed behind the scenes: auditing sitemaps, tracking conversions, and doing other things for the benefit of search engines and the humans who use them. But as much as we want sites that will rank well on the SERP (search engine results page), we cannot lose sight of who these sites are designed […]
If selling cars is a numbers game, then more traffic is always better, right? Well, yes and no. Let’s Talk Traffic To increase sales you need more showroom visits, which means you need more opportunities to convert to leads, which establishes the need for more traffic. Right? But…more traffic doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to have more opportunity. A […]
As featured in the April 2023 issue of AutoSuccess Magazine Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication A digital shopping experience absent of friction can lead your customers to what they are looking for. Often, it is that high-quality user experience that creates early trust and a solid leg for future positive interactions to stand on. These first impressions are paramount […]
So, you’re spending all kinds of money. You’ve got all kinds of marketing dollars going in all different directions, and you have all this referral traffic coming back to you website. How can you tell what it’s actually doing? I’ve got you covered. There’s a lot of different ways we can measure that 3rd party traffic and the way that […]
Accountability in pay-per-click is very important because the money that you’re spending only lasts for that moment in time. With a poorly configured account with poor targeting, incorrect ads, and a low-quality score, that money can vanish and you can get nothing for it. It’s very easy to have lots of fraud, waste, and abuse in pay-per-click and it’s often […]
Last week we talked about questions you can ask a 3rd party inventory provider to (hopefully) get more traffic to your website. But what about your website tools, like a trade provider, chat provider, or service scheduler? Here’s some questions we can ask those tool providers to see how well they’ll fit in with our website and our marketing stack. […]
We touched on alignment. It’s one of the most important things we can make sure of: that our partner is providing exactly what we think. We want to ask them point blank: What are the main goals you’re helping dealers using your product meet? Is it leads? Is it impressions? Is it branding? What am I getting for my money? […]
What are some of the ways you should compare 3rd party inventory providers? As we’ve discussed previously, the way we hold our vendors accountable is going to differ depending on what service they’re providing. In this example, let’s talk about some ways we can compare a 3rd party inventory listing provider. On-Page vs. Off-Page When we’re looking at a 3rd […]
Now that we’ve discussed what vendor accountability is, let’s discuss some of the tools we’ll use to hold our vendors accountable. Now, before I get into that you’re going to notice that I’m going to use the word ‘our’ a lot. That’s because I don’t identify as a vendor. I identify with the dealer. Our job is to hold the […]
Are you really okay writing checks to countless vendors, settling for meaningless reports and questionable results? If you’re paying them month-after-month you need to hold them accountable. In the coming weeks, I’ll give you the complete playbook, as well as a number of FREE tools, dashboards, and reports. But first, I’ll define Vendor Accountability, identify which vendors you should be […]
Regardless of who you are or what you do for a living, you probably have a pretty good idea of what traditional marketing looks like: newspaper and TV ads, billboards, radio spots, and other costly investments. While they may feel like tried-and-true avenues to pursue, these advertising mediums have become increasingly less fruitful over time. Unlike modern digital marketing, they […]
Competition… Are your online competitors the same as your brick-and-mortar competitors? What’s the difference? And how do you figure out who, and where, you should be targeting? Well, you know from your monthly OEM reporting what your market share is, and who your competitors are, right? But that doesn’t really encompass everything, does it? In fact, over the last five […]