Can your brand become diluted?

I have been working real hard lately to build a very defined brand in the auto industry.  Many of the top level vendor executives know who I am, many do not like me.  Mainly it is because I use my skill and knowledge to dissect some of the poor offerings they are putting out there.  A good example of this is a recent post I did about Dealer.com Social Media.

I have possibly diluted my brand by publishing content in many places.  One thing I have made sure of it is always unique content, meaning I will never publish the same article in more than one place.  Occasionally others will pick it to republish under a creative commons license and I am ok with that.  As an Automotive SEO professional I want people to see my name and know who I am.  I also apply this strategy too for dealers in their marketing efforts.

We are doing some very aggressive microsite strategies for dealers in several markets.  One of the site we just launched for a NC Chevy dealer is starting to pull in national traffic for people looking for infor on the Chevy Silverado and what we are doing for another dealer will effectivly knock all other Cincinnati Ford dealers out of the first page of the search engine results pages.

The question we face when deploying these strategies all the time is it right?

It could possibly affect the OEM's brand in those markets by creating a tough online marketing environment for competing dealers.  Many of these properties we create do show up really well for compenting deaelrs names.  Like this particlar site gets a dencent amount of traffic for people looking for Fairfield Ford.  The real question is it fair to the others who do not employ the same strategies?



Technorati Tags: brand dilution, cincinnati ford, fairfiled ford

Content - Content - Content - Building My Business

Many people in the auto industry take umbrage with some of the things I write.   Mainly because I hold vendors accountable.  I too am a vendor and make mistakes occasionally but with that said I do not do anything that places the client in jeopardy nor will I present things to the automotive community which I have no knowledge of.

I did a recent post about how Pasch Consulting Group violates Google's terms of service.  What was funny he just recently did an automotive seo workshop where he bragged about using this methodology.  I was not in attendance but heard a recording of it.  There were so many things he presented that were off base it was actually laudable.

I am sure Brian Pasch picks up a decent amount of business of the things he publishes.  I personally do not have a marketing site that I use to actively pick up business, but do so through referrals and through the content I publish as well because I display what I feel authority without a pitch and know the car business. 

My first job after leaving the military was selling cars and i have covered every position on the front end of a car dealership to the point of General Manager and have worked in web marketing for over a decade.  These experiences help me become a better service provider while at the same time give me plenty to talk about.

The content I have published helps car people identify with me and shows my passion for the industry.  This great content base has helped develop loyal fans and customers.  At the end of the day that is what it is all about..



Technorati Tags: automotive seo, brian pasch, content marketing

My New Truck in say 2 years?

I just caught a glimpse of the 2011 Ford Ranger as featured at the 2009 Geneva Auto Show.  This truck is going to be sweet with four full size doors.  I have always personally loved the ford Ranger and have owned a few.  I have decided that I will buy this baby from my friends at a Cincinnati Ford Dealer when it becomes available.

I am just wondering what a new vehicle like this will do for the volume of people looking for F150 Price Quotes.  I am sure it will have a negative impact on the traffic.  It should not be a big deal from my friends at Beechmont Ford because they have seen such a dramatic increase in online dealership traffic due to an aggressive automotive seo campaign.

Technorati Tags: automotive seo, ford dealer, 2011 ford ranger

I hate I missed it - NADA 2009

I missed the opportunity to go to 2009 NADA this but have already booked travel to Las Vegas for the Digital Dealer Conference.  I do have some great contacts that did attend but were relegated to the exhibitors area.  I am sure over the next few days we will get some great updates from some of the people in attendance.

I personally have decided to enter the fray of offering Automotive SEO services in the public arena.  Currently all of my business is coming from other vendors or through networking directly with dealers.  I have yet to finish my marketing site or even make a big direct marketing push but that is soon to change.



Technorati Tags: nada 2009, automotive seo

Help is a two way street

I deal with many automotive vendors daily some interactions are perfect and actually are teamwork between competitors. A good example is Matt Watson over at Vinsolutions helped me with an RSS feed to help my populate some content for a New Jersey Hyundai Dealer and in return I showed him some ways to improve the visibility of his Automotive CRM Software.

I am a direct competitor with him on a craigslist for car dealers product and we still helped each other.  This is very different from the interactions I had with Dealer.com, even after being contact by one of their executives. 

The online world is small and being an you get more by helping each other versus trying to protect myths.  One thing is you do what you say you are going to do or you keep loosing you your name and product descriptions.  I am suprised that when I did this article about Dealer.com Pay Per Click that they did not follow up with me like they claimed, but then again they offerend me an education and cannot get their keywords back!!

Technorati Tags: automotive crm software, dealer.com pay per click, craigslist for car dealers

Join em or beat em either way is a win

I have been toying with the idea of using wordpress for dealer micro sites for quite sometime now and finally broke down today and set one up.  It is designed to help a dealer generate leads the 2009 Ford Escape Hybrid and my friend Alvin Newton has one set up for the Saburu Impreza.  After speaking with my programmer tonight about recoding a plugin to send adf/xml leads to a dealers crm/ilm we brainstormed on using wordpress as a full fleged car dealer website and may be real close in bringing this about.

This may be the way to go to offer dealers a very low cost way to build an online presence that does not require a contract or a monthly bill for the website itself.  Basically it would just be some core file changes to wordpress to set different levels of permissions and to pull in inventory listings.  Then the dealers only cost would be their inventory solution which if they use a lot service company or do it themselves it will be really easy but eventually we would look to use a solution like AutoWebEngine which can poll a dms or pull a feed from from a lot service.

So for a basic install with limited design work a dealer will be able to have a full functioning website for less than $1500 with minimal mothly cost for hosting less than $10.00 a month and if they want top end design work it could be done for around $1000.  So they could get a high end website launced and ready to go for less than $2500.

The only downside would be content, they would have to do it themselves or hire it out as well.  Still even if they used a content service they should be under $4000.  I should have this ready to goto market by the end of first quarter 2009.   This will be a huge win for the dealer community when it happens.

What will be great about using wordpress as the CMS is that once the site indexes the SEO will be instant as I proved with a post a couple weeks ago about dealer search engine marketing.  Basically that post is still beating a website vendor for their name and product descriptions, which should be unheard of.

I have had a couple vendors approach me for white label SEO service for their dealers websites but none have entered into serious negotiations with me yet.  One of the mid size players has even offered me a reseller agreement but I would not sign it because they also wanted a no compete, not going to happen.  Now if they wanted to contract me to consult for them or provide white label SEO with a decent minimum then it may be possible for them to get a no compete out of me but without consideration I am not going to give up development plans just for the right to sell a product.

Another vendor did want me to consult them on thier platform but they wanted a NDA.  Meaning I could not list them as a client or a reference.  However they did not want to pay the fee I felt was warranted to give up that right.

I will give it until the end of the year before I start the development of an inexpensive website solution for car dealers to see if all of the cross talk means anything.  I will either join up and help a vendor market themselves and their clients or go it on my own and take business from them.  Either way it is a win, because my craigslist solution for car dealers is really catching on like wild fire and I am picking up clients daily, except over the holidays.  The good thing is I will have a client list in place no matter which direction I go.

car dealer websites, automotive digital marketing, 2009 ford escape hybrid, saburu impreza

Good Things Can Come from Perceived Negatives - re Dealer.com

A few days ago I blogged here about my interaction with dealer.com and over the weekend finally made contact with one of their executives. He reached out to me and we had a meeting of the minds sort of. It was relatively a short conversation but now there is a different level of respect I believe.

I was invited to visit their office in Vermont and offered a demo of their search marketing platform. I am looking forward to the demo of their product and it was expressed that they wanted feedback on the pros and cons of it.

Currently I manage $15,000 a month in pay per click advertising budget for dealer clients and affiliate arbitrage and use a myriad of keyword research tools and competition spy tools that dealers and consultants should use if they are serious about using pay per click to market a car dealership. So I would be interested to see what value their tool provides to dealers that use it.

I believe they have a genuine interest in providing value for their dealers and understand that automotive seo is not a set it and forget process or free. Maybe they will want to take advantage of my white label seo solution (<< site is intentionally sandboxed and not finished, clients come first over personal marketing) or request my services to consult their seo department.

It was quite easy to show that SEO does not take ages and my example actually did better than I imagined beating out dealer.com for their product description. I figured my site would come in second or thrid given that it is on a crappy .info domain and has ZERO authority. This shows that the dealer.com site needs seo help as well. A web vendor should never be able to lose their name and product description searches.

Chances are the post about the dealer.com seo challenge may loose it's rankings because I have better things to do with my time than keep a post ranked to prove a point, the point was made and delivered. Providing value to my clients comes first, even though that post did open the door with a large dealer group (22 rooftops) to help them drive more online traffic to their stores.

Humility in the auto industry is almost unheard of. Sure I love to pound my chest because I pwned a big corporate vendor just as they like to claim they are the best with the products they offer and pound thiers. Online interactions should be give and take and pave the way for mutual fulfillment of goals and that requires humility from all parties. That is the biggest lesson learned here.

There is tons of room for growth in this regards in the auto industry, at all levels, and using education as a marketing tool will win if the education you are providing is accurate. We all have to learn to be brutally honest about our own products and services. Misguiding potential or current clients in the education process is a recipe for disaster. Even worse than that is believing what you are preaching is gospel without really knowing the facts yourself.

Is it negative or an education?

I have been accused of being negative recently by people I would not expect it from.  It may be because I called unintelligent marketing and sales techniques "A House of Cards".  While I understand how that could be considered negative to some, especially the ones who build them.

My intention was not to be negative but really to show that many of the big vendors in the automotive digital marketing arena only design products that are only semi effective or claim mastery of a process they cannot implement.  To that extent they are building a house of cards that is easily toppled when more effective processes and techniques are used.

The big corporate structures make it impossible for them to adapt fast enough and deploy effective strategies.  Just because they can't do something well they pitch that it cannot be done.

Because I poked a big hole in a recently presented myth people I respect accused me of being negative, for using the words "House of Cards".  Sure my personal marketing tactics are aggressive, I do not have the benefit of a huge marketing budget, but they are effective as well are my techniques.

I consult with a handful of dealers across the country and my product is auto dealer web traffic using very effective means.  It is accomplished using aggressive dealer SEO, craigslist and various link building campaigns.  I even use pay per click for car dealers for certain types of campaigns.  The thing is each dealers situation is different and market climate requires different techniques.  Nothing is cookie cutter.

To be sucessful in my opinion is to provide value first and become a partner with the dealership and be nimble enough to change direction when need be.  Build the foundation first and build long term relationships!!

Is what is good for the goose good for the gander? Dealer.com Debacle

I love social networking but I hate it when misinformed people preach things as gospel. I recently had an interaction at my favorite automotive social network and saw a comment from a Dealer.com executive that just reeked of BS. What is even worse is I gave him a link to his post for search engine marketing to help drive traffic to them and that is when good intentions turned into garbage.

The original post I did talked about ways to drive online traffic to car dealers but I stand by the fact that search engine marketing is a very expensive way to drive traffic to a dealership. However they did not like me referencing them in that extent.

The comment was made by their executive that SEO "takes ages" where as search engine marketing is instant and allegedly more effective than SEO. This is just not true and I did a fun blog post to show how easy it is to get almost instant search engine rankings without buying them and pointed out that #9 in the SERPs is more effective than #2 paid listing. See it at Dealer.com Search Marketing vs SEO.

After I did the mild jostling blog post I was contacted by a different executive with dealer.com with an offer to educate me on search engine optimization. I did not realize that I was that inept at SEO and my theories are wrong. But low and behold that post is already winning terms that Dealer.com should have and never get pushed out of the top spot.

[Dealer.com loosing dealer.com search engine marketing]

Dealer.com is worried about losing their search terms however they encourage dealers to buy their competitors names. I guess they are concerned that it may cost them business when holes are punched in their sales pitches and they realize they are the ones that need an education. I doubt they will contact me to train them even though I would probably work cheaper than most SEO trainers. Why is it ok for their clients to do it but not ok when other automotive vendors do it?

Now other bloggers are picking up my post. Some are republishing it and other are referencing how dealer.com lost their keywords and I did another post about the dealer.com search marketing holes.

Dealer.com left me a message that was unprofessional in tone and nature offering me an education in SEO. I called them back and was talked down to still, I terminated the call. Guess they don't like it when people show others the light and will not put up with intimidation tactics.

It is the car business an egos are strong and the big players try to bully people. They are picking the wrong market environment to try that in. Now they will get beat down by the little players in the automotive niche. Kinda like a hundred midgets on a bear. There will be some bloody midgets but they will win and force the bear into submission. I got plenty of bandages and do not care.

dealer.com, search engine marketing, seo, sem

Getting Reconized Without Even Trying!!

Lately I have been doing a lot of work at an automotive social network helping build the content base.  The task is never ending.  It is fun to watch a site grow in ways that you would not expect.  One thing I did not realize due to my affiliation there people recognize me as an authority on automotive SEO.

It surely is not based on the seo of the site that I work for it is based off the content that I have published regarding SEO principals and calling out smoke and mirrors from vendors in the niche.  Most in the car business just do not get it at all including the ones that claim they do.

Today I got an unexpected request from someone I have never met due to our connection at www.plaxo.com.  It actually floored me to say the least.  I guess that is a benefit of trying to maintain a strong social presense.

One thing that really gets me though is the true lack of understanding of how the longtail can really benefit car dealers and how owning terms like Cincinnati used car dealer or New Jersey car lots can provide more value to the dealer in the quality of traffic they recieve than owning terms such as special finace.

Hopefully the industry will have an awakening and I will be a part of it.

Brand Conversion - One piece at a time....

When I was an Internet Sales Manager I had created several lading pages to have consumers contact me directly to save money on their next vehicle purchase. Now I have a tremendous amount of content out there that I must either convert to affiliate marketing or just value added content to those people who find it.

When I was the ISM we carried the Hyundai product and I LOVED IT. So I concentrated there in my personal online branding. Now that I no longer anticipate ever working at a car dealership I have started that conversion process. The first of many pages that needs editing is my Hyundai Dealer page. I just hope that it does not lose visitors since I reworked it.

hyundai dealer, hyundai dealership, hyundai branding

Automobile Industry Events - J.D. Powers Automotive Internet Roundtable

The JD Powers and Associates Automotive Internet Roundtable will be held October 7th - 9th at the Bellagio Resort in Las Vegas Nevada. As a member of the staff of the premier Automotive Social Network hopefully I will be able to attend to network with auto industry professionals.

While there is a competing conference at the same time, which will probably have more dealers in attendance, this will be an opportunity to reach out to the community that supported me when I was threated to be sued by Ziegler Enterprises.

Also as a result of building up my search engine presence I have been engaged by a new friend, Scott Pitman, of mine to help Suzuki of Wichita build some lenses on squidoo. Hopefully this will help in their online marketing mix.

Hopefully all of the anchor text that I have added to this blog does not hurt my efforts, because some people consider me knowledgeable in Automotive SEO. I would hate to get this site sandboxed...