As the landscape of automotive advertising changed, two camps have emerged: traditional marketing and digital marketing. This segmented philosophy left many dealerships behind the curve, forging through a continual drop in gross margins and wasted ad dollars. A greater and greater number of consumers began spending the majority of their car buying process researching online and started visiting fewer dealerships, which has made it vital to understand how and when consumers make a decision to buy. It’s time to think differently — traditional versus digital… it’s time to end the debate.
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Digital Dealer 23 - Settling the Traditional v Digital Debate
1. Settling the Traditional Marketing
Versus Digital Marketing Debate
Once and For All
Dave Spannhake
Full Name I Company I Job Title I Email
Dave Spannhake I Reunion Marketing I CEO I dave@reunionmarketing.com
2. THE CURRENT AUTOMOTIVE LANDSCAPE
17.6 million sold new units in 2016
All-time high, surpassing 17.5 in 2015
United States population – 323.1 million
5.4% of the population bought a new car last year
The average month then sees 0.45% of
the population is purchasing a new
vehicle
4. GROSS MARGINS CONTINUE TO DROP
OUR OPPORTUNITY
IS TO INCREASE
SALES WHILE
CUTTING THE
MARKETING COSTS
PER CAR SOLD
2016 NADA STUDY
$630 IS THE
AVERAGE COST TO
MARKET EVERY
SOLD VEHICLE
ACROSS THE
COUNTRY
12. BEST PRACTICES TO BUILD A BUDGET
Set marketing costs per car sold goals and set sales goals
Multiply the two – there’s your budget
Example:
Sales Goal – 150 units
Marketing Cost Per Car Sold Goal - $250
Marketing Budget – 150 x $250 = $37,500
Build your budget then dominating intent, moving up
that funnel, then stimulating interest among your most
likely audiences and geographies
14. FIRST: DRIVE WEBSITE TRAFFIC
There are no competitors on your website,
where you have the opportunity to be the sole
influencer.
This is the channel at the bottom of the intent
funnel where people are very likely to be in-
market to buy – allocate budget to help it
convert and create shoppers!
If the manufacturer mandates a site that doesn’t
work, spend the money to use a site that works
18. SEO CREATES SEARCH ENGINE VISIBILITY
META-TAGS QUALITY CONTENT STRUCTURED DATA
PAGESPEE
D
NO DUPLICATE CONTENT
URL
STRUCTURE
DIRECTORY OPTIMIZATIONMOBILE
FRIENDLY
PHOTOS | ALT TEXTLINK BUILDING
19. SEO IS NOT DEAD.
YOU JUST NEED TO DO IT RIGHT.
25. BE SURE TO KEEP IN MIND THESE ASPECTS OF PPC
ANALYTICS
INTEGRATION
COST PER LEAD COMPELLING UNIQUE
AD COPY
AD EXTENSIONS
QUALITY SCORES NEGATIVE
KEYWORDS
IMPRESSION
SHARE
GEO
26. QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF
Do you own your
AdWords account?
What do your
quality score
metrics look like?
Is your agency
taking a
commission on
your spend?
How do your ads look and influence
customers compared to your competition?
29. INTEGRATE RESOURCES AND USE THE DATA
BEHAVIOR REPORTS
LANDING PAGES, PAGE SPEED,
EVENTS, & MORE
CONVERSION REPORTS
GOALS & ATTRIBUTION
SET UP GOALS
CREATE FILTERS
INTEGRATE WITH
SEARCH CONSOLE
INTEGRATE WITH ADWORDS
USE GTM AND SET UP EVENT
TRACKING
CREATE RETARGETING
AUDIENCES
ENABLE DEMOGRAPHICS
TRAFFIC ACQUISITION REPORTS
SOURCE/MEDIUM REPORT
ADWORDS REPORTS CAMPAIGNS
REPORTS
AUDIENCE REPORTS
DEMOGRAPHICS, GEOGRAPHY,
DEVICES, & MORE
30. EASY WINS IN CONVERSION
SEARCH WIDGET ON HOMEPAGE
CLEANING UP THE NAVIGATION
CLICK-TO-CALL ON SRPS & VDPS
REMEMBER THE PURPOSE: DRIVE SHOPPERS
TO NEW & USED SRPS AND SCHEDULE SERVICE
ENSURE AN EASY TO USE SEARCH FILTER
DON’T OVERDO IT! LESS CLUTTER
31. USER EXPERIENCE
THE MAJORITY OF TRAFFIC COMING TO DEALERSHIP WEBSITES IS NOW
MOBILE. HOW DOES YOUR MOBILE EXPERIENCE CREATE SHOPPING BEHAVIOR?
HOW DOES YOUR DESKTOP?
32. MORE WEBSITE LESSONS TO KEEP IN MIND
Your Homepage is Meant to Drive People Deeper Into the Site
• Navigation & Inventory Search Widget - 79% of total clicks
• Homepage Banners – 6% of total clicks
• First three homepage banners – 91% of banner clicks
Remember to look at your analytics in terms of shoppers and not total sessions
• this can be heavily polluted and paint the wrong picture and often does.
How many dealers are only ever looking at their site on their desktop computers?
• Remember that the majority of traffic now is coming in on mobile so be looking
there too!
Meet Your Staff Page is almost always in the top ten page visits
• People want to see who they will be working with so look professional
36. MEASURING THIRD PARTY SUCCESS
KPIS to Measure
• Merchandising!!
• Amount Spent
• Cost Per Vehicle
Viewed
• Cost Per Lead
• Percentage of
Inventory Viewed
40. ARE YOUR STIMULUS CHANNELS WASTING BUDGET?
RALEIGH
WAKE COUNTY
WHERE ARE YOU SELLING CARS?
41. HOW FACEBOOK HAS SHIFTED
• Facebook does not show every post a business
creates and instead dealerships rarely gain visibility
this way
• 65 million businesses post 1.5 times a day to reach
just 2 percent of Facebook’s audience
• In 2016, organic reach declined 52% from January to
June
• With 2 percent of the people who “like” your
dealership see what you are posting that would mean if
you have 10,000 likes, only 200 people would see your
post
43. ORGANIC IS DEAD.
Organic posts no longer reach an
audience large enough to justify
costs for most dealerships.
Paid posts allow you to truly
reach your targeted audience
and stimulate interest!
44. BUT PAID IS VERY MUCH ALIVE
TARGET SPECIFIC
AUDIENCES
• Customer Database
• Max & In-Market Prospects, 90
to 180 Days to Buy
• Target Model-Specific Owners
• Geography
• Demographics
• Income Levels
• Retargeting Ads
• So, so, so much more
• And definitely NOT Page Likes
49. EMAIL & DIRECT MAIL – LEVERAGE CUSTOMER DATA
The opportunity here is with your customer database. There are
far cheaper channels to stimulate market interest or conquest, focus
on the likeliest opportunities
Direct mail is the highest cost channel in terms of CPM – it
can be effective to people with expiring leases and those
nearing the end of their finance terms but again, there are
more cost effective channels to stimulate interest without that
intent data
Remember that open rates on email campaigns are typically
around 15% - most of your emails don’t get through and emails
not sent to your database drive site traffic, but incredibly low
shopping behavior and site engagement
53. TRADITIONAL MEDIA KPIs TO KNOW
Tier 1 and Tier 2 advertising are
often the vast majority of stimulus
marketing spends in most markets.
FREQUENCY – how many times are you getting that
message in front of them during the media cycle?
REACH – what percentage of your target
audience are you getting your messaging to?
CPM – what is the average cost it takes to get in front of every
1,000 people (this is a good comparison for all media types)
How much awareness and
stimulus are you creating
with your spends?
54. IS YOUR TRADITIONAL MEDIA MAKING AN IMPACT?
With the average
person seeing more
than 10,000 ads
a month and
noticing more than
4,500 ads what
kind of frequency
does your
messaging need to
have to make an
impact?
60. CONSIDER THESE IRONIES…
A. Target 10,000 people with direct mail = $10,000
B. Target 10,000 people with Facebook = $80-100
A. Spend $5,000 on Radio in medium-sized metro – 1.5 frequency
B. Spend $5,000 on AdWords in medium-sized metro – 1,000 to 2,000 “Now Buyers”
A. Spend $30,000 to $50,000 on High Funnel broadcast advertising for stimulus
B. Worrying about a secondary site that costs between $1,000 and $2,000 when the
manufacturer’s website does not perform but others convert twice as effectively
A. There’s a lot of conversation about how VDPs are a metric that doesn’t matter.
B. VDPs by definition are people looking at your inventory – the sole purpose of what
your marketing efforts are meant to do! Of course it matters!
A. Learning a ton of actionable strategies at Digital Dealer and Leave Fired Up
B. Going back to the dealership and not executing on The Opportunities
61. Contact Info
Dave Spannhake
Reunion Marketing
CEO
dave@reunionmarketing.com
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