As we approach the last quarter of 2011 it is a great time to stop and ask if YOUR advertising strategy is yielding the best results for the money they invest.  We’ve been told to review our personal investment portfolios each quarter but do you carefully inspect the returns from our automotive marketing investments each quarter?

In order to help dealers get a handle on the ROI of their marketing investments, we need to make a commitment to organize our investment channels.

Will you take a few minutes to determine how your monthly marketing budget is allocated between digital and traditional investments.

Create a spreadsheet that breaks out your current monthly budget into individual columns for all your marketing channels.

The traditional marketing columns should include radio, print, cable TV, direct mail, telemarketing, billboards, license plate tags, and newspaper.  The digital marketing columns should include website costs, third party leads, Cars.com, Autotrader.com, Google Adwords, Text Marketing, Social Media, Automotive SEO, CRM, Chat, and Reputation Management.

If you would like our Excel spreadsheet that I use to outline automotive advertising investments, send me an email and I’ll forward it to you.  You can reach me at brian@pcgdigitalmarketing.com

Is Your Digital Investment > 50%?

At the St. Louis PCG Pit Stop Jim Flint, eCommerce Director at the John Eagle Group in Texas, shared some very interesting statistics about their franchise store growth and profits.  His research related each store’s success to their digital marketing and traditional media investments.

Jim has been tracking the changes in spending allocations for the past few years for all their stores.  I was very impressed with his passion to get to the optimal balance for each store.  He also reminded dealers to review their strategies on a regular basis because nothing is STATIC in this business!

As Jim spoke to the gathered automotive professionals at the Pit Stop Conference, he reminded me that a few years back while speaking at another Automotive Conference I told dealers that 30% of their budget should be allocated toward digital.

He also correctly recalled that last year I encouraged dealers to move their digital spending to 40-50% of their  overall budget.

Jim took it to another level during his presentation in St Louis.  Jim suggested that dealers digital advertising budgets should be in the 60-70% range, depending on market and brand factors.

Automotive Advertising Budget Allocations

As I travel around the country speaking at 20 Groups and Conferences, I would say that a majority of dealers allocate less than 50% of their monthly budgets to digital marketing.  If I had the guess at the national average, it would be about 30-35%.  These numbers get me excited because there is so much opportunity for growth.

Just recently a member of a 20 Group I attend shared that 70% of his budget was radio and cable TV.  This of course is just the opposite of what Jim and I are recommending.  The challenge is to show dealers why a higher digital marketing investment is the right way to go. Few industry consultants have made that clear to dealers. Of course I’m on a mission to change that through education; live and remotely via blogs, video, and Podcasts.

In order to build confidence with dealers to change their historical allocation models to increase digital spending,  we must remind ourselves that most people do not embrace change.  There are other barriers in place for dealers that include long standing relationships with ad agencies and marketing partners.  Dealer principals have also admitted that they don’t ask too many “digital” questions because they don’t understand digital marketing and do not want to look stupid.

If your dealership is not actively using Adwords, Retargeting, Chat, Text Marketing, or engaged in Social Media, as these are just a few examples, you need to review your automotive advertising strategy.

I would like to offer my time to assist you with the audit and assessment.

Request A Review in Confidence

To help dealers candidly review their current advertising budgets and strategy, PCG Digital Marketing offers a Digital Marketing Assessment Program to help dealers find new opportunities in their market via digital marketing.  We take the time to complete a detailed spreadsheet of current advertising investments and then show a path for testing new ideas that can carefully reallocate expenses without causes a riot within the dealership.

When dealers are given the proper education on technology, strategy, and costs they will always do what is best for the business.  Their entrepreneurial instincts take over and the shift to a higher allocation of digital investments will come easily.  The key is documenting the Return on Investment (ROI).

Nothing pleases me more than when a dealer has the “light bulb” experience when I complete a digital marketing workshop.   I can see it in their eyes and on their face that they finally get a new concept that can make a big change in their business.

If you are looking for great workshops on digital marketing, join other automotive professionals February 1-3rd in Las Vegas for the 2012 Digital Marketing Strategies Conference (DMSC) which is just prior to the 2012 NADA Convention.  Come out for both conferences and return with winning strategies that you can implement for greater profits and success.

Schedule a Call With Me

If you would like to schedule a Digital Marketing Assessment for your dealership, give us at call at 732.450.8200 and ask for Carrie Hemphill.

Carrie will schedule an assessment call with me to get the ball rolling at your dealership. The sooner you understand the opportunities that are in your market, the faster your profits will accelerate.

Let’s get to the answers together.

On August 14, 2011 an amazing team of digital marketing and social media experts will be coming to St. Louis to offer dealers the opportunity to refine their advertising and marketing strategy.

The recent changes with Google Places make a strong case why dealers need a marketing strategy that is continually updated based on market conditions.  Your strategy must be fluid and flexible to adapt to change.

I’ve been flooded this week with calls and emails asking for guidance on how to adjust Internet Reputation Management (IRM) processes since Google cleaned up their star counting policy. This is a major opportunity for dealers who adapt first.

Google Places is not the only digital marketing opportunity that has changed recently. There are a dozen major shifts that we have seen this year that impact a dealer’s operating strategy and budget.

Fluid or Inflexible?

• Are you properly identifying customers with Google accounts?
• What are you doing to have your digital assets tagged with +1?
• Are you using the Google Authorship tag in your blog posts?
• Are you preparing for your Google+ brand page?
• What is your strategy to build mobile text marketing lists?
• Are you leveraging ALL of the opportunities to remarket to your monthly unique visitors?

Without a winning strategy, dealers will be wasting time, money, and losing competitive opportunities.

Jim Flint To Speak in St Louis

We are also pleased to have Jim Flint from the John Eagle Group speaking in St Louis. He’ll be sharing how his Dealer Group has changed their automotive advertising budgets and strategies to be more effective this year.

Jim will share what got cut and what stayed in the budget. This will be an eye opening discussion that smart dealers will not want to miss.

Dealers should reserve their hotel rooms and register for St. Louis this week. We also also proud to be jointly promoting this event with the St. Louis Automobile Dealers Association, a great partner in advocating education for Missouri car dealers.

So book a flight, drive your car, or walk over to the conference on Sunday August 14th and make the decision to build a smarter and more efficient marketing strategy for your dealership.

The workshop schedule can be found on the link below. See you in St. Louis and all dealers that register in advance can request a free digital marketing evaluation with a report delivered to you at the conference.

Car dealers have an increasingly challenging task ahead of them as they have to continue to evaluate the latest digital advertising platforms, services, and related technology.

It is not uncommon for dealer principals to say that they are “sticking to what worked in the past because they have no patience and specific strategy as they sort through the claims of automotive advertising partners.

Automotive Inventory Syndication & Marketing

PCG has created a whitepaper that will be released today at the Automotive Marketing Boot Camp in Orlando and it will be available for download at http://www.automotive-advertising.net.

The whitepaper is entitled “Evaluating Automotive Inventory Advertising Services” and its focus is on inventory syndication and advertising solutions.  Since many car dealers use platforms such as Autotrader.com, Cars.com, UsedCars.com, EveryCarListed.com, and Craigslist this is an important discussion on how to evaluate success with third party advertising strategies.

The whitepaper will be a living document.  It will be revised periodically to include new entrants into the inventory advertising and syndication business.  It will also be revised from data and commentary provided by the automotive community.

Consider the initial release on April 16, 2011 a starting point for many viewpoints and related discussions on dealer inventory advertising platforms and third party leads.

The goal of this whitepaper is to publish datasets and strategies to compare and contrast automotive advertising platforms. This information contained in this report will provide dealers with new ideas on how to evaluate their advertising and syndication choices.  As this document grows we will also include case study data from dealers who offer to share their results.

Dealer Centricity Scores Introduced

In addition to providing data on pricing models and lead quality we will also take a look at the way in which cars are displayed on the Internet.  We will introduce Dealer Centricity Scores (DCS) as a measure of how many ads (potential brand leaks) are displayed on Vehicle Detail Pages (VDP).

We will also introduce one method of evaluating the ROI of popular inventory syndication platforms using a Cost Per Vehicle Detail Page Views formula created by Dennis Galbraith.  This approach is one way that Dennis suggests that a dealer can evaluate the benefits of upgrading from a basic advertising package to a premium package.

So if you would like to download the whitepaper, it will be available after 5:30 pm today.  After you have time to read the document, add your comments and suggestions how this whitepaper can be enhanced.

Sharing Your Data For Future Updates

If you would like to share data from your dealership to be added to future versions of the whitepaper, send me an email to:  brian@pcgdigitalmarketing.com.  We would love to get actual dealer data from ALL platforms listed in the whitepaper.