Automotive Web Marketing "Really Connected"

 Everyday you wake up and you have your list of reports to update and spreadsheets to fill out with the same old numbers, but what do these numbers really mean? Most car dealerships nowadays have an internal BDC (business development center) and some sort of in-house SEO-SEM wizard or a 3rd party provider, where they are separately preparing their reports for the day. My point is that the dots often aren't getting connected from how the user finds your website to what they do on your website to what happens when they fill out a lead submission on your website.

More than ever it has become imperative to run an efficient trail of consumer contact, more specifically we all need to know that the search term we are aiming for is driving home a return on investment. It's like a black-h*** once the customer is handed off from the website, we as automotive SEO experts have to fix this immediately!

Here is how I propose:

• Crazy egg provides a great confetti report which shows which source enters your page and where the click by color coding the dots. Take this report and meet with your GM or Advertising Manager suggest what is working and what isn't working and make necessary tweaks to budgets, targeted locations etc.
• Work with the BDC department to outline referral sources for phone tracking, chat tracking and walk in showroom source traffic, match this up with your Google analytic's referral source report
• Most dealerships today are running with a CRM system to track all leads and activity. There are reports available to track by source and referral if you have them configured properly. I suggest Vin-Solutions or Dealer Sockets.
• Create a spreadsheet like the one Hubspot has provided here. Utilize this on a monthly reporting basis to capture your big money wins and tail back on the ones that need some love.

Communication and regular meetings in face are still the best ways to keep your department dealership goals aligned with what you are representing on the interweb marketing world. Every dealership will have their share of challenges implementing a sound formation from who handles their leads to is responsible for generating their leads, the closer you can bring these two worlds the farther they will take you.

Thank for reading and for more great useful tips follow me on Twitter.

I will leave you with this funny BDC video, may be old to some of you but I thought it was a great example if you have been working in the "Internet Department" for any amount of time: