Oh Magoo, you've done it again!

Who can ever forget the lovable Mr. Quincy Magoo.   One of the first successful human cartoon characters, this Oscar winning Rutgers alumnus would venture out with his severe myopia and hijinks would ensue.   

Mr. Magoo came to mind today as I was perusing a chart from those marketing information aggregators and analyzers at Market Sherpa.  The chart analyzed the best sources of website conversions.

Website conversions, as you may know, are when a visitor to your eCommerce website takes an action that transforms them from a visitor to prospect or customer.  The conversions we prefer are those where a customer either makes a purchase or submits their personal information which opens the door for further contact from our highly trained sales staffs.  Some automotive website vendors also include as conversions those visitors who click on the "Hours and Directions" link.  (To what degree this is a true "conversion" is the subject of many a lively discussion around the water coolers of the marketing universe.)

Here are the results Marketing Sherpa found when surveying to find the best sources for website conversion:

Source:  http://www.marketingsherpa.com/1news/chartofweek-10-30-12-lp.htm

To date I have tried to keep my articles fairly simple and basic for the digital marketing neophytes out there.  To that end, I am not interested in drilling deeply into the information contained in this study. (The Marketing Sherpa articleitself does that far better than I would, anyway!)   I am going to share with you the observation that came to mind at first glance:  "Oh, Magoo, you've done it again!"  We are concentrating our efforts on those areas which provide the least return!

Most dealers know at this point that they have to do well in organic search.  This is most often tested by typing the dealership name into Google.  Unless you share a name with a larger urban behemoth somewhere else in the country, you usually show up quite well simply by default.  It is when we change the search term to a particular vehicle model that we sell combined with the name of our city or county that we become more concerned.  If you know what to look for, you see the organic search littered with third party vendors and paid search that might even feature competitors far away!

Too often this evokes a knee jerk reaction.  We have to show up on top!  The quickest route to get there?  Paid search, of course.  $800-$5000 per month later, we are on top of countless search term lists...but in the high rent district known as the "Sponsored Links".

Although it is falling out of vogue lately, many dealers ad Facebook ads, too.  It is, after all, recommended, right?  Using social media is all the rage in trade publications.  So we litter our social media pages with customer pictures, links to a particular inventory unit, or announcements that it is the end of the month and we are dealing!  Sometimes we subscribe to a content writing service that charges significantly for articles to blast on our Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Finally, we might opt for a greater spend with third party sites like Cars.com, AutoTrader, or Kelly Blue Book.  We will pay a little more for nifty banners and sparkly side ads in an effort to make sure we are all over the page when consumers are doing their search.

While none of these are bad ideas, if the research by Marketing Sherpa is accurate then we may be suffering from the same myopia as the loveable Mr. Magoo!  The chart shows that the actions we most frequently default to give us the least return!

According to our Sherpas, the most effective means to garner conversions are organic search and email campaigns.  It makes sense, too, when you think about it.  So why do we avoid these two highways to prosperity?  Because it is harder to understand how to do these well.  We are car people, and to do content or develop and test email marketing materials requires creative ad people.

Organic search after the great Google Penguin invasion has become more challenging.  To Google's credit, those websites wishing to gain organic prominence need to become living, vibrant sources of relevant information.  This challenges the dealer to move from websites that resemble a digital version of the classic Sunday newspaper full page ad to websites that engage, inform, and most importantlyspur consumers to choose us as their dealership of choice when they purchase!

Email campaigns can be a challenge, too.  There are no shortage of vendors with many and varied email marketing products out there.  Even if you use a vendor, though, it still takes time to determine to whom in your database you intend to send email solicitations and what you want those solicitations to contain.  Add the specter of Spam filters and email campaigns can become the most intimidating media for the dealer to use.

The path of least resistance and greatest expense leads to third party vendors who will handle the tasks of search optimization and targeting email marketing.  But why not do it in house?  Besides having more creative control and people working on your material who understand your dealership more intimately because they are a part of it, too, in house marketing allows you to test, retest, and then run with what truly works best for your individual operation!

Google Analytics allows you to publish two different sites and measure the results.  A good CRM tool combined with a staff that understands how to use it and read its reports allows you to test market your marketing materials.  Which email works better?  Which web page design attracts more click-thrus?  While you and your entire dealership family may love your site or the clever email you are sending out, if it does not resonate with your target consumers and result in visits to the dealership it is a waste of time.

In this last election, many of us believed America was about hard work, self-reliance-- why we were a nation of industrialists like John D. Rockefeller!  Imagine our shock waking up on Wednesday morning and discovering we were actually a nation of Honey Boo-Boos!  Perceptions are nice, but a good marketer needs to understand the reality of their target market.

May I make a bold suggestion?  Let's have a paradigm shift in our dealerships.  Among our ranks of "car guys" why don't we add one or two creative content generators?  That's right, add to the payroll someone whose job it is to write compelling ad copy for both our websites and our email campaigns.  Let's find someone who can handle the mechanics of HTML code, SEO content generation, and graphic arts.  Replace our fascination with the relic who has been in the business for twenty years and therefore knows "the car business" with a curiosity for the person who can deftly and accurately aggregate the labyrinth of Google Analytics data into an easily understood assessment of our situation.

In short, let's relax our obsession with drawing a direct line between each sale and the person(s) on the staff who caused it to happen.  Make room at the table for one or two non traditional dealership employees whose jobs are to make our Internet presence engaging, evolving, and most importantly -- effective.

You will not have to forgo accountability.  Accountability will just take on new forms.  Instead of just measuring closing ratios or sold units we will begin  measuring trends.  Did our exposure online increase over last month?  Are visitors to the website visiting more pages or spending more time on our site?  Did more visitors send in emails?  Have phone calls increased?  If the answer to any of these questions is "No", then you need to look deeper into the data to answer "why".

A good content team should result in an increase in the number of people visiting our sites, the length of time spent on the site, and most importantlyan increase in the number of phone, email, and walk-in leads. The degree of data you can cull from a well executed Internet marketing plan is staggering.  In fact, you have a far greater risk of "analysis paralysis" than you do of lacking tracking data.

It should not take long until you are fully in charge of the two aspects of marking that will give you the most conversions:  relevant content that fuels organic search and targeted email campaigns.

So let's look beyond our immediate comfort zone.  Let's look into building in house what works best for filling up our appointment calendars and sold logs.  If nothing else, at least you can change the discussion in the huddle from how hopeless conditions at the dealership are to why in the hell the company would have hired a couple of odd looking geeks!

Thank you for reading my article.  For nostalgia sake, and as a treat for having endured my ramblings, shall we enjoy some Mr. Magoo?