Crunch Time is Officially Here for Automotive Digital Marketing

Strategy

With Labor Day over, it's time for car dealers to get serious about their end-of-the-year push for Automotive Digital Marketing. 2009 will likely be the first year that car dealers focus a good portion of their marketing dollars on the Internet.

One of the keys to success is getting the right combined strategy between the 4 major aspects of online marketing for car dealers:

• Search Engine Optimization
• Lead Conversion Optimization
• Social Media
• Online Vehicle Listings

Most dealers are not thinking of a "strategy" right now. Rather, they are gearing towards ramping up their efforts in a way that will get the most bang out of their individual bucks.  For those reading this, I strongly encourage you to step back, look at the forest before going after the trees, and either put the effort into generating a unified strategy or hire someone who can.

The days of "throw money at it to make it better" are gone. It's through a combined effort on all fronts that car dealers' online advertising dollars can be best spent.

This isn't limited to but includes:

• Having a social media branding and outreach strategy that integrates seamlessly with the other 3 aspects of online marketing.
• Utilizing link-building strategies for SEO that will allow social media and online vehicle listings to help "kill two (or more) birds with one stone".
• Think along the lines of Lead Conversion Optimization so that it's not just a matter of driving traffic, but also making sure that the traffic is going to the right places at the right times.

Over the next several weeks, we will be covering each of the 4 primary marketing "disciplines" individually so that car dealers can understand how to start thinking along those lines. It cannot be stressed enough that having more is not necessarily better unless you take everything into account a develop a true strategy for rolling out and enhancing your marketing efforts over from now until the end of the year and beyond.

* * *
Read more about Automotive Digital Marketing on this blog.