The More Information, The Better!
What makes a good SEO Video? It has to be informative! The more information you provide, the more effective the video will be. If someone is going to spend time watching a video about a specific car, that means they are a potential customer!
Give Them What They Want!
Show everything there is to show on the car inside and out. Now, that doesn’t mean you have to say, “here’s the tire” but it wouldn’t hurt to mention, “this car has alloy wheels, and 17” tires”. Focus on the technology and features the specific vehicle offers; that is what customers are looking for. They want to know what the car offers.
It’s also important to talk about gas mileage and safety, which are possibly the most important purchasing factors for a car buyer.
I Want It, And I Want It Now!
You might think the SEO videos don’t add much value or aren’t worth the time it takes to make them. After all, the specfications on each vehicle are on your website and the manufacturer website. But let’s face it. We live in a society in which we are used to instant gratification. We don’t want to have to search for the information we are seeking; we want it provided to us in an easy and efficient matter.
SEO Videos are a great opportunity to provide potential car buyers with specific information about a precise vehicle in your inventory. So what are you waiting for? Do you provide these videos for your customers? No? We can help! contact us now and let’s get started!
By: Jenn Mayer
I have to admit I am late to the foursquare game. Although the app was first launched in 2009, I have only recently joined. After moving away from my hometown earlier this year, I was forced to learn the ins and outs of a new state, new city, and a new neighborhood. foursquare became my ultimate tool for discovery.
foursquare (that’s right, it is not capitalized) is a free app that allows you to share with your friends where you are, tips about your favorite places, and helps you discover new places in your area. foursquare gives you personalized recommendations and deals based on where you, your friends, and people with your same taste have been. The app has also recently undergone a makeover, giving it a simpler look and making it more user-friendly.
foursquare allowed me to discover coffee shops, restaurants, nail salons, and more. If it was lunchtime and I was hungry, I would simply type in “lunch”, and foursquare would search the tips and check-ins that had been logged around my current location to suggest places I should try for lunch. This is different, and possibly more effective then using Google, because foursquare was able to more accurately search around where I was, and also took into account how popular the places around me were. Now, I am addicted to checking into my location on foursquare. Not only do I get points, badges and mayorships that encourage me to keep using the app, my past check-ins help to shape my recommendations.
So, how can your dealership use foursquare to enhance business and marketing? First, you must encourage people to check-in when they visit your dealership. One way to do that is to offer a deal. Many businesses offer discounts to patrons who check in at their location. You could offer a free oil change, or even a discount for someone who checks in and signs a purchase agreement on a new vehicle that same day. People will be encouraged to check in and thus make your dealership a more popular place in the area.
You can also encourage employees and customers to leave a tip, or some advice, about your dealership. For example, you can post any specials you have going on, whether you offer free refreshments in your waiting area, or even the best sales people to work with. When people search for your dealership using the app, they’ll see the great things about shopping there and will be more likely to stop in.
As with all advertising and social media campaigns, foursquare must be interacted with regularly. If no one has checked in recently, or if the last tip is from six months ago, the value is lost. Encourage your employees and customers to download and use foursquare and watch its positive effect on business! Take it from me; I’m the mayor of Potratz on foursquare!
On January 22 at 3:00PM, Potratz – a full service automotive marketing agency– is set to launch its latest web series, Digital Marketing Dialogue. The series will feature live discussions on best practices associated with all aspects of digital marketing. Sarah Adamo and Renee Benedetti, Search Engine Marketing Managers for Potratz, will host the new bi-weekly series. The company has also launched both a Facebook and LinkedIn group for discussing latest episodes as well as current trends in digital marketing.
The live event will encompass all of the major digital avenues that Potratz currently offers for clients. These include search engine marketing, social media marketing, marketing automation, web and graphic design as well as content marketing strategies. The hosts will take on-air questions from a live online audience looking to gain insights into the latest trends in the digital marketing world.
Digital Marketing Dialogue will follow in the footsteps of Chief Operating Officer Paul Potratz’s web series, Think Tank Tuesday in delivering quality marketing tips and best practices for professionals seeking advice to improve their business and sales. “Think Tank Tuesday has become a staple in the field of automotive marketing; we hope to continue delivering quality information through our series,” said Benedetti.
Adamo and Benedetti have led trainings for Potratz’s current digital marketing apprenticeship program, a paid training that assists young professionals looking to obtain Google Adwords Certification. “We have an opportunity to improve the amount of qualified individuals in the area and to position our company as a resource for young professionals looking to gain experience,” said Adamo. The last group of apprentices all obtained certification and some were offered full-time positions as members of the Potratz team.
To keep up-to-date with latest episodes for the series, sign up for email updates at digitalmarketingdialogue.com. The team is also set to appear at National Automobile Dealers Association convention January 25-27 in New Orleans, and will be offering live demos and workshops on current products and services.
If you would like to make an appointment to speak with Paul or the team, please call 518-631-5505 or visit ppadv.com.
Who went the extra mile for our clients or a fellow team member? Who had a great attitude all week? Who was able to brighten up everyone’s day?
During our weekly staff meetings, each team member votes for the Fish Award winner. The criteria? They display one or more of these four principles:
Play: Have fun! Make our clients feel as though they can have fun while they’re here too.
Make Someone’s Day: When a client stops by, make them your main focus. Is it a day where it’s just the Potratz team at the office? Always find out what you can do to make your coworker’s day easier or to make them smile.
Be There: At some workplaces, people will be there in body but their mind will be elsewhere. ‘Be there’ means there’s no disconnect. You should be completely focused on your work and others around you. Don’t hesitate to help your coworkers maintain a positive attitude too.
Choose Your Attitude: When you wake up in the morning, you choose whether to be nice and friendly, or to be mean and surly for the rest of the day. The right answer, of course, is to ‘choose’ to be nice and friendly every day. That good feeling will spread to others!
Are you the type of person who plans every aspect of your life, months or even years in advance? Or are you the type of person that does everything on a whim? I’ve always considered myself the latter in my personal life because I like the thrill of spontaneous plans. However, I take a different approach when it comes to working in automotive advertising.
In automotive marketing, it is best to plan for the future months instead of working in the current month. There are plenty of reasons why this works best for the industry, but here are three that are key to remembering the importance of thinking ahead:
1. You can analyze your current marketing strategy and decide whether it is bringing you the results you desire or if you need to go back to the drawing board and adjust your approach.
2. It is more cost efficient when it comes to media buying. Many reps offer a discount for buying months in advance. Buying in advance also could open up more attractive placements considering how few spots have been reserved.
3. You will avoid making rash decisions that could end up costing you money. These are the end-of-the-month panic moments, the quick decision sales events that go awry, and the poorly crafted E-Blast that’s riddled with mistakes and missing information.
When it comes to dinner plans or mall purchases, a little spontaneity is harmless. When it comes to achieving business goals though, you must put a schedule into place that manages your planning. Each of these points above helps explain why circling dates on the calendar three months down the road can get you where you’d like to be, but recognize it could take awhile for the results to show. If you are starting from scratch, your marketing strategy can take some time to lift off the ground. In addition to a little forward-thinking, you need to build a presence on Google, find the right media for your market, build a presence on social media, set up marketing automation sequences, and optimize your website. All of these outlets coincide with each other create the perfect marketing blend. Thankfully, the automotive industry is predictable when it comes to incentives and sales events so we can take that into consideration when planning ahead.
In general, you will never regret taking the time to carefully plan. Mapping out the future will leave you time in the current month to analyze the results of the past and will relieve you of the stress that comes with scrambling for ideas. A little less stress and more carefully executed projects? These results may just be enough reason to change my whimsical ways.
Picture this: you’re in a situation where you don’t know what to do. Maybe you have an important decision to make or need to fix something. When you need an answer, how do you get it? In situations like these, I always turn to someone who has worked through the problem in the past. I trust their advice because they offer something that not many others are willing to provide: honesty and past experience. In the future, I’ll return to this person for the answers because they took the time to help me when they didn’t have to. This is the kind of relationship dealers should build with their customers, but how?
Virtually every dealer’s website contains a form for setting or requesting a service appointment as well as contact information and directions. The general idea is to get the customer to contact the store by phone, email, chat, or by physically visiting the store. However, hundreds of customers visit service sections of a dealer’s website without ever taking these actions. The website should do more than help loyal customers know where to call for service; it should help service shoppers find the information they need to know they found the right store for service.
At Potratz, we’ve developed a series of 16 Service FAQs to answer questions that site visitors seek. Going out of your way to provide this information to shoppers may seem counter intuitive. After all, why would a dealership want to help someone confidently change his or her battery when the store could turn a profit on that service? A dealer achieves Trusted Advisor status with shoppers by sharing information with them. The fact is many shoppers seeking do-it-yourself information do not end up doing it themselves. Having explored the alternative, they approach the store more confident in their decision to pay for professional service. They value the service and generally have a high trust level in the store providing candid information relative to service providers who are simply open for business. Offering help lets the customer know what kind of store you run and what kind of helpful attitude toward the customer they can expect. Saying you are friendly does not carry as much weight as demonstrating you are friendly.
It’s hard to establish the type of bond I explained above with someone you’ve never met before. That’s why it’s crucial to personalize your website and provide ways for customers to see your team as people; caring people who can offer the assistance they need. With these FAQ pages, a dealer can demonstrate their expertise and willingness to help at the exact moment a customer is searching for an answer via a search engine. The next time that customer has a car problem, who do you think they’ll turn to? My bet would be you.
By: Nick Yocono
You may have heard that you can’t have your cake and eat it, too. But that may not be true, at least when it comes to your new car’s engine.
With gas prices continuing to rise, manufacturers have shifted away from the big engines in favor of smaller engines that produce improved mileage. At the same time, consumers don’t want to lose the power they were accustomed to getting from previous models. So, how do manufacturers give consumers the best of both worlds?
Ford has responded to this new demand with “Ecoboost”. These new engines boast the same specs in horsepower and torque as their bigger displacement opponents, but with much improved mileage and emissions. Ford is not the only one doing this either, other companies have also started utilizing this engine setup, under different names, for their new models. So what is the secret?
The answer is quite simple: turbochargers. A Turbocharger uses exhaust gasses to spin its turbine and suck more air into the engine. That, along with more fuel, will create bigger explosions in the cylinder and therefore more power will be generated. A Ford F-150 equipped with an “Ecoboost” engine has a twin-turbocharged V6 instead of the traditional V8. What the turbocharger allows the engine to do is act like a V6 and get mileage similar to one while driving around. Most of the time you don’t need full power from the engine, such as when you’re maintaining your speed or during deceleration. When you actually do need some power, the turbocharger can spool up and provide that extra boost in power to make the engine perform similarly to a V8. This equates to a engine that will get better mileage and perform the same as a bigger, naturally aspirated, competitor.
Engines similar to Ford’s “Ecoboost” are being used in various new cars. Dodge recently released its new Dart, which on certain models, comes equipped with a 1.4L MultiAir Turbo engine option. The Chevrolet Cruze is equipped with a 1.4L Turbo “Ecotec” engine option. Even luxury manufacturer BMW has switched out the inline six in their 3 series base models for 2.0L Turbo engines. These cars all boast similar performance with much improved mileage to their predecessors.
Fuel mileage is the name of the game when it comes to selling cars in today’s market. Each year more and more small engine turbos show up on the market. If you’re in the market for a new vehicle that gets better mileage than the one you drive now, be on the lookout for setups like these.
By: Jenn Mayer
If your company is involved in pay-per click advertising, click through rate, or CTR, is one of the most important metrics to measure. Click through rate is defined as the number of times a given ad is clicked on divided by the number of times the ad is shown, or impressions.
For example, if an ad is shown 1000 times and receives 10 clicks, the click through rate is 1%. Sites like Google Ad Words provide a plethora of statistics about your CTR and your advertising campaign as a whole, and often it can be overwhelming to wade through them all. With more graphs and charts than you can shake a stick at, how do you know what a good measurement of your success is?
A good click through rate depends on how competitive your industry is. Earlier this year, a Google employee said that beginning advertisers should shoot for a 2% click through rate. Other PPC experts say the figure should be between 2% and 5% for competitive industries, and above 5% for less competitive industries.
Most would agree that the car business is extremely competitive, but your company’s market may be more or less competitive depending on the number of people and dealerships in your area.
Additionally, where your ad is placed can affect your CTR. A recent report concluded that ads on Bing have a higher CTR than Google and Yahoo.
Your CTR is also dependent on the quality of your keywords. It’s important that the users who are clicking on your ad are qualified buyers in your target market. Let’s say, for example, that you sell televisions. People who search “TV” might not be looking to purchase a television, but they still might end up on your site. They might be looking for television programs, television guides, or just want to research types of TVs and aren’t ready to buy.
They might click on your ad, but they aren’t considered qualified buyers, so the chances of them converting are small. A conversion is defined as the move from simply looking at your website to taking some sort of action. That action could be to fill out a form, request more information, or schedule a test drive. In other industries, a conversion could be a sale, but since most car buying transactions take place offline, we usually measure conversion differently.
Therefore, a keyword like “TV” might generate a higher click through rate, but those clicks won’t be from people who actually want to buy from you. A click through rate on an ad with specific keywords might not generate a lot of clicks, but the clicks are more likely to come from qualified buyers.
The best way to ensure you’re getting a good CTR is to monitor your ads progress regularly, and ensure that your bids and keywords are appropriate. There are a lot of factors to manage, so it’s best if a professional mans the helm. Need help? We just happen to be digital ad campaign experts. Give us a call!
SCHENECTADY, NY- Last month, Potratz, the industry leader in digital automotive marketing located in Downtown Schenectady, releases Version 8 of their website platform. The enhanced platform builds new features such as multiple video integration on “every last page” on top of an already advance user interface, enabling the platform to increase conversions and ease navigability.
In the beginning stages of the platform’s creation, Paul Potratz, COO of Potratz, sought a different approach to its design. He offered, “Think about a new sales member. They don’t feel like they’re making a sale unless they’re talking. That’s what other platforms do.” Instead, Potratz believes in the power of listening to the consumer by tracking their website interactions. “By utilizing mechanisms to lead visitors through the sales funnel, our website is listening; we are listening.”
Among the updates includes website and homepage sliders that utilize video content based on post-click analysis. The Potratz web team has also amped up the already-robust analytics dashboard, which gives clients the ability to view data on all devices including mobile phones, tablets, and desktops. Moreover, the dashboard precisely indicates which specific vehicles have the highest viewer interest. With access to every aspect of a site at one’s fingertips, the updated platform minimizes maintenance time, leads to increased customer satisfaction, and helps boost conversions. By taking the time to “listen,” Potratz aims to provide a unique and engaging web experience for dealers and visitors alike.
Potratz is a full-service automotive advertising agency specializing in digital marketing. The agency was founded in 2003 by Paul Potratz in Schenectady, NY and received a Dealer Satisfaction Award from Driving Sales for Search and Behavioral Marketing every year since the award’s inception. Paul has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NY Post, and CBS and has been a featured speaker for NADA, Driving Sales, Auto Dealer People, Dealer Elite, and Automotive Digital Marketing. You can see Paul every Tuesday on the Think Tank Tuesday series available on iTunes.
This year’s Black Friday chaos and record-breaking Cyber Monday sales created quite the stir around the Potratz lunch table. Sharing pictures of our weekend steals and comparing our shopping lists, my co-workers and I discussed 2013’s hottest items over our cups of soup and sandwiches. Remembering the Tickle Me Elmo craze and iPod madness of holiday’s past, we each pointed out our favorite “must haves,” but were sure to mention that the best gifts were the ones we didn’t even think to ask for. There will always be big-ticket items to market each holiday season, but retailers and dealers need to remember that those forgotten wants will also sell. For dealers, this means promoting service.
It’s important to focus both on sales and service when creating incentives for this upcoming holiday season. You might not find a mother looking to buy three new vehicles for her sons, but she could go home with Oil Change certificates as stocking stuffers. Promoting both vehicle specials and service specials provides gift options for all price-points. This season, take the time to create a menu of services that your dealership would be willing to offer for gift-hungry customers, bonus points go for creativity. Bundle together a fuel injection and throttle service for the ultimate Gas Saver or “Holiday Brake” Special for college students home on break. From snow tire deals to a detailing package, busy holiday shoppers will understand the value of these needed gifts, especially if they are being offered at a discounted rate.
When it comes to planning these specials, be sure to keep your customer’s schedule in mind. For example, the day after Christmas finds many scheduling the “to do” items that they never have time for. Why not offer a free state inspection for those who need to get their vehicles renewed? Doing a little extra work in tailoring your specials will stand out in a sea of flashy “hot item” advertisements and it adds value to your dealership. As we’ve discussed in past blogs, service is what builds customer loyalty. Maybe when that lucky gift recipient brings in her oil change coupon, she realizes she’d like to browse the New Year models or get her tires rotated. Service allows customers to interact directly with your sales team and technicians and opens up opportunities for future sales or services. Like a perfectly knotted bow, those small service specials can create lifelong customers and make the holidays merrier for dealers and customers alike.
