Is your Website Mobile Optimized yet?

Nowadays a staggering  9 out of 10 New Zealanders have access to the internet, with the  time we spend online doubling since 2005. And 59% of New Zealanders using the internet are over 35 – its a myth that it is just gen Y surfing the net!

 More and more people are searching the internet and shopping online, particularly on their smartphones.  In 2013, 50% of online traffic will come from mobile devices – smartphones like the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows mobile, Palm Pre). The use of these devices is sky-rocketing with 60% of Kiwis are expected to have a smartphone by the end of this year. Soon enough, all mobile phones will be smartphones.  More people than ever will use their smartphones rather than computers for surfing the internet and shopping. The ‘second screen’ is commonplace in many Kiwi households – people are looking at their smartphones and iPads whilst watching telly, or eating tea.

It is essential to keep up with the technology that your customers are using. Look at a normal website on a smartphone  – the majority look woeful. Most of them look teeny tiny and really hard to navigate - you need to pinch the screen to enlarge everything, and the pages take ages to load! A recently survey showed that 40% of users have turned to a competitor’s site after a bad experience trying to search an un-optimized website on a smartphone.

If you have website, optimizing it for mobile use is imperative.  People who are shopping on their mobiles have different needs and expectations than those who are shopping online on their lap top or PC.  They need easier to read pages, and for pages to appear quickly. They are searching for specific items, the information accessed on their on mobile needs to be easily searched and accessed. They are looking for specific makes and models, information on the makes and models that dealership has for sale, as well as dealer contact details. If your dealership does not have a mobile website, you are missing out on potential leads and sales.

As well as when people are at work or out of their office or homes, dealer mobile website use increases at weekends, when people are out and about doing the rounds of yards on a weekend. These shoppers are far along the car buying process, they will have a make, model, year and budget in mind.  The easier it is to access information about your stock on a smartphone, the more likely you will get leads and walk-ins. People’s attention spans these days are short! If someone is searching for a specific vehicle on a website that isn't mobilized  it is harder to see and access and the consumer is likely to just give up and move on to another dealer’s website that is mobile and easily accessible.

Functionality that your Mobile Website needs

1.       Good search options

The more search criteria on mobile websites, the better, i.e. Body style, make & model, price, mileage, transmission cc-rating etc.

      

2.       Vehicle Features and Description

Easy access to your vehicle’s features and your description and information about the vehicle is vital.

  

3.       How to find you

Address details, contact details and a map are key for mobile websites, so your buyers can easily find you!

4.       Easy dealer contact

The ability to find your phone number or contact you by email is important. Another valuable feature is automatic dialing  when a person can click on the salesperson’s number and have the phone ring it automatically making your dealership easily accessible.

We began to build mobile websites for our clients last year, and we have found a huge increase in leads and enquiries coming directly from dealer’s mobile websites

Mobilising your website will make it easier for customers to search your stock, find your yard and make contact.  

   

If you have a dealer website – you should have that website made ‘mobile’. People also generally prefer mobile websites to Apps, as mobile websites are easier to find – if someone clicks on your website URL on a mobile phone and you are mobile optimized, the mobile site will load automatically. 

The good news is that it is not too difficult to optimize your website for mobile.  Many local businesses provide mobile website builds, so ensure you don’t get left behind.

Playing by the Rules

Two of the increasingly hot topics discussed this year are around the listing order displayed within Trade Me Motors and the usage of keywords. I am personally a big fan of internet neutrality and all it means for internet service providers and consumer access, however even in the big wide web world there still is the requirement for a few rules. If you have some free time Google J C Penney and Samsonite,  look for articles around the manipulation of search results. What we see on the web is dictated by the search engine we use for a number of reasons. The web is huge and so full of content that without the search engines indexing algorithms and a basic knowledge from your PC about your search behaviour you would never get relevant results along with some much targeted advertising. 

 Doug Pierce of Blue Fountain Media examined J. C. Penney's ranking on Google.

Companies like Google draw a strong distinction between those practices and techniques that are set to deceive search results commonly called ‘black-hat’ services and ‘white-hat’ approaches that are offered by legitimate SEM consultants. Everybody wants a more prominent web presence, but this has to be achieved within a set of rules and boundaries. Without this, consumers of the web will lack any relevant return on their search results. In the J. C. Penney case organic search results, those that are not ranked and displayed due to advertising payment were manipulated by the termination of hundreds of web sites links to the J. C. Penney website along with the wide spread use of keywords. The end result was J. C. Penny ranking higher is search results for Samsonite than the Samsonite companies own web site. Google took direct action against J. C. Penney and dropped their average search results from appearing in the first 1 or 2 down to a ranking around 52. Now that must have hurt.

Marketplaces are also open to the same practices and are generally policed in the same way search engines patrol the web. The goal is to always keep the consumer happy and coming back time and time again. For a site like Trade Me Motors there are a number of reasons why consumers keep returning. There is a feeling of immediacy and urgency around the auctions, and the classified listings content should be new and fresh. This is even more important now with mobile devices penetration growing giving customers ubiquitous anytime anywhere access. With each returning visit you never want to disappoint.

  

Keywords are a very efficient way of improving the quality of your Trade Me listings and being found within the keyword searches. The thing to remember about Trade Me Motors is that the keyword search is used both for keywords, and models. For any word or words entered into this field, the complete content of the listings are searched for results. This is hugely powerful.  There are broadly four types of keywords that you should consider when writing comments for vehicles. First, what features does this vehicle have and second, what benefits are standouts like safety, fuel economy, manual and a great first car etc? Third, make sure you include any common miss-spellings or miss-formatting of the model. An common example is including CX7 within the text for a Mazda CX-7. Lastly, list any selling point you have available from your dealership, like free nationwide delivery. A good clue as to what keywords are being used within the search field is to start typing then and you will see the most popular search terms automatically display. This is the ‘white-hat’ approach to keyword usage, and is all fine. What is tightly controlled by Trade Me is the  ’black-hat’ , predatory approach with the use of competitor makes and models keywords to gain an advantage within the search results and attract more people to that listing using lists of various car models. There is nothing worse than trying to search for a make and model and having the returned list containing unwanted results due to the incorrect use of or predatory targeting of keywords. This does not keep consumers engaged viewing your stock.   

 

On Trade Me, the listing order or ‘sort order’ as it is sometimes called is based on a calculation that contains a number of variables. Two of which is the date listed and the number of views a listing has generated. Above these there are two paid positions available at the top of all searches, the first being the Super Feature with the large post card images and the second being the yellow boxed Feature Listings.  Going back to my previous point that customers keep returning due to the listings always appearing fresh and new, this sort order is very important. The age old question of refreshing stock on the site reduces this experience with the returning of old listing to the top of the sort order.  If all dealers engaged in this practice, thousands of listing per day would re-appear at the top of the sort order and the newer listings would be quickly lost. At this point, nobody wins. Customers are also like train-spotters and quickly become dissatisfied with dealers whose vehicles keep returning to their watch lists. They also notice vehicles that have been sitting on Trade Me for long periods of time, that suddenly appear with a fresh date at the top of their searches –this can cause suspicion, and mistrust of that dealer.

So even though the internet is the largest non-owned entity in the world and for most part it is unregulated, the nature of it means that it does impose some of its own self-regulation. For the same reasons these guidelines are also in place for trading market places to ensure the best possible experience for the users - unless you happen to be a German living in a Coatesville mansion. 

Automation doesn’t beat the human touch

I’ve noticed a change is dealer listings lately. Part of my job is to look at listings day in day out, and here at AutoBase & Trade Me I think it’s safe to say we’re pretty versed in what makes a good listing. The proof is in the pudding – good listings get more views, and this information is available to us and all of our clients. Lately I’ve noticed a couple of trends on listings, and they seem to originate from listings being purely automated, with no human input.  

It’s not all about you

The first trend that dealers are cramming their listings full of information about their yard, with very little about the vehicle for sale. Some Vehicle Management Systems allow you to duplicate standard text about your dealership automatically to every listing. It is definitely great to include information about your yard, such as hours, deals, finance options etc – but it should be a balance so make sure you are also adding enough information about the vehicle for sale for potential buyers to search for, and find. People are looking for specific vehicles, and when you come across a listing for a vehicle you like the look off which has little or NO information about that vehicle – it puts you off and you move on to the next. It’s simply just annoying.  For example:

Private Sellers work the system

We know that listings with about half about the car and half about the yard work well. Last year we published an article about privates vs dealers. Privates Private sellers make up 70% of used automotive sales, dealers 30%.  As we see it, there are 3 main factors that distinguish private sellers from dealers that in reality, dealers should be up to play with. Time, Motivation and Emotion. Private sellers spend the time to put blood, sweat and tears into their listings with loads of information about the vehicle for sale. They only have 1 vehicle to sell so can put everything into it.  They will think of every single benefit and feature to mention in their listing to promote their vehicle. It sounds basic, but so many dealer listings lack much of the following information that privates do so well:

·         Selling points

·         Why are they selling

·         How does the car run

·         Prior maintenance

·         Mention modifications

·         Highlight good mileage

·         Highlight special features

Private sellers also tell a story about how great the vehicle has been, how well it runs, and how well they have looked after it. This is what potential buyers want and need to know. A listing with just “Black Ute, 4 wheel drive” in the comments is not going to motivate a potential buyer to contact that yard – there are plenty better listings available at the tip of their fingers to look at.

No info – no sale

People like to use classified sites such as Trade Me because it is easy to search for exactly what they want. My friends and I tend to plug in a keyword into one of the search bars, and go from there e.g. “economical automatic Toyota”, “black Suzuki Swift” or “X5 leather interior”.  Recently I watched a friend search online for a Mazda Atenza.  He was particularly interested in a leather interior. He did a search based on price, year, transmission and KMs. The first Atenza he found was from a local dealer, but only had only 2 images (both exterior), no features and hardly any information about the vehicle, let alone any information about the interior. He grunted and clicked onto the next listing. I asked him why he didn't just contact the dealer to ask for more information about that particular vehicle - he said he couldn't be bothered when there were so many other similar vehicles with more info in his list. That dealer lost a sale and he ended up buying from private seller, who had a listing for a slightly more expensive vehicle, but it showed him everything he wanted.

Keywords Keyword Keywords

If a listing has few keywords or information about the vehicle, it won’t be picked up in some search criteria. We can’t recommend enough that the more keywords you use, the better. Keywords are searched from the top to bottom of your listing on Trade Me Motors - therefore a key word in the features list OR comments 'free flow' section will be picked up in a browser's search. All the keywords below in yellow will be picked up in search results.

Here are some interesting facts:

·         80% of searches include 1 to 3 filters

·         Almost 50% of searches include a keyword

·         49% of viewers search for a car make  

·         Around 41% of searches include a price option. 

The most popular filters used when searching Trade Me Motors are:
1. Make
2. A keyword (e.g. manual, v8, 4x4, leather interior, economical etc)
3. Body style, Price or Year

Another trick to use

Here is a trick that we know encourages people to view tour listings. Instead of just having the Model Detail, this dealer has added *REDUCED* to draw attention to the listing.

You can see for yourself how effective it is at getting attention. You get 25 characters to play with, and they all show up within the search results headline for that vehicle, e.g: ** NZ NEW **, **SPECIAL** or ** Drive Away Price **. Use this information wisely - don't say anything in the headline unless it’s true and relevant to the vehicle being advertised. 

At the end of the day, Vehicle Managements Systems are a great way to get lots of stock loaded quickly but make sure you are reading your listings that are going out, and making sure that they have enough relevant information. Jump onto your classified website and search for your own listings – are they easy to find? There is a lot of competition on the Internet, so make sure you spend a little bit of time and effort to make the best of your listings to stand out from the crowd. You might just make more sales.

What is required in a listing to be sent to Trade Me Motors

To maintain the quality of our AutoBase dealer listings on Trade Me Motors, there are a few things each listing must have:

• A Retail Price greater than zero
• A Year greater than zero (there must be a Year for the Cars/Utes/Vans category)
• A Manufacturer
• A Model
• The Vehicle body type (Sedan, Hatchback)
• A Transmission type
• At least 1 image

If your listing does not contain all of this information we are not able to send it up to the Trade Me Motors Website, you can check if your listings are showing on Trade Me Motors in our DealerBase system.

Click HERE to check (*you need to Log In first).

You will find a list of all stock not showing and a list of the missing information in the Advertising tab under “Stock not displayed on Trade Me”

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact our support team on 0800 42 88 62 or email info@autobase.co.nz.

Top Five Tips for Better Classified Listings

Last weekend I watched a friend search online for a Mazda Atenza. He was particularly  interested in a leather interior. He did a search based on price, year, transmission and KMs. The first Atenza he found was from a local dealer, but only had only 2 images (both exterior), no features and hardly any information about the vehicle, let alone the interior. He grunted and clicked onto the next listing. I asked him why he didn't just contact the dealer to ask for more information about that particular vehicle - he said he couldn't be bothered when there were so many other similar vehicles with more info in his list, so he would start there instead. That dealer lost a sale. AutoBase has been providing services for dealers since 1999, and in that time we've seen it all. Following are FIVE of our best tips that will not cost you a cent to improve your online listings. 

1. Use common usage descriptions and keywords in the description of the item. Most buyers search by using a specific word or term., so if you are listing e.g. a mower, use the word “mower” - not just MT 858. A viewer will usually type in a common usage description such as Landcruiser instead of the correct Land Cruiser - so add these keywords to your comments. Avoid abbreviations - a viewer will type in and search for CRV - not CR-V.  Also check your spelling - I recently saw a listing promoting Pirelli tires - but Pirelli was spelled wrong so would not appear in a search. Click on the image below for a good example that includes many keywords like colours, tire brand and 'landcruiser' in the comments.

One of the most popular search fi­lters used when searching for a vehicle is keywords e.g. “Manual”, “leather seats” etc. 90% of Used Cars searches by viewers on Trade Me Motors are done in the sidebar section of the site - 65% of them use the search bar filters. The Most Popular filters used when searching for a vehicle are MAKE, KEYWORDS (such as features - air con, alarm, iPod deck etc) and BODY STYLE/PRICE or YEAR.

 

NB. Remember not to Keyword Spam - it stuffs up the search results for everyone.*

2. Take good photos. You can use up to 20 on AutoBase and Trade Me Motors. We recommend using a minimum of 3 photos. Use photos that show the exterior, interior, = condition and any special features the item may have. Remember, if using www.dealerbase.co.nz to load stock, you can load multiple images in one go.

3. Use the fields provided fully to give uniformity to your listings. These ­fields give a potential buyer basic speci­fications for the vehicle eg: Transmission, Hours, New, Engine Type etc that they buyer will use to search for and compare listings.

4. Write a detailed description & include as many features as possible. Describe the item well in the comments section and include its features and selling points. Look at how detailed most private vehicle listings are – they are usually jam-packed full of photos features and descriptions of the vehicle for sale. If you were selling a vehicle on your yard, would you only mention a few features? Give your online listings the same attention as you would selling face to face on your yard - use Trade Me Motors as your ‘Digital Salesperson’.

5. Promote the benefits of buying from you. As a dealer you have more to offer than a private seller – warranties, finance packages, delivery, other similar makes and models etc.  Include these and any other benefits of buying from your dealership within your listings to attract more enquiries. Please Note: Ask us about our free ‘Standard Vehicle Text’ feature to enter information about your dealership within every listing, in one go.

Many dealers have the mindset that as long as they put their stock on Trade Me Motors, it will sell itself. This is not the case - we have over 900 dealers and list almost 40,000 listings and just like any other tool, Trade Me Motors must be used correctly and to its potential to work best. If you put the time in to create good listings, you will reap the bene­fits. Trade Me Motors is your ‘door-way’ to over 2 Million prospective buyers every single month - but you need to get their attention, so use Trade Me Motors to its best advantage to maximise your sales.  

For more tips, you can also go to www.dealerbase.co.nz and click on Resources > Dealer Tips. Remember that you can contact our free 0800 42 88 62 Customer Service line if a listing is not displaying correctly, or your Account Manager Davern Arona if you further advice on creating good listings.

"The web is not an advertising medium, the web is not a selling medium, it is a buying medium. It is user controlled" Jakob Nielsen 

*Keyword Spamming:

Keyword spamming is when someone puts irrelevant information that is not about the vehicle for sale into their listings, making the search results bring up screeds of other vehicle listings, as well as the vehicle being searched for. This results in a potential buyer being bombarded with irrelevant vehicle listings they don’t want to look at, which causes frustration with the amount of time they are spending trying to find a specific vehicle. It can turn a buyer off very quickly, and result in a lost sale for you and your business! One of the key factors in Trade Me Motors success is the user friendliness and ease of the site, thanks to the keyword search function where potential buyers can quickly and easily find what they are looking for - which is why keyword spamming is prohibited in Trade Me’s Terms and Conditions.  

 

Reality Check – Are you on your game?

These days most people advertise their vehicles online with dealer & private listings appearing side by side on classified websites.  Private sellers are a dealer’s biggest competition. So is there anything that dealers could learn from private sellers?

Time, Motivation and Emotion

As we see it, there are 3 main factors that distinguish private sellers from dealers that in reality, dealers should be up to play with. Time, Motivation and Emotion. Private sellers spend the time to put blood, sweat and tears into their listings. They only have 1 vehicle to sell – so can put everything into it.  They’re motivated – they need the cash, for a new car, or an overseas trip or some other reason. They have to sell it. They’re emotional – the sale of that vehicle will mean a trip, or an engagement ring or a new car. They put this emotion into their listing, they will think of every single benefit and feature to mention in their listing to promote their vehicle. They tell a story about how great the vehicle has been, how well it runs, and how well they have looked after it.  Let’s take look at the things that private sellers are doing well.

Taking the time

We recommend that dealers spend 30min to 1 hour day 3x a week loading and editing listings.  This is a reasonable amount of time to spend, and you will reap the benefits. You can usually display up to 20 images on your listings – we recommend 10 images minimum which show the exterior and interior of a vehicle. Once the listings are loaded, you can go in and edit them as required. Change around the photos. Add details you may have forgotten. Some vehicle management systems provide features that save you time when loading or editing your stock. For example you may be able to upload multiple images in one go, or load generic information about your dealership onto every listing without cutting and pasting it in one by one, e.g.: “Acme Motors is a family-run industry and has been in Auckland for over 40 years. All Acme Motors vehicles are AA Safety Certified, AA Appraised, AA Serviced, and odometer certified. Delivery can be arranged anywhere in NZ.” Your vehicle management system should enable you to load stock once, and have it appear on your online classified website and your own company website, without having to load each vehicle twice. It is worth asking your VMS supplier about such features which will save you time loading and editing your stock. That bit of extra time spent in creating great listings will benefit you in the long run.

Private sellers may have time to focus on selling one vehicle, but dealers are easily contacted and flexible. A private seller is often at work, cannot be reached all day and cannot show the car at any given time and they are generally slower in following up their leads than a dealer is.

Listing quality

Recently I saw a dealer’s listing for a vintage Mercedes. What did it have in the comments field? Two words –“leather seats”.   Private sellers do not subscribe to the thinking “If people want it – they will contact us”. This just isn’t the case. Buyers search for and compare multiple vehicles online, and are more likely to contact the person whose vehicle has a lot of information and special features listed than one which has a one or two word description. Private sellers put more detail into their listings – they are packed full of features, comments and tell a story about the vehicle. There is a lot of competition on the internet, so you want your vehicles to stand out from the crowd. 

There are free, easy ways to create good quality listings. Firstly, make the most of all the space available to you – fields, comments, photos.  Pack your listings full of key words such as ‘automatic’, ‘turbo’ or ‘economy’ that will be picked up in a buyer’s search results.  Be emotive - tell a story about that vehicle – what condition is it in? How does it drive? List all the features. What special deals or services are you offering around this vehicle?   Vehicles should be treated the same way when advertised online as they are when being sold face to face on the yard. Use classified websites as your ‘digital salesperson, and take the same care and level of detail when listing your vehicles as you would showing that vehicle on the yard. 

Use your levers

Dealers have multiple levers that private seller do not. Private sellers just want to get rid of their vehicle, and have one lever – price. Dealers can use multiple levers when trying to sell the vehicle, such as warranties, finance, price, trade-ins and other comparable vehicles. Dealers also have information on the manufacturer and model of the vehicle that private sellers may not - design changes or important factory information or could offer advice on replacement parts for that vehicle. Promote these benefits and services in listings and when speaking to the buyer to capture their attention.

Promote your knowledge and services

Dealers provide confidence.  Many dealerships offer vehicles that have had full mechanical checks, are AA approved which reassures the buyer that their purchase will not break down a week later, or that they have after sales services available. It is in a dealer’s best interest to make sure that the vehicle is mechanically-sound vehicle and will run OK after sale. Selling a lemon is bad for the dealer’s reputation, so it's in their best interest to sell a reliable, compliant vehicle.

 

 So when listing your vehicles, take a leaf out of the competition’s book – utilize time, motivation and emotion to drive more traffics to your listings and beat private sellers at their own game.

Pimp that listing!

Our dealers often ask us, ”How do I make the most of my online advertising?” The key is to have a simple plan and work your online provider as hard as you can. Henry Ford said about his Model T “Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants. So long as it is black.” Luckily, that’s no longer the case. Online classified websites contain thousands of vehicle listings of every price, model, make and type. So how do you get buyers to locate and look at your vehicles?

An online classified provider like Trade Me Motors gets almost two million Unique Browsers a month (that’s individuals, who have visited the site one or more times in a month, who are counted once). You want to funnel as many of these potential buyers as you can toward your vehicles, so start by placing as many ‘arrows’ as possible pointing to your vehicles. The more vehicle and brand information you have displayed, the more likely a buyer’s search enquiry will pick up on your vehicles. One way to do this is to utilise the ‘comments area’ to the max (i.e. the area where you enter free flow text to describe the vehicle). On most automotive classified sites vehicles can be searched for by categories such as region, body style, make, model, price and year, enabling buyers to filter down to exactly what they want. So be specific and include as many descriptive keywords within your vehicle descriptions as you can such as colour, CD player, AA Appraised, turbo or remote locking to further refine a browser’s search.

Also think about how you would approach a customer and sell that vehicle if you were on your yard. Parlay that same approach and information into your online listings - tell the story. What is special about this vehicle? What condition is it in? What would you say if someone was inspecting this vehicle on your yard? This might sound obvious, but you would be amazed how many scant, lack luster listings we see.

One of our dealers rang me recently concerned that he wasn’t getting many enquiries on his vehicles. When I had a look at his listings the answer was clear – the descriptions listed were very brief with no features, and nowhere near enough information in the description. Most of the comments contained just one word – “petrol”! There was only one poor image on some vehicles and some had none at all. The pictures were taken on a cloudy day and on a funny angle that either cut the back off the vehicle or a corner. We had a chat and the dealer went back and updated all of his listings, adding more information, features and photos plus benefits of buying from his dealership. Within a week he had seen a good increase in his enquiries and vehicle views. We continued to monitor his vehicle views so that he could see which vehicles were getting less views, and figure out the reason why. In most cases, the reason was a lack of information or poor photos. The solution was basic, but it was the difference between working the vehicles and not.

To further attract and drive buyers to your vehicles, use any upgrade features that your online provider offers - feature your listings so that they appear at the top of searches, add a hyperlink to your website, showcase your vehicles in an online showroom or store. If you have a company website, promote it. Putting your website on your business cards and signage is great, but having a hyperlink to it online when someone is already sitting at their computer is far better and there is much more chance of them clicking into your website. Having a website but not advertising it properly is like having an advertisement for your yard on the 100th storey of a building – yes it’s out there, but who’s looking at it?

Also, think beyond just your product. Having your vehicles online is one thing but having your brand online is another. Sell your proposition as well as the product - what does your dealership offer that the next may not? Include information about special services, warranties, finance, deliveries etc. Work your listing space to its absolute capacity to sell not only your vehicle but your brand and proposition.

Finally, work to a plan - but make sure you understand it and you can follow it through. What is your budget? Where will you get the most bang for your buck? Identify your target audience. Where can you reach them and how? Online advertising has rapidly become the foundation to automotive dealers’ marketing plans. New Zealand’s online advertising spend for 2009 was $213 Million - a 10% growth since 2008. So seek out business partners who will put your brand and products in front of a large, relevant audience. In my next article we’ll drill down into how to create and work a simple, targeted sales plan. In the meantime if you are using an online classified website, work that site to your benefit to promote your vehicles and your brand and you should start to see results.

See this article also for 5 free and easy Tips on improving your listings. 

Internet to Inventory

We know that one of the key issues facing dealers at the moment is how to best manage their internet presence – in terms of resources, budget and time. Following we have compiled some of the most common questions we receive from dealers, and our views on them.

How do I maximize my online presence in line with my budget and resources?

Put your stock where the most people are looking. It makes sense to choose a provider who gets the most traffic – Trade Me runs auctions and classifieds and they put a great deal of money and effort into optimizing their search results in Google, so you don’t have to! We suggest following this plan. Put 60% of your marketing spend into online classifieds, 30% into promoting those listings so they stand out, and 10% managing leads and your staff to make sure those leads are being followed up.

How do I encourage people to look at and buy from my online listings? 

Once your inventory is online, use any upgrade features that your provider offers as ‘arrows’ to drive viewers to your listings. Feature your listings so they are highlighted and pushed to the top of searches. If you have a website add a hyperlink to your listings. This will drive traffic into your website. Showcase your vehicles all together with your company branding, logo and promotional text. The more arrows pointing to your stock = more views = more enquiries.

How do I create a point of difference within my online advertising and differentiate my dealership from others who advertise in the same place?

Once you get your stock online, you need to drive traffic to it.

• Make sure your main photo for each listing is fantastic, showing the vehicle at its best.
• Make sure there is as much information as possible about your stock and dealership. Tell a story about each vehicle. Include as many descriptive keywords, features and unique selling
  points as you can 
• Promote your dealership’s services – what extra services do you offer? Focusing on service attracts.
  more leads.
• Entice viewers by running a campaign or special deal. Do you have any specials coming up for the Christmas period? Are you running any competitions? Are you giving anything away with purchase? People love a bargain, so promote any services, competitions or deals in all your listings as well as your website.

How do I bridge the gap between online and offline sales? 

Develop a solid marketing and sales plan:

• Work the 60/30/10 plan and use your classifieds website and all it provides to its capacity.
• Put the same effort into selling your car online as you do into selling your car offline on your yard.
• Ensure your staff following up on all enquiries and provide easy directions to your dealership.
• Provide a rapid connection with the customer.

How do I promote my website and get more traffic to it? 

You can pay for Search Engine Optimisation to drive more traffic to your site, but why not utilise a classified website already available and working successfully? Promote your website by adding the address to all of your business cards, email signatures, signage, stationery and brochures. Even better, get a hyperlink to your website from all of your online listings. When someone is already sitting at their computer there is much more chance of them clicking into your website rather than trying to remember the address. The more arrows that point viewers to your website, the better.

How do I get better qualified leads and drive a higher conversion rate from those leads? 

To give online viewers the confidence to make an enquiry, ensure that you have quality listings with good photos and lots of information about your business and services. This is essential. Make sure that you have a tight follow up process for your staff to help bridge the gap between conversions and sales. It is vital that your staff are following up on all internet enquiries quickly and effectively. Speed is extremely important to consumers. Invest in a smartphone so you can reply to emails immediately. No matter how odd every enquiry should be followed up. We know that enquiries that are answered promptly are significantly more likely to convert to sales.

What are the tools required to convert internet leads to sales? 

• Reply to email leads immediately 
• and appropriately (get a smartphone). Give prospects confidence that you know what you are talking about, and be happy with the customer service they are receiving. Ensure that your replies include:
• Knowledge – Answers are thorough and informative to create creditability with the customer
• Proposition – What is your point of difference? Are you running any deals? Do you offer any special finance packages? Do you have similar vehicles?
• Offer – Have a call to action. Offer other vehicles within their budget, a test drive, or a chat over a coffee or beer (if it’s Friday of course!) to discuss your vehicles and proposition further.

Other than using online classifieds, what should I be doing regarding advertising, such as a banner ad on Trade Me? 

Look at the plan – put your money into the place that will get you the most sales. Most large sites have banner advertising starting at around $10,000 per week, which is often shared with other advertisers. Go back to the 60/30/10 plan and distribute your budget accordingly - where you are getting the most exposure and the most bang for your buck?

Try this - pull out a piece of paper and draft up a 60/30/10 plan using the budget you spent last month. Try some of these suggestions, utilize others strengths, follow up every enquiry and make sure you take great photos and use the maximum allowance. Every little bit helps to make a difference once you have these things in place. And once you do, work on fine tuning them and enhancing them. As Dale Carnegie said: “Don’t be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves.”