Where to go from here?

I am working on several projects right now and plan to use social networking to present these services to the online automotive community.  My main project is going to be a craigslist tool for car dealers.  My goal after that is to design a wordpress theme to build dealer micro sites on.

There is a lot of smoke and mirrors but out there by various vendors but car dealer micro site vendors in the space today really do not have a clue about the best way to SEO these properties or how to optimize them for multiple keywords.

It is time for the industry to wake up and smell the roses.  The big vendors and the ones who do not continually look for ways to improve their skills will soon be left in the dust. 

Trying to develop a search engine presence to market specific vehicles with is really a waste of time and resources if you are doing it with multiple sites.  Having multiple properties to deliver a branding message and useful content to the masses is a great way to market a dealership but certain aspects of the business should be kept to one or two main properties then leverage other platforms to deliver traffic.

One good example is a credit related site I have seen recently pop up trying to draw search engine traffic in for NJ bad credit car loans.

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Can You Change Your Philosophy?

I am working on a project for Frank Myers Auto Maxx.  They have been a North Carolina used car dealer for several years and their flagship has always been "Everybody Rides".  Now I get the feeling they are wanting to change their marketing paradigm which is fine, but what is the effect?

If you are branded as a type of business such as a dealer that specializes in bad credit then try to turn on the faucet to attract a different type of customer you will miss your bread and butter.  The customer types types are a dichotomy and it would be almost impossible to serve them both and maintain a market share.

The real decision is which is more profitable and gives you a higher ROI.  I know which customers I would chase if I had the outlets in place to get them financed!!

What is Social Marketing - Can Dealer Micro Sites Help?

A while back I did a post at my blog about being an Internet Sales Manager describing my research of Dealer Micro Sites. Once I did blog about it I got some caustic remarks from a vendor of Dealer Micro Sites that were comical to say the least. He took the time to post 15 links and description of what he does and trying to justify his pricing. Do not get me wrong, I do feel that people are entitled to a fair profit from their work, but their are some real cons to using dealer micro sites for automobile dealers and unless a dealer is willing to make a concerted effort at using the medium properly they will far out weigh the pros.

The Cons of Dealer Micro Sites

• Dealers do not own the content - Once spending the money to have a vendor create the landing page or micro site for them they lose the use of that web property once
  the contract expires. The dealer does not own vendor created micro sites content in most cases.
• Universal Search
  - Google is changing their algorithm to offer the surfer more options when they search for specific terms. Of course their own directory listing will show on top for specific dealer searches or market area and brand searches. More and more you will see other items such as blogs, video, images, books and maps in addition to plain website returns.
• Content Updates - If something changes and you wish to display different content to your potential customers you must wait for a vendor to update the content or pay them to do so. If there are dealer micro site providers that have a full functioning CMS for dealers to update content please let me know in the comments.
• Loss of website traffic - If a search engine user lands on a micro site instead of your main dealership website it may confuse them into thinking that it is you main piece of online real estate and not offer them what they are looking for.
• Accountability - If a micro site is not performing like it was promised the dealership is stuck in a contract that they cannot escape from in most cases. There will always be fine print that says "results not guaranteed" while you are stuck with a bill each month or even worse prepaid in advance.
• Advertising
  - Beyond creation of the micro site you will have additional expense of SEO and SEM to drive traffic to it. A site does not SEO itself just via submission to the search engines. There are other factors to consider such as link building and pay per click management.

Leaving caustic comments, dropping tons of links, and not using your real name on a personal blog is the anti thesis of Auto Industry Best Practices and violates any amount of decency in automotive social networking environments. Hopefully the car dealer network does a better job an social marketing then the vendors in the space today.