Automotive Marketing

How to Set Up Your Auto Company’s Product Feed in Three Steps

April 17, 2017 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

As an auto company that offers Ecommerce, you obviously want your customers to enjoy using your website. They should be able to quickly and easily find and buy your products to meet their needs. This means that your website’s product feed must be properly designed to help those customers get parts or accessories. It’s an interactive experience.

A fast, intuitive, and organized pathway from your products to your checkout will help to create loyal customers. Follow these three steps to get the best product feed in the auto industry (or any industry for that matter ?).

Step #1 - Clean Out the Unnecessary Code

Get rid of the spans, styles, and other hindrances in your HTML that increase your load-time. These are types of code that may very well be present within your web pages. Overall, they are not useful to the functionality of your website. And, any style code (if it can) should be placed inside your CSS rather than your actual web pages. This is because spans and styles act like extra baggage at an airport. They slow your website down by increasing the time that it takes to load.

To maintain a reasonable size and speed to your web pages, delete those spans and styles. Increase the speed of your website to make the purchasing process go as quickly as customers need to buy from your inventory.

Step #2 - Only Use Optimized Images to Display Your Inventory

There’s no clear or uniform benchmark under which to keep your images’ resolution. It completely depends on the size of your images. But, you should try to stick to Google’s algorithm guidelines to avoid penalizations and get the best possible results. Implement optimized images for the specific pages and sections in which you want those images to be placed.

For your auto company, this is critical because of the high amount of photographs of parts and accessories that you will most likely have on your website. Always remember: shoppers love to see images. But, they have to be images that properly appear and interact with each web page’s text and design.

Read more about this in our downloadable SEO white paper.

Step #3 - Categorize Your Inventory to Meet Customers’ Demands

Guide your customers through the steps to find the solution to each problem that they experience. Avoid confusion by creating an easy system that allows customers to find the correct category of parts, type of accessories, or section within your inventory. Do not allow products to be lost within your website!

While they may not seem be “lost” to you, some products may be so obscurely located on a web page that requires numerous clicks to find that customers will not be able to see them. This kind of disorganization or a lack of categorization delays purchases. Instead, show customers all of the options that match their criteria, allowing them to collect the items that they want as they move through your website.

The End Result - More Paying Customers for Your Business

A well-designed product feed on your website means that users can easily pay you for your products. In other words: a simple purchasing process is a crucial component of a successful Ecommerce website. This is especially true within the auto industry because of the confusion that customers can face when purchasing car parts.

Give users the experience that they want from your brand. For auto companies: this starts with the design of your product feed. Whether it’s cars, trucks, parts, or add-ons, you must guide customers to the section of your inventory that they need with ease.

Still Have Questions About Your Product Feed or Automotive Marketing as a Whole?

Let us know about your situation in the comments, below, and we’ll find a solution. Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for constant digital marketing advice for your website!

DaBrian Marketing Group Hosts Google Partners Connect Event for Automotive Dealers

April 11, 2017 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

The digital marketing agency opens their doors to automotive dealers to discuss the latest trends in online car shopping and search engine behavior.

11 April, 2017 (Reading, PA) – DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC hosts a Google Partners Connect Event that live-streams an informative digital marketing seminar from the famous search engine and answers questions from local auto dealers. Take 30 seconds and register to attend.

On April 19 at 11:30 AM, the team of digital marketers at DaBrian Marketing will welcome business representatives from automotive dealerships in the surrounding areas of Berks, Lehigh, Montgomery, and Chester Counties to their office in downtown Reading, PA:

500 Penn Street Suite 201

Reading, PA 19602

At this event: DaBrian Marketing Group’s team will dedicate time to educate automotive dealers on the online car shopping behavior that is significantly impacting the sales and growth of auto companies.

While online behavior may not seem to change or be relevant to many businesses, it is actually a continuously evolving phenomenon that changes with technological advances. A recent article by Think with Google reports that the search interest for images of car brands’ products has increased by 37%, year-over-year (data from Google Trends).

This is just one example of the digital shift in car shopping and browsing. There are many nuances to the ways in which consumers search, locate, and buy their automobiles in 2017. Such information is a) critical to the profitability of auto dealers and b) the reason that DaBrian Marketing Group is live-streaming of a special seminar from fellow marketers at Google’s headquarters.

Attendees of the event benefit from an additional Question & Answer session about the exclusive qualitative lessons and quantitative figures from Google. The team of digital marketers will openly discuss the factors that must be considered when creating and implementing a digital marketing strategy for the automotive industry.

Interested auto dealers, resellers, mechanics, repair companies, and service providers are highly encouraged to attend this event as the agency offers exclusive insight for the digital marketing landscape.

To attend, simply register online in seconds. Lunch will be provided by DaBrian Marketing Group.

About DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC

Founded in 2008, DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC is a full-service digital marketing agency that provides original and strategic digital marketing solutions for businesses. The team at DaBrian Marketing creates brand awareness, increases lead-generation, and identifies insights that improve sales growth. Services include web analytics, creative design, digital branding, pay per click (PPC) advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, and web design. Company headquarters is centrally located at 500 Penn Street, Suite 201, Reading, Pennsylvania 19602. For more information about DaBrian Marketing Group, visit DaBrianMarketing.com or call 610.743.5602.

How SEO Can Help Your Auto Business Outrace The Competition

March 13, 2017 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Traditionally, automotive marketing techniques have been rather standard. Car dealers and shops may have bought billboards, ads in the newspaper, and maybe even produced a corny, but fantastic commercial (you’re welcome).

Like that commercial, these marketing methods are outdated. Now that we live in a digital world, it’s time for your business to switch gears and go full-speed ahead with digital marketing. Here are four SEO tips that will help increase your automotive business’ online presence and overall sales.

1. Dominate The Local Market

As a car dealership or an automotive shop, your target audience is predominantly local. Knowing this, it’s imperative that your automotive business invests in local SEO. Major search engines, such as Google and Bing, have updated their search algorithms over the years to place a heavy emphasis on locality. Search engines do not only evaluate your company’s website but also other local listing platforms – including Google My Business, Bing Places, Yelp, Facebook, and an array of others. In order for search engines to accurately pinpoint your business, your contact information (name, address, and phone number) must be consistent throughout the web.

Think about local SEO as if it were the dashboard of your car. When icons appear, it means there are issues that need to be resolved. The icons represent your website, local listing profiles, and other websites with your information. Your car is your overall digital presence. In order for your marketing efforts to be successful, you need to make sure these issues are taken care of. Don’t ignore them!

Like your cars, your customers are always on the move. People are searching more on their mobile devices than desktop. How does this impact the automotive industry? Well, Think With Google reports that 1 in 3 car shoppers who use their mobile devices as part of the car purchase process also locate or call a dealer on a mobile device. By not having your information listed accurately across the board, you’re missing out on potential sales.

2. Your Content Is Your Sales Pitch

Being a good salesperson is an art and a science. You need to make the customer feel welcomed, informed, and persuaded to take action. The same is true for the content on your site. Your website is not just another asset to own. It’s a marketing and sales tool. A basic website is basically like buying a lemon – it’s useless. Provide your customers with all the information they’ll need online (price, features, reviews, etc). This gives them peace of mind knowing they have all the details, as soon as they need them. It helps build trust in an industry that is typically associated with not being trustworthy (like this shifty car salesman).

Aside from the technical/product details, be sure to convey emotion and storytelling through your content. Purchasing a car is an emotional, long-lasting process. It needs to feel right.

Your content is not just confined to the text and pictures on your website. It also encompasses video. Video marketing is a huge opportunity for the automotive industry. And no, I do not mean producing more commercials like the one in the beginning (although, it just may be the greatest thing I’ve ever seen). According to Think With Google, 69% of people who use YouTube while buying a car are influenced by it – more than TV, Newspapers, or Magazines. The top 3 most popular types of these videos are test drives, feature & option overviews, and vehicle walkthroughs. The time spent watching these kinds of videos has doubled in the past year.

It all comes down to being open with your customers. You need to speak to them online as if you were trying to make a sale in-person. The more transparent you are, the more likely someone will feel comfortable enough to make such a big financial decision.

3. Search Results Come With Added Features

Search results are no longer just your traditional top 10 organic results. Now, they contain paid ads, local listings, social media, images, videos, news, and more. And, if the results have changed, so should the measurement.

While rankings do matter, they do not paint the entire picture. In order to keep up in the digital race, you need to analyze your competitors and the industry norms to see what kind of search marketing methods are happening and what type of content is being disseminated. If your competitors are active on social media, creating great videos, and are listed in local, they are going to appear before the organic listings. It would behoove your business to do the same.

4.Link Earning: Win The Race With Help From Others

A huge part of having an effective SEO campaign is link earning (often referred to as link building). Link earning is the process of obtaining high-quality links from other reputable websites. This not only helps your overall exposure, but links from other sites also pass link juice (fun, right?). The more high-quality links you can receive, the more reputable search engines will deem your business. This places your site higher within the rankings and makes it appear more often for your desired audience. If you own a car dealership, an extremely important link is from the corporate website. For example, if you’re a Ford dealer, you need to be listed on their “Find a Dealer” tab.

Link earning can also help with your local awareness. By acquiring links from influential organizations within your community, your local search visibility will increase. And, if you didn’t skip to the end of this blog and you read numero uno, you’d know that local is kind of a big deal.

On Your Mark...Get Set...Go!

The entire automotive industry, including your competitors, is moving towards digital marketing. Don’t get left in the dust! Use the SEO tips listed above and start competing for first place.

Have additional questions surrounding automotive marketing? Leave them in the comments below!

By: David McDowell