Touch ID, swipe to Google and enter your long tail search all of course from your smart phone. These are the first actions a car buyer takes on their “discovery” journey to find that perfect vehicle for their needs.

Depending on the research stage that the car buyer is in, often depends how deep they are searching. For example, if I am the customer and have recently decided that I am in the market for a car, I may do a “fat head” search like Toyota and then proceed to check out different models and options that Toyota offers. Now, assuming I am the same customer, I may have progressed in my reasearch and “discovery” stages and now am doing a long tail search like “Toyota Rav 4 Edmonton” or “Chevrolet Silverado Double Cab Calgary”. It is imperative that as an auto dealer, you are understanding what your customers are searching and better yet, understanding that your   customers are getting much more sophisticated and detailed in their search. So many auto dealers are allocating huge budgets into purchasing “fat head” keywords like “Edmonton Ford” or “Calgary Toyota”. The reason these are so high in price is that you are competing with your competitors for these same words and is no different then a used car manager going to the auction and bidding on a unit and lands up paying too much because the bid went so high. Supply and demand.

Here are some tips to help you maximize your search marketing efforts to make sure your potential car buyer can find you for a price that does not break your bank:

Tips:

1. Pick a monthly budget that you want to spend.

2. Assign your search marketing efforts to a staff member who has knowledge in this subject OR hire a consultant such as myself 😉 (Honestly though, you will save yourself money and see much better results if you have someone who is educated in this field.)

3. Use a keyword tool, you can google “keyword tools” and there are plenty of free options out there along with Google’s own in house tool. This is a great tip especially when writing content rich copy to help with your seo and organic search results.

4. Monitor your search marketing and pay per click campaign progress weekly and atleast monthly as you will constantly be making tweaks and changes to your strategy.

5. Actually take action on this and make valid effort to incorporate this as part of your auto dealership digital marketing strategy.

I am going to stop this blog here and I will be back with a much more in depth post about search marketing and how you can kill it with your dealership efforts! For now, this will help provoke some thought.

Questions or need help? Reach out to me here.