Logix Thoughts

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Auto Dealers Spending More In Digital Advertising Than Ever

Posted on by Andrew

The auto industry is embracing digital advertising and marketing more than ever. In a new report from eMarketer, digital advertising spending for automotive is up 18.8% year-over-year.

This confirms what we already knew about digital. Your competitors are jumping into digital spending and you need to be as well. An effective digital marketing campaign can bring you new customers and help convert existing shoppers into buyers.

Digital Spend

Looking for a new way to bring people to your dealership? Check out our Conversion Drivers. Conversion Drivers will help you turn more of your online traffic into leads and sales. Competition is only going to increase as more dealers start improving their online presence.

Hey, Google: Selling Cars is Harder Than You Think

Posted on by Andrew

A couple of years ago, Google debuted a new product called Google Cars. Dealerships everywhere were curious and apprehensive about the new product. There was talk about Google gaining too much power in how consumers would search for cars, and a few dealers were skeptical it would work.

Now, after a couple years, we’ve been able to determine that Google Cars was not a success. Consumers didn’t use the tool nearly as much as was anticipated, and dealers received mixed results from the leads generated by the program.

Google Cars

The failure of a company Google’s size at creating a tool to connect with car shoppers shows that it’s harder to sell cars online than everyone thinks. It’s not about “doing digital;” it’s about doing digital right.

If you’re trying to connect with car shoppers in search engines, you can do it two ways: a traditional PPC program, or a dynamic, inventory-specific program like Search Liners.

Search Liners aggregates your inventory and creates individual search ads for each car on your lot. That way, when a consumer does a search for a specific car you have, the PPC for that specific model will display and when they click it will drive them right to the VDP for that specific car.

Just because Google Cars didn’t work out doesn’t mean it’s impossible to connect with car shoppers on search engines – you just have to do it right.

Step beyond the TV buy with video pre-roll

Posted on by Andrew
Online Video Pre-Roll

It’s the era of the internet baby!

Yet we still have a hard time breaking from the habit of traditional media approaches. The principle still applies…PEOPLE REMEMBER 90% of WHAT THEY SEE!

The question is where will they see it?  Or perhaps better yet, “where will it be most effective?”

The “audience of one” is the feeling you get when we see your ads in the wild. A feeling of pride and assurance rushes over you, and you know you’ve been heard.  You hope that your potential customers were watching or listening at that time.  If that’s not the case, then the ad was lost in the noise.

Traditional media costs are hefty and time consuming. To get the most out of your traditional ads, invest in video pre-roll, the most intentional tool in re-purposing traditional media with an exponential punch!

Drop your 15 or 30 second video in the cue for display.  Throw in a pixel for retargeting and behavioral targeting andy you just launched a lethal combination of advertising both to your known audience and those who are actively looking.  This way you’re not just hoping that everyone is looking.  You can know (via analytics) what was displayed, what was seen and what the results were.

When its all said and done, it’s a fraction of the cost.  A mere 10% of an average cable commercial, or 1% of a prime time commercial.

Better yet, you can redo your whole mindset for shooting your traditional media with your target audience / medium in mind.  Shoot smarter not more!  Edit content for both mediums!

Top of mind awareness for your future customers’ sake takes on a whole new meaning when they are seeing you online — where they are spending most of their leisure time — instead of watching their DVR’d shows while skipping over the commercials.

Advertisers look to expand into online video advertising for 2014

Posted on by Andrew

Video advertising is poised to explode in 2014. The medium is gaining momentum across the board, and advertisers are jumping in head first.

Interested in video? Here are ten facts you should know.

  1. Video was the fastest-growing ad format in 2012.
  2. 90% of users say that seeing a video about a product is helpful in the decision process.
  3. 80% of users recall a video ad they’ve seen within the last 30 days.
  4. Video viewers retain 95% of a message, compared to 10% when reading it in text.
  5. Americans watched a total of almost 50 billion video ads in October 2013
  6. eMarketer found that businesses are pulling money from traditional budgets in order to allocate more to online video.
  7. You can target online audiences the same ways you target with your normal display advertising.
  8. One-third of all time spent online is watching video.
  9. More online video has been uploaded in the last 30 days than all three major T.V. networks combined have created in the last 30 years.
  10. According to NPD, mobile and tablet shoppers are three times as likely to view a video as laptop or desktop visitors.

Video advertising is the ability to repurpose your T.V. commercials for the Internet. Imagine being able to show your T.V. ad only to people who were in market for a car? With online video advertising that’s a reality.

We can take your video and put it in front of people who’ve been researching for a car online, and even to those who’ve visited your website.

Take it to the next level for 2014. Get started with some video pre-roll advertising for your business.

Now Announcing: Million Dollar Test Drive

Posted on by Andrew

We’ve been working on this for a while, but we’re happy to announce a new product we’re starting called Million Dollar Test Drive. Million Dollar Test Drive is a promotional program for car dealers that drives floor traffic to your store, and creates new leads for your dealership.

Plus, every person who comes to a participating dealer gets their name entered into a drawing to win one million dollars!

Check out our site to learn more.

Digital Media and TV: The two pillars of any advertising budget

Posted on by Andrew

It seems that advertising is slowly turning into a two-horse race. In the days before digital media, there was a three-way split between print, radio, and TV. Now, TV and digital advertising are the only growing media channels. In a new report from Nielson, display advertising grew 26.6% during the first half of 2013. TV advertising grew at 4.2% during the same period.

While TV is admittedly a more mature market, the increase in display advertising is hard to ignore. It’s apparent the industry is turning to the two largest mediums to deliver the bulk of their advertising. The Internet and TV are far and away the biggest marketing channels available according to audience size and time spent on each medium.

We see a further consolidation of other media types when we look at some of the declines in advertising spend. Newspaper advertising is down 2% year-over-year, magazine advertising is down by 1.9%.  Even radio suffered from decreased spending during the same time period.

So how does this affect your advertising budget looking into 2014? One benefit is decreased complexity for you advertising plan. Instead of throwing dollars at newspapers and radio, you can shift your budget to TV and online display.

In 2014 it will be important to expand your digital strategy to find new customers online. More people buying digital media means more competition, so developing correct targeting techniques will be crucial.

If you’re curious about the different types of display available such as retargeting or pixel targeting, contact us and we can give you an overview of the types of targeting available for your business.

Beware the Automotive SEO Snake Oil

Posted on by Dave Pavlu

How to measure your Automotive SEO on a CPC level

Is your Automotive SEO company really moving the needle for you, or are they selling you snake oil? I have watched a lot of dealers spend a lot of money on microsites, premium content, videos, blogs and more, all in the name of “SEO.”  I think it is time to discuss some ways to measure your SEO to make sure you aren’t the guy buying a muffler bearing warranty from your web company.

A couple of caveats before we move on: I am NOT calling all Automotive SEOs snake oil salesmen.  I DO realize that every situation is different in regards to dealer placement on the SERP. The purpose of this article is simply to discuss some methods of measurement to make sure you are getting the most from your SEO budget.

Remember that search engines make money by delivering the best, most relevant search results possible.  Therefore, your dealership should automatically show up in the results for queries like: “your dealership name,” and “your make your city.” SEO’s true value comes in on trickier searches like; “make, model, your city” or  “your make your metro” or “your make your state.” You should benchmark your search results on these types of queries on a regular basis.

Searches like these are easy to measure in your analytics.  Here’s how you can calculate exactly what your CPC is on your SEO keywords:

  • Log into your Google Analytics.
  • On the left hand side of the dashboard click Traffic Sources, click Sources, then All Traffic.
  • Adjust your dates to the last 30 days.
  • Navigate to the Source/Medium column and select Search Engine/ Organic.
  • You’ve now isolated your organic traffic. Find the dropdown menu called Secondary Dimension and toggle that to Keyword. Now you can see nearly all of the keywords that were searched in order to drive traffic to your site.
  • Go up to the search bar for these results.  Click on Advanced and set the search to Include, Keyword, and Containing. Type in your word and hit apply.
  • Now you can see exactly how many times these words have delivered a prospect to your website.

Add up these clicks and divide the number into what you’re spending for SEO. This gives you an approximate cost per click on your SEO keywords.  You can also measure the value of each click by analyzing the time on site and bounce rate for these words. Plus, you can measure any goals you have set up in your analytics by hitting the Goal tab at the top of the page.

I’ve seen dealers spending thousands of dollars per month on elaborate microsite SEO programs that were yielding very few actual visitors. Plus, when we looked at cost per click we found they were paying 10 to 15 times what they were paying for similar paid search clicks.

The point here is that if you are paying monthly for SEO you should measure the results to make sure that you aren’t paying for snake oil, or overpaying for clicks you could have gotten cheaper through a paid search campaign.

Dave Pavlu is a twenty-year veteran of the retail automotive industry and the founder and CEO of AdsUpNow.com. AdsUpNow is a full-service digital marketing agency based in Seattle, WA that specializes in online marketing strategies that drive and capture first-party leads for car dealerships.

Google Leads in Display Advertising, Facebook is Gaining Ground

Posted on by Andrew

The latest numbers for total digital display advertising revenue are in, and it looks like Google remains on top.

In eMarketer’s latest report, they reported that Google remains the digital advertising king, capturing 40% of the overall market in 2012. Yahoo remains in second place with 8.6%, but the real up-and-comer is Facebook.

Facebook captured just 5.9% of the overall market in 2012, but they are set to reach 7.1% of the market in 2013. Plus, they are expected to overtake Yahoo in total revenue by 2014.

So what does this mean? It means you should start looking at doing some Facebook advertising. Facebook is set to be a major player in the digital advertising arena, and you should get on board.

Plus, with the Facebook Exchange, you have the ability to retarget your website visitors on Facebook, as well as target them with third-party data.

Go to AdsUpNow and learn more about how you can get started with a Facebook retargeting campaign.

Reaching Generation C – More Than Just Millenials

Posted on by Andrew

Google calls today’s modern digital consumer Generation C. This generation is not bound by an age demographic – instead they are bound by their use of digital media, social media, and online video (heavily Youtube of course).

Generation C mindset is characterized by its devotion to creation, curation, connection and community. They drive popular culture with photos, videos, memes and mash-ups.

Before you dismiss Generation C as an undesirable demographic to target, listen to this: they are responsible for influencing over half a trillion dollars in spending per year.

While 80% percent of millennials belong to generation C, this mindset is truly cross-generational, and includes members from Generation X and the Boomer Generation. In fact, because of this generation’s digital tendencies, they open up new advertising opportunities.

Google identifies 8 characteristics of Gen C:

Gen C is not a demographic – it’s a state of mind.

They’re the people who live digital. They spend more time online than they do watching TV.

Gen C strives for expression.

They are heavy users of social media and share photos and other content online.

Gen C is a taste-maker.
Made up of early-adopters, they set the trends that the rest of the population will soon follow. They also rely heavily on peer approval before making buying decisions.

Gen C defines the social network.

Almost 90% of Gen C has a social profile, and 65% of them update it every day.

YouTube is Gen C’s habitat for entertainment.

Gen C is twice as likely to be a YouTube viewer as the general population, and more likely to be a light TV viewer.

Gen C is constantly connected.

They eat, sleep and breathe the Internet and their smartphone. 91% of them sleep next to their smartphone.

Gen C connects on YouTube on all screens.
They watch mobile video on desktops, tablets and their smartphones

Gen C values relevance and originality.
They value conversation that aligns with their interests, and they aren’t opposed to ads that are relevant to them.

When you remove Google’s sales pitch for YouTube you’re still left with a compelling description of today’s modern digital consumers. These are the same consumers we connect with on behalf of dealerships across the country.

These consumers spend huge amounts of time on screens other than TV. They are mobile masters, using tools from Google, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, and YouTube. They may not know where their television remote is, but they definitely know where they can get online.

Their “water-cooler moment” is a link, a tweet or a tag. Instead of reaching them with a TV buy, you’re better off with pre-roll video and display advertising like retargeting or data-driven advertising like pixel targeting.

Learning to connect with Generation C will become more and more important throughout the next year and in the future. Remember, Generation C is a group of early adopters. As they go, goes the rest of the population. You want to make sure your advertising is primed to keep up.

Digital Media is Overtaking TV

Posted on by Andrew

Digital media has been growing like crazy for the past few years. And, as more people are spending time online, businesses have been shifting their advertising dollars online.

Up until now, increases in time spent on digital media have come at the expense of traditional media like radio and print advertising. However, TV has always remained in the top spot for advertisers, due to the huge amount of time people spend watching TV.

Now, it seems, TV’s reign is coming to an end. For the first time ever, time spent on digital media will surpass time spent watching TV. In a new report from eMarketer, the average adult will spend 5 hours a day online – including time spent on mobile. Daily time spent on TV will be an average of 4:31, which is nothing to sneeze at, but overall growth is down slightly, whereas time on digital is up 15.8%.

So what does this mean for you and your business? It means you need to start doing online advertising – especially on mobile. You used to buy TV because that’s where all the eyeballs were. Now, there are more online.

Dip your toe in the water and start a retargeting campaign for your business. It’s an easy way to get started with digital.