Killer Mobile Marketing Strategies That Drive Sales Ali Amirrezvani Chief Executive Officer & President DealerOn Derwood, MD 301-806-0999 ali@dealeron.com
The views and opinions presented in this educational program and any accompanying handout material are those of the speakers, and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of NADA. The speakers are not NADA representatives, and their presence on the program is not a NADA endorsement or sponsorship of the speaker or the speaker s company, product, or services. Nothing that is presented during this educational program is intended as legal advice, and this program may not address all federal, state, or local regulatory or other legal issues raised by the subject matter it addresses. The purpose of the program is to help dealers improve the effectiveness of their business practices. The information presented is also not intended to urge or suggest that dealers adopt any specific practices or policies for their dealerships, nor is it intended to encourage concerted action among competitors or any other action on the part of dealers that would in any manner fix or stabilize the price or any element of the price of any good or service. 2
Topic 1) Why is Mobile So Important? (Slides 2-6) 1) In 2015, American consumers/car buyers spent half an hour more time each day on their phone surfing the internet than they did on desktop computers. 2) Time spent on mobile will soon exceed television as the most consumed medium for US car buyers. 3) Car dealers sell to local markets and to consumers who are using search engines to research their purchase. In 2016, consumers will perform almost 50% more local searches on phones than on desktops. 4) Dealers are already seeing almost as much traffic from mobile devices as desktops in Q1 2016. By next January, mobile devices will constitute the majority of dealers website traffic. 5) More than 70% of dealers mobile traffic and almost 80% of their mobile calls and form submissions comes from Search Engines; 90% of that traffic is from Google! DEALER ACTION ITEMS: 1) Find out how your ad budget is allocated between TV, Desktop, and Mobile. Mobile should be on par with or higher than Desktop. You should be expecting to invest more in Mobile than TV by 2017 at the latest. 2) Get your website traffic stats from your Google Analytics. Check the monthly breakout of visitors between Desktop, Tablet, and Mobile. Compare your metrics like: Visits, Conversions, Leads, Phone Calls, Bounce Rate, and Time on Site between all 3 major device types. 3) Ask your call tracking provider and website provider to provide you with reporting on which traffic sources (Google, Bing, Yahoo, Autotrader, Cars.com, etc) are delivering Mobile Calls and Website Form Submissions. 3
Topic 2) Mobile SEO Ranking Factors (Slides 7-15) Ranking Factors to Show Up High in Google for Mobile Devices: 1) Physical Location of your Dealership Even though this is becoming Google s most important ranking factor, unless you re willing to move your location, this is the one factor you can t control. So, you need to focus on the rest of these factors to maximize your Mobile Search visibility. 2) Citations & Local Listings You can impact how your dealership shows up for Local Directories and Primary Local Citation Sites like: Facebook, Google My Business, Yahoo Local, YP.com, City Search, Yelp, Localeze. a. Ideally, all of these directories show the same Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP) that is on your website. b. Additionally, get local websites (local newspapers, churches, little league organizations, etc.) to use your NAP on their sites when referencing your dealership. 3) Page Speed Google has made VERY clear that they believe that the future of the Internet is MOBILE and FAST BLAZING FAST. They have even incorporated Slow as a warning label in the results page in the past. There is speculation that Google will begin showing a FAST label for websites for some results later this year. 4) Structured Data Google has been asking webmasters to incorporate Structured Data into their websites for 5 years. Recently Google has begun incorporating Structured Data from the websites into their Search Results, producing anywhere from a 13% to as high as a 50% increase in organic search traffic. 5) Mobile Friendly Test Google also provides a link for dealers to test whether their site is Mobile Friendly from Google s perspective. DEALER ACTION ITEMS: 1) Citations/Listings -- Check your dealership s listing on some of the most prominent local citation/directories (: Facebook, Google My Business, Yahoo Local, YP.com, City Search, Yelp, Localeze). Go to Yext.com and run a full analysis. 2) Google Page Speed -- Google provides you and your website provider with specific guidelines and instructions for speeding up your site. Use this link: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ to analyze your site. 3) Structured Data Check whether your homepage and Vehicle Details Pages are properly and fully coded with Structured Data with Google s free tool: https://developers.google.com/structureddata/testing-tool/?hl=en. 4) Mobile Friendly Make sure that Google thinks all your sites pages are Mobile-Friendly: https://developers.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/?hl=en. 5) AMP Ask your website provider how they are handling Google s AMP changes. 4
Topic 3) Mobile Conversion FAST, SIMPLE, EASY (Slides 16-23) 1) 40% of US Mobile Consumers report that they will abandon a site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. 2) Google not only incorporates page load into their analysis of mobile sites, but they provide a page speed testing resource to show webmasters how to improve the load speed for both the mobile and desktop versions of their sites. Google provides a page speed score and color (Green, Yellow, Red) for how quickly a page loads. 3) One of the biggest obstacles for dealers sites meeting Google s page speed benchmarks are the various plugin products that permeate the industry chat codes, social media toolbars, trade appraisal plugins all of these add-ons can slow down a dealer s site speed. 4) In recent studies (January 2016), less than 30% of car dealer sites scored above Red in Google s algorithm. 5) An EVEN BETTER resource for measuring your site s load time for you customers is webpagetest.org. This site not only show when your site is ready for consumers to interact with it, but it allows you to benchmark it against up to 3 other site and create a video recording that shows how your site loads relative to the other sites in real-time. 6) Few dealer websites are visually complete meaning that they are ready for the consumer to use them, within the 3 second window that a mobile consumer expects. 7) Google s expectation is actually even more problematic. Google has stated their expectation is to deliver content to the consumer in under 1 second. There are currently no dealer sites that we ve examined that approach this goal. DEALER ACTION ITEMS: 1) Run your site through Google s Page Speed Insights and talk about fixes with your website provider: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/. 2) Based on the results of the Page Speed Insights test, review any non-website issues (like Chat codes, etc.) with the respective providers to see if they can help improve the load time of their software. 3) Run your site with 3 of your competitors through WebPageTest.org and create a video comparing them. Stop the video after 3 seconds and see if your site is usable by the 40% of consumers who expect it to load by then. Remember they will abandon your site if it isn t ready after 3 seconds. 5
6 See whether your competitors are meeting this standard as well. Consider how much faster you would need to make your site if you were to hit Google s target of a 1 second load time.
Topic 4) Mobile Conversion FAST, SIMPLE, EASY Examples (Slides 24-37) 1) Case studies have shown that using an actual # in your mobile Phone Call to Action can increase your phone calls 30%. If you currently use icons, you can A/B test this change yourself on your site. 2) Consumers expect that when they click a phone number or a phone button or any other symbol indicating a phone call, that they will begin dialing your dealership. Any other treatment will cost you phone calls and leads. 3) Direction buttons, icons, links, etc. should ALWAYS open into a map with directions automatically calculated from the phone s location. It should NOT open a map within the dealer s website or ask the consumer to input their location to get directions to the dealership. The customer experience shown here may seem obviously flawed, but it is the default treatment for many website providers in our space: 4) It is critical to understand the impact of inventory pricing and display on all of your devices. If you present things like Please Call for pricing, you better make sure that the mobile experience still makes sense. If you are merchandising Please Call, the consumer better have an obvious way of calling your dealership, especially on a phone. 7
5) Make sure that you understand how all of your plugins (chat pop-ups, social media toolbars, finance, and appraisal tools look on all mobile pages of your site. Many of them are not optimized for mobile and the ones that are still may not be implemented ideally for a mobile consumer s website experience. Also, check your forms. Don t ask for any data besides Name, Phone, Email. When you do ask for phone #, the consumer s keypad should be defaulted to the numerical keys. Your website provider should be able to do this for you. 6) If you don t have a responsive website, you need one. Not only does Google recommend it, but there are plenty of case studies in the automotive industry that show increases in Organic Search Rankings and Traffic, Declines in Bounce Rate, and dramatically more leads and phone calls with a well-optimized Responsive Website. 7) Mobile Coupons are becoming a great way for dealers to increase service business. Mobile coupon redemption rates are 10x higher than traditional paper coupons (Juniper Research, Mobile Coupons: Consumer Engagement, Loyalty & Redemption Strategies 2014-2019). Once a consumer saves a coupon to their Apple or Google Wallet, less than 1% delete them (Pep Boys Coupon Study). 8
DEALER ACTION ITEMS: 1) Check your mobile website and make sure that: a. All of your phone calls use the phone number. If not, at least make sure that they have a generally-recognized phone icon (and not some icon your provider made just for their platform or for your dealership). b. Your phone calls to action dial your dealership directly (and don t offer a choice of phone numbers or require multiple clicks to generate a phone call). c. All of your directions/maps links open a Google Map (or other map) with the user s location defaulted as the starting point and your dealer s location as the destination. Never keep the map within your site or require the user enter either his/her location or your dealership s address. 2) Check your inventory pages on various phones to make sure that your calls to action make sense, that your chat codes and social media toolbars aren t destroying the user experience for your mobile customers. 3) Make sure that you have a Responsive Website. Not only is this Google s recommended Mobile Platform, but studies have shown it can increase traffic, conversion, leads, and phone calls for mobile consumers. 4) Start using Mobile Coupons that integrate with Google and Apple Wallet. Pep Boys has already demonstrated that automotive consumers are receptive and eager to use these for servicing cars. 9
Topic 5) Mobile SEM Best Practices (Slides 38-48) 1) As of August 2015 Google will show up to 3 local ads, so your dealership may be below 3 competitors ads even when someone is searching for your brand name. 2) More than half of searches for most vehicles come from a phone, so even if your vehicles are well optimized for Google, mobile consumers (who are the majority of people doing make/model searches on Google) will see 3 ads before they ever see your site s VDP. 3) Most Dealers are NOT buying their own brand for Google mobile searchers. 4) Dealers who do buy their brand and their competitors get dramatically more Google visibility for mobile consumers in some cases 5 times more visibility. 5) There is no cheaper way to generate incremental calls and leads for your dealership than buying your brand on Google for mobile consumers. 6) Buying your competitors brand is not quite as high ROI because you have to pay more per click, but consumers do not differentiate much between the dealership name they searched on and the ones that show up in the ads. 7) Ideal Google Adword Mobile Ad has: a. Call Extensions b. Site Links c. Location Extensions d. A Strong Call to Action e. A Compelling Offer 8) How to Take Advantage of Showrooming Google s automotive study has shown that consumers shop your website while they are in your competitors showrooms. You can target offers to them, based on their precise geo-location. 10
DEALER ACTION ITEMS: 1) Buy your dealership s name for anyone searching on a phone in any zip code in which you sell cars. 2) Test out buying your competitor dealership s names for the same OEM (if you re a Honda dealer, test buying other Honda dealers names in your area). 3) Make sure that you re SEM budget reflects the relative number of mobile searches for your market. Ask your SEM provider to show you the cost per click, cost per lead, phone call, and acquisition for both desktop and mobile to make sure you re not under-spending on Mobile. 4) Work with your website provider to set up geo-fencing to provide special offers/incentives to consumers who are browsing your site on their phones from your competitors dealerships. 11