About a year and a half ago, we did an Automotive News webinar with Google and Yahoo on how search engines have revolutionized the auto shopping process. One of the key points of that presentation is that search and auto shopping is evolving at such a rapid process, and the way people shop for a car is dynamically changing between the time they purchase the last vehicle and their next one.

With that in mind, we went back and looked at that presentation and updated the facts and figures. Incidentally, it’s changed exponentially since we last made this presentation. Here’s how search is revolutionizing the auto industry:

Search Is Exploding Faster Than You Know It

Estimates put the 2011 monthly search volume at 143 BILLION searches per month. That’s up from a mere 2.7 billion in 2006 – an increase of over 5200% in just six short years. Combine that with JD Power’s report that the average age of a trade-in is 6.2 years, that means that the way a consumer is shopping for a vehicle today, is drastically different than the way they did the last time they purchased.

Search Marketing is Bigger Than You Think

Go to a trade show or a seminar and you’ll hear about a lot of different digital marketing outlets from social media to email, mobile phones and more. The simple fact of the matter is that 54% of all digital advertising dollars go to search marketing – close to $19 billion. After that, display advertising (banner ads) makes up the next 32%. Put those together and 86% of all digital marketing is either search marketing or online display. Major marketers are putting their money where customers are.

The Internet is Replacing Newspaper

In 2000, 52% of all dealer advertising dollars were devoted to newspaper – which made it the number one dealer advertising outlet. Today, more dealer advertising dollars go to the Internet than any other single medium (Internet 23.7% newspaper 22%, television 20.10%, radio 16%, direct mail 9.7% and other mediums 9%). If you look at the trends over the last ten years, almost all the mediums stay in line with the exception of newspaper. Newspaper lost about half of it’s share to the Internet.

Customers Select Dealerships Online – Not in Person

It’s a really scary concept to wrap your head around, but the simple fact of the matter is that most consumers select the dealership they’re going to do business with online and they do it with little or no interaction with the dealership. JD Power reports that in 2005 the average customer shopped 4.1 dealerships when purchasing a vehicle and today a customer visits just 1.3. That means, on average, a customer buys from the first dealership they walk into. What does this mean? They’re selecting the dealership they want to do business online. Furthermore, they’re doing it with little to no interaction with the dealership. In the past six years, Internet usage in the auto shopping process is up 16%, while lead submissions are up only 2%.

Google is Destroying the Organic Space

If you take a look at a SERP (search engine results page), you’ll see that the organic results are actually the minority of results. On a typical SERP, you’ll have 1-3 top search ads, several to the right or bottom, a map result and a Google Places listing. In many cases, there will be only a single organic result on a SERP. There’s good reason that Google would want to do this. Google generates 96% of its revenue through advertising – and Google is a business with a market capitalization of close to $200 billion – and the majority of it is generated through those little ads wrapped around search results.

Google is More Important to the Auto Space Than the Market at Large

It’s well known that Google is the dominant search engine in the space – comScore reports that Google garners a 65% share of the search market. However, independent research shows that in regard to traffic to dealership web sites, Google accounts for close to 77% – close to a 20% increase.

Search Marketing Crushes The Competition

While most advertising agencies don’t want to admit it – advertising is an incredibly wasteful effort. Let’s compare: The Superbowl, which is the highest rated program of the year, pulled a 34 rating last year (34% of the population viewed it). Let’s assume there will be 19 million units of inventory sold this year through franchised dealers (12 million new and 7 million used). If you multiple 19 million by 34% and then divide by 12 to get the number of people who will buy a car  a Superbowl commercial reaches – you get an astonishing number of 0.17%. If someone types ‘honda accord’ into a search engine – what’s the likely hood they want to buy a Honda Accord? Let’s say it’s just 50% – compare that to 0.17%. Result: search marketing is incredibly targeted.

All Those Great Features on Your Web Site? They’re Basically Useless.

You spent a lot of time selecting and working on your web site – guess what – it’s useless. People really just go to your site to find inventory. Take this statistic: only 24% of your web site traffic visits a page that’s not your inventory or specials.

So What Do You Do?

Increase your search marketing budget – big time. Our average customer spends $3,200 on search marketing, $21,000 on television or radio and $62,000 overall. If someone were to take $2,100 from their television or radio and move it to search marketing it would do the following: increase a medium that’s 50% targeted by 65%, decrease a medium that’s 0.17% targeted by 10% – and not change your advertising budget a single penny. Make sense?

Want to see the full presentation? It’s live on SlideShare. If you’d like someone from Moore & Scarry to make this presentation at your 20 group or other event, contact us.

Recently, Google announced that it has named Moore & Scarry Advertising as one of their select Google AdWords^TM Premier SMB Partners. The AdWords^TM Premier SMB Partner program is Google’s designation for their digital advertising partners that have achieved the highest levels of training, performance and customer service.

Duncan Scarry, CEO

“We’re incredibly excited about Moore & Scarry Advertising being named an AdWords^TM Premier SMB Partner by Google. I think it’s recognition of the power of our Haystack automotive search marketing platform and the high level of expertise and service our staff provides,” said Duncan Scarry, president of Moore & Scarry Advertising.

Moore & Scarry is one of the first companies to be named an AdWords^TM Premier SMB Partner in the automotive space.  Moore & Scarry has held numerous other Google distinctions for their performance including the AdWords^TM Authorized Reseller.

Google selected AdWords^TM Premier SMB Partners based on stringent qualification criteria, including a proven market track record and the ability to deliver an exceptional end-to-end service to advertisers.

Ben Wood | Google

“We are excited to launch the Google AdWords^TM Premier SMB Partner program with hand-picked, highly qualified companies like Moore & Scarry Advertising,” says Ben Wood, head of Google’s Americas channel sales partnerships. “Automotive dealers will not only benefit from Moore & Scarry Advertising’s in-depth training, but from their years of experience in the local market.”

To learn more about the Premier SMB Partner program directly from Google, visit google.com/ads/premiersmbpartner.

About Moore & Scarry Advertising

Moore & Scarry Advertising is the nation’s third largest automotive advertising agency and North America’s third largest automotive search marketing company. Innovation, bright minds and a lot of hard work have made Moore & Scarry Advertising one of the fastest-growing automotive advertising agencies in the nation.  Moore & Scarry Advertising has represented over 400 automobile dealers, including the vast majority of domestic and international manufacturers, dealerships of all types and sizes, including numerous Automotive News Top 125 Dealer Groups. The agency has offices in Fort Myers, Florida; Chicago, Illinois and Denver, Colorado.

About the Google AdWords Premier SMB Partner Program

The recently announced Google AdWords^TM Premier SMB Partner Program (PSP) connects Google’s trusted and experienced AdWords^TM partners with small- and medium-sized businesses that want expert help in creating, managing and optimizing their online advertising campaigns. In addition to in-depth AdWords^TM expertise, PSP partners provide full-service campaign management, detailed reporting, one-on-one customer support, and broad marketing guidance to help advertisers make the most of their campaigns.

Premier SMB Partners meet Google’s highest standards and criteria for qualification, transparency, and customer service, which includes completing extensive Google product and account management training. This ensures they can provide small businesses with the most effective AdWords^TM advertising solutions.

We all know that SEM is an integral part of a successful marketing plan, but it can be challenging to keep up with changes in consumers’ online behavior and the search engines’ changes in compliance and algorithms.  Morgan Automotive Group consistently achieves outstanding results from SEM and Larry keeps his dealerships at the forefront of new trends and innovations.

Morgan Automotive Group began working with Moore & Scarry Advertising over five years ago and the agency now provides all Morgan stores with full service marketing, including both traditional and online, and manages all SEM initiatives for the group.

We recently spoke with Larry to get his perspective on SEM and discuss the results Morgan Automotive Group has achieved.

How long have you used search engine marketing for your dealerships?

SEM has been an important part of our marketing strategy for at least six years now, and obviously its importance has grown during that time.  Best practices change as the Internet evolves and you have to be diligent to keep up and stay on top.  Our agency monitors our SEM campaigns on a daily basis and ensures that we continually improve our results and increase the market’s awareness of our dealerships. Further, search engine optimization and search engine marketing shouldn’t exist in isolation.  As a matter of fact, when SEO and SEM are properly integrated together, they can produce significantly more traffic than when the two efforts are managed separately.  Our agency tightly integrates both initiatives for us.

What SEM results have you achieved?

Our dealerships’ Internet departments set the pace of our sales growth at this point, no doubt about it.  Their work, particularly with search engines, drives our business now.  Our agency has really helped us with SEM and we’re getting a greater market share at all of our locations.  Moore & Scarry’s SEM services are second to none.  They are a Google Adwords Authorized Reseller, a Microsoft AdExcellence Company and a Google Adwords Certified Partner.  I don’t know of any other agencies out there with all these highly respected certifications.  They understand both the technical and creative sides of search engine marketing and blend them to generate more traffic, leads and sales for our dealerships.  And their knowledge and certifications keep us compliant in this ever changing landscape.

Can you provide specific data about your SEM results?

“We are outpacing the industry in sales and have been for over a year and a half.  All of our stores have gained market share in the past 12 months.  Driving traffic to your site through SEM and SEO is meaningless if you don’t determine which traffic is engaged and converting.  Our agency provides a comprehensive analytics package that monitors traffic and reports the results in plain English.”

We gained 66,514 website visits from our SEM campaigns in 2010, with over 39,000 goal completions.  Our SEM website visitors average 5.53 page views per visit and spend an average of 4.45 minutes on our site. In addition, 72.2% of our SEM campaign visitors were new to our site.

What do like most about working with your agency?

I’m a big picture guy and I keep up with trends and where the industry is going.  We try to stay ahead of the market and attract shoppers where they spend time online.  A huge part of that is helping them find us on Internet searches.  Our messages are designed based on what shoppers are looking for, and what terms they actually use in searches.

We get quick service and results with our agency; even the president is assessable at virtually all times.  They try new things, work with our people, teach and train on how to use tools, and take a sincere interest in our business.  Our SEM practices are continually evolving and the results just keep getting better and better.  Everything is numbers driven and Moore & Scarry Advertising brings facts to the table when we review how dollars are being spent.  There is no ’set it and forget it.’  They constantly monitor our results, keep abreast of trends and work with us to reap the best rewards.

A study done by Pew found that approximately 85% of adults have smartphones, cell phones, and/or other mobile devices, and of that number 39% have accessed the Internet from their mobile device. In Q4 2010, mobile tablets sold approximately 9.7 million units – a 120% increase over Q3. With these numbers, it’s no wonder more and more car dealerships are optimizing their websites for mobile browsers. Optimizing your site isn’t difficult and many web providers offer this as an additional service.

What this means is that 2011 may finally be the year that mobile “arrives” and makes a major impact on your marketing strategy. According to a recent Search Marketing Now webinar on mobile trends, 49% of smartphone owners have purchased something from their phones in the past six months and mobile commerce is expected to reach $119 billion in sales by 2015. I can hear you already, “This doesn’t pertain to me. People don’t purchase cars from their phone.” And while that may be true, for now, you do SELL cars online. Wait, what?

Here’s my real-life scenario: My husband and I are driving around town looking for the perfect used 2010 Dodge Challenger that I’ve been dying to test drive. I go to the usual place – the Dodge dealership in the area – but they don’t have the trim/color/price I’m looking for. How do I figure out where to go next? I pull out my handy-dandy smartphone and I Google it. There, in the sponsored ads section, are several dealerships that have a 2010 Dodge Challenger in stock. I click on the ads, go to the sites, check out their inventory and go to the dealership that has what I want. Done and done.

I found what I was looking for and the dealership got the sale. Seems fairly simple, right? It is! Utilizing Google’s technology, not only can we can send mobile searchers to your mobile-optimized website, but mobile searchers can call you directly from their Google search using a click-to-call feature. By assigning call-tracking telephone numbers to these campaigns, we are then able to track the statistics of these calls (number of received calls, number of missed calls, average call duration, and total call duration for example). We can also track the number of searchers using mobile devices to access your site.

Mobile marketing has been teetering on the verge of breaking out and changing the way we interact with our target audiences. The time has come to embrace this paradigm shift. Is your marketing plan ready for this new mobile frontier?

“We knew that the new features in this release were going to increase traffic by creating more relevant ads, but this was quite a bit more than we anticipated,” said Duncan Scarry, President of Moore & Scarry Advertising.

Haystack’s Dynamic Inventory Marketing feature taps into a dealer’s DMS system, pulls inventory and creates ads for each unit of inventory. This release updated how vehicles are processed. In addition to creating search marketing ads for each unit of inventory, the system now bundles like models into groups and like makes into groups. This allows the system to advertise more inventory to customers and be more targeted in doing so.

When the release went live existing customers saw major traffic increases.

“This release, along with seasonal increases in search, should present an opportunity for customers using the Haystack automotive search marketing platform to reach nearly twice as many customers as before,” said Scarry.

Haystack v2 was a major upgrade released in October of 2010. Since then, Moore & Scarry Advertising has had two minor releases and upgrades to the platform.

The release of Haystack version 2.1 added the VBBM and ABBM features – value based bid management and age based bid management. With Haystack version 2.2, vehicle make and vehicle make/model groupings were unveiled.

For more information on how these features can help you capture more relevant customers, please contact your account executive or a Haystack sales representative.

According to ThinkAuto, a research study put together by Google, Search Engine Marketing is one of the most influential mediums during the auto buying process. On average, auto shoppers are visiting 70% fewer dealerships in person and the majority are buying their vehicle from the very first dealership they do visit. Not because of better sales tactics – but more informed online shopping.

To win the battle of search, a dealer’s inventory must be properly displayed and marketed online. Enter Moore & Scarry Advertising’s Haystack Automotive Search Marketing Platform.

Haystack creates pay-only-for-performance campaigns to market all dealership profit centers and dealership products including dealership, franchise and market for new cars, used and certified pre-owned inventory, top competitors and competitive brands, regional searches, service, parts, collision and more.

“Moore & Scarry has a proven track record of delivering high ROI products to the automotive sector via [search marketing]. As such, Moore & Scarry is a key strategic partner of Google,” commented Ben Wood, Google Head of North American Channel Sales Partnerships.

At the heart of the Haystack is the dynamic inventory-based ad creation engine. Exclusively designed for auto dealers, this feature instantly and automatically interfaces a dealer’s entire vehicle inventory directly into the top search engines to target in-market customers searching specifically for vehicles in stock.

How does it work? By simply using the same inventory feed you send to companies like AutoTrader and Cars.com, Haystack will create custom ads for each and every vehicle in stock. Ads will include detailed information about miles, color, price and more.  Haystack then automatically places these vehicle-specific ads into the top search engines that reach over 90% of internet users. When a shopper searches for a specific car or truck, a dealer’s matching vehicle is prominently displayed.  A unique link on each ad delivers shoppers directly to that unit of inventory on a dealer’s website.  This reduces the number of clicks and time it takes a shopper to find the exact vehicle they’re looking for by more than 60%.

Recently the most powerful online marketing solution the industry has to offer, has become more powerful with newly added features – revolutionary bid management. A mixture of the world’s most notable and effective bid management software and Moore & Scarry’s own proprietary bid management software exclusively designed for automotive dealers. These tools dynamically compare a dealer’s inventory with dozens of resources and adjusts bids to focus advertising dollars on the most attractive vehicles and those most in the most need of turning. Value Based Bid Management (VBBM) compares a vehicle’s actual price to the perceived value of the vehicle and adjust bids to improve the position of attractively-priced vehicles. Age Based Bid Management (ABBM) checks how long you have a vehicle in stock. When a vehicle becomes aged, it increases bids to give this inventory more exposure

The result? Dealers have realized decrease click costs by as much as 24% while focusing advertising dollars on the most highly trafficked units of inventor y and units most in need of turning.

Moore & Scarry has developed customized service levels including Haystack Express that allows dealers access to the most powerful automotive search marketing platform on the planet with, NO monthly fees, NO markup on your spend and the ability to upgrade to more advanced features and dedicated support.

For years, Moore & Scarry’s Haystack automotive search marketing platform has been a closely guarded secret of some of the nation’s largest dealers. Users include numerous Automotive News top 125 dealer groups and publicly traded dealers like the Asbury Automotive Group.

“Haystack is a key ingredient of our overall recipe to increase sales,” stated Alan Krutsch, director of marketing for Walser Automotive Group. In addition to the increase in used vehicle traffic and overall site traffic, the Walser Automotive Group has increased new and used inventory views, map and direction views and email lead submissions. “Moore &Scarry made it very easy to implement Haystack, and they did all the ‘heavy lifting.’  More importantly, they collaborate with us to establish our strategy. It is an outstanding partnership and our results are the proof.”

Find out how Haystack can create more internet leads, reduce advertising costs and offer increased accountability for you. Contact Moore & Scarry Advertising today for an in-depth presentation and a no-cost analysis of your marketing.

For years, website operators have secretly and not-so-secretly bought all-important inbound links. Their objective? Game Google’s search ranking algorithm to secure high search rankings for their sites. And for years, buying links worked like a charm. So well, in fact, that the practice became widespread.

And then the day of reckoning came, when Google decided to down on website operators trying to buy their way to the top. In fact, Google used the opportunity to make very public examples of some very prominent websites.

Enter JC Penney and Overstock.com. Google decided to slash the rankings of both of these major retailers. The story happened to then appear on prominent pages of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Coincidence? I think not!

In both cases, Google acted as the judge, jury and executioner, evaluating the SEO practices of both major corporations and making market shifting decisions without any third party oversight. And if this sounds a little disconcerting, it should be. Once a penalty gets handed down from Google it can take years to reestablish the rankings that were lost due to the search engine’s punitive actions.

While the mainstream media has been covering the actions of Google, few if any have explained the details. For those interested in the story: here’s how it all went down.

JC Penney bought links from thousands of websites around the world. Many foreign sites with little content, specifically created to increase the rankings of the real JC Penney site.

Overstock.com was cited for another reason. The company offered a 10% student discount to colleges that linked their site to Overstock.com. Overstock.com’s vacuum category page ranked #1 for the term “vacuums” and a slew of brand specific terms ahead of the manufacturer’s own websites. This typically grabs the attention of manufacturers and, in order to implement this strategy correctly, requires the assistance of a SEO expert.

Where Overstock.com went wrong with their SEO strategy was their aggressive pursuit of backlinks from academic institutions. Google’s algorithm tends to trust content appearing on domains ending in “.edu” over content from “.com” or “.net”. This process tends to raise red flags because “.edu” domains are regarded as hubs of unique, unbiased information. The chart below lists the top ten links to Overstock.com’s vacuum category page.

You will notice that 8 of the 10 are from academic institutions with consistent anchor text across the board. Simply put, this is not accidental or even close to being considered organic.

As soon as Google perceived the manipulative action, Overstock saw their website rankings plummet from the top of page 1 to the fifth and sixth pages. And their site will go through a long recovery process, and will likely never again achieve such lofty search rankings.

So how can you avoid being punished by Google? Ultimately, SEO is extremely complex and dynamic. Having a reputable company, like Moore & Scarry Advertising, with a strong relationship with Google, who knows SEO best practices as well as what not to do, is imperative. As a Google Adwords Certified Partner and Google Adwords Authorized Reseller, we urge all dealers to consult us before enacting a strategy or hiring a firm that can take your dealership or group down the wrong path.

Don’t let Google make an example out of you!

How successful is the Google Display Network for Car Dealers?
With its impressive reach, the Google Display Network has clocked up a number of successful branding campaigns.

For example, a prominent Toyota dealership in Tampa, executed an innovative campaign targeting a niche audience, resulting in 96,598 impressions, 148 clicks and 0.17% CTR (that’s nearly double the CTR other display networks historically provide!) over a 4 week period.

But how does the Google Display Network compare with Google Search when it comes to increasing site traffic?
Increased overall impressions and visibility of niche market of searchers that may not have viewed or clicked through typical Search ads.

Through the Google Display Network the example dealership spent $400 and received 96,598 impressions and 66 conversions.

Three reasons why the Google Display Network stands out at the moment, and why car dealers should really consider giving it a go as part of your online marketing campaign:

Reason #1: Below The Fold Inventory

In 2009, Google introduced frequency capping to enable advertisers to manage how often their campaign reached the right users. In 2010, they launched a new feature to filter out “below the fold” inventory, to allow brand advertisers to be more selective about where ads appear.

When applying this filter, advertisers have the ability to show ads only in places that appear on the user’s screen when the page loads, without requiring them to scroll down.

Reason #2: Remarketing

Google Remarketing is a new and powerful feature that has allowed advertisers to reach people that have previously visited their website but didn’t convert. After driving traffic to their site with search ads, they can then remarket to those users who have already visited specific pages within their site by showing them ads tailored to the pages they visited throughout the Google Display Network.

Reason #3: Campaign Insights Tool

The Campaign Insights Tool gives reliable data about how a campaign has raised brand awareness or active user interest in a product or service. Results so far prove that this is another clever and useful Google idea.

Ever want to target potential customers with online ads when they’re most likely to notice them? Wish you could show ads to users who’ve previously visited your website as they browse the Web? YOU CAN…and Moore & Scarry Advertising can help!

For a limited time only, sign up for Google Display Network with Moore & Scarry Advertising for $395/month* and get free display ad creation! Moore & Scarry Advertising’s managed services includes…

• Building Compelling Ads
• Tagging Pages on Your Site
• Creating and Managing Key Google Display Campaigns
• Measuring Results
• Optimizing Campaigns

*Price does not include spendable budget. Minimum monthly spendable budget of $250 required.  For more information, visit www.google.com/displaynetwork.

Duncan Scarry was a feature speaker on Wednesday with his enlightening presentation “Digital Marketing Hacks: Ten Digital Marketing Secrets That Will Save You $100,000 Next Year.” Session attendees learned about the best kept digital marketing secrets the industry doesn’t want you to know about and how to save on unnecessary expenses and shift focus to the highest ROI efforts. In case you missed it we recorded the session which you can watch on-demand now, as well as download the presentation for more valuable information.

People who dropped by our booth learned about another highly regarded secret of some of the nation’s largest dealers – the Haystack automotive search marketing platform. As the digital revolution continues shoppers are doing more research and shopping online. Dealers know that if your inventory is not properly presented and marketed on the internet, you will miss out on many opportunities to sell vehicles.

Enter Moore & Scarry Advertising’s Haystack - the most powerful online marketing solution the industry has to offer. The system creates custom pay-only-for-performance ad campaigns specific to your dealership profit centers. With powerful new features such as dynamic inventory-based ad creation engine, value based bid management and age based bid management tools, Haystack can create more internet leads, reduce advertising costs and offer increased accountability for you. Contact us for an in-depth presentation and a no cost analysis of your marketing.

Another great highlight of the 10^th Digital Dealer event was our Tech A Day Giveaway we held daily at our booth. We announced giveaway dates/times on Facebook and Twitter and handed out great items like a Sony Google TV and new MacBook Air. Congratulations to our winners Kevin Galer of Ziegler of Plainwell and Kristin Garini of Carter of Manchester.

We concluded the conference with an exclusive party we co-sponsored with our partner, DealerOn, at the Ice Bar Orlando Wednesday night. Literally the coolest bar in town, it was a hot event with a great turnout and a lot of fun.

We will keep you posted on our plans at the 11^th Digital Dealer event in Las Vagas in October and look forward to seeing you all there. As always, make sure you follow us on Twitter and Facebook for up-to-minute company news and updates.