Keep in mind that ADF doesn’t have all of the fields that we would like, but it is what we have at the moment.

ADFVersion1

You may have noticed an update email last weekend for our blog & training site, the Selling Cars Online Academy. We added over 40 WordPress tutorial videos and made it easier to navigate at the same time.

If you are already a Selling Cars Online Academy member make sure to log in so you can view the training content. If you would like to become a member and get access to all the WordPress videos click here.

Another benefit of the new site is that it is running on a new Genesis child theme and uses a responsive layout. This means that it will work on all “smart” devices; iOS, Android etc.

As always if you have any requests for tutorials let us know.

The easiest way to start is to determine the conversion process for your website. You’re spending money on marketing to get people to come to your site, but what is it that you want them to do there? From a business standpoint, you should be aiming to get users to “convert” by either calling the dealership or filling out a vehicle inquiry form. But how do you track that? Although there are methods to track phone calls down to the keyword level, this post will focus on tracking those users that filled out a vehicle inquiry form on your dealership website.

Goals

Google Analytics provides an easy method for tracking the total number of conversions on your site every month called Goals. First and foremost, you’ll need to make sure that once your users fill out a lead form that they are taken to a unique “thank you” page that cannot be accessed anywhere else on the site. This is how Google Analytics measures conversions.

Once you have that set up, head over to the Analytics Settings page to start configuring your goals. If you have multiple profiles, choose the correct profile for this goal set and click “Edit.”

Settings

Once you’re on the Profile Settings page, make your way down to the Goals section. You’re allowed up to 20 conversion goals for each profile in your Analytics account, but we’ll start with the basic ones here. Since you don’t have any goals set up yet, start with Goal Set 1 by clicking “Add Goal.” I have my vehicle inquiry goal configured like so:

Notice the choices for goal type here, but as I said before, we set this goal up to be a URL destination goal. When a user gets to your “thank you” page (in my case, the vehicle confirmation page), Google Analytics tracks a conversion. I set the match type to “Head Match” to allow for any query string parameters (/vehicle-confirmation/?make=buick&model=lucerne) in case we decide to show the user a more personalized thank you message relating to their vehicle of interest, but the goal will work just fine without them.

Goal Values

As shown in the screenshot, goal values are optional. These are typically used for ecommerce sites that know the direct value of each conversion, but can also be applicable to car dealerships if you know the value of an Internet lead to your organization. Try your best to avoid using arbitrary numbers though, they won’t serve much purpose for measuring results.

Funnels

For more complicated conversion processes, Google Analytics has a section to create funnels. Think of an ecommerce site that you’ve purchased something from in the past — remember all of the pages you had to go through to checkout and receive a confirmation for your order? That’s where funnels really come in handy. They’re a way to figure out where users drop out of your conversion process so that you can optimize pages for higher conversion rates. On dealership websites though, users typically don’t have to jump through too many hoops to convert, so you’re fine leaving the funnels section blank.

Wrap Up

Once you save your goal, it’s a waiting game. Google Analytics isn’t retroactive so the goals that you created for this profile will only apply to future conversions. You can view your conversion data directly in your Google Analytics reports under the Goal section — you’ll just have to give it a few days or so to really gain some actionable insight.

Does Social Networking Sell?

Whenever the discussion of Social Networking comes up with car dealers it always has the same theme. Everyone knows that they should be doing it but they want to know if will it generate sales?

I would like to suggest that as car dealers and salespeople you stop worrying about what will create sales. In other words there is no one thing that can be tied to the final sale. Look at advertising sourcing; can you really tie one media source to the final sale? If a buyer sees your tv ad 20 times and hears your radio ads 15 times over the course of a year and then goes to your website via a google search that isn’t specific to your dealership, calls your dealership and buys a car what is the true lead source?

Remember the sales training basic of Always Be Selling where everything you do has an impact on the sale. The time you spend with product knowledge, or honing your sales skills, or remembering the three foot rule while standing in line at the grocery store. Social sites are a new venue for the three foot rule that allow you to have conversations from anywhere you are. Conversations That can be overheard by hundreds or thousands of people at once.

Just about every car dealership has at least one superstar salesperson who writes personalized letters to his/her client base (without a crm). They see people they know AND take the time to greet them everyday.

Successful Social Networking is about being that person online. Strike up conversations on twitter and Facebook, share your favorite resteraunt on foursquare. Give subtle reminders of what you do and how you can help. This way when someone in your circle is discussing cars your name or dealership will come up. It is about word of mouth and relationships that you can build online.

The sales will come so stop asking if being social sales cars, people sale cars, so be a person online.

Addition, post DSES: One thing that was pointed out very clearly by most of the speakers is that you CAN sell in social networks. I think it is important to not be ashamed that you have a product to sell. As a matter of fact you should be proud of it. Besides, the product you are really selling is yourself.

P.S. if you missed the Driving Sales Executive Summit here is a link to a video that we presented for the Driving Sales Product Innovation Cup

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I am sitting at the airport in Las Vegas waiting for my plain to head back to Reno after the Driving Sales Executive Summit thinking of the take aways from the week. First of all, what a great conference with outstanding speakers and a great message.

For me the biggest take away was that the message that has been being said over and over by a few vendors and a few dealers seems to be getting louder. The message of; start building relationships online like it was the showroom in 1950. If you sincerely take care of your customers as if they were life long friends instead of a paycheck the word will spread and your “paycheck” will be just fine. Gary Vaynerchuk powered this message home with such passion that I hope the dealers both in the room and back at the dealerships heard it loud and clear.

If you have been sitting on the sidelines trying not to be the guy or gal in the public eye, STOP IT! I don’t care if you are a salesperson or the owner of a store, if you have any desire to be better than average you HAVE TO get yourself out there. If you still are thinking that isn’t true you are going to have a rude awakening when you wake up one morning and realize that your closest competitor is six months or a year a ahead of you. You will be in a position of playing catch up that you aren’t going to like. Let’s face it 2nd in this game is as good as page 2 on the Google Search page, you might as well not even be there.

WordPress is known for being a great website platform for SEO. It is also known for having a lot of really cool plugins. In the video we will take a look at WordPress SEO by Yoast which is a great plugin that provides user input for the SEO elements on your pages or posts.

Wordtracker Firefox addon

The video also will demonstrate how to use the Wordtracker Firefox add-on. Although there is some redundancy with this and the Yoast plugin it is another great tool for SEO.

The following screen shot displays the basic elements that you should have on a web page for SEO. Once you have these basic elements covered then you can start adding image tags videos and other content.

In this video we will cover how to use an SEO plugin for WordPress and a great SEO add-on for Firefox.

So I just got off the phone with a website developer, and as usual we were talking shop.  Showing each other the cool stuff we have seen etc.  He pointed me to a WordPress theme that I hadn’t seen before called Black Label. It is available for sale on Themeforest.net for $30.00 and is really cool. The entire home page opens up as a video and upon completion transitions into a slide show.  Make sure that you check out the demo on www.themeforest.net.

Black Label WordPress Theme.