Please let me know if you have any good ideas for micro-sites in the comments, and of course don’t hesitate to ask your questions.

If you see something like this in your email DON’T click on anything, just delete it. If you want to make sure that you aren’t missing friend request just go directly to FB.

When it comes to marketing online, it is pretty much a given that you want to focus on pull marketing. This is when your potential clients follow you on Twitter, Facebook, etc., or even give you their email in order to get your updates regarding products and services.

Even though Facebook business pages have changed to work with the new timeline, tabs can still be a big part of your online marketing strategy.

Give your clients a reason to like you on Facebook

On just about every site we have built in the last few years dealers have requested a “Like Us On Facebook” link on their home page, header or footer. For the most part these “Like” buttons get very few clicks when just randomly added. You may be familiar with Fan Gates or Reveal Tabs in Facebook; this is where you can add content to a tab that can’t be seen unless the user is logged in and “Likes” your page.

Another use case for WordPress

Watch the video below to see just how easy it is to create your own Fan Gate and/or custom tab(s) content with WordPress.

There has been a lot of buzz in the website world regarding responsive layout over the last year or so, and really gaining steam in the last 6 months.  Being heavily involved with WordPress and continually researching themes and plugins as they are introduced I have witnessed a huge demand for responsive WordPress themes.

So what is responsive layout?

In a nut shell responsive layout is a way to design websites so that they are optimized for all portal sizes; desktop, tablet, mobile and everything in-between.  This can be as simple as scaling everything (images, text, etc.) down for a mobile site or even displaying completely different content based on device.

Moving forward with responsive

With proper consideration of your content and users, responsive design promises to be the future of web design. Now you can add content to one website to have it available on any device. Of course there is still some maturing that needs to happen before this technology can be effectively used in all industries, but we aren’t that far off.

You can buy the plugin here: http://wpcoupongenerator.com/

One thing that always seems to happen after a great conference is I get motivated to do something bigger than the norm. I think it would be safe to say that the Driving Sales Executive Summit created some serious motivation for everyone that was there. The event that the DrivingSales team put together was top notch and the speakers still have me motivated even 4 months later.

Taking projects off the shelf

We all have projects that we are working on all the time. All too often the really important ones get shelved or slowed for the squeaky wheels that roll in front of us. Well, just like everyone I have a few of those projects that have been in the works for some time. One in particular that is very important to me is a highbred of an undertaking started about 5 years ago right before the economy took a dive. Needless to say it wasn’t successful at the time.

The original project was for regional automotive sites that were marketed by radio stations. We called it Regional Autos and had several markets like; Autos In Southern Maine and Autos In Iowa

After not being a big hit the first time around I spent a lot of time evaluating how the formula could be “fixed”. One reason for the failure of course is that radio takes a great deal of time for branding a web address all by itself. More than this though, consumers need to have a good reason to submit a lead on a site other than a dealer’s. Let’s face it, the “big” 3rd party sites have built a name and trust over time and they even have a tough time generating email leads. So to make the regional concept work there had to be a reason for potential car buyers to choose our sites over any others.

Creating a good reason to buy a car online

Almost two years ago my wife pointed out a guy on Facebook by the name of Brian Williams. He was going barefoot in Reno everywhere he went to raise money and documenting it online. The fund raising was to pay for his travel expenses to Kenya where he was going to deliver shoes to orphans. In addition to keeping tabs on his barefoot adventure and contributing a little to the cause, I read his blog and watched some of his videos. The shoes all came from middle school and high school students. See video below.

It turns out that Brian has a plan, and a good one at that. Through his non-profit organization called Think Kindness he teaches kids how to give back.  He travels around the country and speaks at school assemblies, motivating the students to raise awareness and give back to their communities and to the world. He then teaches them how to organize committees to achieve some pretty lofty goals. Some schools have raised over 12,000 pairs of shoes in a two week period.  By the way the art of Thinking Kindness is not just for kids .

I got to thinking what a great fit this would be for the car industry. Car dealers have been giving back to their communities from the beginning of time, but never seem to get the credit where it is due. This is because if you raise your hand and tell everyone what you did, it looses it’s sincerity (’cause your a car guy). I am not suggesting that your philanthropy should be put on a billboard as it is of course good to give even when nobody knows about it. It’s just that I also believe in win win, and if you give to a worthy cause and that cause has the ability to tell the world then you both win.

Also by championing a cause like Think Kindness you are letting the social networking world know that there is more to your dealership than just selling cars. Besides, it’s a great story to tell on your Facebook page and in your Twitter stream.

So back to my little project

What if we built the regional sites again with an emphasis on Think Kindness and local communities? e.g. person submits a lead form, buys a car and $100.00 goes to Think Kindness. Then once a year (or more) Think Kindness creates challenges for the local schools to give back to their communities and the World at large. This is as win win win as it gets; dealer sales cars, kids learn to give back (and teach us old folk to do the same). Think Kindness generates money to help local communities and people around the World etc., etc. etc.

This Years Global Act of Kindness

The last few years have been dedicated to raising shoes, but this year the focus is shifting to water. There are people all over the World that don’t have clean drinking water and Think Kindness is working to make a difference by raising money for life straws. If you are interested in getting more information on this please go to the Think Kindness site at http://thinkkindness.org. You can also see the video documentary of Think Kindness’ first trip to Kenya to give away shoes which is very inspiring.

Currently all the dealerships on Autos In Reno have committed to donating $100.00 for each sold used car in Reno and each new car in Reno so we are on our way.  By the way, we have about 20 sites around the country that have been up for over 5 years and are ready to start creating Kindness. If you are interested, please contact us on DealerTrend.com.

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.