Common Internet Marketing Questions from Clients (Part 1)

May 06, 2011 by Erin O'Brien

As a Regional Sales Manager at L2T Media, Erin O’Brien is used to explaining online marketing to automotive dealerships and other L2T clients. In this ongoing feature, Erin will share some frequently asked automotive seo questions, and offer her take on the issues.

How do I determine the best overall online strategy for my dealership?

Today’s dealers have to deal with something very different than they did even 10 years ago. It used to be “own the radio” or “own the television” for dealers in their respective markets.  Now things have shifted and they have to find a healthy media balance. 

I advise my clients to think of all of their media as a percentage of where people find their information.  Nowadays, more people are finding their information through friends via social media and through searches on Google, Bing and Yahoo.

I explain that even though we know this, some clients are apprehensive about this change and have yet to shift their advertising dollars. I tell them to visualize throwing their dollars into the appropriate buckets. Anyone recall Bozo Buckets?  OK, back to the task at hand. 

In case you weren’t already having clown nightmares.

It’s important to put digital media on the same level as traditional media, and then to toss your advertising dollars into the correct buckets.  If 45% of your audience gets their information from online mediums, put the appropriate dollars in that bucket.  Why put 35% of your dollars into radio when only 11% of your buyers listen? 

Our website provider is already doing SEO for us, so why would I pay L2T to do the same thing?

Actually, this comes up so often because the client is right.  Oh, and they are wrong too.  Search Engine Optimization shouldn’t be abbreviated to SEO in my opinion because it is so much bigger than a 3-letter acronym. 

I make it a point to share with my clients that if they want to know about SEO (sorry, the acronym is quicker to write), then they will need to be available for the next 3 days non-stop.  And then they will need to attend seminars, workshops, and training to stay current on the latest and greatest regarding SEO.

Why the clients are right

Most website providers do automate the generation of page titles and meta descriptions, and occasionally provide written onsite content.  This is all very well and good, but it’s just basic web development now.

Six years ago, a web developer doing those things would have been a genius, but now these are basic components of the build. So typically, your website providers in this industry will do these very simple automatic page elements and then charge a monthly fee called SEO. 

Why the clients are wrong

SEO tactics that help your site show up more and more naturally are tactics that are done off-site.  If you are located in San Mateo, CA, and someone searches for “Toyota Highlander San Mateo, CA” that area Toyota dealer would be the most relevant search result and therefore wouldn’t need to spend much time doing SEO tactics for that location. 

However, once a user searches for “Toyota Highlander San Francisco, CA” that same dealer wouldn’t show up naturally because there isn’t anything that would make them relevant in the search engines’ eyes. 

That is where off-site tactics come in.  L2T prides itself on staying current on the most influential areas of opportunities when it comes to strategic SEO link building. 

I end with this…

Let the website providers do what they do best…create websites. 

Let L2T do what we do best…drive more traffic to your site using the most up-to-date tactics to get your site showing up naturally for searches you wouldn’t have otherwise.

In part two of Erin’s take on common online marketing questions, she’ll look at combating negative online reviews and appropriate bounce rates for your website. Stay tuned!