Yes, I’m “attacking the clicks” again: Because Clicks Don’t Buy Cars–HUMANS Do!™ The is no competitive advantage to clicks, only to vehicle sales. And clicks just keep on being some asinine and sales-distracting measurement. You have to dig DEEPER to get your competitive advantage. Examples: I just had a dealer client with 4,000 clicks from website visitors who had never visited before–maybe sounds good, right? And the “click vendor” involved
AN UNKNOWN LEAD VENDOR CONVERSATION THAT MAY HAVE OCCURRED TWO DECADES OR SO AGO (or last week) IN THE CAR BUSINESS . . . Mike: “Hey, Jimmy, I gotta’ GREAT idea to make crazy money on the few real leads we have for dealers while charging them even more money. Before we starve.” Jimmy: “I’m sure it’s crazy, Mike, but shoot! I’m hungry.” Mike: “You know we’re trying to sell
Sales “match-back” reports, without solid web traffic to support them, are definitely bogus. Essentially, sales “match-back” ALONE WITHOUT ACCOUNTABILITY CHECKS are just fake “math-back”. How? Using a non-vendor-specific hypothetical example (thank my lawyer for that phrasing) of a disreputable email vendor’s program that emails something like 125-150k “in-market” shoppers. The sales match-back report shows 22 sales…and the story is that the emails “touched” these sales, and even if you only
OEM “co-op” digital advertising programs can far too often be a useless “Participation Trophy” that isn’t “free” because the OEM reimburses you–No: YOU Still Pay The Bill For Them by losing competitive sales. Especially in geos with lots of stores from the same OEMs, digital co-op programs can too easily render NO or little useful competitive advantage. Or even drag you backwards in sales. What?? Yes. Lemme ‘splain: If you are one
It’s far too easy for a digital advertising service or agency to send traffic to your website, wash their hands of the situation for sales after that, and hand you their invoice. Or, they also give you some “custom” reporting that shows how great they are—and how much YOU suck—and hand you their invoice. What happens when you question that invoice? Good things, always, but sometimes surprising things, too. We had
For a first sense of this hard truth, consider your dealership’s website: Did you know that your website vendor, especially your OEM-approved website vendor (and other vendors), most likely allows tracking “pixels” (scripting) from 3rd party data companies? That track your visitors? “So what?” you think: “What can they do with an IP address?” A lot, it turns out. If you’ve been watching the news about Facebook’s data issues, it
About fake PPC and SEO traffic. YES, it happens. I’m not talking about fake clicks on ads to reap PPC payment, I’m talking about agencies who provide false clicks to get paid for PPC and SEO services that they DO NOT REALLY DO. Read on, but overall, if you don’t do these services in house, then you must engage and monitor/hold accountable REPUTABLE PPC and SEO companies. That’s your best
First, let’s just look at the size of the problem for the marketplace, then examine the situation for dealers. Online Ad fraud will cost companies an estimated $16 billion this year. Dealerships are not exempt from this problem. For dealerships, click fraud via click robots (called “bots”) can be the first thing to identify: Does your traffic look and shop like humans, or does it appear to provide fake click