Successful dealers adjust their marketing strategy to be where the majority of the customers are: Internet search engines. Customers go to Google and Yahoo to find their next vehicle instead of print, TV, or radio. To attract these shoppers, successful dealers appear on top of the search results for all the popular search phrases in their market.

Ironically, many dealers are unaware that third-party lead providers use this strategy to acquire and re-sell leads. These are leads that a dealer could potentially generate him or herself if he or she had a search engine marketing strategy. Worse yet is that third- party leads are sometimes sold to more than one dealer, which dramatically reduces closing ratio and average gross while increasing cost per sale.

Successful dealers generate their own leads by going directly to the customer. The best dealers in the country create their own regional buying service by marketing their site through search engines and multi-media email campaigns so they can generate more profitable sales at a much lower cost.

Two types of search engine marketing:

One is free and the other costs. To appear on top of search results in your market for free you need the right Website with the right optimization so search engines find it, give it a high ranking and put your dealership ahead of your competition. This is a science that requires years of experience and automotive search engine know-how. To appear on top of the sponsored search results you need to have the right pay per click strategy.

5 Steps:

1. Know the most popular search phrases in your market.
2. Design the right ad copy so when customers see your link they click on it.
3. Bid the right amount on the right position for the each phrase.
4. Make daily adjustments to your bids to ensure you outperform your competition while paying as little as possible to get the most leads.
5. Measure everything including your clicks, conversion, leads, closing ratio, average gross, and cost per sale.

Search Engine marketing allows you to reach more buyers in your market for a fraction of the cost of buying leads and for much less than traditional advertising. The leads are not sold to other dealers so the closing ratio and average gross are higher than leads you and other dealers buy from third parties. Finally, you only pay for positive results, making it the most measurable marketing medium in the history of advertising. The question is not if search engine marketing is effective-the question is how to take advantage of this opportunity.