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| So, What's A MicroSite? (continued) |
| SUPERIOR DEALER SOLUTIONSsm |
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Copyright © 2008 Automotive Dealers Network. All rights reserved.
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By Ralph Paglia
Director – Digital Marketing / ADP Dealer Services
email: RPaglia@AutomotiveDealersNetwork.com
Director – Digital Marketing / ADP Dealer Services
email: RPaglia@AutomotiveDealersNetwork.com
Ralph has held positions such as OEM Partnership
Executive for Reynolds and Reynolds, CRM/eBusiness
Director, New Car Sales Manager, Used Car Manager,
F&I Director, General Sales Manager and General
Manager. He led the development and design of
nationally implemented CRM and eBusiness programs
for Ford, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota and other car
companies. He also designed Ford’s BDC program
Mercedes-Benz StarLeads CRM system and the
Mercedes-Benz BDC.
Executive for Reynolds and Reynolds, CRM/eBusiness
Director, New Car Sales Manager, Used Car Manager,
F&I Director, General Sales Manager and General
Manager. He led the development and design of
nationally implemented CRM and eBusiness programs
for Ford, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota and other car
companies. He also designed Ford’s BDC program
Mercedes-Benz StarLeads CRM system and the
Mercedes-Benz BDC.
| PART 3 |
microsites? What are the most common and useful metrics? As I mentioned in the last section, microsites should be evaluated based on several Key Performance Indicators (KPI), a few examples of these are: • Lead Forms Submitted + Phone Calls / Unique Visitors = Conversion Rate • Unique Visitors Referred to Primary Sites / Microsite Visitors = Referral Rate • Organic Unique Visitors / Total Unique Visitors = Organic Penetration Be sure to display (big and bold) a unique toll free AdTracker phone number on your microsites to track incoming calls generated, and make sure your microsite supplier embeds site visitor tracking software such as Omniture’s SiteCatalyst into the site. One of the most useful reports is the Referring Domains reports which show how many leads were submitted by the URL used to link an advertisement to the microsite. I use multiple URL’s for each microsite and then monitor each ad group by using distinct URL’s as the pointing web address that then shows up in the Omniture reporting. Whether it is a microsite, any other site or simply an online advertising campaign to deep links within your primary web site, here’s the metrics I find most useful:
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promotions? Are there circumstances in which LP/MS might not be an appropriate solution? Microsites can be used for current promotions and then left intact for long term use in generating organic traffic and leads after the current month’s ad campaign is finished. Sometimes keeping them updated can be a chore, but what isn’t? I have used them for both long and short term campaigns and objectives, as well as modified short term campaign microsites to be relevant after the campaign is over. Usually the monthly hosting fees are low relevant to the set up costs, so why not let your microsites collect organically generated traffic and produce leads as an ongoing yield from their hosting fees? As for when they are or are not appropriate… Plenty of dealers look at other dealer advertisements in every media channel and criticize or applaud those ads. Microsites and their cheaper cousins (landing pages) are the same way. I could show you some truly tacky looking microsites that generate plenty of leads and sales for their dealer, but which other dealers will say “that’s terrible, he shouldn’t be allowed to do that” or “I would never use something that looks that hideous”… Beauty is in the eye of the beholder when it comes to microsites and landing pages. The metrics tend to show whether they should or should not have been used. Keep in mind that microsites are never appropriate without the dealer’s commitment to invest money in marketing and promoting them. Individual results may vary, and runaway successes like www.2008ChevyCamaro.com are only available to those dealers who try multiple microsites. Anyone who tells you that microsites are a “sure thing” or “guaranteed to produce sales” or that they can duplicate the success of some of these microsites on an “at will” basis is either lying or does not have any experience doing it. Microsites are a form of communication and depend upon online advertising and search engines for their success… This means they must be conceived, gestated, born and raised. At the end of the day, some will work better than others. Just remember, nothing is better than rich and relevant content that people are looking for and which search engines can index… Especially when served up free from the clutter and distractions of other subjects, products and services. And THAT is what creates the magic of microsites! |
investment is required, and what does it cost to keep them up and running? Different microsite suppliers charge different fees. At ADP Digital Marketing we have not yet established our microsite pricing matrix, but they will be completed by the time this article is published. We are still assessing the typical costs involved. Contact us for rates. I have personally used some smaller independent microsite designers that charged $750 per site as a one time set up fee and $75 per month to host them. And, I have seen some of the large enterprise dealer groups purchase microsites from ADP for as little as $295 a month per site with a $595 set up fee. It is safe to say that costs are reasonable for the sites themselves, but it is usually the advertising campaigns are where the real money is spent. As for staff and overhead, well… Tina Pratt, the GSM at People’s Chevrolet in Chula Vista builds her own microsites and uses the store’s digital advertising budget for pure advertising buys, which I taught her to do herself and she does a heck of a job for that store. I have recently been hired on a consulting basis to compete with her and she wins the search engine placement battle quite frequently. But, that is when the teacher shows the student how it’s done and I usually come right back at her with an online ad campaign for Courtesy Chevrolet in San Diego that kicks her butt, until we run out of budget. Ahhh, the car business… You gotta love the competitiveness of it all! |
How about some Case studies; one or two brief examples (with details) where LP/MS made a difference. What was done, and what were the results? There are so many examples of microsites being used to make a difference in a store’s success that it is difficult to pick one in particular, but let’s take a look at the www.PHXfinance.com microsite I designed for Courtesy Chevrolet in Phoenix. After you look at this very basic, and not so elegant special finance site, take a look at the advertisement we placed in over 60 bus shelters around Phoenix in August 2006, which is shown below: Imagine sitting in a bus shelter, in 100+ degree temperatures and staring at that life sized poster twice a day, five or six days a week… To say it generated a few phone calls and visits to the microsite is an understatement. The bus shelter ads cost about $5,500 per month, and was used as part of the budget previously spent with BarNone for special finance leads. Combined with the online advertising, which was $4,500 per month, we set up a $10,000 a month “eFinance Department” total advertising budget. The PHXfinance.com microsite was, and remains able to receive organic ranking in a highly competitive subject matter area and appears as a first page search engine query result, for “phoenix auto finance” as shown below: Phoenix Finance, Do you have Bad Credit and want a Used Car? at ... Courtesy is the Phoenix Valley’s only car dealer that has been nationally recognized for their leadership in the area of credit repair by hiring and ... www.phxfinance.com/ - 10k - Cached - Similar pages The astute reader will notice the bus shelters display the URL: www.PHXfinance.com whereas some of the organic search results list PhoenixAutoFinance.com. PhoenixAutoFinance.com was used for the original root domain URL, which was indexed by search engines, and PHXfinance.com was used as a special, shorter and easier to remember URL for specific ad campaigns where we wanted people to go directly to the advertised URL. This allowed us to evaluate the effectiveness of the ad campaigns by looking at the referring domain reports for the microsite. The Courtesy Chevrolet eFinance team really hit its stride in September 2006 when they sold 57 cars. When we examine the metrics around the use of the eFinance microsites, here is what the results were:
nature of the promotion with more phone calls generated than electronic leads. However, once we started counting up all the expenses paid in the form of lender fees, we realized that generating special finance leads online is a lot cheaper than getting the deals bought! Our process for handling the incoming phone calls was to get callers to either schedule an appointment to come in right away, or if they wanted to know for sure whether they were pre-approved, we asked them to complete a credit application, such as the one at www. SDCreditApproval.com which is a completely different dynamic online credit application. We set up SDCreditApproval.com to quickly access a deep link connected to an easily remembered URL. The talking credit application is provided by DealerCentric and hosted within a BZ Results web site. So, yes the microsite made a difference in this case study, but it was used in conjunction with online and offline advertising, combined with a very talented crew of automotive professionals made up of Ron Daly, Scott Daly and Barbara Mason. In the interest of proper disclosure, I will also report that by January 2007 we completely reconfigured the eFinance Team because of the high bank fees and the need to properly compensate some of the most talented car people I have ever had the privilege of working with.
another tool that savvy dealers can use to get an unfair competitive advantage… Combined with the right people, lead management processes and technology, the use of microsites is one of many digital marketing tactics that separate some of today’s most successful dealers from those that would like to get there. |
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about how microsites are used, what they were, where to get them and how much was the right price… I am going to outline a few of the questions and share my opinions as to the right answers. The following questions and my answers to them have been set up within the context of a “how to” and “why” perspective for use in developing a dealership’s digital marketing strategy and ongoing digital advertising campaigns. |
