Can SEO, SEM and Web 2.0 Marketing really help Michigan Chevy Dealerships? In these challenging economic times auto dealerships are going to have to position themselves in a much bigger digital arena. Not only having a web site is important but then comes the responsibility of making it visible for web site searchers out there.
The Detroit Free Press announced earlier this year it would be cutting back on its home delivery. This is going to have serious repercussions throughout the Michigan economy and in particular the automotive dealerships. Since the advertising scene is going to be seriously limited it is up.
After looking into the Automotive scene a bit deeper I was somewhat dumbfounded when I found out that the majority of the sites I reviewed lacked critical data. The “Guts” of these sites were missing and for the most part altogether non-existent. In the most simplest terms there was nothing for the search engine spiders, (bots) to grab a hold of. This meant that the web sites, (despite how pretty they were or how glitzy they were in appearance) lacked visibility.
This puts the auto dealership owners in a very bad situation. When you tack on the additional promotional expenses such as PPC, (pay per click) sponsored links, banner ads, and paid text links the problem becomes very serious.
So now we have two problems. One is that the dealership is invisible through bad online marketing. The second problem is that the dealership cannot reach as many people through traditional media, (newspapers). The dealership is left with basically two choices. They can go through television and radio to try to get more prospects or it can turn to the Internet.
I think the Internet is a better cost alternative. Now there are multiple families of search engines including web video, podcasts, blogs, and social bookmarking which will enable the dealership to get in front of more people at a much lower cost than traditional media advertising.
To be continued.
Posted by Ted Cantu on Feb. 17, 2009 - to learn more about how Web 2.0 can help your auto dealership check out CRM Automotive solututions here...
