Welcome to the first Wednesday Workshop video of 2017! NADA is coming soon – we’ll all be down in New Orleans in just a few short weeks… This week’s video walks you through all of our awesome plans so you’ll be sure to catch everything!
2016 is drawing to a close, and we just had our last Topgolf event for this year in Scottsdale, AZ. If you didn’t get the memo, it happened last Wednesday, December 7, and it featured the top minds from DealerOn, Google, and ELEAD1ONE.
By this point, of course, word about DealerOn’s Event Series had spread among the automotive world, so dealers from all around the Arizona-New Mexico-SoCal area came hungry for knowledge. And they weren’t disappointed.
Kevin Lao from Google started things off strong with a presentation over Automotive Trends & Insights. Google has several Retail Strategists in different verticals, and they’re responsible for teaching these industries how to succeed with the world’s most popular search engine. Kevin is one of the best and brightest in the automotive vertical, and he certainly proved it at Topgolf. He laid out the digital path for an average car buyer, pointing out that 19 of the 24 touchpoints in the buyer’s path are digital.
He then highlighted which automotive search terms are seeing the most growth. Pencils were scribbling and keyboards were clacking as folks took advantage of the free knowledge Kevin was dishing out.
After closing out his session by addressing how auto dealers can elevate their online presence, Kevin handed things over to Shaun, who gave another one of his killer SEM presentations. If you’ve never heard Shaun talk about optimizing paid search, then you’re missing out. His presentation covered how to use your ad budget wisely, how to use Google Message Extensions to their fullest potential, and why having a human touch is almost always better than using automated ad services.
Most importantly, Shaun taught us all about the difference between desktop and mobile PPC ads, and how to best reach people looking for a new car.
Bill Wittenmyer from ELEAD1ONE was up next, and he gave a powerful talk about getting the most out of your CRM software & provider. Bill’s a no-nonsense kind of guy, and his business acumen is apparent in the way he talks about ELEAD1ONE’s success over the years. You don’t become one of the highest-rated CRMs in auto by following other companies. Bill is a trendsetter, through and through.
Greg Gifford, DealerOn’s Director of Search and Social, and Jeff Clark, DealerOn’s Chief Sales Officer, both presented after a delicious fajita lunch, catered by Topgolf’s amazing staff.
But of course, Greg talked about his favorite subject: local SEO. From on-page signals to off-page signals, all the way to garnering positive reviews for your dealership, Greg’s knowledge in the SEO arena is second to none. In fact, we like to joke that Greg’s forgotten more about SEO than most of us will ever learn. During his session, he shared helpful tips on optimizing website content and link building for dealerships looking to improve their rankings for searches in their local city.
Jeff Clark closed out the day with an incredible talk over marketing your dealership’s fixed ops in a mobile-first world. The fact of the matter is that fixed ops is a $300 billion industry, but most dealerships are outpaced by national service centers. And it’s because they’re not marketing like they should be! Jeff dealt some serious knowledge over Google AdWords campaigns, which everyone found extremely helpful.
Before we called it a day and spent some time eating & golfing, Jeff showed us how to leverage services like Google Customer Match and Facebook Custom Audience to maximize marketing efforts.
We’d call that a good day, wouldn’t you?
In 2017, we’ll be kicking off a whole new set of Topgolf events, so stay tuned for the first one in the early Spring season! Next on the DealerOn calender will be the NADA Expo & Conference in New Orleans, January 26-29. It’s the 100th anniversary of NADA, so you know it will be a good time.
See you there!
If you’d like to watch the companion video – Watch Martha here
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What did you do last week? Well, we were at the DrivingSales Executive Summit for a few days of serious learning. While the event included lots of speakers, we had the privilege of sending The Beard (Greg Gifford) and The Hair (Shaun Raines) to Las Vegas to do a dual-panel presentation. We saw familiar faces there, like Jessie Hochhalter of Google and Brent Wees of NextUp, and even met a few new folks.
The event was packed with lots of knowledge about digital marketing and automotive sales, and it got pretty high-tech when Ben Anderson from AutoMotion talked about RFID technology and geofencing. We’ve enjoyed a long relationship with DrivingSales, so it was great to have DealerOn make an impression with such Greg and Shaun.
They took the stage by storm, of course, and did a series of questions answers (game show style!) over SEO and SEM. Shaun brought everyone up to speed with what’s happening in the Google AdWords world, and he even talked a little bit on using your digital ad spend wisely and the pros & cons of using SKAG (Single Keyword Ad Groups). Everyone was duly impressed.
Greg, never one to disappoint, peppered his SEO Q&A’s with a ton of tips & tricks on local SEO. While traditional SEO is still important, you’ve gotta have strong local SEO signals, or your dealership isn’t going to be relevant in local searches. He’s talked about this before, of course.
He also made sure everyone was up to date on the recent Penguin and Possum updates that Google threw at the world only weeks ago. If you want to brush up on some of that, watch this clever little video.
Arguably, one of the main events of DSES was, without a doubt, the “Joe and Shaun Karaokethon” hosted by DealerOn! It happened on Monday night, Oct. 24, at Dino’s in Las Vegas. Joe Webb of DealerKnows and Shaun Raines have been serenading the auto industry with their singing skills for the past several years. But recently, DealerOn has gotten in on the action by sponsoring this night of fun, and this year’s Karaokethon was no disappointment.
Joe and Shaun rocked faces off and those brave enough took the mic and tried their hand at matching the likes of Joan Jett and Freddie Mercury. Seriously, we can’t wait to do this again.
If anyone else has some DSES stories they’d like to share, then let us know. And if you think Joe or Shaun got the lyrics wrong to your favorite song, well, maybe they’ll do better next time.
To watch the slides from Shaun & Greg’s presentation at DSES, click here.
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