You can see it in the data when you do your research. You hear it at conferences you attend. You see when you watch peoples’ presentations. You see it with those around you, and most likely you see it in your own behavior as it too is shifting towards mobile.

This natural evolution of how we access the Internet and communicate has been prophesied in sci-fi stories for decades. The “future” that we have always anticipated really is here and it is drastically affecting each of us in how we live, shop, share, and conduct business.

Evidence of this trend was revealed this Fall during conference season when Dataium co-founder Jason Ezell shared slide #20 of his presentation deck called “Betting on Your Future Business Using Predictive Analysis”. In this presentation you see that the trend towards mobile began around April 2011 and that it shows no sign of leveling off or declining. Logically, why would it?

There is also evidence of this in the data that was accumulated by Shopper Sciences while performing the now infamous Google ZMOT study. In their research, mobile use, while not yet a leading stimulus or communication source for auto shopping is clearly a growing trend that experts do not disagree is on track to be so by the end of 2012.

The significance of this information was supported at this year’s JD Power Automotive Internet Roundtable (#JDPAIRT) where Tier I organizations participated in numerous sessions and breakouts on the subject, and industry vendors are scrambling to respond to this quickly growing need.

The question for me isn’t whether mobile will be embraced by auto dealers, but how will it be embraced and will it be implemented effectively.

Early on, that is the past couple of years, the most effective way for dealers to utilize mobile marketing was by sending coupon and specials alerts via SMS. But now, people are being inundated with specials and savings on their mobile phone, so it is likely that the game will have to change.

Some companies, like AutoMotion TV for instance, are banking on people embracing the dealership experience by installing a mobile app for the dealership. I personally am skeptical that this use of technology will be accepted by people, but the mobile app provider has proven success with auto dealerships that you can read about on their site.

The philosophy behind AutoMotion TV’s dealer apps is to make them part of the shopping experience and to communicate with them via push messaging. Most mobile apps I have seen offered by automotive website providers fall short on the vehicle and inventory front, with limited or minimal ability to experience virtual vehicle tours or browse inventory with rich media. This is one are where AutoMotion TV stands out.

More importantly is AutoMotion TV’s push messaging, which is their ability to send messages to users via SMS that have their dealer apps installed. The question is, what is the right information to push? Is it coupons and special offers? Is it service reminders? Or maybe it’s more engaging content such as questions, surveys, polls, or even contests?

These are all important things to consider. There is no doubt you want to have a mobile strategy. In my opinion I would be less concerned with what and how you do it and more concerned with just doing it. From this you will find what works best for you, your team, and most importantly for your customers.

I don’t know how much buzz this is getting but I do think it is an exciting time for the automotive marketing business. Dealer.com, or DDC, develops fine auto dealer marketing software and the new SRM tool addresses an important undeveloped territory for car dealers – Content Syndication.

What is Content Syndication?

Content syndication is not a new practice. It has been going on in print media and in radio for more than 150 yeas with the Associated Press. It is the practice of re-distributing content across numerous destinations. In terms of the new SRM software by Dealer.com, the content syndication features are meant for the web, thus blogs and social media sites.

Is Content Syndication Good for Car Dealers?

Content syndication is a tricky beast for car dealers. From 2007-2009, we implemented aggressive content syndication initiatives with our dealer blogs using a practice called RSS Marketing. This was effective for SEO purposes by promoting a dealership’s website, but it did nothing to foster community and engagement on on the blog itself.

As social media evolved, search engines began looking for conversations to serve up in the SERPs, and that form of RSS marketing grew less effective for SEO, to the point where we shifted gears towards other types of content, content that builds on the dealership-customer relationship as opposed to products and services. Doing this has made it possible for us to build long-term engagement with dealership customers by collecting permission-based email or mobile opt-in subscribers. The SEO benefits however are less impacting, but still there.

What Can Dealers do with Content Syndication?

If you want the SEO benefits of content syndication, you have some options. To name a couple there is the Automotive Advertising Network (AAN), which generates thousands of syndicated pages of commodity-based content in a way that produces an impacting SEO benefit for car dealer websites. This network can be good for generating website traffic and leads.

There also is AutoConverse.com, which permits dealers and marketers to create unlimited free SEO micro sites to promote products and services. This system is good for connecting with in-market buyers and loyal customers, engaging people and managing relationships over long periods of time while building permission subscribers…the best kind.

Dealers and merchants with these free automotive SEO micro sites, otherwise known as Merchant “Smart” Sites on AutoConverse.com can take advantage of two forms of content syndication:

a.) You can publish blogs to your merchant site which are automatically syndicated on AutoConverse.com.
b.) You an hook up your blog RSS feed to your merchant site so that recent posts can appear

Both of these options are completely free and offer good SEO juice for your blog or website.

AutoConverse.com is powered by AutoConversion, our parent company. For more information on this please feel free to get in touch.

How Do Content Syndication and Reputation Management Relate?

With the new Social Relationship Manager from Dealer.com, dealers will be able to experiment with content syndication to give their content more exposure, and have a good way to keep a radar on things using the reputation management tools it offers. I think it was smart for DDC to make this product available stand-alone but I would not be surprised if dealers struggle for a while to make it truly beneficial. There is certainly no lack of tools out there to do these things already, some of which are free as you saw a moment ago, and syndication is only useful if the content is effective.

Producing effective content is not something I see a mass of dealers catching on to, but that is ok. It makes space for guys like us, who specialize in producing engaging and interactive content that has an automotive SEO backbone. As Pasch stated towards the end of his review on ADM…

“SRM is one of those groundbreaking products that energizes the automotive community and provides the momentum to build innovative, time saving, products in the years ahead.”

Here is Dealer.com’s video for it…

Click here to view the embedded video.

The project is a culmination of things. It is meant to offer auto shoppers a more private way of obtaining purchase information from local auto dealers and retailers. The site also offers dealers and retailers a social networking platform to promote their specials and cultivate high-quality prospects.

AC features a marketplace similar to Craigslist but rather than having dealers and merchants post ads in a market, shoppers are expected to post requests to which dealers and merchants may respond. The service is free for everyone.

AutoConverse.com supports communication in the format of a blog or forum which is visible to the public or in the form of private messaging which is only visible to the designated members. In either case, the Shopper is not forced to give up his or her phone number and email address in order to have a conversation with dealers and merchants. This is how the site provides a more private way of communicating.

This is how the site provides a more private way of communicating.

The site offers four different member types for people to distinguish one another – Shopper, Dealer, Merchant, or Agent, each containing its own unique set of links that can appear on the member’s profile. An Agent would be someone who represents multiple dealers or merchants, or a webmaster using the site to promote his own automotive sites and interests.

Members can optionally link to their Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare profiles along with links to their blog and website. Dealers have the ability to link people to dealer review sites like Carfolks.com or their dealership page on DealerRater.com.

Dealers, Merchants, and Agents can then create Merchant Sites which are WordPress-based microsites meant to promote a dealership or other brick and mortar storefront, or a website. These members can create as many merchant sites as they like and whatever content they publish to their merchant sites also appears on the AutoConverse.com activity stream.

This is an abridged version of the original press release which has further detail and quotes.

From 2003 to about 2006, pay-per-click advertising, particularly in the auto industry, took the field by storm. Car dealers were practically forced to spend thousands upon thousands on PPC advertising to stay in the game. Website technology evolved into a death trap for car dealers because the SEO aspect of car dealer websites was completely disregarded. As a result, when the PPC bubble deflated, car dealers were left with few choices for a truly competent website platform.

Website providers have been scrambling the past 2-3 years revamping or overhauling their platforms to meet the automotive SEO needs for car dealers. Today the SEO rat race in the automotive online retail business is about as over-saturated as CRM was 5 years ago. Mysteriously, while everyone now offers “the best SEO”, many dealers still lack vital understanding about the true role that SEO plays in one’s business.

An example of this was revealed to me during a phone with a dealer group. The dealer contacted us about our content marketing services. He explained that he did his own keyword reporting using Web CEO and that he has effectively positioned his websites across thousands of keywords. He had a good video presence going but still when he searched for a particular set of keywords, his competitor sites appeared in the top results but not his. One of which he suggested sold a whopping “6″ cars a month, which is hardly any at all.

While scoping out everything and listening it was clear that not only did this dealer know and understand all the fundamental automotive SEO practices but also was applying them to his online presence, and I told him this. I explained that he is doing everything we teach our dealers to do and that as far as I could tell he was far ahead of the game.

“But why does our competitor rank higher”, he asked.

My response was two-fold…

a.) Just because a site appears higher in a few searches you perform manually doesn’t mean it ranks higher for others nor does it mean the site ranks higher for the majority of keywords you target.
b.) Just because your competitor ranks higher doesn’t mean they sell more cars.

This second response was key. Dealers tend to approach automotive SEO as some sort of silver bullet to their sales needs. But it’s not. SEO is about attraction, visibility, and possibility. I wouldn’t even classify SEO as creating sales opportunities. That’s what conversion accomplishes. SEO creates the possibility for conversion. Big difference.

I don’t know if this is what the dealer needed to or wanted to hear. I think appearing higher in search was more important to him than having a more successful business. I could be wrong. But what I took home from that conversation was the realization of how even the more sophisticated of dealers that has his head wrapped around all this SEO stuff, can sometimes miss the significance SEO has with your business.

If you are looking at video marketing as “the next big thing” or as a silver bullet to your online marketing needs, be warned. Video is great and highly effective, but it’s time-consuming and expensive. You will need good SEO to get your videos watched, and you will also need an effective conversion mechanism. Video itself is not the best conversion tool. Those that have experimented with viral video marketing may testify to this.