When dealers evaluate the purchase of goods and services, they do as any intelligent business would do and consider the ROI. With online retail today in the automotive marketplace, ROI is typically measured on a cost-per basis, e.g. cost-per-lead, cost-per-click, cost-per-sale, etc. While these certainly are useful ways to measure ROI, I have become skeptical of how this information is assessed and leveraged by dealers.

For many years dealers have been able to know their per-vehicle cost-per-sale. But with today's Internet technologies, there are other cost-per ratios that can be measured. Search engine marketing itself has introduced tremendous new methods for dealers to track and measure where specific portions of their marketing dollars go. But search engine marketing is a complex practice that I think benefits the search engine companies more than anything.

Take a moment to read this entire entry on my blog so we can explore the topic together.

While I agree with you that SEM can be difficult to do and may benefit the Search Engines more than anything. There are plenty of good companies who will do SEM for you for a small fee. But I believe that you must first make sure your website will convert traffic into leads.

Yes, naturally you want to make sure you can convert visitors into business before driving large volumes of traffic to it.

In your opinion, what is the best infrastructure to convert a browser into a lead?

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"What a dealer needs is a web site that can convert traffic into leads" Jeff Kershner, Internet Sales Manager, Mercedes Benz of Hagerstown. Digital Dealer May 2007.

I did a quick search for a common keyword in the philly area 'ford trucks philly' in google. The third result is craigslist, which is probably what I would want if I were looking for many ford truck listings in the area.

In this case, I'm looking for a car dealer. The last result on the page is actually a dealer's cobalt site: Echelon Ford, Stratford, NJ, Philadelphia, South Jersey, Explorer, F150, Mustang, 500, F250, Escape, Expedition More than likely google picked up on 'ford' and 'truck' in the first paragraph of the site (and 'ford' in the domain name) and philly in the page title. While that's great, the site doesn't make me want to buy a ford truck.

I changed the search term to '"ford trucks" philly'. The relevant result is in the #4 spot. An izmo site: Commercial Sale - Pacifico Cars, Ford Mazda & Hyundai Cars dealer in Essington Avenue Philadelphia, (PA) Again, the first paragraph is what got it listed there. The page is geared more towards commercial sales, but it does get you the information you may be looking for, and a contact. The only thing it's missing is a link to the truck inventory.

Unfortunately it's hard to find a good site that has the best of both worlds; One that is search engine friendly & optimized and captures leads.

I think the flash based sites out there may do a good job with getting leads, but when there's no text for the search engines to spider, how are leads getting to the site? That's an extra charge for SEO, when IMO it should already be built into the already expensive site. The opposite could be said for the cheaper txt based sites.

Many 'web 2.0' sites already have optimization built in. Blogging sites rank high because they are built correctly. Imagine if car dealer sites were built to this same standard. ROI would increase. I honestly don't think car dealers blogging about their cars (on separate sites) is the solution. Now a car dealer site that is setup like a blog would be even better.

When your looking at the SERP (Search Engine Result Page) are you referring to the natural or organic results or the paid or sponsored results? If your referring to organic, SEO comes into play and the longtail target keyword 'philly' comes into play. However, if you are referring to sponsored, SEM comes into play and can be geographically targeted. I know from experience that web 2.0 pages have a much lower cost per click in SEM and for some keywords will show results in both organic and sponsored. This is especially important because if you appear in both areas the page visits will increase exponentially than if you just are in one or the other.

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"What a dealer needs is a web site that can convert traffic into leads" Jeff Kershner, Internet Sales Manager, Mercedes Benz of Hagerstown. Digital Dealer May 2007.

There are sites out there that are excellent at capturing leads and are extremely search engine friendly. Have you seen any of the Adsites that are available?

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"What a dealer needs is a web site that can convert traffic into leads" Jeff Kershner, Internet Sales Manager, Mercedes Benz of Hagerstown. Digital Dealer May 2007.

I suspect when you state "best infrastructure" you mean method. The plain and simple answer (in my opinion) is a well-designed landing page. So often, companies set up SEM campaigns to drive traffic to their site. The problem is, how do you accurately analyze your conversion ratios if you present users with multiple conversion opportunities?

Studies show that a well-designed landing page converts. A well-designed landing page is one that focuses the user on a single point of conversion. The moment you require a user to choose among different conversion points, you draw ambiguity and risk losing a conversion all together. Therefore, an effective landing page gives visitors a "take it or leave it" decision.

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Ryan Gerardi

I completely agree. That is the whole purpose behind my signature.

It also allows you to write a very specific ad text when doing SEM. This lowers costs and raises conversions rate.

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"What a dealer needs is a web site that can convert traffic into leads" Jeff Kershner, Internet Sales Manager, Mercedes Benz of Hagerstown. Digital Dealer May 2007.

Organic. My main point was that if you already have a search engine friendly page, you don't have to spend as much on SEM or CPC campaigns.

Honestly, I haven't. Which ones? I was mainly referring companies like dealerskins, or bz results that make flash based sites which can't even be crawled. Run bsresults.com through a crawler simulator, see what you get. Probably just what they have in meta tags or title tag.

Google Adwords/Analytics provides some excellent tools for measuring campaign effectiveness. You can even roughly calculate things into dollar amounts and set up 'funnels' to see where visitors are going on your site. Analytics itself is free.