OOH Insider - Episode 010 - How To Save Money on Advertising and Sell More Cars with Dane Saville

Welcome to another episode of the at-home insider. We're bringing you tips, tricks and insider insights on how to maximize your advertising, ultimately to become more efficient and a better business. Overall, I'm . I'm your host. And today I've got a very special guest for you here.

This is Dane Seville. And if you're in the automotive space, you already know who he is. If you're not, you're going to learn a lot from him today, regardless of whether or not you have a car dealership, regardless of what type of business you have is a wealth of knowledge that you can practically apply today tomorrow to immediately see results.

So without stealing all of this Sonoma welcome Dane here, Danes from reunion marketing, you guys are in North Korea. Raleigh North Carolina, Ollie, North Carolina. Had you guys always been based out of North Carolina? Is that, is 

that home-based? Yeah. Yeah. So five to six co-founders we actually all worked at a 33 store automotive store, a group here in Raleigh.

Um, uh, there, our CEO is the marketing director there for the last three years of his tenure that we were there, increased revenue. I think it was like from 800 million to 1.4 billion. One of our one out of every four cars were sold with this automotive group by the time his tenure is done. So I, you gave me such a great introduction.

I'm now I'm gloating about him, but, uh, you know, I was grateful to be part of that teams. So, uh, yeah. So since inception, about four and a half years ago, Raleigh has been in, I mean, reunion's been in. That's 

pretty awesome. So coming from experience like that, you have 33 stores to, to account for it's easy ish.

It's easy ish. When you have one store to worry about doing it for 33, how many stores do you work with now? I'm sure that they experienced working with 33 stores, really equipped you guys to be able to scale quickly and provide that same level of service. But how many stores are 

you working with now?

Yeah, so we're at about 220 stores. And it's are you 

strictly franchise dealers? Independent dealers? Little bit of 

both. A little bit of both. I would say probably majority of our franchise dealers, but we do have a lot of independent dealers as well. And we're actually focusing on growing that. Uh, and I want to dive into the weeds here, but specifically our, our newest, uh, social media platform would work really well for independent dealers.

So we're sexually starting to dabble more in that because the service really speaks to their, their businesses. Uh, so, uh, you know, now we're really trying to make a push towards that as well. So that makes 

sense. So, so you guys are, as a company you're adapting to the market, adapting to the needs of the consumer, ultimately dealer dealer principles across the industry, whether it's franchise or independent.

And that's really what this conversation about. The conversation today is about, is adapting to new technologies, new understandings of things that are sort of established an SEO is a sorta buzzwordy type thing that gets thrown around. And maybe a little bit too loosely. If you could deign condense down, what is SEO, if you had to explain it to a six year old, how would you explain what search engine optimization 

is?

It is. Tailoring while I've got to talk to a six year old. So telling Prairie wouldn't work either, uh, you know, making your website so that people can find that's, that's 

such a great summary because that's really what sparked my thinking about this was I had passed a great billboard campaign and it was actually before I started working in the outdoor industry, I passed it and.

I was looking for a place to go out to dinner and the creative really stood out to me. It used some, some of the landscape with it. It had a great tagline and a, I was looking for a place to go eat and all I can remember was the tagline. I was like, what the hell is the name of that restaurant? So I just typed the tagline and thinking, of course, I'm going to find the restaurant what'd you guess?

Nothing, nothing that even came back to that, gosh, it seems like a missed opportunity that client's spending a lot of money in this big expansive campaign to be out there. And they got me to do the thing they wanted me to do, which was look them up. But ultimately I couldn't. So 

when focusing on SEO. To help people that are looking for a product 

or service that 

maybe you 

offer.

Is it helping those people to find you, does it create new type of search activity or is it really just redirecting people that 

are looking for what you provide and making sure that they find you? So it's, it's sort of like the whole gamut. I mean, it's from people who have. I had a friend recommend.

You're like, let's talk about a restaurant since you were just talking about, you know, you know, if a friend recommend that restaurant, they, you know, they Googled the name of the restaurant. If they're, if it's serves a certain type of type of food, like steak, like steak house near me, uh, you know, whether it's even pricing or specials, steakhouse specials in Raleigh, North Carolina.

So there's like from, from, you know, just beginning to, to understand. What you might be interested in and, uh, you know, to, to the actual brand name of it now, you know, since we work with more automotive dealerships, I could probably speak a little bit, a little more clarity to that. So it's like, whether you're just starting to look for new or used cars used Honda civic, new Honda city.

New Honda civic near me. Who's Honda civic, Raleigh, North Carolina. So you're just beginning of that customer journey to now you're thinking about, okay, you know, I've looked up the different specs and stuff. Now it's, you know, Honda civic, price, Honda civic, lease Honda civic, lease Raleigh, North Carolina, you know, and now you're sort of in the middle there, and now it might be that, you know, now you've done your research and go, okay.

I wrote down three dealers that really spoke to me based on what I saw on their, about us page or this, or whatever. However, they visited the website, you know, visit different page. Now they go, okay. Now. You know, Dane Seville Honda or, you know, new marketing Honda. And so it's really just covers that full gamut from discovery to ready to purchase.

Okay, great. So, so really you can structure an SEO strategy around wherever. Folks are in the funnel. Now it could you, is it, is it a replacement for search engine marketing? If somebody is looking, it sounds like some of those keywords and terms might be things that we also bid on as well. Do you, do you do the two compliment each other?

Do they work together? Is that 

there's a lot of synergy. And so what you need to understand is. For specific keywords, is there competition? So like, again, I'm going to go with automotive just cause that's sort of our, our deal. Uh, and this would work for any business though. So let's say I own a Honda store and I go, okay, I won't push my, you know, the Ridge line for, you know, this next quarter.

And so, you know, I would just Google, you know, 2019 Honda original line Raleigh, North Carolina. There would be people bidding on this, but I'm just saying, if you re, if you Google that in your market and there were no ads for that, and you're in those top spots organically, then there's kind of no purpose for you paying for the keyword.

If however, you know, you have maybe the top two spots, but. Your competitors have that top page search listing that absolute top impression share they're getting there. Then you would, you would want to compete because even though the majority of clicks go to organic listings, you don't want to miss the people that click on those paid search results are a little, a little more ready to buy.

Um, so you don't wanna miss out on that market share. I mean, why would you give them. Uh, you know, just because, you know, you wanna avoid, you know, increasing your budget a little bit, that you might have, you know, just like, you know, like, you know, your brand, your own brand name, you know, that's going to vary based on, are people bidding on it, you know, is your name eponymous with the town that you're in?

You know, if that, if that's the case, then you know, you wouldn't take a look at it, look at the market and see what those Google search returns are. So they, there is a lot of centers. SCM paid search definitely has a place in for any business, but it's got to kind of depend on your market conditions, what you see in those search results and how you're performing organically.

So it's sort of like a myriad of things that would determine that. And you 

used a word earlier to tailor. And it sounds like that's really that there's not just a cookie cutter approach to this, that it can vary depending on your brand where you are maybe the name of the dealership. So it's not a one size fits all approach.

Is that a fair statement? That's 

definitely fair. Same. In fact, my latest webinar was called one size. Doesn't fit all. So that kinda, kinda, it kind of fits the more, I mean, you think when you think about, uh, you know, the way things are broken down, the way people search for things and the way that we do.

And this is going to speak specifically to just SCM right now just paid search right now is that we would, we make sure that accounts are so granular that if you Google. You know, 2019 Honda civic for sale, you would get one ad. And if you did 2019 Honda civic lease, you'd get a different ad because you have two different sets of expectations maybe with, with sale.

You want to see what maybe that sale price is. You have different deep linking in the extensions. Um, We can headline might be a little different. You definitely lose like words like for sale, uh, working in the geo where's least, they might want to be interested, like what is the monthly lease price? So you wouldn't want to have the same ad delivered for sale and for lease because Cubs, consumers have different expectations in terms of.

Why they entered that search that specific way. So the big thing is, is, is, you know, one size doesn't fit all. So you want to tailor, you always want to meet customer expectations and that goes from the ad. And then when they click through the ad, make sure that landing page experience is the exact same thing.

So do you see from an advertising standpoint, SEM, SEO, do you see a lot of waste being created by one, using one ad for two different types of people? To also not connecting that customer journey. It's easy to put an ad in front of someone that lines up with their search, but then it takes them to, uh, just the homepage of the website and go, what the hell?

This isn't, this is what I was looking for. Do you find that there are dealers who are losing pieces of their investment? Essentially just wasting money because. Things like 

that. Oh, a hundred percent. And that's SEM and SEO. So I'll try to give a succinct, two-part answer to that with SCM. Yes. And you know, it's, it's a matter of again, delivering on those expectations.

If they have an ad and they search for a specific vehicle and you land them on a generic specials page, or you land them somewhere where they have to use your search widget to then get to what they wanted, they're not going to, they're not going to take their time to do that. They're gonna bounce once you fail to deliver on expectations.

That's the last customer, actually, this will be three part answer. The second thing is. Um, you know, right now with responsive search ads. So, you know, Google that's relatively new thing, but I don't, I don't see, we don't predict it, predict it's going anywhere. So responsive search ads as you have, uh, you know, 15 headlines and four description lines and Google sort of selects from those 15 and those four headlines and description lines that best match the search.

That's 43,600 and plus combinations. Basically 

just from 15 headlines for descriptions, 

script has just remixed them at any which way those, for those searches. So what a lot of people aren't doing is a lot of people. Number one are a lot of agencies aren't prepared for that, and they're not really implementing best practices for that.

Uh, be careful cause expanded text ads can look like responsive search ads. They'll have like the three headlines, the two description lines. But they're not really responsive search ads. So, uh, to be able to tell that you want to Google similar variations of the same search and see if the same ad gets delivered over and over again, if it doesn't, if it.

Tailored to the search. Then it's likely expanded text ads. You want to ask your agency partner or internal team about that. Now the important thing about that is when you don't tailor to the experience and you're not getting the click click through the landing page, doesn't match an experience you're effecting your quality score.

So your quality score is determined from five different factors. I don't know if I remember them off the top of my head, but it's like click through rate, add, add text relevance, landing, page relevance. I know I'm missing one and historical ads account history. So when you're not really tailoring those ads, you're not really giving that experience that customers want.

And customers are bouncing off your page quickly, not clicking through on your ads. You're going to have a lower quality score. Now, the importance of that is, is that, you know, if you're an, a dealer or a business and your ads have a quality score of three and your competitors have a quality score of six, you're going to bid twice as much.

To be competitive for those searches and paid search, then that other, that other company. So to answer your question in that first regard, that's where we see a lot of waste is not only, you know, not capitalizing on Google products and innovation. So we see a lot of quality scores, averaging threes and fours.

Uh, I think our RA and I could don't quote me on that. Sending our ad agency averages like an eight at seven or an eight, maybe even a nine. 

If I can just interrupt what I think you just said, I want to make sure I. Was that if you're your agency average right now is an eight quality score. And let's say mine is a four that if we were spending the same dollars, your investment would go twice as far.

Exactly. So you can, without even spending more money increase, someone's effectiveness by just making sure the ship is tight and we're blocking and tackling and doing all of those now would that perpetuate too? So if I was at a four and you're at an eight and I continue to overbid and I'm still not working on the fundamentals behind the ad, would my quality store score continue to get punished?

And eventually I've just, I'm just spending more and more money. As a score continues to go down, 

but that's like the whole, that's the whole, just like that. That's sort of the synergy between, between all SEO and SEM two is that, you know, making sure that you know, where your ad lands landing page, where your ad takes them to, you know, your, your URL, your URL structure, your metadata, the headlines, the text, everything should speak to what they saw in that ad.

So you're optimizing the page. SEO. You're optimizing. Uh, not only to be ranked, but then also to provide a user experience that aligns with what brought them to that page in the first place, the other place where we see a lot of, uh, kind of circle back, uh, or does that I should stop there. Does that kinda make sense?

Yeah, totally makes sense. The other thing that people need to be wary is, and this is changing the automotive. I don't know about other industries so much, but we're a flat. Agency for paid search. 

What's that mean? So the reason why, 

so like we would offer, like, you know, let's say, you know, we have different tiered packages.

Let's, I'm just gonna throw a number off the top of my head. This isn't like a number we really offer it. Like, let's say we say, okay, we're going to charge you a thousand dollars. It's a thousand dollars a month or 500, let's say $500 a month, like management fee. So manage the account. It's $500. You let's say you have a budget of $10,000.

Okay. That we're going to get paid 500, no matter what, per month that's flat fee. So there's just one fee. And 

the $10,000 would be true, 

spent them through spend the, the, the opposite of that will be the commission-based agencies, where you have a $10,000 spend, but it shouldn't say 10,000 to spend, but how much you spend influences how much they make.

So they make a percentage. It's not a flat fee. They make a percentage of your monthly budget. So what that does is let's say your agency comes in and goes, you know what, man, you got to spend 5,000 more and more. To make sure you're competitive. And for these keywords in these ad sets they're commission-based agency, are they re unless you really know how to dig into the data, are you really certain that you need to increase your spend if they're commission-based, because that means they're making more money.

So we do, we do flat fee rate and we suggest everyone works with flat fee rates. Because even though you go, oh my God, that's definitely going to be 500. I spend every month. That's what it is, our, our, our decision-makers independent of your budget. Um, so that's where we also see a lot of ways to where agencies and, you know, snake oil salesman will convince someone to work with their agency and their decisions are based on.

More money, more money, more money, more money for them to make and not necessarily the person's best interests. Yeah. Listen, 

I worked at one of those agencies. It, wasn't not a knock against the agency, just more traditional media mindset and making a percentage. But for me, that was a fundamental conflict because the workload didn't change.

If you spent a thousand dollars or $10,000 for doing the same amount of work, why should I take. You know, on $10,000, why should I take 1500 bucks when I was only taking 150 at a thousand? Did my cost of goods change that the scalability change it? Hadn't. So maybe if we walk through an example, let's just use that $10,000 budget and working with you guys.

Let's just say it's a thousand dollars to work with a $10,000. And you've got that great quality score and your ads cost half as much as mine. So if you have $10,000 with reunion marketing, you're spending a thousand dollars to have a professional team manage it truly like, like a, like a portfolio manager would in an investment type scenario, right.

You know, you're measuring your moderate and all these things and making the best call based on what's best for the client. You don't have an influence that's at Starbucks. So $10,000. Um, right off the top, right? So 10,000 and 10,000. And in my scenario, I take 20%. So I'm taking $2,000. Your actual spend is now eight.

So right out of the gate, I've still got $10,000 review. But let's say I took that out to a thousand. So we're at $9,000 spend, right? Once I've paid you guys, and then I'm at $8,000 with the other guys, if I'm at $8,000 with the other guys, and they're only half as good as you. Then I would need to spend 16, $17,000 with the agency that's ripping me off just to be at the same level of quality as working with somebody like yourself.

Yeah. Essentially. Yeah. Sort of like fundamentally. Yeah, it would be, you know, we make sure that every dollar is, is maximized to its fullest potential, um, uh, to circle back and not to get off this topic, but to circle back about wasted spend, you're talking about, you know, wasting an investment, what we see with a lot of agencies too.

And I should say. There are actually a lot of great agencies out there. Someone like generalize and say, a lot of agencies are terrible. There are some agencies and it's getting fewer and fewer because there are honestly a few players in automotive. You know, like we actually like get along with our competitors.

Like most of our competitors we get along with, because we know that they do have best interests at heart for their clients. Do we think we're better? Of course we do. But, uh, you know, but there are some, like I said, there's still agencies out there as COE disease. I'm sure this applies to all industries.

So for example, they, you know, they focus on like the push a certain metric, like traffic to your website. We're gonna increase your traffic 2000. So we got this one dealer, uh, in Naperville, uh, just outside of Chicago, this other agency, you know, we, we, we fixing things, so I'll get to like what happened. So we fix things and traffic's down.

And these guys, this dealership, like guys, like our traffic's down, like 20%, what's going on traffic to the website, to the website. Yeah. So what happened was, is as we dug into the analytics, this previous agent. They were getting traffic there. So their Chicago dealer, they're getting traffic from Miami, New York, San Francisco, Boston.

Like they were getting trapped. From people that are not going to buy from them, fixed it. When we put in like their geos, we will fix their directories and we've worked in, like, we called them bottle conversion pages. It's like a mini research page where you can like take some actions, see inventory, you know, we worked at GOs in on that.

And so yeah, your traffic overall is down 20%, but your traffic in your geos, your traffic in Chicago and Naperville and other suburbs is up 7,500. So, you know, you, you, you got to look at it where it's like, you don't just look at the overall trends. You know, even if you're not adept at analytics, you know, you can still, it's easy, like click on, like it's literally like acquisition.

Uh, you know, like source medium, see where it's coming from. You look at geos, like, you know, you don't have to be an expert to, you know, one, two clicks. You can look on like, go like mazda.com for like their, you know, their guides or even Google offers how to do this. But it's like, don't necessarily look at like just, just holistic numbers.

I can really be paid attention to more than 80. Um, and like I said, it's not that hard to kind of dig into that at a high level. 

So we've definitely identified that there's differences between what makes a good agency good. And maybe a lesser agency, not as good. Um, not to, not to throw any punches, but what would you say for an automotive dealer?

The three things, if they're considering SEO, what are the three things that they need to know? Or need to ask the agency that are considering what are the three things that a dealer needs to know about search engine optimization? Is it how this fits into your campaign? Is it something more technical that would require a certain level of expertise?

What are those three things? If you were 

given advice that they should look out for first, I would ask if, um, does your SEO package include Google my business? Why is that? Google my business is like your new gateway to the website. It's like, it's almost like a new website for your company. Google. My business has your hours of operations, your, your, uh, you know, calls to action, phone number, website, directions, uh, has pictures, which you want to update and manage.

It has reviews that you can respond to. Uh, now, you know, now it has like products. Uh, I think we're kind of testing that now, so you can kind of put inventory on your Google, my business. So it's a place where people go to, to engage. A number of things. Um, part of that too, is, is best practices of GMB. So not just are they managing your GMB?

Are they managing it correctly? So you should have a different listing for if you're a dealership for your sales and your parts and your service, you should have different listings because they have. 

Within the Google, my business listing, they should be separated, 

separate listings for that, because people that are looking for, for sales, like your service center has different hours than your sales, your parts, you know, they have different phone numbers.

Um, you know, there, there's a re there's a number of reasons for why you wouldn't have that different. Cause you're, you're getting sort of like different customers. So, you know, again, you want to speak to them again on that individual level. Like if I'm a service customer, you give me like your service hours, service, phone number, you know, so-and-so.

Um, so making sure that they're managing your, your GMB. So that's also important because your GMB has a directory. Consistency is key too. So where you start with your GMB, you can then sort of replicate your, your phone numbers, your, your address and everything across your other directories, you know, yellow pages, so on and so forth.

There's dozens of them out there. The important thing too is, and this would be a quick pointer and not necessarily part of the question, but just as a, as a key for anyone that, you know, Is interested in SEO, the way that you have your address listed on your website. Let's say you're on south main street.

If you do S w S period, Maine. On your Google, my business, all your directories, it should be S period main. You need to have that consistency consistently actually helps Google recognize you as being more authoritative, consistent, delivering on, you know, you're, you're showing that you're, you know, your attention to detail.

So actually having those cadet consistency actually helps with your directories, having authority and ranking and things like that. So Google my business are, you know, is that part of your SEO package is something that I would ask. The second thing would be is also, if I'm going to work with you, does your SEO include CRO CRO conversion rate optimization?

So you don't want to work with an SEO company that just brings traffic to the website. Yeah. Anyway, you know, I shouldn't say anyone, but a lot of agencies can just bring traffic to the website, but that traffic isn't converting. Then what's the use of bringing them to your website. So, you know, you know, does that SEO company also perform conversion rate optimization, you know, doing Hotjar testing.

So Hotjar is like looking at behaviors on the website, seeing like where people are clicking the most, just understanding consumer behaviors on the web pages. Cord sessions and see what people do on your site. Hollers in placement of buttons, you know, are you optimized for mobile, so on and so forth. So there's a lot of facets that go into conversion rate optimization that compliments SEO, and should be an integral part of that SEO package.

So GMB, CRO, and that's a good, let's see a third question. This is a, this is a good question. Third top question would be, I would say, would be. How do you report? How do you report? Oh, no. Do you have, yeah, I'm 

going to ask the question that you think of from the first two things. How is your agency set up to support doing all of those things for over 200 clients?

Is it technology? Is it people, is it an equal mix of both? How do you sustain that level of service? You talked about a lot of things that I think a well beyond even having come from automotive that at least, you know, from my experience, I don't remember offering anyone ever cause we didn't have the capability to do it.

How are you able to offer that much? Is it the technology? Is it. 

It's a combination. So we, we focus, we actually, two years ago, we had no idea we'd have an operations department. That was no, when that was not a concept we had, it was, you know, w we're going to be people focused. We're going to have the right people in the right seats, executing.

And that's when we realized we're like, you know, at that point we were like at 140, you know, smack den. It's like, well, we triple this client load. We're gonna have to have so much overhead. We're not, we're going to like lose money. So we actually, then we came up with our operations department. So it's we like to call it.

It's like automation with human oversight. So you don't want to fully automate, you should never work with a company. I don't believe anyway, that's my personal opinion. Shouldn't work with anyone that just it's fully automated because you still need human eyes on different things. Optimizing, paying attention, making sure nothing breaks.

Uh, you know, so you should always have a human element to that automation. So it's a comment. It's a combination of those two things. 

Great now with SEO, can it be like geographically specific? Like with SCM, I can say, Hey, just this zip code. Are you able to do things like that and control? Hey, I'm not, I'm not getting somebody.

Who's looking for a Honda accord in New York city with my SEO. How do you, 

how do you do things like that? I mean, that's a number of things. Like I said, we create like those model conversion pages. So for every model in your lineup, there's a specific page that has. Uh, description about the vehicle, like some emotive emotive texts, like talking about like why, what interests you in the vehicle in the first place?

You know, just kind of hitting on the emotion of buying. Then we have like some value props. What are some things that this vehicle gets accolades for that might interest you? Like, for example, there's a muscle car would be like, you know, horsepower torque, you know, Cobra Cobra, trim level option, you know, it's like whatever it might be.

Um, and then within that page, within the headlines, within the URL, within the text, it's your Gog O G O G L. We've actually gotten so tech we've actually gotten so technical with it that we actually have. Sort of other, I don't want to call them sub pages, but pages that hit on got your second geos and your third geo.

So that way they're more relevant, more likely to rank depending on where those consumers are, are, um, searching from. And that comes from communication with the dealer of like, we're where they know they want to, you know, historically from sales and, and, and then also looking at search trends where people coming from, um, then, you know, within your, you know, your homepage or about us page, Yep everywhere.

You're fighting all your fi F and I, your, your, your service page, you know, get service in Raleigh, North Carolina. You'll get oil change here at Dane Honda in Raleigh, North Carolina. So you don't want to keyword stuff it's you don't want make it look like. Like a bot created it, but you can strategically work in that geo here and there to, uh, you know, make sure that that then you're, you're getting that relevant traffic makes sense.

So, 

um, so you just made me think of, maybe this is a good segue. Would you like to play along? I'm going to share my screen here and we can, we can do some billboard stuff and I think this is going to be what you'd find pretty neat. Um, I'm just 

gonna see here. We're going to share and I'm going to share which screen am I going to share?

I think 

this one. So if you'd let me know if you can see my screen there and I'm gonna see it. So let's see we talk in Raleigh. So I'm just going to bring up Raleigh 

and see if this is going to run slow or fast. 

Cause.

So, this is where this is. This is a tool called geo path in geo path is, um, I don't know what the right word is, but outdoor companies, billboard companies, you know, bus shelters, screens at the, at the mall. Uh, they all got together and geo path is. Sort of the data auditor, but also this really cool platform where you can start to look at targeting for billboards, um, how it all works is it uses six different data sources to make sure that data is clean and up to date, obviously something that you know a lot about.

And then it uses mobile device ID data, just like, just like the ways app might, um, to, to see where people are going and things like that. So did you see that here did that. Yeah. Yeah. So, so what I've done here is I said, all right, let's say I'm working with a Honda dealer and I want to run a campaign that's designed for service.

So I want to look for people that have a Honda, so make of any vehicle owner leased. And what it's going to start to do is it's going to compare people that own Honda's in Raleigh. And if that word let's just say that doesn't look like it did, but in Raleigh, Processing a lot of data. So it's, it runs a little bit sluggish, but let's say you said to me, Tim, I want to do digital billboards and 

I want 

to 

do digital billboards for my C rat rallies, a, uh, uh, Upscale trendy city.

You've got interior walls, furniture, ceiling stuff that I could, uh, I could run on. Let's see. Digital bulletins. There we go. All right. So let's just say I wanted to run digital billboards and this is, this is where it gets sloughed is updating all of that inventory. I want to run digital billboards in Raleigh, targeting people who own a Honda.

And I want to be pretty intelligent. I'm a dealer on a budget. So I want to be most efficient with choosing which locations I actually run on. This is how if you're working with a partner that works with GOP, You can do that. You see it's processing over here on the right hand side. And what it's doing is it's indexing every outdoor location in Raleigh, North Carolina, against Honda owners right now.

And once this finally does populate that, what would we be able to do? Look at the placement of maybe your dealership, we can look at all the Honda stores in the market and where those outdoor locations match up. So now you can start to craft a message. All right. I want to go after my competitor with a Honda service message.

So I want these three billboard locations that are closest to my competitor, that over index with Honda owners or, uh, another targeting that you have, maybe you invest in third party. Uh, listing sites like Carfax or auto trader. So you've got a big, strong, independent store and you are on Carfax and you want to target your $15,000 in less selection of over 200 cars to people that have.

Shopping on third-party sites. So this tool allows us to do that. I apologize, run a little bit slow. That's not uncommon for it to do, but is something like that is a 

tool like 

this is that valuable when considering an SEO strategy and SCM strategy, I'm coming from the thought process. Outdoor creates a lot of search.

In fact, it creates more search 

dollar for dollar than 

TV, radio, and print advertising 

combined. So 

is something like this, a program like this to come up with a way to drive more search activity. Does that benefit an SCM or an SEO strategy? 

Yeah. I mean, anything that sort of has a demonstrable ability to get people to remember and conduct a search, whether it was.

Uh, you know, the exact, uh, brand name, um, you know, I mean, it just, you know, if it hits on there, you know, again, like sort of a mode of advertising talking about how that billboard that you saw for the restaurant really sort of struck a chord with you and you had to just find it, you know, depending on the creative, you know, even just stirs some sort of search for the specific make and model, um, you know, anything, anything that, that can truly get people, push people like into the.

Um, would be a value because then, you know, the more that they are more people that conduct searches, the more opportunities you have to, to get them on your website, make sense. 

So, um, so keeping in theme, so, so I'm glad to hear that. Cause this is a tool that I got excited about. As soon as I saw it, just to help dealers be more efficient because we know, we know we still need to fill the top of the funnel, right.

We need to drive people to go back and look for you to, to ultimately to find you, people are going to find you. Yeah. If they're shopping for that particular vehicle, probably, but this tool would allow you to do something like that. So there's just some stats, but what would you do SEO wise for something like this?

If your client wanted to run a bill where I said, buy a Kia, get a billboard. Is that showing up for you? Yeah. Cool. What, what would be an SEO strategy? We see there in Charleston, Savannah highway, buy a Kia, get a billboard. Would this be an SEO or an SEM campaign? How would you approach them? 

Uh, I mean, first, you know, one of my, again, like I said, you know, there's a, there's complimentary, so women necessarily dive into SCM, but you know, Savannah highway, making sure that that is showing up on the website, making sure that the address matches the billboard.

Uh, so that way they know that they're stood there looking at the correct. So whatever you have on that billboard, you will make sure is, you know, sort of headlining on your website. So that way people don't go, wait, is this, is this the dealership that I wanted to, you know, to search for, um, you know, Kia, Kia country of Charleston, making sure you know, that the brand name.

Is a headline up there, you know, you could even potentially even get a banner on the website that sort of replicates what you see there. Um, you know, we don't recommend a whole lot of banners is because there's, we did a, we did a study that just shows, you know, it's like, I think it's like 6% of all homepage clicks go to a banner and, you know, half that goes to just the first one.

So you wouldn't want to do overkill, but that's a potential other strategy. So that way there's sort of some brand new. Consistency among from non-digital to digital. Um, you know, if I'm. It's hard to say with SCM because this isn't real vehicle specific. Like we, we target first, like more the low funnel searches.

So it'd be like more like Kia Optima for sale. But, you know, working in, you know, working in that Savannah highway, you know, the kid country of Charleston, working those different things, uh, if a dealer wanted to go after high level, you know, maybe mirroring something in the language about that, like you saw our, you, you know, get a kid, get a billboard, you know, check out Kia country of Charleston.

I mean, but that would really be if you know, That'd be one of the last things we recommended because it's so high funnel, but there are definitely some things SEO that, that you could sort of on the website once they get there to create some, some resonance. I mean, 

could you, um, just thinking out loud, could you use SEO in this Charleston area?

And then, like you had mentioned with the vehicle landing pages, could you have a buy a keyboard, a buy a Kia, buy a keyboard? Yeah. Buy a kid, get a billable. Um, shows up in the SEO links and back to a page, it gives them a place that they could convert. Hey, if you enter your information, it enters you to when, or, or could 

you use it that way?

You, you could come up with like, like a specialty landing page that, that aligns with that. So that way, if they went, oh, by Kia, get a billboard and that sort of like what they Googled then, you know, just to capture that traffic, um, and make things relevant. You could have like a specialty landing page that could have like a lead form in there.

Um, but it would just kind of depend on. You know, dealership goals and, and just, you know, we'd have to take a look at, we'd have to take a look at what we could do. Cause you know, there's also limitations on, uh, depending on what platform web website platform they're on. So there are a bunch of variables, but yeah, I mean, there's a way to, uh, even, like I said, come up potentially come up with like a specialty page that has a lead capture form that coincides with this non-digital, uh, sort of.

Okay, 

I'm just going to scroll through a throw a couple more. This was a pretty cool, um, campaign for Mazda of south Charlotte. They had a number of these and everything. I've got number one here, but this made for a made for campaign and it looks very tier one ish, um, made for style made for vacations.

And this is really now getting into, into that campaign. Thought process. So, right. So let's say we used a tool like geo path to target Mazda owners, or we know that the people, most likely to get a CX five are coming out of a pilot. So we want to target Honda owners. Um, and, and so it sounds like we could incorporate, and maybe we, and should just as good out of home.

Stewards for our clients. We have in conversations with folks like yourself on the other side, Dane, where it's, Hey, I work, I'm a billboard guy. I worked with the client on their outdoor stuff, but I know that all of my dealers have somebody like you sitting on the other side, uh, it sounds like there should be some communication going on back and forth.

Would that be beneficial for like you guys and everything that you're doing? If you were working with a dealer that. With somebody doing out of home, would that be a 

healthy relationship to have for you? I mean, that's what the, I mean, anything from, you know, whether you have a provider for SEO and a product provider for SCM and a provider for traditional provider, for billboards provider for TV provider, for SEO, like anytime you're working with more than one vendor, it isn't the dealer's best interest to have, uh, you know, cohesion and to have open communication among those vendors because everyone should have.

Working together on behalf of the dealers. So yeah, I mean, there's definitely benefit to making sure there's open lines of communication. Uh, sort of thought leadership and creative for how we can make that a seamless experience for the consumer, because that's the benefit of the cool. 

So I'm going to the next one.

I'm going to show you, this is a fun one for us and out of home, we call this a tease and reveal. If I came here and I said, Dane, my, my billboard guy came up with this awesome idea. I want to do this teasing reveal for the new model coming out. And I want this all to work together. Create a ton of buzz.

Let's get as creative as possible. This goes up for a month in the market. It doesn't say, I don't even know what's underneath there just as you deserve deserve more this year, it's going to create intrigue. That's what outdoors designed to do, right? A, an emotion and drive it behavior and action. I'm going to go back to Google.

Like what the hell is this? What is, do you deserve more this year? Billable. How would you best help me as the dealer. If I said, I want to do this, I'm doing this. You need to make it the most successful thing. What things would you be looking for to connect the dots on the back of, 

to me? I mean, the first thing I would do is I would replicate this with social media.

I think social media, even before SEO for me, would be where you really capitalize on this and promote through different channels. You know, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, uh, I would definitely capitalize this on social media first and foremost. Um, but then again, because you want to have cohesion from, you know, you have this ad on Instagram and they click through, you know, I would have, you know, again, I think this would require building out a specialty landing page with explain them what they deserve, you know, what sort of specials or deals or things that they're getting based ads as part of this campaign.

And I would, I would mirror a lot of the creative that you see here, you know, in the. Uh, those ads and it doesn't have to be exactly the same. It could be different bow, different color, different wrapping, but still that same sort of tag connected to it. You deserve more this year. And then, you know, when they get, when they get to the landing page, whether you say, you know, like this is what you deserve, or you deserve this, or, you know, however you want to phrase it, I'll show you the 

reveal.

So then this goes up the month after. So it creates that anticipation in the market, right? You're driving past this thing everyday going, what the hell is that? What does this deserve more? I don't know. It's. And then, Hey, happy Honda days. It's got car Honda. I 

go, okay, I got you. I got you. So during that month of the buildup, I think you could still do some social media ads to that.

And then you just don't reveal it yet. It's like a countdown and you can be like, oh, that's cool. Some sort of countdown, like in 28 days, you're going to find out what you deserve. And you know, when you put a little dollars behind it, because once you get that, that page built, there's not really anything else.

Except little updates. So it's not like you're reinventing the wheel. Uh, and then it gives that gives your agency time to create that, you know, really put in some, some thought behind making like a cool experience for that special landing page that you would then update those ads to land on. And then when you it's like you deserve more affordability, then it's like that page shows all the different affordable options at Scott Clark Honda.

She coincide that sort of build up with your different efforts where you don't remember. You know, you don't have that, that original specials page that guy was talking about. Cause you're waiting for that buildup for this billboard to go up. And then you coincide like the day that billboard launches your agents, your digital agencies should be on.

And that comes down that communication your agency then. Okay. Let's, let's change this landing page and let's push this out to, to also. Show them what affordability that they, that they've they've deserved. 

So that's pretty cool. Right? So then you, could you got this, this, this cool little billboard up in the market.

People are, are looking for you. They're seeing you on social. They're going back to go. You don't want to put all the money behind it. So maybe it's a modest SEO, the landing page. We're getting all these people and maybe a small retargeting budget to, to keep those people. Hey, 16 days ago, 15 days ago tend to it's here it's time and really creating excitement, which would, it sort of sounds a little bit 

outside of the box from what most dealers 

do.

What would you say? In 2020, what is the biggest from an advertising standpoint? The biggest opportunity for dealer is it to stand out? Is it to just tighten everything up on their website? What should a dealer be focusing on going into 20, 20 and beyond? Is it an opportunity? Is it just better fundamentals?

What do you see? Dan 

and I, I don't, I don't want to limit it to just one thing, because it is a two part thing. I think. And that is, that is number one. You said the fundamentals, making sure that you have a sound SEO, SEM and social media strategy working on your behalf, that they're focused on quality score, driving the right traffic and have a social media campaign.

That's more than just, you know, one or two generic ads. And the second thing I think is really important and we don't do it, but I think is important. And I've spoken on this, uh, at different conferences, is that. Uh, you know, you, you, you're not just, you know, that Scott Clark Honda, you're not just Scott called.

You're not just a Honda dealership. You're Scott Clark Honda. I think a lot of dealers don't capitalize on, on who they are and like their community involvement and really differentiating themselves to be that franchise. Honda dealership instead of just a Honda dealership. So I think there are a lot of agencies out there that, I mean, that would be the second part because you can have all the great branding in the world, but if you, if they can't find you and they can't, and they get fresh in your website and they can't really engage with you, you know, all the great brand in the world is not going to make up for sloppiness elsewhere.

So number one, be those fundamentals. Number two. You know, once you have those fundamentals in that great brand to make people want to do business with you. And I think, you know, a lot of dealers, so many dealers, and this isn't a crack against them because you know, we're four years in, in business. We're proud to be four years in business.

And dealers are like, you know, 30 years family owned that. That's great. Don't get me wrong. That's fancy. But as a car shopper who really cares that doesn't me, how much is it? And that doesn't really matter to me in terms of like, do I feel like I'm going to get hassled at your dealership? So like the, you know, the about us page would be a great opportunity to have like a really cool video that goes around the dealer.

You know, meet the dealer principal and I know staff can't turn over, so you don't want to get everyone, but I mean, your, your longstanding employees, you know, you know, show them the, the, the business center, show them the service bays, you know, show them the experience they're going to get. So branding yourself, I think is a second thing that dealers absolutely.

Focus on, uh, in 20, 20 moving forward. 

And it makes sense. And especially in that order, make sure that your house is tight and then we can go outside and play 

outside the box. And, and if you have a solid cause if you have a solid strategy already going. Your general searches and things that are coming in, then you can get creative and you can do that.

You deserve more sort of thing, because you know, you have a team that is going to run a tight ship and is going to make sure they coordinate well and execute everything the way it should be done to make that campaign a success. So that's what I like that outside the box, thinking shouldn't happen until you have your fundamentals really solid, but there's definitely.

I don't think enough dealers think outside the box and be honest and that's no, no crack against any dealers, but, uh, you know, I love it when I see dealers doing things that I don't see often. 

That's great, you know, and that's, and that's an interesting point, especially being so close to it, that it still stands out to you when a dealer does something.

Right. You see dealer stuff all day, every day, you're at all the conferences. It's what you live, eat, and breathe. But when somebody does something different is still stands out. So how much does it stand out to somebody that isn't in it every day? Uh, an interesting statistic I'll leave you with this is seven.

It's almost, I think it's 70% of drivers drive over 300 miles a week. Recognize and acknowledge seeing outdoor advertising ad requests, very high, 70%, 25% of people that drive over 300 miles a week will buy a car in the next 12 months so that they see it. And we know that they're going to buy it. And we know that it drives search, and we know that we've got great folks like Dane and the team at reunion marketing to tie it all together.

Sounds like a pretty good combination to really be more efficient, sell more cars, service, more cars, own more market share without spending a bunch more money. Cause I'm sure you see that everybody's trying to do more with a little bit, a little bit less than I think that we've, we've covered some pretty cool ideas on, on, on how to do that day.

And if folks want to learn more about you, I know that the KPI cafe is like a totally free 

session of just 

great, valuable insight. Where can people find the KPI cafe? Where should they be following you on to get the best, most current stuff? 

And ultimately, how do they get into. Yeah, I like that. Shout out for the KPI cafe.

Take lab. Private. Yeah. It's on our YouTube channel. So we're union marketing. If you go on YouTube, just type in arena marketing. It's one of, you know, it's a playlist. We're up, we're up through three seasons now. So you'll see playlist season one, season two, season three, season four. We'll launch February 24th.

I think that's a Monday. Um, if then what connect with me? I'm on LinkedIn. Dane Seville. Same with Facebook. No Twitter, uh, you know, people get when they all sorts of ways. dane@reunionmarketing.com uh, Dane reunion on Twitter. So type in my name you'll find me somehow. So I'm every, I try to be everywhere.

Yeah. All right, man. Put yourself out there. You're on the record. He's on the record here with the at-home insider folks. If this has been helpful, I encourage you to share it with somebody that could benefit from the information like common. Do all of those things, all of Dane's contact information and the best ways to find him are going to be in the show notes.

So whether or not you're seeing this on YouTube for the first time, listen to it. And it's podcast version later on, or even just seeing it as an ad somewhere on the internet now that you can get in touch, but just going and checking out the notes. And the a and the about us or the more section of wherever you are, Dan, you got anything you want to sign off on?

Anything that you're focused on? I know we mentioned KPI, cafe, new products, anything new coming out from reunion. We got to keep an eye on. Yeah, 

no, like I said, you know, KPI's is sort of my baby. I sort of started that. So that number one, that's my, my thing, growing that subscriber growth, I'd love to get to a thousand because then you get a whole bunch of other things to play with on the back end of YouTube.

But new things are the union. Like I said, our intelligence social platform, you know, we, we w it's something that's innovative in automotive. No one else was doing it. It's up to 50 different ads based on different buyers. Types of buyers, uh, you know, tailored messaging on every single ad. You know, your Tundra buyers during the Tacoma buyer, your SUV buyers, coming to your sedan buyer, and they using actual inventory using the actual inventory dealers have on their site, on their lot, using that.

And then we're coming out with a more robust, uh, fixed ops stress. To coincide with that. So that's the big thing coming up with reunion over the next two, three months. 

And what more can you ask for folks? If you listened to it this long, you got to go out and get in touch with Dan. You got to listen to more of his stuff.

I've learned a lot here today. Hopefully you have to signing off for the at-home insider. I'm Tim day in Seville reunion. Mark. Right there. Check them out. You will not be disappointed if you're looking to sell more commerce service, more vehicles. If you are looking to reduce unapplied, you know, unapplied hours, whatever your goals are, it starts with the fundamentals.

And we've talked about those here today. Ways for you to maximize your advertising in 2020 and beyond I'm Tim Rowe. And we'll talk to you guys