Posts Tagged ‘ online marketing ’

What You Should Know About Google’s Quality Score (or, How to Save 50% on AdWords)

April 27, 2013

If you’re a Google AdWords advertiser selling car, truck, ATV or motorcycle parts and accessories, you may already know the importance of your Quality Score. You might not know how it affects your bid or how to improve it, so as an automotive aftermarket digital marketing agency we thought this would be helpful. (Why you should improve it and reduce bid costs is at the bottom of this article.) Quality Score factors Our diagram at the left shows the factors that determine your Google AdWords Quality Score for keywords. Your QS can run from 1 (bad) to 10 (good)....

Google Reveals Automotive Repair & Maintenance Shopping Secrets

April 25, 2013

Here are some interesting stats on consumers searching for vehicle maintenance and repair services, for both Do It Yourself (DIY) and Do It For Me (DIFM) vehicle owners. It’s the subject of a report released by the folks over at Google Think Insights and shows the importance of automotive Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and paid search. As an automotive aftermarket digital marketing agency we enjoy data like this. DIFM consumers were responsible for 77% of the aftermarket’s sales volume in 2012 (excluding tires). That’s only down slightly from a decade ago, when it was 78%. It’s projected to get...

Increase Relevance (and Sales!) with Email Segmentation

January 23, 2013

We’re all bombarded with thousands of marketing messages throughout the day, and people run avoidance measures in an effort to escape many of these messages. One of the most popular platforms to reach consumers is through email marketing, yet countless marketing messages go ignored and unread. So how do you keep consumers interested and engaged in your emails? One word: segmentation. Email segmentation lets you cut through the clutter by staying relevant and providing material you know your audience is interested in. You send email with one type of content to a group of customers, based on their interest,...

Trend 8: Vehicle Segment Trends by Region

October 22, 2012

Jumpstart Automotive Group released a report on online car shopping trends by U.S. region showing the top vehicle segments as well as the top shopping consideration. The company analyzed behaviors of automotive website users in 2012 “to draw connections between specific U.S. territories and the most popularly researched vehicles and top car shopping considerations among consumers within those territories.” The study found that: People in the Northwest region of the U.S. tend to prefer hybrids and consider price as a priority. Consumers in the Southwest prefer compact cars and focus on the features of a car when considering a...

Trend 18: Where Consumers Find Information on Engine Parts, by Age Group

October 12, 2012

Today we are going to look at some of our own research to give you an idea of where enthusiasts go to find information about engine parts. We will also look at how certain age groups tend to visit different outlets to find their answers. As a part of our own syndicated Hedges & Company research, we sought to find out where enthusiasts find information about engine components. We surveyed 2,768 enthusiasts and asked them where they tend to look for information. Their choices were the following: mail order catalog, social media sites, garage, independent shop, blogs, chain parts...

Trend 20: 6 Ways to Improve Email Deliverability

October 10, 2012

As an email marketer, it’s important to make sure consumers you send emails to are actually getting them. Blacklists, spam filters and all sorts of other automated technologies can keep email out of the inbox. Don’t panic though, there are steps you can take to ensure emails are delivered, based on our own experience delivering more than 100 million emails in a year. 1). Monitor the returned email server codes from your bounced emails. The three digit error codes that begin with 4 or 5 are sometimes cryptic but will help you understand if any of your emails were...

Trend 21: Using Social Media Effectively

October 9, 2012

Here’s how to effectively use your social media campaign to connect with your customers and evaluate your business. Building a large following of fans is nice, but to really make your social media campaign work, you have to attract fans that have the potential to become customers. For example, if you are a small business with no online presence operating in Miami FL, having fans from Cleveland, OH won’t do you much good. Having “likes” and “fans” is helpful, but what you should really strive for is actual interaction with your subscribers. The more involved subscribers become with your...

Trend 26: Amazon and 3 Predictions for the Automotive Aftermarket

October 4, 2012

Our series of automotive trends continues with our predictions on one of the automotive aftermarket’s largest retailers, Amazon. Prediction 1: Amazon will start charging sales tax. More states are following suit in the bid to make Amazon charge sales tax, leveling the playing field for retail stores. California, Texas, and Pennsylvania are among the states to do so recently. Congress is considering passing “The Marketplace Equity Act,” which would require all online retailers with more than $1 million in annual sales to collect sales tax. As the tables turn on Amazon and their advantage of not charging customers sales...

Trend 27: eBay and 3 Predictions for the Automotive Aftermarket

October 3, 2012

The online giant eBay is growing and evolving with both consumers and merchants in mind. It’s now more than an online auction site and “the world’s online marketplace.” It has evolved into sales platforms and technologies, through its many subsidiaries, supporting both online and offline retail sales. There’s a solution for large online retailers as well as “mom and pop” local retailers. Today, eBay’s mission is to take the “e” out of “ecommerce” and support commerce at all levels through all channels. Shopping anytime, anywhere is eBay’s new vision. Here are our predictions for eBay and the automotive aftermarket....

Trend 28: Google and 4 Predictions for the Automotive Aftermarket

October 2, 2012

Google is significantly changing the online landscape with new services like Google+, Google Wallet and Google Shopping. Here are our predictions how these services will make a significant impact in the specialty auto parts industry. Prediction 1: SEO and paid search is a battle for real estate, not just position. Search engine marketing will no longer just be about being on the first search results page. It will be about the total real estate on the page including results for Google+, Google Shopping and other Google search enhancements. Prediction 2: Google+ will play a significantly larger role in marketers’...

Trend 33: Mobile Devices, From Flash to HTML5

September 27, 2012

The development of Flash for mobile devices has officially ceased. Adobe has announced that it will commit its resources to HTML5, a platform with broader support capabilities. After Apple excluded the use of Adobe Flash player in its mobile devices in support of HTML5, Adobe reluctantly announced that they would commit to HTML5. However, many websites still depend on Flash for videos, interactive images and interfaces. Relying on Flash for the main content and navigation of your site cripples it when it comes to visitors who connect using an Apple mobile device. According to a study by comScore, the...

Trend 36: 4 Things Wrong With Your Social Media Strategy

September 24, 2012

Are you making these common mistakes with your social media strategy? Mistake 1: Assuming that consumers follow you to have a “relationship.” Most don’t. The vast majority of consumers follow brands on social media to get discounts. Only two out of ten consumers follow brands to have a relationship (these are the hard-core evangelists that really like a brand) and eight out of ten really want a deal. Many brands with social media sites spend a lot of time trying to build relationships with their followers but a lot of these marketers are actually spinning their wheels. To maximize...

Trend 55: The Top 5 Online Holiday Sales Days

September 5, 2012

Today we will give you a look at the biggest days in online holiday shopping during 2011. Mondays shortly after Thanksgiving are the biggest days of online shopping and here are the top days for eCommerce according to comScore, a company that tracks online sales metrics. 1). Monday, Nov. 28, known as Cyber Monday, tops comScore Inc.’s list of top 2011 holiday season shopping days with $1.25 billion in online sales (this year it’s Monday, Nov. 26, 2012). 2). Monday, Dec. 5, only a week after Cyber Monday, comes in second with $1.18 billion in online sales (this year...

Trend 66: 2 Things to Know About Online Sales of Auto Parts in 2012

August 23, 2012

For our first automotive aftermarket trend, we look at two things you need to know about online retail sales of auto parts in 2012. 1). Retail brick and mortar sales of automotive parts and accessories had a strong first half of the year, but online sales are still far outpacing traditional retail. We’re still forecasting online sales of parts and accessories to come in around $3.5 billion (excluding online auctions) in 2012. We’ll have more detail on that in some of our posts over the next 66 days. 2). June slowdown: Online retailers of auto parts and accessories have...

New Auto Market Research: Secrets of Parts Buyers Revealed

May 7, 2012

New BuyerZoom and BrandZoom research reports are available through the Hedges & Company Market Research Store. We’ve added new reports covering engine bearings, carburetors, connecting rods, cylinder heads, engine blocks, performance fasteners, fuel and oil pumps, gaskets, lifters, pistons, push rods, rocker arms, valves, and valve springs. For the first time in the automotive aftermarket it is possible to obtain affordable research reports focused on buyers of specific types of parts. BuyerZoom reports give you extensive behavioral data on consumers who shopped for or purchased specific types of parts, while BrandZoom reports show consumer perceptions and opinions on brands...

2012 Online Sales of Auto Parts Growing

April 17, 2012

With the Catalyst 2012 conference this week — ChannelAdvisor’s annual ecommerce gathering — we thought this would be a good time to examine online sales of auto parts, sales statistics and multichannel shopping. The growth in online sales of auto parts has been outpacing the rest of the industry for many years. In 2009 we saw the slowest growth rate at just under 10% over 2008. More recently, we’re seeing a robust growth rate again and we’re projecting online sales of auto parts to be just under $3.5 billion in 2012. This is purely retail sales of auto parts...

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