Ode to a Hummingbird, or SEO Now Made Easy-er.

Just when we thought we were all optimized, Google launches yet another zoological algorithm at us.  This time it's "Hummingbird".  This update does not appear as earth shattering to those tasked with optimizing the company's search rankings as the great Penguin invasion of 2012.  In fact, Google's little winged offering should make our marketing efforts a little easier. 

Search engines are rapidly developing the idea of semantic search, or search engines that don't just look at what you are search but attempt to also predict "why did you ask?".  Online communities like Reddit and Imgur frequently  have a good time with Google search suggestions.

Automotive dealers (or any digital marketer for that matter) need to understand that the search engines companies make their money by producing really good and relevant search results.  Often we get so narcissistic that we forget that the advertising world was not created to serve our ambitions alone.  They are there to create pools of users so that they can charge others for access to these users.  In the case of Google and Bing, we do not necessarily have to pay for this access!  We do, however, have to be a good search result.

So how does one become a good search result?  

It is done by being the best answer to a particular question.

Far from being intimidating, this should be seen as liberating.  Gone are the days of having to think up every conceivable keyword string that our customer base might use.  Now we just need to know what our customers want to know and be the best at providing the right answer. 

This is something we should know instinctively!  

How much easier is it to sit in a sales meeting and ask our staff what types of questions people ask them on the lot versus asking (especially older veteran salespeople) what types of search terms our customers are typing in?

Once we understand what our consumers are asking for, we can begin to make sure that these questions are answered on our web pages.  This goes beyond simply providing a price and a list of features on our inventory (which is still very much relevant, by the way!).  What other questions are our customers asking?  Some examples of unique questions we could be answering might include:

Is it better to buy or to lease a new car?

What is the gas mileage of the Chevrolet Impala?

How much can I tow with a half ton F150?

Is Honda really more reliable than an American made car?

Cobalt, in partnership with General Motors, now allows flex site users to have unlimited pages on their dealer websites, so adding information pages does not require paying for additional pages.  Complimentary blog sites like the one this humble blog is posted on can be used with links back to Google + and dealer web pages.

Now it is not all smooth sailing for traditional auto dealers.  Old school thought processes now have to give way to recognizing that there is value in having creative talent on the staff.  You can rely on expensive third party options, if you wish, but remember that your content will likely be uncomfortably similar to everyone of their other clients, too.  It is time to have on staff a copywriter or two and maybe even a graphic artist.  Oh, and we need to make sure that our "old guard" is nice to them and recognizes their value, too.

The search engine industry is always testing new approaches and modifying their algorithms.  We need to recognize that as consumer habits ebb and flow so must our content.  Google is already requiring fresh content, so this is not a question of adding some webpages then sitting back to see who drives in.  Guiding your efforts should be someone talented in organizing good online content and objectively measuring the results.  This person should be a partner to your sales managers, not a subordinate.  The hierarchical territory disputes traditionally associated with car dealerships need to diminish and a more collaborate, cooperative model be embraced.

Just as the market has changed with lightning speed the past few years so, too, have the tools changed that dealers can use to respond.  Again, this represents a tremendous opportunity for us to simply and effectively do what we do best: respond to the needs of our consumer base.  Google is empowering us to not simply know the answer, but to be the answer!

Marvin - Brilliant, underappreciated, nonetheless devoted.

Who the hell is Marvin?

This blog spawned from the wave of disappointment, betrayal, abandonment and despair brought about by my dismissal from the Great Lakes Auto Network.  I won't rehash the details but suffice to say I knew digital marketing best practices and yet was taken out by old school car guys who think that digital watches are cutting edge.  As an ardent fan of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, how could I not identify with Marvin the Robot?

To me, the title was a clever allegory, but today I realized that for all my marketing savvy, I failed to consider whether my audience would know who Marvin was.  Few things are as humbling as yelling about the emperor having no clothes whilst yourself being completely naked.  Sure, I knew Marvin, but would anyone else get the metaphor?

Well, my cherished reader, today I seek to remedy this narcissistic oversight with the following little essay:

"Why I Feel Like the Marvin the Depressed Robot of the Digital Marketing World"

by Jeff Novak

     Really Smart Depressed Human Marketing Enthusiast

If you have not read Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy then you should.  In fact, now is a good time.  Do your inner misanthropic cynic a favor and give him/her an endless river of therapeutic laughter.

One of my favorite characters in this five book trilogy was Marvin the Robot, aka Marvin the Paranoid Android (despite his complete lack of paranoia).  Marvin was a rejected prototype of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.  Marvin had a brain the size of a planet and could do incalculable (except to him) computations in an instant.  As a service robot, however, he was pressed into service to do simple tasks at the whim of whoever was in possession of him at any given moment.  As a prototype of SCC's Genuine People Personalities (GPP) Marvin possessed intelligence and emotion.  You can imagine, then, the depression that would result from so great a mind as his being enjoined to perform the most banal tasks imaginable by beings whose intelligence is, by comparison, insignificant.

Let me share some quotes used by Douglas Adams to endear his readers to this very popular character:

“Funny,” he [Marvin] intoned funereally, “how just when you think life can’t possibly get any worse it suddenly does.”

On being left through a quirk in infinite improbability and time travel for fifty million years on a planet by the protagonists: “The first ten million years were the worst," said Marvin, "and the second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third ten million years I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline.” 

“Pardon me for breathing, which I never do any way so I don’t know why I bother to say it, oh God, I’m so depressed.” 

 So is it unbridled hubris which leads me to associate myself with Marvin?  Yes and no.

I am not the first to notice that the corporate world so often makes so little sense.  Its folly has long been lampooned by those far more talented than me.  The Office, Dilbert, Office Space et al.   How does a company continue to make money when propelled by seemingly endless and illogical decisions?  Doesn't a company have to do all those things they teach in those ivy league schools to succeed?

The answer, at least based on my experience, is "nope."

 In my first entry I likened myself to Camus' Sisyphus, diligently pushing forward with new ideas and best practices only to reach the top and have management knock the rock back down the hill.  Perhaps I am a zealot, or perhaps more accurately a masochist, but I have the insufferable optimism to keep encouraging my employers to let me move forward with new ideas.  Why can't I accept mediocre results.  Why can I not stand like the others and compliment the emperor on his fine flesh tone robes?  Why can I not look at that damned rock at the bottom of the hill and vow to just look like I'm pushing?  My late father won't let me.

My father drilled into my head as all good fathers do that I should work hard -- harder than everyone else.  While in his machine shop your hard work was reflected in the widgets you had produced, or on a job site the sweat pouring from your brow, people cannot appreciate hard work or talent that goes on in one's head.

In 1913 psychologist John B. Watson administered a lecture at Columbia University entitled "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It" (Psychology fans will find it here) in which he brings to the world of psychology the idea of studying the psychology of behavior.  His most famous experiment involved scaring the hell out of a little kid named Albert with rats. ("Making Sense of Autism..."James Copeland MD)

After discovering that the academic world frowns on professors who study the effects of professorial mojo on their research assistants, John Brodus Watson took his research and his skills to the field of advertising where, according to Mad Men, indiscreet liaisons are what one does during lunch with the secretary pool.

In the time since Watson, behavior science has taught us much.  Advertisers began to use this science to affect greater response from their advertising targets.  (They also benefited from the influx of horny professors that could give them tips on how to use science to get the most out of the aforementioned secretarial pools.) 

I wonder what it was like for marketers at the time to see the arrival of science to their trade.  Who was this Watson guy?  What of behavioral study?  What does that have to do with painting really pretty shingles to hang over the door of our client?

In the past one would measure advertising success with quarterly sales reports.  "Gut" would often determine if a campaign worked or not.  The addition of science would bring about focus group testing, product trials, polls.  The better advertising could quantify its results, the more effective it would become.

Now comes the digital age.

The Internet has flourished with dizzying speed, and it's evolution takes days, sometimes hours.  In the midst of it rose Google, a company initially concerned with producing relevant search results for their users that became an information and analytical juggernaut.  Gone are the days of spending on billboards, magazine ads, radio spots and the wait for periodic sales reports.  Digital analytics lets you see how your ads are performing.  Heat maps and A/B testing platforms let you test your web design in real time using the site visit data of the actual users you are targeting.  Can you imagine what Don Draper could have done with accurate and quick data like this?

It does not stop there, however.  The digital advertiser has at his disposal tools that reveals where your target market is looking online.  Complex algorithms have been developed to try to pinpoint how close your prospect is to making a purchase.  eCommerce giants like Amazon can predict which additional items you are most likely to include in your current purchase.  Look up something in search and everything else you do is plastered full of ads relevant to what your search patterns.  Imagine the Reader's Digest in the doctor's office knowing you were just reading about how to refinish antique furniture, slowed down for a sign at a used furniture store, and were looking at wood finishing supplies at Home Depot.  It then suddenly switches the article on the cover from "How I Narrowly Escaped Being Targeted by a Nigerian Prince with an Escrow Problem" to "I Restored Grandma's Chifferobe".  This can happen online - a marketer's wildest fantasy can be the Internet's reality.

It doesn't end there.  In fact, it doesn't end.  Digital marketers are moving on to concepts like geo-fencing.  Soon your Firestone tire store can make an ad pop up on your customer's smart phone as they pull into a Goodyear store.  The explosion in smart phones and tablets opens the door for marketers to literally travel with you, offering advice and counsel at every turn.

So what does all of this have to do with me?  Like Marvin knows about infinite improbability hyperspace drives, I know something about this stuff.  I know the marketing tools that are out there and have even had success applying them.  I can look at an automobile dealership's operation, analyze their message (in those rare cases where such a consistent message exists), and find ways to expand their reach.  The good Lord gave me a talent for language and a creative mind.  I can do digital advertising -- But like Marvin I am surrounded by those who don't understand.  What's worse, this is how I make my living, and in the end dealerships always seem to eschew what is new and strange so as to default back to their comfort zone.  They do this even when it makes no logical sense.

Only six percent of dealership marketing decisions are based on actual data.  In fact, data is typically anathema to the automotive dealership.  They count the number of "X's" on the sold board, they calculate the amount of profit, and they see if they sold more than last year.  The concept of measuring the site metrics of their website, the trending of viewers looking at their inventory, the breadth of data they can find with their Customer Relation Management software to find strengths and weaknesses -- all receives scant attention.  And woe to him that brings it up!

One of my favorite passages in The Hitchhiker's Guide lampoons this very concept.  It involves infinite improbability fields but it makes the point:

The principle of generating small amounts of finite improbability by simply hooking the logic circuits of a Bambleweeny 57 Sub- Meson Brain to an atomic vector plotter suspended in a strong Brownian Motion producer (say a nice hot cup of tea) were of course well understood - and such generators were often used to break the ice at parties by making all the molecules in the hostess's undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to the left, in accordance with the Theory of Indeterminacy. 

Many respectable physicists said that they weren't going to stand for this - partly because it was a debasement of science, but mostly because they didn't get invited to those sort of parties.
Another thing they couldn't stand was the perpetual failure they encountered in trying to construct a machine which could generate the infinite improbability field needed to flip a spaceship across the mind-paralysing distances between the furthest stars, and in the end they grumpily announced that such a machine was virtually impossible. 

Then, one day, a student who had been left to sweep up the lab after a particularly unsuccessful party found himself reasoning this way: 

If, he thought to himself, such a machine is a virtual impossibility, then it must logically be a finite improbability. So all I have to do in order to make one is to work out exactly how improbable it is, feed that figure into the finite improbability generator, give it a fresh cup of really hot tea ... and turn it on! 

He did this, and was rather startled to discover that he had managed to create the long sought after golden Infinite Improbability generator out of thin air. 

It startled him even more when just after he was awarded the Galactic Institute's Prize for Extreme Cleverness he got lynched by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had finally realized that the one thing they really couldn't stand was a smartass.
[http://www.ebooktrove.com/top_ten/DouglasAdams_TheHitchhikerTrilogy_5Books1ShortStory.pdf]

Now that I have pointed out what is wrong with the rest of the world, let me share with you what is wrong with me.  I love marketing.  I love creating a message that moves people to act.  I love measuring my message, analyzing it as critically as possible.  I love unique messaging.  I love thinking outside the box -- often  way outside.  Marketing and sales process is for me a passion that borders on obsession.

My recent stint with Community Chevrolet demonstrated that I am good at it, too.  They did not know what they needed to do so I was given license to do almost whatever I wanted.  (Whatever I wanted, by the way, never translates into throwing huge sums at vendors and the latest gimmick.  I am far too fond of controlling my message for that!)  In the end their used car sales soared 91% and their new 27%.  It was for me an affirmation that all those stats and best practices I had studied were actually relevant to this business.  I have finally pushed the rock up the hill - to its peak, no less!

Then the damned thing rolled right over me.

During a market slump the salesmen corner the owner to assert that the BDC call agent was inexperienced and that is why sales are down.  The owner fired the BDC agent (who happened to be my son).  My son gets picked up immediately by a competitor and I am fired in a fit of pique because I did not forbid him to take the other job.

In case you're wondering -- no -- not one piece of empirical data was used in any of these decisions.

So call it hubris, cynicism, or a completely delusional self image I can relate to Marvin.  I don't share his near infinite knowledge, but I share his hamartia, or fatal flaw as it were.  Marvin cannot help but compute complex problems.  His mind won't allow him to settle for the banal.  He thinks because he is, and who he is compels him to think, to calculate -- and to feel.  In addition to being infused with voluminous data, he is also programmed to feel, and he feels like no one can relate well to him.

People can see sweat. People can count the widgets you have produced. But people cannot always see that what you are saying is right, that you know what you are doing, and that you can translate theory into success. 

I have a passion for what I do.  I know that it works -- and I have a work ethic that propels me to do the very best, well in excess of expectations.

Now if only I could accept that for many, the status quo is their comfort zone, an just play the game?  No way.

Works cited:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/making-sense-autistic-spectrum-disorders/201008/020-thorndike-watson-founding-fathers-behaviori

http://pages.pomona.edu/~rt004747/lgcs11read/Watson13.pdf

http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/watson.htm