Events, Happenings & Cool Stuff

2006 Ford F-150 Available In Sanford Florida

We just picked up a used truck dealer located in Sanford Florida (near Orlando). I was looking over their inventory this morning and all I can say is “WOW”.

They have just about any pre-owned truck you can think of, from little trucks to jacked up trucks. If you’re in the market and live in Central Florida, check out their inventory (click the picture).

Showroom Logic, based out of Central Florida just added another weapon to it’s arsenal. Automated Google Adsense that is specific to each vehicle the dealer has. Normally you see software like this come out of California.

Recently, Showroom Logic announced some unique tools like their automated Twitter  Tweets for car dealers and Facebook Updates. Now this tool really takes the cake.

Showroom Logic Twitter API In Action

Co-Founder Patrick Bennett thought of the Google Adwords concept and put it to action after many hours of coding and testing. Showroom Logic used the inventory of Park Automall in Tampa Florida to test it.

What it does:

Every dealer has tried Google Adsense before, and some still use it. The problem is they all fight over the same keywords. Think of Google Adsense as an auction to advertise. Whomever pays Google the most per click will get the number 1 slot.  A typical dealer will focus on a string of keywords. Here is some keywords another Tampa Dealer uses (they are a Ford Dealership)

• Ford Tampa
• Ford Tarpon Springs
• Ford Dealer Tampa Florida
• Tampa Bay Ford Dealers
• Ford Dealership Tampa Florida

That’s it, that is their entire campaign. Showroom Logic’s automated campaign creates a list so large I couldn’t even put it here. Park Automall has about 200 used cars, so when Showroom Logic’s software crawls their inventory it created 2,314 different keyword phrases (an average of 11.5 different keyword phrases per vehicle). When a new vehicle gets added it creates a new adsense campaign. When a vehicle is sold it removes that specific campaign.

The results are astounding. In the Tampa Bay area alone they had 66,455 ads displayed in the Tampa Bay area alone (just yesterday). Not only did the ads appear on Google Searches, they appeared on 65,143 content related websites like newspaper websites and car related blogs.

Click The Screen Shot For More Details

The great thing is the fact that the ads only show when an article mentions a specific car or truck that the dealer actually has in their inventory. If the news article was about a “2005 Honda Accord” the ad would show up. When the user clicks the ad it goes directly to the car!

This is an example of 1 of the 65,143 impressions Park Automall received yesterday.

Most dealers that spend the time setting up a Google Adwords Campaign will have each link pointing to their main website. Users don’t like that. If they click a link they want to see the description they clicked show up.

Wouldn’t you rather pay .50 cents for a quality click than 2 or 3 dollars like everyone else? The keywords Showroom Logic bids on are exclusive, some only cost .10 cents because nobody else bids on it.

The Ads Even Pop Up On Youtube Videos. Imagine the saturation?

Showroom Logic’s Google Adsense  tool is only available for one dealer per area. Co Founder of Showroom Logic Mike Annable says “It would be a huge conflict of interest for us to service 2 different dealerships a few miles apart. If we did that, we’d have to favor one and I wouldn’t want to be put in that position”.

For more information and screenshots of this tool, visit Showroom Logic’s Blog.

How Do They Do It?

I’m going to use Park Automall  as a reference in this article. The cool thing is they aren’t even in the city of Tampa, they are in nearby Pinellas Park.

According to Google Trends, the Tampa new and used car market (on the internet) is one of the largest in the entire world. It’s is ranked number 8 in the country (Orlando is number 7 – Kansas City is number 1).

Do you realize how many new and used car dealers are in Tampa? There are many multiple rooftop dealers as well, and they should be there.

I could go on and on about what a dealer should do, but I won’t. I will keep it simple and give my 2 main reasons why. It is important to note that this example snapshot is just one single keyword phrase, and they rank on thousands.

1) Backlinks: Park Automall has many links from related websites  pointing to their website with anchor text using Tampa Keywords. The best way to find out how many backlinks you have is Yahoo Site Explorer. At this time, they have 443 different backlinks, from many different websites. Most are auto-related. Their Showroom Logic website is keyword friendly, and between that and the blog it really juices up their main website which you can see here.

2) Proper Website: Park Automall is smart enough to have their own website, meaning they own it. Most dealers “rent” a website from providers. Park Automall had their website custom built. I have nothing to do with that website, so I can honestly say “well done”. I did some consulting for them when they recoded it, but other than that I am not affiliated with that company in any way.

There is a dealer in Lakeland Florida that dominates the Lakeland searches, and I see them show up occasionally on Tampa car searches. Why? They have their own site as well.

Do I recommend that a car dealer runs out and switch over their site to a custom one? Probably not yet, but I would suggest getting a macro site and start getting more of the long tail keyword traffic. Showroom Logic offers private third party car listing websites, which is perfect for juicing up your website. Besides their Twitter Tools, Showroom Logic utilizes press-releases and viral campaigns to help a dealer dominate.

Mike Annable of Showroom Logic can be reached by calling 863-666-0130 or you can send him an email at mike@showroomlogic.com.

Smart Car Drivers Are Wicked Smart

I have always been fascinated by Smart Cars. I remember last year I saw a petite woman parked under a shade tree kicked back and reading a book. The car looked normal compared to her, but I’m not sure if I could fit in one.

I started chatting with her about the car, because that was the first one I ever saw up close. She said she loves the car. The only drawback is people staring at you everywhere you go. “It takes a bit getting used to” she said. There are more Smart Cars on the road today, so I’m sure it got a little better.

I was reading up on Smart Cars in Wikipedia. Some Smart Cars have some pretty cool features:

• Autonomous Cruise Control System: One of the things I always disliked about cruise control was having to hover my foot over the brake pedal when I’m on the highway as I approach a car going below the speed limit. This system uses either radar or laser to detect this car and will slow down to compensate. It will even automatically resume if the car picks up speed.

• Intelligent Parking Assist System (IPAS), also known as the Advanced Parking Guidance System (APGS): Some models come equipped with this feature, which steers itself into a parking space with little input from the user.
• Automotive Night Vision with Pedestrian Detection: There really isn’t much published about this feature, but I think the name says it all.
• Driverless Car: OK, this one seems a bit scary, but you can read about it here.

Obviously the car has standard features as well, but the above list stood out from the basics like power windows, etc…

Last year you wouldn’t find any on a used car lot because they were so new. Today the used car dealers with talent are successfully finding these cars and putting them on there lot.

Park Automall in the Tampa Bay Florida area manages to keep them in inventory, selling a couple of them a week.

Currently, Park Automall has four used Smart Cars for sale in Tampa. Click the photo to see them all.

Uncle Sam is running out of money. Hurry Up and get your $4,500!