Online Personal Branding and owning the Search Engines for Competitors Names
I started a rebranding effort online with my new profile picture here. The one I had here before I did not use in any of my other online profiles. I used another image that reflected me. Just an average guy making money online. Many people in the Make Money Niche of online marketing recognize it "as me".
With that being said I added my phone number to my new rebranded picture. This may look spammy to some and others will see at as perfectly acceptable. I for one do not care about the opinion that people hold of my based on pictures etc but I do try to protect my online reputation.
What efforts are others making to brand themselves?
As a dealership employee I am not paid to brand the store, I am paid for sales my department generates which for now is just me. Do you see a problem with an employee branding themselves first then the store second?
I am starting to revitalize a blog network for self promotion that I will own and maintain. I had changed it over to affiliate marketing offers now will push that traffic back to my inventory and me. Which may actually cost me money personally, ie lost income, in the short term but will pay off in spades later. Is anyone else doing this? I have been successfully doing it in online affiliate marketing for the last several years and it does make some nice extra cash!!!
Going after competing dealers names in a branding effort. I have some single page sites that rank under a competing dealers own website for their name, it will outrank them in the very near future for searches for their name. Which is a presell for me and my inventory for their brand. How would most look at efforts like this?
With all of the extra work that I am doing to push leads to me and brand myself I own all of the content, domains and pay for the hosting so if my situation changes I can move it over to another location or sell the property. I know that is a fine line to walk, opinions please?
You bring up a couple of issues here. First of all, there is nothing at all wrong with going after competing dealers in the "search" department. If they aren't protecting their own sites, shame on them, and bully for you. We are very aggressive in this area, AND it works extremely well.
As for branding yourself first, again bully for you. If your Dealer has issues with this, he should be paying you to "brand" the Dealership. There is a fine line here obviously that you should be careful in navigating. For example, I wouldn't use your talents to threaten or otherwise cause your Dealer discomfort. I am assuming that you have no employment contract and that both you and your dealer operate under an "at-will" employment agreement.
I would also recommend discussing your efforts with the Dealer to make sure you are both on the same page. I can't imagine that you would have too many items up for disagreement. If you do, you probably aren't working for the right guy or gal.
Personally, I don't know why you wouldn't want the Dealer to pay for all of your advertising and marketing efforts - regardless of what they are ultimately branding. I again am assuming that you are working for a reputable company with leadership in place to see the big picture. Candid conversations are good.
I may not know the whole story, but it sounds like you are on the right track.
We have discussed it at some great detail. The only thing is they realize that if I am branding me first that property is of little value to them if I leave so they do not want to subsidize it much if at all. Which that is ok by me because if I own it it is "transportable". They still had some reservations but know that I will not give my talents without compensation and this is what is best for me right now. They have tried to move me into "Real" Management and I have resisted greatly. Right now I am responsible only for me and the Interwebs and am not tied down to desk deals unless they are mine. I do fill in when one of the other managers takes a day off if needed.
I am not one to burn bridges so I would not use those properties to hurt the dealer unless they really phucked me, which I do not think they would ever do, I am a likable guy. But they are not prepared to pay me a salary at the level to justify me working only as a "marketing" employee. I do have a good arrangement with them but even then results are expected. The only results I can measure properly with the current sales staff is exactly what I see and touch. Which is a conversation that should not be held here..
As far as the other dealers not liking me taking their name away from them in the search engines you are right shame on them. The dealer has already had one call and he congratulated me on the job well done as we were able to also take two new car deals away from them and sell the customers preowned vehicles. I was on the first page in google for their exact store name search in less than two days and now I am number 3. My title tags have a better call to action. Now they are trying to recruit me, but I am not interested. The only thing that bothers me about doing this is my market area is small. Everyone in the biz here knows everybody and has worked with one another at some point or another.
I got in the business here in 1990 and my father was the used car manager at another dealership for 15 years and believe it or not I got in the car biz before him and we have never worked together. I got out of the biz in 1998 and just came back. So I really have to be careful somewhat if I ever leave this store and stay in the car biz in this market..
Another thing is the dealer likes the PR job I did for them over a comical situation you can see more about it at Consumer Blotter
Well, you won't like my answer.
Here's my first post and it's going to look like a trolling flame :(
Are you an employee or a contractor?
If it's all about you then that's the fault of the dealership about not paying you or encouraging you to be part of the team. To a certain extent.. Maybe it's the old question of just who owns the customer... is the customer your client or the client of the dealership.
Quote: "First of all, there is nothing at all wrong with going after competing dealers in the "search" department. If they aren't protecting their own sites,"
Personally I've seen business and individuals especially in Real Estate and Travel grab up the names of the competition before, chasing page rank et all...
To me I will avoid using them like the plague... I see it as a blatant lack of ethics, character and integrity.
Build your own name and don't try to use or abuse someone else's.
IMHO and my two pence.
A person not willing to advertise themselves really has no business selling
anything to anybody especially in high ticket retail. Real estate agents are
responsible for their own marketing activites and marketing for the most part.
The employee mentality is poor for the dealer and the individual selling their
product. I much would rather have two guys that market themselves than
10 that relied only on my advertising as a business owner. I just don't own the
business I am in now. I can be a partner, responsible for my own destiny, or
an employee that bitches about a bad benefit package and bad advertising.
The Union Worker Mentality is not the right attitude to have selling anything!!
You are fine with your opinion.
Going after competitive names in such a way that does no inflame is
fine with me especially when they have a name like My Town Ford or
My Town Nissan if I have those product lines in stock in the used car
department.
On one property that I am having to rework from affiliate marketing back
to generating leads I list the competitors names as dealers that may sell
brand x vehicle, but I dare not buy a domain with a name like TomJonesFord.com (fictitious example)
but I would and do own names such as anycityforddeals.com and can optimize
them "city ford dealer" type searches and display my used ford inventory.
That is taking advantage of the longtail in a very targeted way. People do
it all the time with directories and even the big players in the auto lead gen
biz do it.
What will be fun to watch is when the website providers that use misleading
cloaked content to SEO flash sites start getting deindexed and if they show up
in my market they will get reported to the G to be taken out of the index. If
they get enough complaints about this practice then they will take the footprints
those sites leave and ban them all.
What is bad is that most dealers do not have people on staff that even have a clue
about what I just said much less the dealers or vendors knowing.....
Really though it is not any less ethical than dealers mentioning competitive
brand names in their other advertising to sell used vehicles. That is my view.
It is true, many dealers do not understand where or how their internet leads get to them. Most (if not all) dealerships have had the factories jam cookie cutter websites down their throats and often dealerships have three or more websites for the same store... Then often fumble the ball on most of the leads they get.
On Super Bowl Sunday, I drove to my local supermarket with shopping list in hand. The typical items were on the list, and I had every intention of purchasing those items I had pre-selected. I also had every intention of "staying on task," and ONLY purhcasing the items I wanted, not being swayed by any nefarious marketing "tricks."
Here's where it gets interesting. Before getting to the supermarket, I had written down "Doritos Chips" as one of the items I was to purchase; however, once entering the fray I encountered a HUGE display of "Tostitos" brand chips located away from all of the other chips.
While I don't work for a supermarket, I can only assume that someone was given incentives to put these Tostitos in a more positive position within the store than the other chip brands. Upon walking up to the mountains of Tostitos brand chips, I must confess that I wasn't thinking of the "blatant lack of ethics, character and integrity," on the part of Tostitos. Rather, I CHOSE to purchase the Tostitos because they sounded better at the time, AND the price was right. Quite simply, the Tostitos were marketed better than the Doritos on this particular day.
I look at Search Engine Marketing in much the same way. My job it to get my website in front of as MANY potential customers as I can. If it has a better position in searches than a competitor's website, than I believe I am doing my job well. Someone may well be searching for "Any Town Ford," because she/he had top-of-mind awareness about that particular dealership, OR that person may have simply heard a marketing message for that dealership and typed in the name to see exactly what they were about.
Now, if my website pulls up in the search for "Any Town Ford," how is this any different from Tostitos getting a more prominent place in a supermarket from a competing brand?
Marketing is about placing your product and service in the most favorable light and position as possible as compared to other competing products and services. Search Engine Marketing is only a small part of this. Think of your website as a REALLY BIG display of chips that you want in front and center of your prospective customers.
The next time you go shopping, take the time to study all the marketing efforts that are being made to get you to do something that you really had no intention of doing originally. I think you will be surprised at what you may find.
Why the push to brand yourself? If you work for the dealership, then you should be driving their brand, & competitive offerings first.
If you have your own business, your personal branding efforts should be separate from those done for your clients. [Your own branding efforts would be more effective by offering a benefit statement to your frame image. An image wrap that says something like "Ask For My 3 New Online Secrets!" works better than just a phone #]
Vince - I fail to see where the "blatant lack of ethics" comes into the comments made in this thread. Search engines were created with specific rules & guidelines; if one business has the ability to play by those rules & capitalize on the opportunities within the SE's - that's simply a smart move on their part. Not an unethical one...
---If you have your own business, your personal branding efforts should be separate from those done for your clients. [Your own branding efforts would be more effective by offering a benefit statement to your frame image. An image wrap that says something like "Ask For My 3 New Online Secrets!" works better than just a phone #]---
I should of quantified that a little better. I am not rebranding in the Make Money Niche the only reason I added my number here and my ISM blog was because of the many request I have gotten for my number. Now it is there easy for you to find. :P
A far as personal branding as a dealership employee I look at it no different than if I was selling real estate or mortgages. As my department grows I will of course move it more towards dealership branding. But if I own the property (domain, hosting) and am only compensated for countable sales I am going to brand me first and foremost. People don't buy from dealerships they buy from people.
People are trying to segment automobiles to that of a commodity and that is the wrong attitude IMHO. It is transactional based but people are not going to point and click to buy a car. They are going to request more information and if they have an identifiable contact it gives them someone to hold accountable and as a resource.
Unless the car business needs to be restructured to allow delivery points for manufactures and take the dealers out of the equation that is the way it is going to be for the foreseeable future. Want to see sales go to the floor for a brand take out the "People" part of the business.
I don't look at it as I work for a dealership. I view my relationship as a partnership.
Depends on what kind of people the consumer is dealing with when it comes to buying a car! lol
Good ole HAL or internet age could be replacing some of the inadequate or wanna be sales people!
I think what your doing is great and smart. Again- the dealership is not delling the car people do-
wise/ nice/ and professional sales people that is lol
