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Both statistically and anecdotally, it's clear that many dealers are diverting portions of the money they had targeted for traditional media - radio, TV, and print - to the Internet. This makes perfect sense: most online marketing practices offer a higher ROI along with greater certainty about its accuracy. What's more, dealers are making these revisions to their advertising budgets with greater and greater confidence, as online marketing continues to grow in effectiveness and successful models for online marketing become more commonplace.

Look deeper into the Internet ad spend itself, however, and things become murkier. Online marketing is an evolving field comprised of many different practices - some quite familiar, such as third-party leads and organic and paid search; others new and not yet fully established, such as dealer blogging and customer reviews. Some dealers venture only so far into this field, unsure of how to move beyond the basics; others hop from trend to trend without achieving real success with any one practice.

Moving away from traditional advertising requires some courage and guidance, but it's obvious that making this leap marks the beginning of careful analysis and decision-making, not the end. In this article, we examine some basic principles for finding the perfect Internet advertising mix.

The Secret: There's No Secret

The first thing to emphasize: there's no one secret recipe for success. That's the conclusion Jared Hamilton and Trevor Hill reached in making their forthcoming documentary, entitled The Master's Series: Automotive eCommerce. The product of Accelerate Automotive, which Hamilton and Hill founded, the film focuses on the structures and practices driving the online success of the nation's most accomplished dealerships.

"Everywhere we looked," says Hamilton , "we found highly successful dealers employing a wide range of approaches to Internet marketing." These conversations lead Hamilton and Hill to identify a number of key principles and insights into Internet marketing within a dealership.

Principle 1: Start at the Beginning

Sounds too obvious to mention, doesn't it? But "starting at the beginning," means a couple of different things, both very important. One, it means not getting ahead of yourself. If you dive into a complex Internet technique before establishing basic processes and a sound structure, your effort will fail. Two, it means picking the low-hanging fruit before climbing the tree.

The main benefit is that the most basic Internet marketing practices can pay off right away, while more advanced techniques - even if they're perfectly implemented - may take months to gain traction. Hamilton and Hill identify two practices as no-brainers for absolutely any dealership: (1) buying third-party leads, and (2) listing inventory on a website that aggregates and publishes inventory for many dealers. The first requires only a solid lead-management process - something you should have in place, and if you don't, you need to build that as soon as possible. And, the second doesn't require anything that a well run dealership doesn't already have.

Principle 2: Remember, You're Building a Strategy

The object of the game isn't to reach the final practice on the list of Internet marketing practices. Instead, it's to build a strategy comprised of the practices that make sense for your market and your dealership. This means mastering a collection of these practices and making them work together, not discarding old ones in favor of new ones.

Third-party leads, for example, are not only vital to your dealership's Internet success but can be easily integrated into your dealership. They can also quickly bring in sales while you craft other aspects of your overall approach to online automotive sales. They should not be viewed as temporary or stop-gap measures.

Principle 3: No One Lead Source Represents All Potential Customers

This is a very important principle and underscores why you need a mix of tactics, not just one effort. If there were an online marketing practice that gave you effective access to all your potential customers, it would be perfectly reasonable to build towards it and ultimately rely on it alone. But the fact is that different practices capture different groups of customers - something that doesn't seem to be changing. As long as this is the case, its imperative that you evaluate and choose techniques based on their ability to connect you with these different groups.

According to Hamilton , a common misconception among dealers is that they can eventually drop third-party leads in favor of paid search and still connect with the same consumer base. But this isn't the case, he says: "The customers dealers reach through third-party leads are the ones who prefer to find a dealer using an independent resource. Paid search can deliver a lot of leads, but it simply doesn't touch a big piece of the population. A dealer who drops third-party leads in favor of paid search is leaving plenty of money on the table." With the majority of automotive internet shoppers visiting third party sites during the buying process[1], there are few - if any - dealers in the US who find that paid search can give them all the sales volume that they can handle.

Principle 4: Use the Right Perspective for Evaluating Cost

It's ironic. Dealers who spend, month after month, $500 per sale on traditional advertising can bristle at the thought of spending half that on third-party leads. This phenomenon is really just a reflection of how attached we can be to what's familiar, even after it ceases making economic sense. While it is true that generating leads via your website can result in the lowest cost per sale, both online sources will cost you 50% less than newspaper, television and radio advertising and they should be evaluated accordingly.

According to Hamilton , "The most successful dealerships take cost per sale very seriously, and track return on investment carefully for each of their online marketing practices," he said. "The ones that prove themselves will remain in play as long as these dealers still have cars to sell, and the resources to sell them."

Some Reassurance

If you are disappointed that there's no single way to achieve the right Internet marketing mix, take comfort in the fact that you have room to address your dealership's particular needs and strengths.

If you are worried that the Internet seems too complex and constantly changing, take comfort in the fact that your strategy will always be a work in progress, with various components operating smoothly while others are still being thought out.

Most importantly, if you are concerned about cost, sit down and calculate your cost per sale for traditional advertising. By integrating online marketing into your strategy you can reach more customers, achiever greater ROI and be reminded that things can continue to get better and better.

[1] 77%, 2006 JDPA New Car Auto Shopper Study