Your Digital Marketing Budget. Divide and Conquer.

In the new era of digital marketing, it’s pretty easy to get lost in the seemingly never-ending stream of digital marketing solutions for your business. Where do you begin? 

You need to host your website. That's a thing. How much should that cost? What about updating your site regularly? That's another bill. How good is your website? What about SEO? Search engine optimisation, also known as website voodoo, costs exactly as much as someone can get you to spend. 

What about Google My Business? Google reviews. That’s pretty important. There are lots of fancy software services out there to help you with that. Expensive too. 

picture-taking and hosting services. Social media presence. Social media marketing. Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and more. Call tracking software. Chat services. On and on and on. Pretty soon you're spending a fortune and still not generating what you need in the way of leads for your business. A couple of grand here, a couple of grand there, five or ten different services—soon you’re talking about a lot of money! 

But what does your business really need? It needs leads. Simple. It needs calls, forms, and chats that result in customers at the door. Everything else is pretty much bullshit.

Yes, you need a good website; that's true, but it doesn't cost a fortune. A half-decent website might cost $300 to $500 per month, and that’s likely an automotive-specialized templated site. They're pretty good. Don’t be fooled by the ones that include marketing. You're paying for the marketing, not the site. If you're not generating enough leads through your marketing, then you're likely overpaying. 

You even need some SEO. That’s true. There are companies out there that specialise only in SEO. Stick to them. At least you know exactly what you’re paying for and will likely get some half-decent results. Avoid having the same company that does your other digital marketing also do your SEO. If it’s a site hosted by a vehicle listing service with thousands of dealers, it’s their main site that gets priority, not yours. Conflict of interest. If it’s a digital marketing company that does Google marketing, then be careful, because the better the organic value of your site, the less you need to spend on ads. Another conflict of interest.

What about those Google reviews? They’re important. Yes, they are. And the proper motivation for your staff should generate more than enough positive reviews to make up for the screw-ups and disgruntled customers. All those other review sites are fringe. I wouldn't spend a ton managing those. Besides, if your reviews are that bad, you have bigger problems than what we're dealing with here! 

Ok, so you have your site hosted for a few hundred bucks a month. Maybe you're spending a thousand or so getting professional pictures taken. You’ve engaged a company specializing in SEO for $700 to $1000 a month and you're away. Quality site. Moving up organically over time. Even quality pictures. What’s left? Leads for your business. That’s it. Everything else is about driving traffic directly to your website, then into your store. A completely measurable return on investment. I spent this. I got this many leads. They resulted in this many deals. I averaged this much gross per deal. Clean and clear results-based digital marketing spend. 

The message here is this: There are a bunch of small investments you need to make to have a quality digital presence. All are easily separated into distinct costs, or even better, distinct companies, so there are no grey areas. But they all add up to what is a reasonably small part of your overall digital marketing budget. In a perfect world, all the money you invest for the explicit purpose of generating prospects for your business is easily defined and tracked, and the best way to do that is with a company that only does that. Just like SEO. Just like social media management or website hosting. Divide and conquer.