2009 marked the first year that car dealers and manufacturers started making the full “shift” to online marketing as their primary form of advertising and driving leads and sales. Many increased their percentage of their marketing budget to be used online. For some, this was a result of dropping their overall budget. For others, they started spending more and more online, less and less offline.

Regardless, that trend will continue in 2010.

Here are some of the things that we predict will have an impact on dealers and manufacturers in 2010.

Social Media Will Grow in Use and Importance

This alone can be its own blog post, but one thing is clear. Customers are going social and those in the automotive industry will have to as well. The challenge is in finding the right formula that works for particular dealers, their customers, and their area. There is no “one-size-fits-all” solution in social media. So hire a qualified company with a team of experts to guide you.

More GOOD Sites are Better

2009 had a lot of dealers buying domains and throwing up sites left and right. Some would use redirects in an attempt to drive more traffic to their primary websites. Others would use microsites and landing pages to generate more leads. In 2010, the “domain bubble” (which burst a long time ago) will become more clearly useless as a strategy. Putting up high-quality, lead-generating pages and websites will be the key. Having multiple-domain primary websites (such as the Power of 5) will prove to be exceptionally useful as well.

Online Reputation Management will be a Key

As more people look to user-reviews as a portion of their decision-making process, “defending home base” will be of utmost importance. In the automotive industry, “home base” is your name. When people search for you by name, are they finding properties controlled by you and only you, or are they seeing review sites, 3rd party sites, and competitors?

Pay Per Click Marketing will be “Exposed”

For years, pay-per-click marketing on search engines has been used by many as their primary method of driving traffic to their websites. While PPC has a place in an automotive digital marketing campaign, it should never be the primary focus. There are certain aspects of it that will be exposed more readily in 2010, such as the fact that buying your name in Google is a practice designed to inflate the numbers and apparent effectiveness of a campaign. From a dealer’s perspective, it’s a waste of money. Again, a whole post should be dedicated to this.

Mobile is Here, but be Careful…

Sites that are able to be viewed flawlessly on mobile devices such as iPhones and Blackberries are rising in importance. More people are surfing from their mobile phone than ever before. With that said, there will be a “hype” level that is attributed to them that may sway decisions unnaturally. Going mobile is important and we are happy to have an excellent mobile product for our customers, but that doesn’t mean we believe it will be of utmost importance in 2010. It’s a luxury, but for the right price, it’s worth it.

We listed off the first 5 of 10 Things to Expect from Automotive Marketing in 2010. Here’s the rest of the list, and as you can see, the theme remains the same: 2010 will be a digital year for automotive marketing.

Regardless of what your current strategy is, you should be looking into the latest and greatest, but only through cautious eyes. There are many “shiny gadgets” out there that in reality will not help you to improve your business. Others will, but at too high of a cost. Our goal is to make sure that you’re getting the most bang for your buck with every marketing decision you make with us. Here are the last 5 things to consider going into the new year:

Content Rich = Traffic

Having sites with lots of quality, unique content has always been important, but as more competing websites put more content on their sites, it will be increasingly imperative to have content and pages add “on the fly”. Long-tail searches are becoming more relevant, and while they’re still not as important as having the “money terms” that drive the bulk traffic, finding the low-hanging fruit of someone deep in the buying funnel will make adding more content a must in 2010.

Tracking Makes Perfect

There’s no time for practice. You need to make your marketing decisions quickly and be able to enhance your presence at will. Tracking traffic, leads, and telephone calls with extreme accuracy will help you have a flexible game-plan going forward. The days of “they viewed your map and hours so that’s a lead” are over. If you can’t track it, it doesn’t exist. Google analytics and other 3rd-party tools will make the difference.

Lead Conversion Optimization Turns Traffic into Leads

Behavioral targeting is not new, but it’s relatively new in the automotive industry. Having website components that “adjust” to the search terms and traffic sources of your visitors will make their goals easier to achieve. In car sales, your customers’ goals are the same as yours – they want to find what their looking for quickly so they can make a buying decision and you want them to do the same thing.

Conformity Will be a Battle

As OEM’s move towards universal vendors and attempt to keep every dealer within their own little box, successful dealers will take advantage of the tools available to them to get the advantage. While there’s nothing wrong with a unified message, look, feel, and overall marketing strategy, having the ability to rank well for competitors’ cities while still having compliant websites will be the difference between a few sales a month. In today’s volatile market, every extra sale is worth going after.

SEO is Still the Key

Many things will make 2010 completely different from 2009, but one thing will stay the same throughout and beyond. Search engine optimization is still the key to being able to get every local sale you can as well as to branch out into other markets. While PPC, Social Media, and all of the other types of marketing are emerging, SEO will still be the most important thing to consider. You can’t get leads without traffic, and the organic search listings are the primary point that people use when deciding who to visit.

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2010 will be a “bounce back year” for many dealers. Some, unfortunately, will not see enough of a bounce back to save them from their fate, but those who survive and flourish will be rewarded with even more in the coming months and years. People need cars. They will until something replaces them as the primary method of transportation. Until that day comes, keep diligent, market well, and be willing to take chances. It’s what’s kept you going strong for years and you shouldn’t have any intentions of changing that.