Content Marketing is a long-term commitment

Content Marketing is a journey, not a destination.

Many car dealers want to see results now and a return on investment.   The problem with SEO and content marketing compared to PPC and Google Advertising is content marketing takes patience.  You cannot expect clear results in a couple of weeks; it can take a couple months to have noticeable results.  Content marketing is not a one-time investment; it is an on going investment.

Why isn’t content marketing a one-time investment?
Search engines are evolving and favor newer content over older content.  Google loves to crawl websites for new content.  Each time your website is crawled and doesn’t produce new pages, Google will crawl your website less and less frequently.  What people search for today, may not be the same as what they will search for tomorrow.  You need a comprehensive SEO and content strategy to keep up with the latest search trends so you can be on the search results not just for the current year models, but also the next year models.

Dealerships biggest content marketing mistakes:
Many car dealers will switch their website providers frequently.  Doing this not only removes your pages indexed in search engines, it allow removes unique content from your website.  Creating such a turbulent website will most likely lower your website’s ranking in Google.  Most content marketing is not transferable from one website provider to the next, meaning you will loose almost or all gains you have made with your content once it is removed.

Car dealers are by nature impatient, they want leads today, not tomorrow because a lot of the people signing the contracts have to meet a sales quota.  They don’t care about lead creation tomorrow; they need to keep their jobs today.  Ideally every dealership should use a combination of both PPC and content marketing.  Get leads now, but prepare for tomorrow.  PPC is a noticeable immediate return on investment it does have its place in your dealer marketing strategy, but it should not be your entire strategy.

So when do I start seeing results with content marketing?
Some results from content marketing can be felt in just a few days.  However the effect of SEO content marketing is accumulative.  Meaning, your results will most likely increase gradually, day-by-day, and month-by-month.

Creating a successful dealership or any business is not a game of checkers; it is a game of chess.  Meaning, your dealership not only needs to plan for today, you need to prepare for tomorrow, next month, and next year.  You need to be ahead of your competition, having Content Motive take care of your SEO and content marketing will keep you ahead of the competition.  Having on going content marketing and content creation is the best solution for staying relevant and improving your search engine results.

Want to learn more:
• http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnhall/2014/04/13/content-marketing-is-a-long-term-commitment-not-a-campaign/
• http://www.copyblogger.com/long-game-content-marketing/
• http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2013/sep/23/content-marketing-commitment-brands-strategy