Internet Advertorial

Marina News

Sept/Oct 2008, Part Four

Authors: Channel Blade, Boatdealers.ca, boatest

Third Party Listings on the Internet for Dealers

In this, our fourth installment on how to use the Web to drive your business, we review the benefits of choosing and managing third party boat-for-sale Internet listing sites.

While loading pictures and entering the data for copy points and product specifications takes time, steps can and should be taken to prevent this from becoming too time-consuming. There is a real advantage to listing as many product photos and information possible on each listing, since it limits consumer questions on sales calls that could be an impediment to sales. The following article attempts to help you keep uploading inventory simple.

New Boat Inventory

If you post a larger amount of inventory on a Web site, there is more potential for higher search engine rankings, based on an expanded set of inventory names and keywords. Therefore it becomes important to make sure all new models of your boat lines are represented on your site. If a boat that you are capable of selling is presented properly and as available, you receive the benefits of expanded product information associated with your online dealership. There is also a distinct benefit of not losing the prospective buyer looking for a product that you don¿t necessarily have in inventory today, but could easily get for them.

Adding your own photographs to inventory on your lot allows you to stand out from the crowd of dealers selling the same manufacturers. Most Web photos on dealers' Web sites start with what the images manufacturers provide and often this is sufficient. With today¿s digital cameras and Web technologies, however, it is easy and inexpensive to take several pictures of units on your lot and augment your listings with your own pictures, providing additional perspectives on your product.

Typically, with new inventory coming in mostly once per year, there's a "crunch" time for this data entry, but after that, your work will largely be to maintain the listings. Keep copies of your work, so before you distribute it to your third party listing sites, you will have saved work for yourself from year to year, as many manufacturer models may only have minor specifications or photo changes on the same boats.

Used Inventory and Brokered Boats also add additional brands and model names to the association of your online dealership with search engine keywords. This can help drive your search engine ranking, as we noted before. If a potential buyer uses a major search engine to look for a specific brand, model and year of a boat that is in your inventory, the search engine will be able to detect it in your listings. Remember that it is incredibly important to enter descriptions for your inventory. Although it will take a few extra minutes of typing, it is crucial to include detailed descriptions that include quality keywords that attract search engines and customers. If you skip on these descriptions, it could cost you higher search engine rankings and interested prospects that get the information that they are looking.

Maintaining used and brokerage inventory on your inventory sites could be time consuming, given the fact that several specifications need to be included, but in a market such as today's, the presence of this information on the Web is critical for your Internet leads. The key in entering this inventory is to decide what the guidelines will be for the types of inventory you enter. While it takes more photos and information to sell a cruiser, you may limit yourself to four photos and ten features for a deck boat. They key is knowing what to do before you set out to do it, select what's most important for each model you sell and stay consistent. Make a plan and work that plan.

Multiple Sites are Necessary to Increase Sales

In our previous installment, we made the case that the manufacturer's site can be a major source of leads and, if it is not, we recommended you take some kind of action. Even a very effective manufacturer's site may not be enough to deliver the leads and sales you require to make a reasonable profit. By expanding your reach into as many Internet listing sites as possible, you extend the reach of your name, brand and inventory, increasing lead volume.

Again, it is imperative that used and brokered inventory is supported in your Internet listing efforts that go beyond your own Web site. While it's certainly possible to have a very well-designed and effective lead-generating Web site, the expanded footprint of Internet listing sites only serves to complement your efforts.

Auto Propagation

For those unfamiliar with the term, auto propagation is the automatic loading of inventory listings to multiple sites from your Web site as a single source. If you have significant amounts of used and brokered boats, auto propagation or auto loading will drastically reduce your manual entry time and prevents duplicate entry. This means that when you make a change on your site, that change occurs automatically, over the specified time period established, on all other sites of which you distribute inventory.

There are a multitude of options you can use to facilitate auto propagation:

• Channel Blade is the best known in the business for helping dealers increase sales through the Internet. They can be contracted individually by dealers and are suppliers to many boat builders, such as the Brunswick Group.
• Some manufacturers have custom solutions.
• Boatdealers.ca uses all industry suppliers and makes software available to individual dealers, where necessary.
• Some suppliers will go onto your site and cut and paste to update their site. As long as you're not doing the work and everything is completed quickly, this can be just as beneficial

We talked to Carly Poole at Buckeye Marine, who is committed to this process.

"No one likes to do the same job twice, let alone three or four times, as the case may be when manually posting inventory on third party sites," she said. "Every time you have to re-enter information you run the risk of copy errors. We have found that using Channel Blade¿s automated inventory feed saves us time and money not only in terms of staffing but also in minimizing costly errors. We no longer advertise on third party sites that are not set up to accept our inventory automatically."

Assessing Third Party Sites

Ultimately, assessing where to list your inventory will be determined by the quality and number of leads that you receive and to some extent, on the types of new and used inventory that you carry. Some sites do much better with smaller, less expensive vessels, while others excel with higher-end inventory.

Assuming that your target sites offer auto propagation, here are the next series of measurements you should consider:

1. How many boats are on the site? The high inventory sites will be more appealing to prospective buyers.

2. If you want to sell new boats, the site must have a complete range of models for the key competitive manufacturer in your area. If they don't then new boat buyers won't spend time on the site.

3. The total number of dealers participating on the site is a good signal as to how the site draws traffic.

4. Third party traffic audits are available. The Internet is historically hard to measure and easy to misrepresent. This is important for listing boats and absolutely critical for placing ads.

5. Research site links and see what kind of links are established to and from the sites

There are only two sites with significant searchable boat tests. Boattest.com is US-based and has significant new boat tests. The access to used boat profiles on Boattest.com requires a purchase by the visitor.

Boattest.ca has both new and used tests, all searchable and all free. In addition, links for tests can be pasted on dealer partner sites with reciprocal links right back to their site. This allows your sales team to email links to their site with the third party tests available. This type of validation helps close the sale. Boattest.ca is tied directly to Boatdealers.ca.

Of course, the ultimate measurement is cost, as well as the number and quality of e-mail leads.

Use these measurements to assess a solid foundation of third party inventory listing sites, determine the most effective way to get your inventory to those sites, and consistently distribute and present your listings to generate more leads from the Internet.

If you have missed the first three advertorials on how to use the web to drive your business, email us at info@lifestyleintegrated.com and we will send you the PDF version.