Are you reachable in the mobile world?

Many new dealers looking for ways to get the word out. When you want to market something look at two things.

#1 the most efficient methods to get word out about your product - some may be expensive, some may be free. Often one must take risks but most of the time your peers can help filter these choices. The best results will require more time and patience. Although I think it was awful, my first bypass-filter overview youtube video still gains me sales every month. It was worth the experiment and I had something to further improve. 

#2 The markets which the products you carry serve. This is where ideas for #1 come from. We just had a major ice storm which lasted for three days and not one tree in Sioux Falls went undamaged. Half the town has been without electricity since Tuesday. Think of the commercial and retail accounts who would benefit from our products. Because of my establishment, the 100:1 and Bar & Chain oil is selling well. Northern Equipment sends all their generator customers to me for oil too so the ASE 10W30 is always in proper supply.

Planting word of mouth in those markets always pay off later. One trucker recently told me the only high quality grease one can find in an emergency is through AMSOIL dealers.

"Hey, nice car!" - Thanks, it performs reliably thanks to AMSOIL!

In order to have more time and the budget to reach those local markets (listed at the bottom) why not have a website doing 50% of the work around the clock? It's not tough at all!! It just takes determination or a commitment you will never regret. Let me summarize by telling you about my AGGRAND Page which I paid someone to build, then I populated the material. Through a dozen consultations with the local web developer they made me a multipage site, which was set up so that I had control to make changes and updates. This was done in the fall of 2007. Last month I noticed among dozens of orders in the peak season a REPEAT preferred customer purchase I gained through this site from Waxahachie, TX in the amount of $12,600. I have to ask you, was the website worth it??

Note that none or very little of my online success came from mobile devices. VERY FEW dealers are getting aggressive in that area. It's open range.  

As you may know I built my AMSOIL Synthetic Warehouse site from scratch. I built it with one thing in mind - ranking high within the search engines. But there are other more fundamental considerations which can save you time and help you to start building your business significantly NOW.

Simple site build and proof of its success.

#1 - Use a common website builder tool and use the basic training tutorials.

#2 - an outline for a simple structure (basic 1 to 4 pages to get something started). Don't worry about having the best the first time, just get something up you can send people to and most of all your first site should really be one you do on your own..

#3 - knowing you can go back later and work on content, plan a low cost local adwords or pay-per click campaign. There is a way to get the most from your dollar here by quickly re-directing hits to the AMSOIL page.

When your page opens up, it should within 8 seconds do the following for the most basic site:

• Professional heading or well designed logo
• Lead the customer to what they intended to do - Learn and Buy (easy to find link to the AMSOIL store). A heading that says something like "Buy AMSOIL Products NOW" in the most prominent space.
• Gain the trust of the prospect (Amsoil material, photo, authorization and article links)
• Contact info for the site owner. 

One dealer for eight years now has ranked on the top 10 in new accounts list using a site as simple as what I mention above. Just a plain two page site but used an aggressive Google and Bing click advertising strategy.

I'm working right now to focus my paid listings via Google to a few regional areas for various purposes. This means several areas of the country my ads won't show up. I know where the majority of my sales come from and the majority of the clicks which I pay for which don't perform. I'm eliminating these. If I see someone hitting my ads too often and no sales - I can block that URL so they can no longer be a drain on my wallet. There are so many efficient ways to increase site performance using the pay per clicks. A lot of people don't like them but they do work!

I should mention that I have seen many well built and informative sites but you never saw the dealer make direct jobber because the main menu or "Product" links were buried within a monstrous heading or none at all. The simplest site must know the customers attitude. That is "I just want to buy, what is this site? Ahh - click, now I'm at AMSOIL. 99% of the customers who land on my site could care less of what I have to say. By business doubled when I made the first image and menu tabs in my "Buy" page go right to AMSOIL's site. The other 1% I drove in from Dealer ads not intended for sales.  

Here is one of our dealers in Tennessee who uses this simple format:
http://www.realsyntheticoil.com/ 

Here's another dealer in the group who built a site in a couple of evenings:
http://motorcycle-octane-boost.com/ (Ranks #2 naturally when looking for Amsoil motorcycle octane boost as well!)

He used this to build and host: http://www.1and1.com/?kwk=19368776 

The one who ranks in the top 10 for all those years in new accounts:
http://www.pao-oils.com/index.html - It does pack in the customers through click-throughs but I think he relies on it as they do very little to zero with customer and dealer retention. After expenses it's worth at least $4000 to $5000 per month. Is it worth the time to build a site like that?

Now, if you are really determined to work AMSOIL full time and want to be in the top 20 dealers my best suggestion is to first invest in top tier website development software, then enroll in a website development course. Another way is online. I found several "Introduction to Dreamweaver Online Courses" you can take for little money. Of course you will want to have a 3rd party book on the software too but it works and will make you an impressive income if you plan well.    

Hand this prospect your card and a tube of grease - He'll thank you and call you back.

The last note on development - I can look at 200 Amsoil websites and can find serious fault or something overlooked on 197 of them. Mostly that's regarding missing HTML text which search engines pick up or very poor keyword/title balance. But with a simple 1 to 4 page site mentioned above with a smart pay per click campaign you can override what most don't know.  

So I'm here to help you consider the options and I can even provide you with a wealth of keywords via spreadsheet to get your pay per click campaign going.

A web presence is key as your first step to make AMSOIL a household name in your area.