The GPO Fight in 2010 For Car Dealers

A recent article on DealerRefresh.com written by Alex Snyder entitled “Is Edmunds Stealing From You?” has generated a tsunami of comments and reactions from the automotive community. For some automotive professionals, the tactics recently used by Edmunds using Checkered Flag MINI’s brand was a revelation on the topic of “online brand leakage”.

Among the many comments on Alex Snyder’s post was one from Tim Jennings, Internet Director at Tom Sparks Automotive in DeKalb Illinois. He coined the acronym (GPOM) which stands for Google Page One Management. This refers to a business process to eliminate websites that are leaking your brand equity on Google Page One (GPO) for searches on your business name or locale.

Tom and others suggested that dealers fight back. I decided to create a whitepaper this weekend to show car dealers how to push third party lead collectors off of Google Page One for their dealership name.

Third party lead collectors have a role in automotive marketing. Our position is that they should generate traffic using their own brand and advertising dollars and NOT by leveraging car dealer brand names and draining brand equity and reducing their online ROI.

Car dealers need to protect their investment in their brand; it is their multi-million dollar asset. Dealers need quality, first party consumer car leads to run their business. Without a GPOM plan they are:

• Buying leads that they should be getting for free.
• Enabling their competitors to buy leads generated by their brand name.
• Allowing consumers to be distracted from their initial search goal

I have outlined an effective GPOM strategy that all business owners, even outside of the car business, can implement themselves. I hope we can keep this topic in the forefront of 20 group meetings and automotive conferences. If dealers across the country implemented a GPOM process, they would be surprised at the positive results for their brand and first party lead quality.

You can download the white paper on the link below.