Archive for February 19th, 2010

Can US Automakers Get Their Act Together?

As we all know by now, over the last twenty years, the major players in the American vehicle manufacturing sector have seen a large decrease in sales and buyer confidence. Among other tactics the big American auto makers – GM, Chrysler and Ford – got heavy into outsourcing of materials and labor. These practices became common place and as a result lesser quality products being offered on the auto market became more common.

Rogers Auto Group has the most affordable cars in the Chicagoland area with the best collection of Illinois Chevrolet and other Chicago GMC cars and trucks. When you buy a GMC or Hyundai vehicle you are buying today’s innovation for tomorrow’s future. Rogers Auto Group is a Chicago bad credit car dealer offering Second Chance auto financing for responsible individuals.

With the credit collapse of the last couple of years, prospective consumers found it difficult to obtain the crucial financing needed to be able to purchase new vehicles. The American automakers were the big losers.

Facing the danger of a total collapse, American auto makers realized that downsizing their operations would be necessary to allow their stake in the American and foreign markets to stay viable.

As a result of this and other stimulus measures, the remaining new car outlets have seen an influx of business over the last number of months. The big three automakers located in the United States and Canada have begun to re-group and part of that is a renewed focus on what the average American consumer looks for when considering a new car purchase. Newer technologies, such as Hybrid engines and fuel alternatives, have emerged on the car sales market as a result.

Sales figures in mid 2009 were down across all auto manufacturers, however, with the short lived cash for clunkers government run incentive, many dealerships across the country saw an uptake in sales for a short while. While General Motors has struggled greatly with turning a profit, the Ford Motor Company has done better than expected.

While GM’s profits are still slightly in the dumps, many consider Chrysler to be in the worst shape among the big three. However, with major restructuring and by following the lead of GM, there is a chance that Chrysler can also pull out of the recession a reborn and more efficient operation.

 

AdWords and KeywordSpy – find out your competitors’ keywords

KeywordSpy is a pretty valuable tool if you spend more than a few bucks a month on AdWords. It let’s you find out what your competitors are using in the way of keywords and if they happen to be using some that you haven’t thought about, the reason is that they are probably making money from them. And you should be too.

I’ve often felt that there is a lot of intellectual property tied up in a well run AdWords account. It’s not just the keywords that you’ve researched that have value, it’s the Ad Group and Campaign structure as well as Campaign settings.

for example, if after paintstaking research you’ve found that clicks are more profitable from the South East of the UK than from the North West, that is valuable knowledge and you wouldn’t want your competitors to know it.

But with keywords, part of your account is exposed. Your competitors can see your ads against your keywords (unless they’ve blocked you IP address). This means that give time and effort, they could eventually find out all the keywords you are using. But lets face the facts: this will take ages. Sure, it would give them a valuable insight into your AdWords account but it would take them ages and on balance would probably not be worth doing.

However, new technology is springing up constantly to help online marketers and what KeywordSpy does is research your competitors for you. In just a few seconds you can find out what keywords they have been advertising against and for how long. You can also get some idea of how much they are spending.

For example, yesterday I looked at one of my competitors to see how much they were paying per click for the phrase “adwords consultant“. It was pretty revealing.

If you are just starting out with an entirely new AdWords account or perhaps are thinking of expanding your business into a new area then KeywordSpy will save you time, money and effort. It may also point to opportunities you’ve missed. For example, a few years back I was steadily generating a few hundred pounds a month from a single keyword that was costing me a few pounds. If my competitors had known about it, they could have started to share my income which would have been annoying!