The Cost of Fear in Not Being on Google

In 2013, automotive dealerships were barely keeping their heads above water, coming off of the two worst years in new car sales history.  

I watched newly established dealerships foreclose overnight, Ford consolidate storefronts at a rapid rate, GM go bankrupt, communities lose sponsorships, fundraisers, and Saturday cookouts. I watched dealer principles experience loss, colleagues lose their jobs, marriages fall apart, and managers fail forward in front of their families and towns.

I watched a lot of brave and successful business owners in an industry be driven to change overnight.

During this call of courage, there was an even bigger industry growing in our midst. An advertising phenomenon most businesses were turning a blind eye to, Google Ads.

Every week I opened Automotive News, Dealer Refresh, or Auto Success and read about the dealers “overcoming the odds” and “doing things differently” with Google. 

At the time, I was a business development consultant for American Tire Distributors where my position consisted of being a liaison between OEM partners, Distribution Centers, and our dealership clientele.

Although I had a business degree in marketing, I wasn’t using it. Ultimately, my goal was to aid in service departments stocking efficiently for monthly net profit gains. In order to gain the trust of my clients I found myself doing everything from teaching technicians how to properly patch and plug a tire, spending hours with managers reviewing part

statements, and planning promotional events to increase business demand on shoestring service budgets.

Keeping up with my craft, I started researching companies like Firestone, Midas, and Ken Towery’s investing in Google Ads each month on search terms like “cheap auto repair”, “tire sale near me”, “car service repair,” etc.

I remember thinking, “There are little margins in tires, surely people just buy the tires there and then go to the dealership for their actual service work. There’s no way they will last.”

Then as life does to us all sometimes, my thoughts stood corrected. It was 2014 and Ford had released a study that helped connect the dots. 

Nearly 70% of Firestone’s generated revenue came directly from customer pay service work.

Using Google Ads to generate new visitors in their drives at low costs per acquisition, the Firestones of the world were stealing dealer market share all while obtaining it at a premium acquisition cost. Any good service manager knows that the odds of doing service work on a vehicle dramatically increase when a customer first purchases their tires with you.

Ok Google, I was listening.

A few weeks later, I was perusing the usual pages of Automotive News and a dealer in particular caught my attention. He owned a Nissan Dealership out of Florida who decided to take a huge leap in his advertising with an overnight infusion to Google Ads.

He told the story of being terrified moving a $3k monthly radio campaign into Google and for a fraction of the cost, his campaign was generating five times the return. The next month, he moved $10k and yielded even better results touting “it was like turning on a faucet for my business”. He started moving his direct mail, newspaper ads, and billboards. Within a year he was investing over $30k a month on Google and was leading the southeast region for Nissan dealers.

Even though this was only a few short years ago, at the time, I found myself thinking, this dealer is crazy and a brash decision maker.

Ok Google, now I was really listening.

I researched the company who was handling the online Google Ads campaign. They were a startup company out of Raleigh, North Carolina, 1 of 18 Google Premier Partners, and they happened to be hiring.

I recall “asking to connect” on LinkedIn with their executive leadership team and feeling the need to better educate myself on this digital transformation in automotive advertising.

A few weeks later, I received a call from the sales director of the Google Ads company asking if I’d be interested in considering the position. 

Fast forward, after several rigorous rounds of interviews, I received a very unexpected phone call offering me the position.

After days of research, soul searching, and a bet on myself, I took the uncomfortable leap forward from the very comfortable and cushy position I was beginning to outgrow.

 In order to best serve businesses in the future, knew I had to push myself to be stretched, challenged, and ultimately pursue something I believed would change the world.

The strings of uncertainty, fear, and self-doubt came flooding in during the first several weeks;

Did I make the right decision?

Will Google be around in 10 years?

Am I just selling spam?

Every salesperson knows more than me. Am I qualified?

What if I fail?

What if this doesn’t work?

Ok Google, tell me you’re going to work.

I share this story of my own journey and leap of faith in 2014 to an unknown digital field in hopes to motivate you to do the same in your online marketing journey in 2019.

I’m also here to share with you some unfortunate news, the longer you wait to be on Google the further behind the marketplace you’re going to be. Each year clients are having to pay roughly 10% more to gain the same amount of market share as years prior.

Just as we all experience similar experiences in our personal development, sometimes you have to be willing to fail to move forward in business.

Ok Google, tell them how the story ends.

I am pleased to say that I did win the job and continued to apply great preparation and tenacity in my sales process, despite being unqualified on paper.

I quickly became a subject matter expert within search engine marketing and produced more new business in a shorter tenure than almost anyone in company history winning a “rookie of the year” award among sales people. 

 Stop letting your fear of what you don’t know on Google rob your business success in 2019.