One of my most favorite sayings in the world goes like this:   “A sale, like a war, is won by many battles and lost by one”   This is true across every industry and business and why there is no single ZMOT (Zero Moment Of Truth). There are multiple events that take a customer to the point of decision to contact your dealership or buy your car.   Our own studies have shown along with many others that a visitors will visit a site multiple time and even see and click multiple ads before they convert to a lead basically showing that there is no one single moment where a visitor decides to convert or buy.   So what is ZMOT?   Well for the car business I believe it’s a name for the process a visitor goes through before… “You get a seat at the table”. (I talked about this in “The Currency Of Trust” post in March of 2010) That’s really all a lead is… “ a seat at the table&rdqu...

This was a question asked on Dealerrefresh by Ed Brooks of vAuto. I find this a very interesting question for a lot of reasons and my answer is YES where you have control over it. Obviously in a new car franchise you have less control as your inventory is dictated a great deal by the OEM but even they somewhat dictate your allocation by marketing. In our Toyota store here in Houston that I ran in the 90’s GST would give us our allocation based on our “Rolling 90” the average number of vehicles we sold in a 30 day period for the last 90 days. In a sense you could say they were dictating what we stocked by Marketing. During the worst days of GM’s VOMS program at our Chevrolet store we fought to get the best vehicles including the Avalanche a very popular vehicle from 99 – 2001 Why? They sold better “Marketing”.   In a sense one could say and I will say it, what you stock has ALWAYS been a “Marketing Decision”.   ...

Some people have heard me say this in the past   “It’s not your website provider’s job to give you a working website. It’s their job to give you a functional one; it’s your job to make it work”   What does that mean…REALLY?        • It’s Your Job – to know what keywords to rank for      • It’s Your Job – to create good content to make that site rank      • It’s Your Job – to work to get the backlinks to your site   At the end of the day that is exactly what SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is Keywords, Good Content & Backlinks it is really that simple and also that hard…Why? Because we have been conditioned to think our website provider is going to do it for us. I can’t tell you how many times I hear website providers tell dealers “Our sites rank b...

All too often what we think are strategies are mere tactics and are driven by technology vendors want to sell us. I put together this 2.5 day class for our clients and perspective clients on Strategies to help them better define their own strategy online & off.

This is a 2hr version of a 2.5 day class.

 

Ignite 11

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I love reading Jim Ziegler’s articles there is a lot of hard core truth in what he writes, most of all you can bet he is passionate and believes and lives every word. While reading this latest article “Coffee’s for Closers” it floored me that we still see this connection between the “PRICE” and the close. What’s even more ironic is that is that what actually “CLOSES” a car sale is as old school as it gets and hasn’t changed in the last 50 years. You all know what I am talking about…To put in James Carville terms “It’s about the relationship…stupid” Now I am certainly not going to say that price isn’t a concern, you will address, it but I will say… IT AINT THE CLOSE and I will go even further and say… IT NEVER HAS BEEN.      Back in march of last year after South By Southwest I wrote a post called “The Currency of Trust” in this post I s...

  “Communication with you customers has never been easier…and yet your customers have never been further away.” For some time now I have been thinking and battling it out with several blog opponents on conversion and why it is so important. It really comes down to breaking through the Digital Divide between you and the customer. To do that you need to PERSONALLY INTERACT WITH THEM and to do that you need contact information… PERIOD.   The Digital Divide is the growing digital gap between the customer and the personal connection to a salesperson. “Whether you like it or not there is a huge technological wedge between you and the customer.” No matter how hard you rail against it the technological wedges keep growing. When you think about it the Digital Divide didn’t just sneak up on us it’s been happening for some time. In the 50’s the way you shopped and bought a car was you ...

You know for last few months I have been hearing a lot about leadership in our industry, about education and how there needs to be more of both, I ABSOLUTELY AGREE! I met up with Bill Playford at SWSXi (South By Southwest Interactive) for those not familiar with the acronym. We talked about this very thing. I found myself getting very excited at some of the ideas we were discussing, so much so I was writing curriculum in my head as I was driving back to Houston Friday afternoon.   On the way home I made several calls that to be frank…were a total buzz kill on the subject. I was quickly reminded of the agendas of some of the broadcasters, large vendors with money, resources and a voice and the influencers in our industry and the task of bringing true leadership and honest education seemed to be almost too daunting a task for anyone to take on.   This morning I wake up still thinking about this subject and as I going through my normal morning readin...

This NADA was riddled with the Microsite buzz or at least where I was. I heard more than a few sessions on this topic and it amazes me sometimes that these “Experts” who talk about microsites and conversion still think that if you just throw a Microsite out there it will instantly get traffic or if you build a lot of them somehow visitors will just trip into them. Just quit it…Please! Don't ruin a good thing before it ever gets started with these crazy notions of volume of sites and bad content. A Microsite is: 1.       Written and designed for a specific audience 2.       Optimized to the visitors intent 3.       Fulfills the promise made by the ad that drives the traffic 4.       Simple easy to navigate with a specific purpose 5.       Ultimately visitor generated through testing A Microsi...

Who are we putting in charge of our business? As I watched this video of Groupon’s CEO Andrew Mason apologizing for a business in Japan that couldn’t handle the orders that Groupon generated for them over New Years I couldn’t stop thinking; VIDEO “Here is a vendor that set a marketing strategy in place for a business using price positioning and email executed on it and then when the business wasn’t prepared to deliver, HE’S apologizing to HIS customers for it?” A nobal gesture. This is amazing, these businesses that work with Groupon have virtually no margin in what they sell through that channel, they are told what they need to price or discount their services at to work with Groupon and all the while making the customer more and more loyal to Groupon, Yes Groupon looks at the customers at their customers not the businesses customers… How did Groupon get their customers? Do they have a product to sell? NO they got those cust...

Read an article yesterday in Automotive News about Microsites and Acton Toyota. I was absolutely thrilled to see that Post-Click-Marketing is finally getting some long overdue credit in the space and from Automotive News to boot. However Acton hasn’t even scratched the surface with Microsites and Post-Click-Marketing and in fact in many cases is doing it the wrong way and is wildly successful even when handicapped. This should prove without question that your dealership needs to consider a strategy around microsites and conversion optimization.   The good news is Acton is beginning to understand the basic premise behind what a Microsite is supposed to do: "Focus the visitor on a specific offer and message" However to do that there is so much more that should be done and isn’t being covered in the Automotive News article. Below are a few rights and wrongs about what can be taken away from this article and microsites. ·   &n...

“The only thing you’ll will need is crowd control” That was the tag line I used when I first started “Outside The Box Marketing” in 1997, that business was a direct mail marketing company for event sales, you know these sales we’ve all done them: ·         The Gorilla on the roof ·         Burgers and hotdogs on the grill ·         Greeters in short skirts ·         The red and the blue balloons (do you remember what the blue balloon meant?) ·         100,000 pieces of zipcode saturation mail All equaled then a mass of people on the lot. I can still remember the look on the faces of the GM’s and dealers we did this with back then…Big smiles on their face, beatin on their chest “lo...

It has been suggested that we start an #automarketing tweet chat. So as is my fashion I just went ahead and did it. Please join us every Wednesday 12pm to 1pm CST (Central Time) for #AutoMarketing Tweet Chat. This is your chance to engage with some of the most talented and brightest in the Auto Marketing space we will be discussing sales & service marketing from Social Media to Traditional and everything in between. To follow the stream easily go to http://tweetchat.com/ and sign in with your twitter account if you don't have a twitter account this is a great reason and opportunity to get one go to www.twitter.com and sign up it's free and if you don't use it for anything else but to learn from the #automarketing tweet chat forum it will be worth it. So come jump in the conversation,   Larry Bruce @pcmguy ...

Ok this isn’t a post about me or is it…the lines are getting blurry aren’t they. Yesterday I read I read 7 articles all having to do with social media many others but that was the biggest portion. Here they are if you would like to read them. 10 Social Media Trends for 2011   The 4 C’s of Social Media   The Difference Between Friends, Fans and Followers   Creating Your Own Brand Network Like Oprah Winfrey - Sent via twitter from Brian Clark @copyblogger a blog you should read daily if you are marketing on the net   Facebook eCommerce the Future of Online Shopping by JD Rucker he always makes me think differently   Improve Your Influence by Chris Brogan another guy everyone should read daily its no wonder he’s an overnight success   25 Ways to Get More Social Media Followers from Hubspot another blog  I read daily and you should too.   Aside for the obvious that social media is ...

A few days ago I posted “Good News and Bad News about Microsites and Landing Pages.”   In that post I said that many dealers are getting microsites, which is good; however they are getting them for the wrong reasons, and that’s bad. I don't see a lot of strategy behind most microsite initiatives and, to be honest, there are more than a few vendors selling them with no strategy at all, and for all the wrong reasons. I have had several requests to go into some detail on this so I will in this post. Microsite and landing page optimization is not a onetime thing; it’s an all-the-time thing. Microsites and landing pages focus traffic on specific offers, promotions, and messages, and are designed to remove distraction and logically lead the visitor to conversion. To achieve real improvements in your conversion rates, optimization needs to be a part of your marketing culture – it needs to be a habit. In the spirit of Franklin Covey’s bo...

I have been in an interesting discussion on dealerrefresh.com with dealers, vendors, representatives of ATC and Cars.com over the last few days regarding the recent ATC acquisitions and their implications on dealers and this discussion has morphed into how to measure ATC, Cars and eBay Motors as classified listing services. I have made my position very clear on this “You measure by conversion” Lead, Call, email or chat. However this discussion did morph into whether or not VDP views (Vehicle Display Pages) were a valid measurement and did they help the dealer? This prompted me to do a thorough analysis from a conversion stand point of the listings and VDP view within each service ATC, Cars and eBay. Below in this power point is are my findings. I will leave it to the dealers to use this data to make up your mind as you will and to lend whatever wait you deem necessary in using it. Atc vs ebay presentation View more presentations from MicrositesByU....

Monday morning I am sitting at my computer with my peripheral vision on my twitter feed when I see @jimziegler tweet “Alpha dog is on the point”. Now I have seen this tweet before and not really thought about it too much until someone tweets back “jim what is the point?” Now to set this up for you people that haven’t sold cars in a dealership before the point is a place on the lot usually around where the customers park where all of the salespeople will congregate and wait for an up (if you don't know what an up is ask someone who sells cars, can’t explain every car term not enough time or room on this post). That’s  when an interesting analogy occurs Jim’s tweet back “I am on social media communicating with my customers and friends” and it hits me Social Media is the new “Point” for your dealership, the “Virtual Point”. Now instead of the salespeople out on the physical “Point&rd...

Good News… I am seeing and hearing a lot more dealers thinking about using microsites and landing pages. Bad News… I don't hear a lot about the strategy behind their use or what they intend to use them for. It reminds me of the early CRM years when a lot of us rushed to get us some of that CRM without understanding how we would implement CRM in our store. I wrote an article for Dealer Magazine back then called “Just Because You Built It Doesn’t Mean They Will Come”. “Just Because You have a Microsite, Doesn’t mean they will come” If you are building a Microsite in WordPress thinking that it will have some magical SEO value and be so optimized that you will get all this traffic and somehow sell more cars as a result, I hate to be the one to break it to you but… IT WON’T All you will succeed in doing is placing property on the web that requires your time, effort and mone for you to try and rank, takes you...

We were all taught the 10 step road to a sale when we were little in the car business. Step 1 – Meet and Greet: Walk confidently up to your customer, extend your hand and say “Hi Welcome to ABC dealership my name is Larry, and you are?” Firm hand shake look the customer in the eye. Anyone who has ever sold a car knows the importance of this step. It sets the tone for the rest of you sales process with that up. Get it right you’ve got a 10x better chance of selling that up, get it wrong and you're up will immediately start looking for ways to bail. Visitor landings are ups driving on to your digital lot. So what's your meet and greet like? A confident, strong handshake viewed as trustworthy and engaging?  A wimpy, sweaty handshake depicting nervousness and mediocrity or the blow off like when someone puts out their hand, invites a handshake, and just as they’re about to shake hands, they lift their hand up quickly and says “...

This is a short post because you need to read evey one of the 32 proclaimations in this Manifesto. Then think before you post or comment ever again.

Proclaimation #1 - There are tools. There are people who use the tools. And then there are people who are tools. Know the difference. 

You can read the rest here http://bit.ly/socialmanif

Pay paticular attention to #19, #31 &#32

For the past 2 days I have been in debate on dealerrefresh about online marketing numbers and conversion. It appears that my comments on what a website should convert at have caused a stir in the dealer community, enough so that I was called out on it and asked to back off. It also appears a label I have placed on a main website is causing some people heartburn. This post will hopefully clear up a few things: 1.       Why I believe that the benchmark for conversion in online marketing should be 30% minimum. 2.       What the definition of a “Random Access Website” is and why they are the way they are. 3.       Why I believe that you should NEVER…EVER send paid traffic back to your main website deep-link or otherwise. So let’s jump right into conversion percentages and benchmarks. First let me start out by defining conversion – A conversion is any fo...

So you know your online marketing needs to be better and now you just need to find someone to do it. The following questions are ones you need to ask to ensure that you maximize your investment:   1. What increase in conversion rates should I expect? Can an online marketing company guarantee specific results? I have yet to meet a credible company that is able to guarantee specific results. The truth is, every project comes with its own unique situation. However, a good online marketing company should invest time with you up-front to set target goals for any planned improvement and optimization work. Keep in mind though those pre-set targets can be both achieved and missed. The point is to focus on defining success parameters for the project from the very first day. 2. What time frame should I expect the project to be set up by? Online Marketing is an ongoing process. There is always room for improvements. Some companies will provide the work within a month and disappe...

Digital Dealer was again a great venue this year. For those that wanted my slide deck and for those that couldn't make here is my presentation.   After reviewing 35 hours of people searching for car online on video we came to some shocking revelations that dispell a lot of myths we have been told over the years about how, where and why people shop online for a car.   Happy to answer any question about this slide deck.   Enjoy! How people searchView more presentations from MicrositesByU....

You shouldn’t spend money on advertising to new people if your current visitors aren’t converting, period. Ask yourself this question: Would you spend $100,000.00 more on advertising knowing you only have one salesperson who’s closing ratio is less than 10%? If your answer is what I think it is then why are you spending any money on “SEO” knowing that your name is what is driving 70% + of your traffic, any money on Page One Defense when the leak is so small or one more red cent on PPC to drive traffic to your Random Access website? (That’s the salesperson with a 2% to 7% closing ratio)   Let me repeat that: "You shouldn’t spend money on advertising to new people if your current visitors aren’t converting over 15%." Let it sink in.   In a recent post Seth Godin wrote: “The mistake we often make: thinking that the problem is that there’s not enough people starting the process, not enough peo...

Its 9 pm and I get this tweet from Matt Watson of VIN Solutions. “Saving Chevrolet Means Sending ‘Chevy’ to Dump http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/automobiles/10chevy.html?src=mv “ When I clicked the link and started reading the article, I found myself saying “WHAT!” There are no words to describe the level of ridiculous here. GM doesn’t have a brand recognition problem. GM has a business focus and a customer understanding problem. I can’t believe that someone spent money at GM for some Einstein to come up with this ridiculous plan to stop using the term “Chevy”. GM focus on building on good products, focus on connecting with customers and with your dealer body quit all this non-sense that your brand is broken, it’s NOT! What is broken at GM is it’s trust with the dealer body. Their lack of new and quality product and their complete disconnect from the consumer. Fix those things GM and leave Che...

I have been thinking these needed updateing for a while. This is my version, would like feedback on changes or additions or Bruce ur full of crap.

2010 10 step road to a sale

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A lot of requests after my session at Digital Dealer 8. Here are 101 ideas to increase convesions and get away from 3rd party leads. http://bit.ly/aXVeOV

101 ways to increase lead conversion without more money

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Hope they help,

Larry Bruce (@pcmguy)

At South by South West (SXSW) I attended Chris Brogan’s and Julian Smith’s session “I Don't Trust You One Stinking Bit” a really long title I thought but it did sum up the session. As usual I walked away my head swimming with ideas and making connections between trust, social media, customer experience and content. As I thought through these ideas an old sales training model from the early 90’s came to mind and suddenly the role of social media in the car business, hell in any business became as clear as a bell to me. While running my dealerships in the early 90’s one of my favorite sales training modules involved two triangles, some of you may have seen this example in a training session in your career. It goes like this:   This came to me from an old Clint McGee training tape where Clint talked about getting the customer to “spend YOUR time”. In training I would train salespeople to spend time with the cus...

15 years ago I told Ron Craft (the dealer I got my start in the car business with in 1984) “Customers aren’t shopping for a car they are shopping for a salesperson to buy a car from”. That was the way I approached car sales when I got into it after having been in the shop for a few years. I didn’t know it then but I was using social media.
Each day I would I would take brochures, donuts and coffee to local hair salons, boutique stores, doctor’s offices ect. talk with the employees, customers and patients about just anything… and cars too, I got to know a lot of people and got a lot of referrals. Before I knew it I was selling 20+ cars per month and in 1988 I made over $80K selling cars in Baytown TX.

For a single 20 yr old making $80K and yr runnin around in a free Camero, well those who know me know can certainly imagine the trouble I was able to get into, that’s another post (maybe).

On each sale I got to the point that I would pretend to take the deal to the des...

While in San Diego at Online Marketing Summit 2010 I heard a simple yet revealing fact. The “Thank You” email you send the customer after they submit a lead or for an appointment with your dealership will have the highest open rate of anything you send that customer.

This shouldn’t come as a revelation to anyone, and it didn’t to me until they said “Make the most of it”. I started visualizing all the thank you emails I have designed, written and received in my head and thought “My god, what a waste of a high value contact and a great opportunity for further engagement”.

Conversion Rate Optimization today is all about engagement, the more engaged the customer the higher the possibility for conversion. For you dealership conversion in this case means the sale. The more you can get the customer to engage with your online property the higher your chances of getting that appointment and closing the sale. Engagement leads to trust and trust lead to the sale, when done p...

There is an old saying in marketing fish where the fish are biting. Currently Facebook gets about 100 Million plus unique visitors each month, that is over 1/3 the US population. With the rising price of Google ad words it makes sense to add Facebook advertising to your marketing mix. I recently read an article “How to advertise on Facebook” was interesting but basic. The following is my version.
On Facebook your competition isn’t other business owners it’s the litany of status updates, party photos and comments that are pouring in…millions per hour. Here are 4 tips that will help you when advertising on Facebook…some pretty obvious.

1. Target your audience
Duh, I’m sure you say… but keep in mind that Facebook users divulge a lot of information about themselves here in their profiles, more and better information than trying to use demographics or rating from traditional advertising means.
Facebook allows you to groups you want to reach, you can target users based ...