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 ...

Those who follow me on twitter (@pcmguy) have seen me tweet this probably multiple times. “Google commodities everything” this is a quote from @jeffjarvis book “What Would Google Do?” for those of you that haven’t read it you should do so as soon as possible.
Along these same lines I recently heard a great analogy about search marketing that will I hope will set your mind for the rest of this post. “Great Search Marketing is 1% about the click and 99% about what you do next.”
In an earlier post “Get Outside Your Random Access Website” I talk about why your main website is not the place for your search marketing respondents to end up. We also discuss why single landing pages and deeplinks don't optimize conversion as well as a well constructed conversion path.
As we begin 2010 I believe we will find that conversion optimization is the new SEO.
Now SEO isn’t dead, it is still evolving and you need to pay close attention to SEO when you build out any kind of online...

Web 3.0 is all about recommendations, free services, intelligent (semantic) searches, and information that’s no longer random data, but tailored, highly intuitive and delivered in real time. Identifying some broad trends that dominate the new crop of Web tools and services which are in tune with the next generation of the web - Web 3.0 site and how these applications may impact your business.
Mobile applications have long been aimed at giving subscribers information specific to their whereabouts, but now we’re seeing even more intelligent ideas. Loopt.com is a new one this year that blends our love of social networking with location-based services. It’s has been described as a ‘social compass’ as it detects not only where you are on the map, but also pinpoints your mobile friends in the vicinity. Loopt is US-centric at present, but the company says it working on looping up Europe. I personally have become a fan of FourSquare and I've gotten many associates addict to it.
Now...

It’s late and I am about to go to bed, but I get this tweet “10 Things Social Media Can’t Do”. I have to read it, with all that is being stirred up today in our industry on this topic you would think it is the second coming or something. I am not going to go through all 10. I don't even agree with all 10 only 8, 5 & 10 are suspect.
I do think we need to really pay attention to the first 4 however – here we go.
1. Substitute for marketing strategy. A Twitter campaign or a Facebook page that announces your weekly specials is not a marketing strategy.  – Amen! Social Media is a part of your strategy. It will help you with the longtail, it will help you with SEO, it can help you engage your customers where they are, but it is not a strategy. Your Marketing strategy should connect to social media, not through social and certainly not revolve around it.
2. Succeed without top management buy-in. – Oh dear god yes, have we learned nothing from our 10 bout with CRM?  De...

Wednesday I caught a Tweet from Alex Snyder on CRM “Why hasn’t CRM sold more cars”. I was glad to see someone writing about something other than Social Media and I even email that to Alex.
All the hype and I am not using that term in a bad way here, just as a description for the industries obsession with Social Media. Whit all the Social Media hype it was refreshing to see an article on something other than social media.
This was an excellent post and made some great points about what is required to make CRM systems and processes work in a dealership. I commented in this post that I was happy to see a post on something other than the Social Media hype and I got a couple of snide, but thought provoking comments from some guys who clearly had not thought their positions all the way through.

 
Comment one (The names have been left out to protect the not so innocent :))

“Larry,
What this post has to do with Social Media I have no idea so why anyone would anyone bring it ...

Yesterday I read a Ward article by Steve Finley, ‘Biggest Crock I Ever Heard’. This was follow up article containing rebuttal comments from disgruntled internet mangers taking offense to an earlier article “Are Dealership Internet Departments Obsolete?”.
This is so ironic I had to laugh, the very people that stuck their noses up in the air in and said “You just don't get it” 8 years ago now… just don't get it.

 
On Kain Automotive Idea Exchange I made a comment that the lines between the floor and the Internet Department are blurring, the fact is they are gone.
The internet customer has changed, really I shouldn’t say they have changed it’s just that the internet customer now is not just an elite group of tech savvy engineers who are playin around on their new fangled computer to find the cheapest car possible. It’s now Joe Everyday Customer who, while price is a concern it’s not the primary driver or their reason for being on the internet shopping for a ca...

I just read a great article on PR and Social Media “Social media mitigates public relations crises”. I have though a lot about what dealership or dealership group will be the first to have an online firestorm erupt around them.  There have been small brush fires here and there. I was involved in one with a client of AIMData 3 years ago before social media got big in this industry. It was quickly put out with a communication.
Interestingly enough that seems to be the same tactic that many so called “social media experts” say to do, and I agree having used this tactic before.
The good news, if you find yourself being attacked thorough social media you can use social media to fight back. When doing so here are some good points to keep in mind.

 
1. GET INVOLVED – it is our natural tendency as car dealers to ignore or dismiss those who talk about us, unless they get to the dealer. You cannot afford that anymore. My favorite saying, I don't know who said it, I read it 10 ...

Just read a post by Adam Singer about a Business Week article “Beware Social Media Snake Oil”. This post was a great break down of all the myths that come up about Social Medias impact on business productivity and intellectual property.

I would like to add a dealership spin to this in the hope that dealers look at social media from a different angle.
Business Week Article - “As millions of people flock to these online services to chat, flirt, swap photos, and network, companies have the chance to tune in to billions of digital conversations.”
Dealers let me put some factual numbers behind this statement along with some of my own comments.

Marketing Spend
$55 billion - number of dollars marketers will spend on interactive (display, mobile, email, social, search) channels by 2014
21% – percentage of all marketing spends that the 55 billion figure will represent – and the minimum % of your budgets you should be looking to allocate to these mediums. For dealerships th...

I must have heard this 100 times at DD7 by many dealers I talked with. I even found myself agreeing…I remember saying sure it does. Today as I was recapping what I was exposed to this year at Digital Dealer I thought about this and it occurred to me…WHY?
What exactly does traditional media do for a dealership? I found myself not being able to answer the question. It’s not track-able so we can’t assign that value to it. Tried to fall back on the whole branding thing, but I think we have at least proven that social media does a better job of branding than traditional media could ever do now.
SO WHAT IS TRADITIONAL MEDIA GOOD FOR??
Honestly, I can’t say.
There are so many other ways customers are getting the information they need I really cannot see why any dealership would still be advertising through Radio, Television or Heaven forbid the Newspaper. The only explanation I could come up with is one that is all too common in the car business… We’re comfortable with tradi...

I read through 4 blogs daily and there are a lot of great posts all with their own spin. From social media to mobile marketing to video, everyone is promoting the next SILVER BULLET and its killing me. Guys get a solid foundation down first, you’re off in web 2.0 and you haven’t even leveraged 20% of web 1.0.
I look through dealer websites that are a complete disaster you got flash widgets jumping out at customers, cars driving around on the page. On many websites you can find everything but a car to buy or make a service appointment. What else do you think customers are coming to your site for? To be your friend on Facebook? Give me a break!
All I am absolutely wore out with all the people pushing things on car dealers when they don't even have a solid basic online foundation. You're confusing dealers you’re making them focus on things that don't matter right now and generally giving good communication channels a bad name when dealers are not ready for them.
Dealers, PLEAS...

Post-click marketing continues to gain mainstream acclaim.




I found this great article by Miro Kazakoff, managing director at Compete.com, wrote a great article on MediaPost,
SOS For Marketers: Avoid a Crash Landing.
"The fastest, cheapest way to boost return on your online advertising investments has nothing to do with the design and placement of your creative. Based on a recent study, it is possible that your competitors could be generating five times the ROI as you are with comparable messaging and spending.
What can you do right now to increase the ROI of your ad campaign? Pay more attention to the post-click experience.”
(The Emphasis.)

 

 


Kazakoff goes on to offer four lessons:
1.     Don’t get between your customer and the activity you are trying to encourage — except when it helps customers get there. “Advertisers must help customers transition to the shopping experience through dedicated, quick-loading landing pages that tie the messagin...

A new study of mobile vs. non-mobile Internet usage;
Based on a sample of 92 million impressions, shows that mobile users are approximately half as likely to click on an advertisement as non-mobile users, of the 92 million impressions cited in the study, approximately 1.3 million (1.5%) came from mobile browsing. While non-mobile held steady with a 0.83% click through rate, mobile as a whole pulled a mere 0.48% – just over half of the average.
While the recent growth in Smartphone’s has sparked a renewed interest in mobile advertising, it appears given the numbers that mobile users are not receptive to advertising – a phenomenon that is not surprising to me, given the mobile users propensity to be searching for quick answers or directions, according to the study by Chitika.
It has long been my contention that very few people are browsing the internet on their phone, yet we all want quick concise answers when we use it. If you think about it that is what you have the phone for...

I just read a post on Linkedin entitled “If content is King, Does that make SEOs The Joker?”. I have also recently engaged in several conversations on DrivingSales.com and other on Social Media and other topics. It seems everyone is promoting their skill. Only natural I guess as their livelihoods depend on that skill. In todays competitive world and most especially online you have to be GREAT at all of it not just one part…like it or not that is the state of your business.

There are 3 elements of all marketing, they haven’t changed, just the channels to deliver your story have multiplied 10x and your audience has grown 1000x smarter and more demanding.

Placement AKA audience, distribution. Whatever you want to call it, this is the mechanism by which you get your message out. These mechanisms breakdown into 2 categories: Proactive and Reactive I recently when into great detail on these categories as well as the channels in a post entitled “Communication Channels, Levels...

There has been a lot of buzz on social media these days. I have made my position pretty clear, social media is a support mechanism to your dealerships message not the primary carrier of the message itself. To that end I have studied a lot with a guy by the name of Chris Brogan. I met Chris in NY a few months back read his book Trust Agents liked what it had to say so I struck up a conversation with him one night, little did I know I was talking with a social media rock star. As I have had conversations with him and commented and read his blog post I more convinced now than ever that social medial is one of the core channels of communication and will be become the primary way customers will check out your dealership to determine if they want to do business with your store.
What does this mean? Well as some people may have read my recent post on Communication Channels, Levels of Interruption and Marketing Effectiveness, another post inspired by a Brogan post, I categorized then score...

I just read this post by Chris Brogan “Communication Tools and Levels of Interruption” and I have to say it is a very interesting read. What I find even more interesting is the comments from the people who read the post. Clearly these people were looking at this from the stand point of communication of a co-worker or friend and the interruption impact these had on their daily lives.

Me, I looked at this posts and comments through my marketing colored glasses and found some interesting confirmations of our own research. This post will have more meaning for you if you read Chris’s post first and some of the comments then come back to this one.

Some years ago I started looking into the ways multiple channels affected certain campaigns and found that there were two types of marketing campaigns:

1. Proactive – these campaigns would target individuals before they would show up on a business’s radar as being “In the market”

2. Reactive – these campaigns would seek ...

Over the past few months social media has taken on a life of its own both in and out of the Retail Automotive Industry. It’s been incredible to watch. Like a shiny new toy I have seen the blogs fill with internet managers talking about social media, the blogs I have posted about social media have gotten 5X the attention in comments than that of others, it seems many are scrambling to involved, as they should. In Fact I recently read an article that the new Mac OS, Snow Leopard is integrated Facebook address directly into its own address book as I am sure MS Outlook will soon follow suit. Your customers are tweeting, flickering and facebooking at a rapid pace and you need to keep up.
Unfortunately what I am not seeing a lot of is THE MESSAGE, at the heart of all this for the marketer is the message. What this comes down to is that social media is another communications channel. like email, voice, text, search and even your lot and sign you are communicating a message and looking for...

Socialnomics
I caught this video Socialnomics on YouTube yesterday. It is an awesome representation of the statistics and power of Social Media. Make no mistake Social Media will make as big if not bigger impact on marketing than the internet did during the early 2000’s and more than any other medium in history to date. With that said Social Media Marketing is not an advertiser push medium, you cannot and will not be able to control the message, Social Media is a pull medium and is driven and controlled by the user. The dealership advertising has no place there. In this space you will have to be authentic, you will have to be different, you will have to be remarkable or you will be invisible. So what does that mean, well it means the saying “Without the customer there is no car business” a mantra we in the car business have been paying lip service to for far too many years will now have to be true…REALLY! Then once you deliver on this promise you must make it easy for the cus...

Recently my good Friend Kirk Manzo, a great sales and F&I trainer sent me these pictures. These are from a 2005 article in Dealer Magazine or someplace like that, I honestly don’t remember where this article ran. Apparently Kirk was training in a dealership in Florida and the dealer had this Poem blown up an posted on the walls of the dealership. I am honored and flattered that anyone would do that with something I wrote and thought it might be something to share here. See below, I always love the feedback on things like this so please comment. Thanks:
THE AMERICAN CAR SALESMAN


The American car salesman is both hated and revered.
He is the last of a rare breed – the ultimate maverick.
He walks with confidence and takes offense at direction.
He cannot be left on his own, yet his spirit will not be dominated.
He is free enterprise personified.
The American automobile salesman laughs in the face of affirmative action. He is one of the few workers in society who is paid ...

The title of this post comes from an early Wal-Mart internet team saying “you can’t out Amazon, Amazon”. Bottom line, Hyundai was first to market with Cash for Clunkers and they were first to add incentives on top of this offering.  To come along now and try to say the same thing only louder or do it better is foolish and will make no bigger impact than GM’s failed attempt to follow Hyundai’s Assurance program. “You cannot succeed if you try to tell you competitor’s story better than they can”.  This is the hardest lesson for a marketer to learn about competition; as human beings we are well trained to follow the leader. The natural instinct is to figure out what is working for your competition and then try to outdo them, if they compete on price we’re cheaper, if they compete on speed we’re faster. The problem is that once the consumer has bought the competitor’s story, it is the same as convincing them they w...

Before the "Golden age" of mass media, marketing wasn’t particularly important. Companies made commodities, things people needed. If you made things people needed, it was fairly priced and well distributed you’d do just fine. If you were a farmer you didn’t worry about marketing corn, if you were a black smith and could shoe a horse for a fair price you’d do ok, and the local barber cut hair. People bought stuff they needed and those with the skill made money providing for their customers’ needs.
 
Along came the “Golden age” if you had enough money you could buy a ton of television commercials, magazine ads or radio commercials and tell the story of your choice to each and every consumer, but you had to market to all the consumers at once, there were only 3 television channels and radio and print were also limited. You had 60 seconds to tell a simple story and if you did a good job you could create demand, instead of satisfyin...

 All online marketing is designed to get users to engage that’s the point and the great thing about it, engagement is clicking—clicking your ads, your links, your content, your experiences. You want clicks lots and lots of clicks. When users are clicking, things are happening, moving and shakin.  But not all clicks are equal. There are those clicks you can control, and those you can’t really control.
Clicks you can’t control are like a busy highway interchange. You optimize the hell out of your content; throw it out there with some hope that if you did your job, you’ll get the traffic.  Where users end up and what they do when they arrive is entirely up to them, your ability to control what they click on is very limited. These clicks like a busy highway spaghetti junction interchange are a good thing and sometimes a bit scary:
 
You want your content out there for users to discover and explore. You want to be well placed so you get ...

I get asked this a lot when I talk about it. Everyone knows the 10 step sales process in the industry, or at least I hope they do.
1.       Meet & Greet
2.       Establish common ground
3.       Select a vehicle
Ect… ect… if you don’t know it and you want to post a comment here and I’ll send it to you. What does this have to do with Post-Click-Marketing? Well it has the same characteristics both have the same goal…the sale. For Post-Click-Marketing that sale is a conversion or lead.
Try this….
Go to a few local car dealerships (not yours) you need a completely unbiased subject. Now pay close attention to how your conversation goes with the salesperson. When you get a real salesperson – not some reject from the past 5 dealerships they couldn’t make it at – meaning they know how to sell and have practiced their craft, he or she wi...

 2 days ago I wrote a blog post on cash for clunkers entitled “Cash for Clunkers”… Most likely a clunker. After reading the bill cover to cover 3 times I was amazed at the number of holes in this thing. I listed 7 major holes in the bill that were seriously detrimental to dealers. As I do with many posts that have to do with OEM’s or Automotive and the Government I sent it to my good friend Cliff Banks at Wards Dealer Business to review before I posted it. Cliff is by far the most connected individual in the business and I can always count on him to keep me on the right path for the dealership, as he believes as I do that dealers are the Key to an automotive turn around not a speed bump between the OEM and the customer. Cliff asked me not to post until he could check a few things with NHTSA. Surprisingly NHTSA was very receptive and it appears that at least 5 of the holes will be addressed before the July 24th deadline…hopefully.
As you can tell I...

 I recently read an article that started like this, I am changing some of the language to fit the car business.
“In the beginning there was your dealerships website and it was good. But then it grew, and grew and grew, until it encompassed the heavens the earth in content and scope. There was something for everyone and everything for someone, and it ceased to be a coherent presentation to anyone in particular.”
“It became an Encyclopedia Corporatica – a massive tomb of information. It contained inventory, employment information, staff information, Green Dealer information, press releases from years gone by. An impressive body of work to be sure…but a sales tool, as a marketing vehicle it sags under its own weight.”
These two paragraphs sparked this post and / or rant. Hope that doesn’t turn you off but this is something I have been very passionate about for the last 18 months or so and in the lightening fast pace of online marketing ...

I was recently asked by a dealer “What is Twitter?”, I thought about that a bit and my answer came out like this. “Twitter is a one-to-many, one-way, Instant Messenger”. That got the point across in an easy way, I thought. Then I got the harder question… “Ok how do we use this in our dealership?”
Well, that one stumped me for a moment. Like all social media, a marketer must find the right way to use these things- using them the wrong way can have really negative repercussions. The thing about social media is that it’s TOTALLY controlled by the community.  You must tread lightly.  People choose to want to hear what you have to say- and can just as easily turn you off. With all that said, the best use for Twitter I have found, particularly for a dealership, is as a message board to announce the OCCASSIONAL, really good specials that will get people into your store.
Here are a few examples of what I mean:
1.   ...

 
Why Social Media Is Important To A Brand And A Dealership
 
I am posting this as a follow up to Social Media an Oxymoron. As we continue to venture down this uncharted hi-way we need be sure that we separate Advertising from engagement and make sure that we allow the people who are supposed to be doing the engaging to do so easily and for us as marketers to participate where appropriate.
 
People Still Prefer Real-Life Recommendations to Online Reviews

Referring a product or service is not a new idea, it’s been around as long as people have—but is the way people make recommendations changing with the times? Despite increased online activity, real-life referrals are still more influential to consumers than those received online, according to a new study by Mintel. 34% of American consumers bought a product or service based on a recommendation from a friend or relative, while 25% bought based upon a recommendation from their spouse or partner.
&nbs...

I recently read a great article on Global Consumer Email Trends. This article discussed the various ways North Americans, Europeans and Asians view and use email. While each were very different in their usage and most interestingly in the way they respond to email, there are some bottom line truths when it comes to email and how we use it to market and how the multiple cultures we are marketing to view it. No matter what the ethnicity there are clear rules for effective email communication.
Permission Based Email (PBE) is the only way you will be getting to a consumers inbox in the very near future. According to a recent study by Messages Lab, SPAM hit an all time high in February of this year at 85% of what is being sent to your inbox. Major ISP’s like MSN, AOL, GMAIL, Yahoo and other have already begun to crack down. If you are one of those marketers out there that is doing EMAIL BLASTS… STOP you’re wasting your time and most of the emails you send are not even g...