Dane Saville, the Public Relations and Brand Director of Reunion Marketing, will be speaking at DSES.  His breakout is titled, "Relevance is King: How Your Content Can Save You Money, Build Your Traffic and Convert Your Browsers".  This is a guest blog from Dane on measuring your marketing.

There’s the old cliche that “good things come to those who wait.” I’m hoping that you’ll feel this adage applies to my egregiously late submission for introducing you to my DrivingSales Executive Summit session. Let’s not waste another moment.

First, a little bit about me.

I began my career in automotive marketing with Leith Automotive here in Raleigh, North Carolina. I was hired as a copywriter to craft radio advertisements, television spots, blogs — really, just about everything. One of the first novel concepts I had was to write the Average Joe test drive. What does a casual car shopper really want to know about driving a vehicle? This lead to a lot of dealership visits where I had the opportunity to see how things operate in the showroom and on the lot.

I moved onto an independent agency, where I took the role of chief editor for the automotive team. And, ultimately, coming on board to form Reunion Marketing as the Content Director and, later, Brand and Public Relations Manager.

So what is it that I hope you’ll learn from me at DSES ‘18?

Relevant content can help fulfill the potential of every single marketing dollar you spend.

Take the Guesswork Out of Media Buying

The NADA released a report that “Internet” advertising comprises 55.4% of a dealership’s marketing budget. This means there’s still significant spending in traditional media, such as television and radio. There’s a problem with this …

You’re indexing audiences to target the greatest percentage of people who fit — demographically and geographically — your defined audience with as little waste as possible. After you’ve attempted to limit the scope of who your ads will reach, this manual buying involves a process of negotiating, purchasing, and monitoring. And guess what?

There’s still an incredible waste of spending no matter your market.

That’s because traditional media does not offer the same granular targeting that programmatic media does. Even if you pay the money to be able to drill down your audience with understanding their preferences or personal habits, like exercising regularly, you’re still not matching the power of programmatic channels.

Programmatic media buying (think of Facebook, video pre-roll, and Pandora) eliminates that waste because you can go beyond basic demographics to understand their shopping behaviors and other indicators that help ensure you target people who have a high level of interest in your brand around which you can stimulate interest in your dealership.

This means every marketing dollar is spent on your exact audience and not an estimated percentage of your local market.

]The 3 Pillars of Paid Search

If you get these three pillars right, you’ll save money on every single click.

The Right Ads

You want to have the proper account structure.

You need to focus on being mobile-friendly.

You must maintain a great Quality Score. The QS of your ads directly affects their cost.

The Right Impression Share

You should align your budget with strategic impression share.

For searches that demonstrate an intent to buy, you’ll want to maintain a greater impression share. That’s because you have more opportunity to create ads with greater specificity while generally not competing against third-party sites.

For searchers that are broader, you don’t need a high impression share. There are more strategic ways to attack those searches with a lower share and leveraging a specific Google tool.

The Right Targeted Market

This pillar is the most simple. You have targeting options with your paid search strategy to ensure that you’re not spending outside of your targeted area — the most viable market. This goes beyond just setting a radius.

Website Content

Your landing page content must match the search query intent.

Is your Search Console connected to your Google Analytics account?

You can see the search queries for which you receive the greatest number of impressions. Along with that, you’ll see other information that can help you make smart decisions.

Is your Google Ads account integrated with your Google Analytics account?

You’ll get even more insights on other search queries by understanding that I’ll discuss. Plus, you have the added benefit of potentially increasing your Quality Score by applying this strategy — remember you may be paying more right now because your ads don’t have the right landing page.

It’s all about understanding your local search market.

Conversion Rate Optimization

CRO fulfills the potential of your SEO and SEM efforts.

Conversion Rate Optimization is not just changing a button color or when your chat tool pops up. It’s understanding how people behave on your site and making strategic updates that compel them to do what you want them to.

It means understanding that five homepage banners is not helpful to car shoppers. That’s because 79.09% of all homepage clicks are on the navigation or inventory search widget. I’ll discuss what percentage clicks on homepage banners.

It means utilizing heatmaps to see what elements capture your site browsers’ attention the most. I’ll discuss how to use them and what you can discover.

It means optimizing your content across all devices. Shoppers are as diverse as the vehicles on your lot, so you want to make sure that you’re not neglecting a great experience for all of them.

It means creating and optimizing content that’s relevant to their searches and removing the friction that let’s them convert while engaging with that content I’ll discuss and show some examples that can guide your next strategic updates.

It means knowing that conversions on your site directly affect how you rank in SERPs. It influences the key factors for how Google determines whether or not your site is giving car shoppers what they want. Google rewards that with a better rank. I’ll talk about the ways you can take up this real estate in SERPs and dominate the positions that get nearly 50% of all clicks.

See You at DSES on October 23rd at 9:50 a.m.?

There’s so much more to share, so I hope you’ll join me at the DrivingSales Executive Summit in Las Vegas.

RelayCars Pro includes a host of features to aid dealers and OEM product managers with the selling process, product design, training and more

 LOS ANGELES (October 9, 2018) – RelayCars, the virtual reality automotive experience that puts consumers in the driver’s seat of thousands of vehicles, today announced the launch of its virtual reality application RelayCars Pro, an automotive sales platform. The new application offers a suite of services with an immersive approach to present cars to potential buyers.  Powered by the most expansive VR automotive asset library on the market, the salesperson can place consumers in the driver’s seat of any vehicle through the virtual reality showroom.  With a database of thousands of vehicles that is constantly expanding, dealers are able to show car buyers a realistic view of a vehicle that may not even be physically on the dealership lot.

Recent automotive studies show, 80% of car shopping touch points between the initial research and visiting the dealership are digital.  As this digital trend continues to grow, with RelayCars Pro, dealerships can further the car buying experience through VR tours.  Customers can view interior and exterior 360° spins around each car as well as explore different trims, colors and videos of the models.

Additionally, RelayCars Pro with ‘Commander’ allows one or many users at a time to be guided by an agent, aiding in design reviews and research where buyers may not be centrally located. Commander option is available to work over a local area network or remotely over the internet with either 1 -1 controls or with the agent controlling multiple headsets via a companion app running on any Android device. This option prompts salespeople with USPs that are unique to a vehicle model. A self-guided experience is also available, with a white label version of the application accessible on both iPhone and Android, requiring no headset. 

“At RelayCars, we are proud to offer a product made specifically for dealers that will continue to shape the future of selling cars,” said David Falstrup, RelayCars CEO.  “We have already found great success working with a large network of dealerships and look forward to bringing more businesses on board as our VR library grows and technology continues to advance.”

Businesses interested in working with RelayCars Pro may apply to try the VR sales platform for free by registering here.

RelayCars’ consumer application is also available now for free on iOS, Android, Oculus Go, Google Daydream, Samsung Gear VR, Microsoft MR and soon-to-be Magic Leap.

About RelayCars®

Featuring the most expansive and high-quality VR automotive library on the market, RelayCars is a virtual reality suite of apps that allow both enterprise and general consumer users to explore the interior and exterior of thousands of different vehicles via smart phone, tablet, web or VR headset. The app is available for free on iOS, Android, Oculus Go, Google Daydream, Samsung Gear VR and Microsoft MR. RelayCars is the sister-company of EVOX Images, a company best known for providing rapid, large-scale global image creation solutions on demand with a focus on automotive VR and 360 images. For more information on RelayCars, please visit www.relaycars.com or follow RelayCars on Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn.

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New funds to accelerate company growth and innovation in digital marketing for the automotive industry.

SpinCar, the global leader in digital automotive merchandising software, announced today that it has closed a $22 million financing round led by Wavecrest Growth Partners, with participation from auto and tech industry veterans David Metter and Harpreet Grewal. The new capital will be used to fund company growth and continued investment in product innovation to meet accelerating market demand for digital automotive merchandising technologies.

SpinCar’s digital automotive merchandising platform leverages advanced 360° display technology and proprietary behavioral data to reinvent the way in which dealers, OEMs and third-party automotive marketplaces engage with car shoppers. The platform transforms static online merchandising content into immersive, VR-enabled experiences, complete with virtual interior and exterior tours as well as tagged, touchable hotspots that allow consumers to explore key vehicle features in rich detail. By capturing precise vehicle and feature interaction data in real-time, SpinCar enables dealers to personalize every consumer touch based on the specific needs and interests of individual shoppers. SpinCar’s VINtelligent Retargeting solution delivers the industry’s most personalized digital ad units for greater marketing effectiveness along the entire car buying journey. Dealers using the SpinCar platform report greater than 30% increases in online consumer engagement and conversion rates, as well as 20 – 30% faster inventory turnover, particularly for used and certified pre-owned vehicles.

“In a world where consumers are just a click or swipe away from a myriad of information sources and alternative purchasing options, every digital interaction for a car shopper represents a critical moment in the purchase journey. SpinCar is enabling local and national auto dealers to bring the personalized showroom experience directly to prospective car buyers wherever and whenever they want. Our platform is generating measurable results for dealers of all sizes, and this investment will enable us to expand our industry reach at an even faster rate,” said Devin Daly, SpinCar Co-Founder and CEO. “Wavecrest’s customer-first approach and unrivaled B2B SaaS experience make them the perfect partner for our next phase of growth. We’re excited to work with their team and network of operators as we accelerate our efforts. This capital will allow us to bring new products to market faster, enhance the services we provide to our customers and partners, and expand our world-class team.”

Describing the investment, Deepak Sindwani, Managing Partner at Wavecrest Growth Partners said, “SpinCar provides market-leading technology to a very large industry in the throes of digital disruption. We were impressed with the company’s value proposition, business performance and unique data assets. We look forward to partnering with Devin and his team to transform the way that vehicles get purchased.”

In addition to Deepak, Harpreet Grewal and David Metter have also joined the company’s board of directors. Harpreet is a 30-year veteran of SaaS businesses, with particular expertise in selling to SMBs. Most recently, he served as General Manager/CEO of Constant Contact after the company’s $1.1 billion sale to Endurance International in 2015. Previously, he was a 5-time CFO of public and private SaaS companies. David is the co-founder and President of AutoHook, which was acquired by Urban Science in 2015. David is a frequent speaker on the topic of digital innovation at auto dealer conferences, including the North American Dealer Association (NADA) show.

Presidio Technology Partners acted as the financial advisor to SpinCar on the transaction.

About SpinCar 
SpinCar offers automotive dealers, OEMs and online marketplaces the industry’s most advanced platform for digital automotive merchandising. The company’s 360° WalkAround® technology builds trust between buyers and sellers by bringing the physical showroom experience to car shoppers wherever and whenever they want. SpinCar’s proprietary shopper behavioral data and VINtelligent® Retargeting solution enable dealers to deliver hyperpersonalized interactions across the entire car shopping journey. To date, more than 140 million virtual WalkArounds have been experienced by car shoppers across 14 countries. To learn more about SpinCar, visit SpinCar.com.

About Wavecrest Growth Partners 
Based in Boston, Wavecrest Growth Partners is a growth equity firm focused on investing in and partnering with leading B2B software and technology-enabled services companies. Wavecrest targets investments in high-growth technology companies with proven product and business models and brings to bear a differentiated combination of investing and operating expertise to help accelerate growth and profitability. Representative investments include Building Engines, Tier1CRM, and SpinCar. Wavecrest’s team has over three decades of collective investing and operating experience in growth-stage B2B technology companies, including numerous successful outcomes. For more information, visit wavecrestgrowth.com.

Erika Simms, Vice President of Dealer Authority, discusses the importance of building your brand and some tips on on where to start.

How are you building your dealership brand?

Thomas Gage joins LotLinx team to spearhead company’s push to help auto dealerships use advertising strategies powered by artificial intelligence to achieve sales objectives.

 CHICAGO – September 25, 2018 – LotLinx, the automotive industry’s No. 1 artificial intelligence (AI) company, announced today it has hired former Cox Automotive strategist and noted marketing analytics expert and author Thomas Gage as its new Chief Strategy Officer. In this role, he will apply quantitative data gathered by LotLinx’s AI technology to dealerships’ sales objectives to identify the best approach to their advertising campaigns and marketing spend. His primary objective will be to help dealers identify where and how to market their inventory to achieve the best results.

Gage has been recognized as a visionary in automotive retail during his 17-year career with Cox Automotive. He was a thought leader in positioning the AutoTrader brand to accelerate its growth through innovative analytics and audience tracking. He later supported the company through multiple acquisitions. He is a regular speaker at industry conferences and co-authored the book, “Who Sold It?” with Brian Pasch, which focuses on marketing attribution. They are now collaborating on their new book, “Frictionless” which focuses on Digital Retailing.

As he begins his work at LotLinx, Gage will assist dealerships in implementing the LotLinx platform to meet sales and marketing goals. With a track record of accelerating corporate growth, and extensive knowledge of product, analytics, strategy and acquisitions, he will work with LotLinx’s team of experts to create even more powerful products to improve the efficiencies of dealerships by incorporating AI.

“There is a significant opportunity to apply the LotLinx technology to marketing challenges in a way auto dealership managers and salespeople understand,” said Gage. “We are really speaking their language, and making it easier for them to meet their business goals, simply by incorporating AI and marketing automation. No one else in the industry is as laser-focused on meeting the objectives of dealers as LotLinx.  Marketing has become overly complex, but now we can greatly simplify things for our clients by putting more decision making into our products.

“LotLinx is absolutely unique in this industry and Tom was one of the first people to truly recognize what that means for dealers,” said LotLinx Vice Chairman Mark Boyd. ”Having him on board in this strategic position is going to be monumental in helping communicate the astounding changes our AI is introducing to the marketplace. He knows what dealers care about. He speaks their language. This is a big game-changer for us.”  

This fall, LotLinx will attend several industry events, including Digital Dealer 25, DrivingSales Executive Summit, Autovate, Used Car Week, Kain Automotive, Automotive Analytics and Attribution Summit. Members of the company’s leadership team will be present at many of these conferences to discuss the company’s plans for upcoming initiatives to continue to help dealers optimize media spend.

For more information, visit www.lotlinx.com. Thomas can be contacted on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasgage/

About LotLinx

LotLinx is the automotive industry’s No. 1 artificial intelligence (AI) company dedicated to empowering automotive dealers and agencies through its Vehicle Identification Number (VIN)-Specific™ digital marketing platform. Thousands of car dealerships across North America have successfully leveraged LotLinx’s approach to delivering purchase-ready shoppers to their websites. In the past five years, the company has grown more than 67,000 percent, earning it the No. 1 spot on Crain’s Chicago Business’ 2018 Fast 50 list, along with a spot on the Auto Remarketing Power 300 for 2018. LotLinx partners with many leading brands, including Audi, GM, FCA, Ford and Mazda for Cooperative Advertising programs that reimburse up to 100% of a dealer’s marketing spend. Founded in 2012, LotLinx now works with global technology leaders and serves many of the nation’s Top 100 Auto Groups. To learn more, visit www.lotlinx.com.

This is a guest post by Sean Stapleton, CEO & Co-Founder of Dealer Teamwork.  

Sean will be speaking with Firas Makhlouf from Driver’s Village Automotive Group on Mastering Modern-Day Lead Generation at the DrivingSales Executive Summit next month.

Have you ever asked yourself, are my providers providing?  Today, many car dealers want to know the first step to generating their own leads.  To begin, dealerships need to audit their current tools and suppliers to ensure they are maximizing their indexing capabilities.  The next logical question to ask is, how do you measure the success of your lead generation?  Successful lead generation is built up of cost, conversion and ultimately sales, which equals ROI. 

Mastering lead generation is no easy feat, so it’s no wonder specialized third-party lead generation companies sprouted and dominated with the dawn of the Internet.  There was a demand, so naturally, companies grew to fulfill that demand.  Third-party lead providers may have their place in an automotive strategy, but when dealers put all of their lead generation “eggs” in the third-party “basket”, they are gambling with their livelihood. 

If dealerships hope to survive and thrive in the modern world, they must audit who they work with, how they are generating leads and ultimately at what cost.  First list out your providers, then the cost and finally what each provider generated.  This will tell you which vendors to cut or limit.  This leads you to one of two conclusions – it either generated a positive or negative ROI. 

Regardless of how it turns out, the road to success is similar.  You must:

1.  - Optimize your website to rank highly in search and for positive user experience. 
2.  - Structure your campaigns and segment your message to meet shoppers every step of the customer journey
3.  - Coordinate messaging across all marketing channels.

• This begs one more question, if lead generation is so crucial to the measure of success, why do so many dealers feel content allowing third parties to control their destiny at ridiculously low ROIs?

Today, let’s focus on the first leg of this journey: optimizing your website.  If you want to generate your own leads, you need to get people to your website.  To draw more shoppers into your website, you need to set your website up to rank highly in search and set it up for a positive experience for shoppers.  Gone are the days of trying to trick search engines to rank higher with keyword stuffing and black hat SEO tactics.  Now are the days of practicing white hat SEO, meaning emphasizing a positive experience for humans will result in better performance on search engines. 

How is this possible you ask?  It’s possible because search engine algorithms are more sophisticated and can better mimic the human evaluation process of deciding if content is quality, relevant and if it answers the searcher’s questions.  This was achieved because search engines, like Google, used real people’s actions of manually evaluating the search process to dictate which content is high or low quality.  Then they implemented machine learning to imitate that behavior, so their algorithms could evaluate search as close to human evaluation method as possible.

What does this mean for dealers?  It means you structure your site for success so that it can be interpreted by search engines and indexed properly to rank highly in search.  This includes making your site easy to navigate, mapping that navigation to your customer’s journey to buy a vehicle, building out better landing pages according to the “one page, one purpose” principle and giving consumers more information to get their questions answered faster. 

When it comes to optimizations, the fewer clicks the better, so make it easy for people to find information on your site.  Make it easy for shoppers to contact you when they are ready with strong and easy to complete calls to actions.  What’s more, make sure you always have the most up-to-date and relevant content live or you break digital trust.

Think of the customer journey like a funnel.  High funnel being the beginning of the journey and low funnel being the end.  High funnel shoppers are trying to decide what type of vehicle will suit their needs by researching body styles, brands and vehicle features.  Mid funnel shoppers have narrowed their search to the few vehicles that best fit their needs and are comparing the features and cost of each.  Low funnel shoppers have essentially chosen the exact vehicle they desire and are looking for where they can complete their purchase and purchase options they have by comparing dealerships and their offers.  Then once they have found the vehicle and dealership that best fits their needs, that is when they physically venture into the store to make the purchase. 

Today, for most car shoppers, most of that research happens online.  In fact, according to a 2017 Google study, shoppers tend to only visit one or two dealerships before making a purchase; this is down from five visits in 2005.  Because much of this journey happens online, it is crucial to structure your website content to meet the needs of shoppers at each stage, and then mirror that experience in your ad campaigns.

For high funnel shoppers, provide model specific and body style specific landing pages that showcase the breadth of your inventory and the features and differences of each vehicle.  For mid funnel shoppers, showcase the various trims of each vehicle model, penny-perfect pricing and cost difference of each.  For low funnel shoppers, tell your story and why someone should choose your dealership over the one next door.  Showcase your client testimonials, explain the financing and leasing process, showcase your trade in programs, make it easy for shoppers to see what financing they qualify for, etc.  Another thing to keep in mind throughout is that video has a place at each level and helps convert more shoppers along the way.

Modern car shoppers want to feel confident in their purchase decision and they want to feel educated on the entire process.  Don’t require someone to submit a lead form or call you to find basic but essential car buying information like your current offers and pricing of vehicles.  Modern shoppers want to find this information themselves before engaging with the dealership.  Modern merchandising is critical here for your success. 

When in doubt, the easiest way to audit your website is trying to buy a car from your dealership.  No, you are not actually buying the car, but take the steps you would take if you were buying a car from your store.  Use Google’s Ad Preview Tool to simulate the search process without costing yourself money or hurting your SEM metrics, and then ask yourself these questions:

• Do your ads show up?  What position?  Was it relevant to your search?  Did it have Ad Extensions?
• Does your website show up in organic search and is the result appealing to your search intent?
• When you get to your website, does the landing page match the content of the ad and further answer your original search intent?  Was the pricing a penny-perfect match from ad to landing page?
• Is it easy to compare vehicles and can you find the transactional information you need to make an informed purchase?  Hint, that means more than MSRP.  MSRP is important to have, but few people pay for a vehicle in full over financing or leasing.
• Is it easy to get to know your dealership and learn more about what will happen when the shopper goes into the store to make the purchase?
• Is it easy to contact you?  Try filling out your form or chatting with your dealership.  How long does it take for someone to respond and do they give you a thorough enough answer?

Do this regularly to find bottlenecks in the process so you can reduce your waste and improve your optimization process.  If you don’t find your current process pleasant, neither will the shopper, and you will lose them.  For a deeper dive and real-life examples on each of the legs of the journey to generate your own leads, don’t miss my DrivingSales Executive Summit session with Firas Makhlouf from Driver’s Village Automotive Group on Mastering Modern-Day Lead Generation.

This is a guest blog by Jon Petron, Vice President of Advanced Services for Outsell.  

Jon and Paul Schnell, the Digital marketing Director at Wilsonville Toyota and Wilsonville Subaru will be presenting a breakout at DSES titled, Sleepers: How to Maximize the Hidden Value of Your Database.

Your most valuable shoppers may already be with you.

Dealers can make the most of their data and capitalize on all the information in their CRM and DMS but often hesitate to implement a plan to get started. A surprising amount of your databases are comprised of unsold leads and prior customers (even when dormant), who can yield more profit than you expect once brought back to life.

You ignore these sleeping consumers at your peril because your competition is already implementing the tools and strategies designed to help you know when customers and prospects are back in-market, re-engaging them at the right time with the right content individualized to them.

Taking advantage of your data, however, starts with keeping that data clean, both for reaching new prospects and for leveraging real-time sales data to improve retention tactics.

Outsell recommends mandatory  Data Appends as we’ve identified that less than 50% of our client databases have reachable records combining both CRM and DMS. An initial append can help increase that reach between 10-30%.

Once you are communicating regularly, leveraging the data behind engagements as well as activity across the web is what allows for relevant messaging. First, you need to ask: What do you consider a lead? And at what point do you move on to the next one?

Training your staff to communicate with potential buyers is also imperative, especially when using the data available about their behaviors and needs. One of the best ways to ensure accurate and relevant follow-up with prospects and customers is through marketing automation.

Marketing automation is software that provides more individualization and automated sending for email communications, while simultaneously letting the consumer drive the content they receive. Employing a marketing automation tool can give dealers a competitive advantage in retaining customers and unsold leads that blasting emails out of your CRM simply cannot.

But automation alone isn’t enough. Artificial intelligence allows for more robust lifecycle management, keeping you in front of consumers more relevantly with the least amount of hassle. Your dealership needs AI and automation that fits your specific needs to best utilize your existing data and go after the ‘sleepers’ you’d otherwise miss out on.

Learn more at my panel with Paul Schnell from Wilsonville Toyota and Subaru October 23rd during DSES where we’ll cover the secret value of data to drive more sales.

Cumming, GA (September 19, 2018) – Client Command ®, an automotive marketing technology company focused on engaging Active Shoppers™, today announced that the US Patent and Trademark Office has issued US Patent 10,078,844 covering its marketing technology platform.  Client Command’s proprietary technology matches online car shopping activity with offline identity data and where applicable and permissible, triggers relevant messages based on that data.

The current industry standard of automotive marketing technology is hyper-focused on leveraging a dealer’s existing database to forecast and predict buying behavior for marketing purposes.  In today’s online world, shopping activity takes place anonymously, limiting a dealer’s ability to know who exactly is shopping and how intensely. Most innovation within the industry helps dealerships more efficiently and effectively market to previous customers. Dealers face a significant void when it comes to engaging shoppers outside their database.

The patent covers Client Command’s technology and its ability to connect dealers to Active Shoppers™ who have no prior relationship to that dealership. With this patent, Client Command is positioned as the only entity able to leverage online shopping data to engage both previous customers in a dealer’s database and individuals with whom they hold no first party data relationship.

“In the automotive industry, the first party data relationship is weak,” says Greg Geodakyan, Chief Product Officer.  “In ecommerce, banking, hospitality, and other industries, consumers build relationships with brands on a continual basis.  Consumers set up accounts, log-in consistently and are shopping or seeking a brand’s service on a weekly, monthly or even yearly basis. Automotive is different -- purchases happen every four to five years, consumers are considering ALL options, regardless of where they have received service in the past.  Dealers need an innovative approach.”

The recently issued patent not only covers the ability to match actual shoppers to online shopping behavior, but also the platform’s ability to send marketing messages, where applicable, to those matches.  This advance in technology provides intelligence and automation that helps dealers be more efficient and effective with their marketing and expand their reach to Active Shoppers™ in their entire market, not just their database.   

“In a rapidly-changing and ultra-competitive market for a shrinking number of car buyers, dealerships must stay ahead of the curve in how they engage shoppers and evolve their experience,” says Geodakyan.  “With the issuance of this patent, Client Command continues to push the industry forward in technology and innovation to help dealers compete in today’s market.” 

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About Client Command:

Client Command® is the automotive industry leader for knowing and engaging the Active Shopper™.   The company’s patented AI-powered technology delivers the most precise audience identification, matching real-time online shopping behavior with Active Shopper identity.  Client Command’s ability to know more about consumers fuels personalized marketing solutions with a proven track record of increasing a dealership’s ability to conquest new and retain existing customers.  For more information, visit clientcommand.com

LEHI, UTAH - September 13, 2018​ – Podium, the leading customer communication platform for local businesses, has been named to the Forbes 2018 Cloud 100, the definitive list of the top 100 private cloud companies in the world, published by Forbes in collaboration with Bessemer Venture Partners and Salesforce Ventures. This award comes on the heels of Podium being ranked #13 on the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest growing companies for 2018 and being named the 2018 “Best SaaS Product for Small Business/SMBs” by The SaaS Awards.

"The power of the cloud has transformed the way people do business and we are honored to be recognized by Bessemer Venture Partners, Forbes and Salesforce Ventures for our innovative technology solutions that benefit both local businesses and their end-consumers," said Eric Rea, CEO and co-founder of Podium. "We help any businesses with a physical location improve their customer interactions and drive purchase decisions better than anyone, and this award is a testament to the talent and hard work of our team in creating our platform."

As part of the rigorous selection process for the Forbes 2018 Cloud 100, Bessemer Venture Partners received submissions from the top cloud startups. The Forbes Cloud 100 judging panel, including top public cloud company CEOs, reviewed the data to select, score and rank the top 100 cloud companies from all over the world. The evaluation process involved four factors: market leadership (35 percent), estimated valuation (30 percent), operating metrics (20 percent), and people & culture (15 percent).

“For the past three years, the Cloud 100 list has identified the top cloud companies that are reshaping their respective industries,” said Alex Konrad, Forbes editor of The Cloud 100. “I am consistently impressed by the caliber of companies honored on the Cloud 100 list. It is an exciting time to a be a cloud company and founder.”

“All of the twenty-five cloud IPOs and major cloud acquisitions over the past three years have been prior members of the Cloud 100, and we absolutely expect that the dominant public cloud companies of the future will also come from this list,” said Byron Deeter, a top cloud investor and partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. “The 2018 Cloud 100 represents well over $135B in private shareholder value--an astonishing figure that reminds us yet again of the power of the cloud. The way we do business will be dramatically different as a result of these companies and I am honored to celebrate the remarkable accomplishments of the founders and teams behind each company on the 2018 Cloud 100.”

“The business opportunity for cloud companies is tremendous today as capital investment, customer demand and rate of adoption continues to grow,” said Matt Garratt, Managing Partner, Salesforce Ventures. “We’re excited to see the potential of these companies and look forward to seeing what innovative technology they deliver around the world.”

Each year the CEOs of The Cloud 100 and the 20 Rising Stars companies are honored at the exclusive Cloud 100 Celebration hosted by Bessemer Venture Partners, Salesforce Ventures, and Forbes.

The Forbes 2018 Cloud 100 and 20 Rising Stars lists are published online at www.forbes.com/cloud100 and will appear in the September 2018 issue of Forbes magazine.

About Podium

Podium modernizes the way business happens locally with products designed to help businesses be found, chosen, and gain insight into their customers' experience. By conveniently facilitating millions of customer interactions, such as driving customer-generated online reviews and providing improved customer communication tools, Podium serves 150,000+ users across nearly 20,000 local businesses. Headquartered in Lehi, Utah, and founded in 2014, Podium is currently backed by IVP, Accel, Summit Partners, GV (formerly Google Ventures), and Y Combinator. To learn more, visit www.podium.com or contact us at press@podium.com.

Media Contact

Brian Spittler Communications Director, Podium

brian.spittler@podium.com

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We recently sat down with Chris Smith from Curaytor, and the conversation turned to the buyer behaviors that identify purchase intent. Chris mentioned certain "money pages" that the dealership should focus on.