This week a Google AdWords approved vendor, in the Chrysler Digital program, told us that they couldn't connect the dealer's Google AdWords account with the dealership's Google Analytics account. We asked why. We were told that it was a Shift Digital policy.

We called Shift Digital and the dealer support representative confirmed that they would not allow the company to connect the two accounts. No reason was given other than it was the company policy. 

Before I publish my full report on this dangerous decision and the current advertising reporting pratices supervised by Shift Digital, I wanted to give both Chrysler Digital, Chrysler Dealers, Approved OEM Vendors, and Shift Digital an opportunity to reach out to me and explain their position.

Google Recommendations The Connection

I wonder where Google stands on this matter? Google specifically recommends that Google Analytics and AdWords are connected.  In this article, Google states that: 

Linking a Google Analytics property to your AdWords account can help you analyze customer activity on your website. This information can shed light on how much of your website traffic or sales comes from AdWords, and help you improve your ads and website.

More specifically Google states that the connect allows Chrysler dealers to "automatically view your AdWords click and cost data alongside your Analytics site engagement data." In other words, dealers can inspect the click quality of the AdWords investments!

Ooops..maybe the fact that the connection shows campaign costs in Analytics, which would expose just how much money is being funneled to agencies and the OEM, is the reason behind this edict? 

Are Chrysler Dealers Like Mushrooms?

My reaction to this decision was that Shift Digital must think that Chrysler dealers are like mushrooms. They can feed them shit and keep them in the dark.

Will the Chrysler Dealer Advisory Board stand up? Will Google?

Without the connection of Analytics and AdWords dealers cannot see what specific path consumers take when they click on an ad from a specific AdWords Campaign Ad Group. They cannot see which Ad Groups are generating the most SRP and VDP views.

Without the two accounts connected Chrysler dealers can not inspect and/or improve their AdWords click quality based on website actions. They would have to trust that their AdWords vendor is doing a fantastic job. 

Is the real reason why the connection has been denied, is so that Shift Digital does not want dealers to understand their business model? Are they trying to hide just how much their Digital Advertising program is padded with fees?

The connection clearly show how much Google is charging for campaigns which may not match the Chrysler bill from the approved vendors. 

Do they believe that Chrysler dealers are like mushrooms and that but removing the Google recommended AUDIT tools in Analytics, they will not complain?

Do all dealers want to inspect their AdWords campaigns? No. But the Chrysler dealers that are truly operating in the digital age, and that have a passion for excellence, do want this audit function enabled. 

Let's See If Google Or The Vendors Speak Up

Since, Google demands that agencies provide TRANSPARENT reporting (see: http://bit.ly/1zcCoNw)  to customers, will Google step up and tell Shift Digital and Google AdWords approved SMB partners to stop blocking AdWords and Analytics connections?

It takes one minute to connect the two accounts so this is not a task that is unreasonable. In seems to me, that Google is saying that Chrysler dealers can DEMAND the transparency that the connections delivers: 

For advertisers to fully realize the benefits of advertising on Google, they need to have the right information to make informed decisions. Therefore, we require all of our third-party partners to be transparent with information that affects these decisions. In addition to meeting the requirements outlined below, third parties must make reasonable efforts to provide their customers with other relevant information when requested.

I have been told by vendors that Shift Digital operates like the "digital mafia" in the United States. No vendors DARE to speak against the Company in fear that they will lose their OEM contract. Does anyone want to confirm that opinion?

Shift Digital extracts a payment from vendors in the Chrysler program to fund its services, and the payment percentage of each monthly retail transaction may shock you. That is another article in itself.

I know many of the Chrysler approved AdWords vendors provide a clear statement of fees when they operate Google AdWords programs for dealers outside of the Chrysler program. So, are they complicit in this deception? Is Google complicit as well? 

Does Google encourage their approved agencies to charge for AdWords services that are not performed to build a "bank" of unused cash? Does Google allow approved advertising partners to ESTIMATE monthly AdWords bills? If there are unused AdWords funds, in any given month, should they be withheld from the customer's knowledge?

I think Google would say "no" on all cases but I hope that they will answer that questions directly. As you will soon learn, the sloppy billing and reporting practices that I have discovered in the Chrysler Digital Program are designed to benefit only one company. 

Could Chrysler dealers be paying much more or getting much less for the OEM approved Chrysler digital services, because of the Shift Digital management model? It is clear that the OEMs like outsourcing all digital decisions regardless of the fees charged to dealers and vendors. 

Shouldn't Chrysler dealers demand transparency from their OEM advertising programs or has Shift Digital grown to0 big and influential? 

A simple solution would be to allow the recommend connection and just be honest with Chrysler dealers about how much of their spend is going to Google Advertising,  how much is going to management by vendors, and how much Shift Digital receives for being the manager of all things digital. 

Time To Respond 

I'll give all parties involved till May 4th to reach out and contact me about this matter. Any calls or emails can be kept confidential if you would like to remain anonymous. I hope that the executives at Chrysler, Shift Digital, and Google will step up and clarify their position.

You can send me email or contact me on my cell at 732.672.2356. I would also like to hear from dealers who object to this practice and have contacted their Chrysler representatives. 

SUPPORTERS OF TRANSPARENCY: Please share this post on social media and like this post. I will be starting a petition for Chrysler dealers to sign. The more dealers we can reach in the next few weeks the better.

By Brian Pasch

Have you noticed the increase in photos in your Twitter newsfeed?  Twitter is making a change to their platform to increase the number of photos that automatically open in the reader's newsfeed.

In the example on the right, I loaded a "goodie bag" photo with my tweet about speaking in Holland, When I looked at the tweet on my mobile phone, the photo was expanded, increasing the visual impact of the tweet.

This is a big change for marketing professionals. As Twitter evolves, expect more creative ways to use Twitter to reach local car buyers and to accelerate B2B marketing.

Note: The Twitter IPO will be coming to market this month and it will be interesting to see if it succumbs to market hype bolting the shares to the moon in the first day of trading.

Twitter Ad Formats

At the top of this post, a graphic is shown, which is the opening page to Twitter Ads.  Twitter gives you two choices on where your ads will display.  

I have been testing Promoted Tweets for the past few months and the results have been very encouraging. The targeting options that Twitter gives marketing professionals works very well for B2B strategies as well as B2B conquest strategies.  

For example, if I wanted to promote a webinar on Automotive CRM Sales Process, I could target Twitter users (which includes dealers) who follow DealerSocket, iMagicLab, VinSolutions, Eleads1, and DealerPeak as an example.  

I can also target users who use a certain hashtag in their tweets. For example, the #automotive or #automarketing hashtag is often used by automotive professionals.  If you start to think out of the box, the possibilities get very exciting.  Again, since you are charged on a per click basis, the traffic and engagement can be easily tracked. 

Using Promoted Tweets for B2C campaigns (consumers) takes a more creative approach and targeting is not so cookie cutter.  The good news is that I see Twitter ads as even more effective now that the reader can see a photo.

Photos Will Help Car Dealers

The addition of photos in the Twitter newsfeed will help dealers connect with consumers on Twitter.  Cars are a very visual experience and I can predict that dealers using Twitter ads creatively will see a jump when photos are added to their campaigns.

Twitter provides and advertising dashboard which shows click data at the campaign level, and also a summary of all campaign engagement which is show above.  The cost per engagement (CPE) for the B2B campaigns shown above, are less than a $1.00.  

With photos in the Twitter newsfeed, the ad impressions become more important, because without clicking on the tweet (costing you money) the photo can convey a branding message. This will be one of the additional benefits to dealers who use promoted tweets on Twitter.

Strategies to Reach Consumers

Keep in mind that Promoted Tweets represent another slice of consumer online "eyeballs", it not the holy grail.  My initial ad campaigns show great promise. Twitter does not have the reach or granularity of Google Adwords but it has other advantages.  

Since so few dealers are testing Promoted Tweets, first to market dealers will have a competitive edge to increase new visitors to their website.  Twitter visitors can be engaged with great content (landing page) and also added to the dealer's retargeting campaigns.  This example show why social media advertising and digital marketing campaigns need to coordinated. 

If you have any additional questions about Promoted Tweets for your dealership, ask them here on DrivingSales or send me an email, if it regards your local strategy: brian@pcgmailer.com.

Brian

Brian Pasch, CEO
PCG Consulting
732.672.2356
Google

By Brian Pasch

I wrote this week about calculating the Cost Per Shopper (CPS) and related to this metric is the Cost per VDP View (CVV). A number of inquiries came in asking how to setup Google Analytics to count Vehicle Detail Page (VDP) views.  

You can setup a "Data Segment" in Google Analytics to filter data by VDP views.  This is something that is helpful for immediate answers but you lose some detailed analysis that GA can provide marketing profesionals by using a goal.

I recommend that readers setup a Google Analytics "goal" that triggers when a consumer visits a Vehicle Detail Page (VDP).  The goal is the preferred method because to see which traffic sources are generating the most VDP Views.

If you setup goals for VDP Views, then you can also use Multi Channel Sales Funnels (MCSF) to see a better picture of the attribution associated with consumers looking at your inventory.  However, MCSF will be a topic for another day.

The Goals Area of Analytics

You will need to have "Admin" permissions to setup new goals.  Click on the Admin menu in Google Analytics and you should see a series of choices, like I have shown above.  Click on Goals, shown in the red box, and then click on "Create a Goal".

Google Analytics is constantly evolving and you will be pleased to see that Google has added a number of templates to track goals for a variety of website applications.  Many of these apply to car dealers so read them carefully.  For this case, we will pick the "View More" option. 

Then you need to create a name for the goal, which I set as "VDP Views".  You also need to indicate what will trigger the goal counter.  In this case, it will be a "Destination" page on the dealership website: the VDP.

The only tricky part of this goal setup is to know how your website provider defines Vehicle Detail Pages (VDP).  In the case shown above for Dealer.com websites, they differentiate VDPs for new, used, and certified vehicles.  Each vendor has their own pattern, for example VinSolutions is simply /vd/. 

Using the "regular expression" option, you can tell Google Analytics to trigger the goal counter if any of these 3 types of VDPs are viewed.  The "pipe" symbol, located over the backslash key (\) separates the patterns for the VDP's with NO spaces.

If you did this correctly, when you "Verify this goal", which is the blue hyperlink shown on this GA page, you should see some data shown.  If the data is zero, you typed something wrong.

Save The Goal and Wait

Once you save the goal, data will be collected and VDP views will be calcuated from this day forward.  Once you get a full month of data collected, you can start to use Google Analytics to better measure the sources that are generated VDP views and the multi-touch influences shown in MCSF.  You can start to calculate CVV and in the next article I can show you how to calculate CPS. 

I hope this helps to get a few readers into Google Analytics and on their way to better focus on the metrics that can improve their website performance and marketing investments.

Brian

Brian Pasch, CEO
PCG Consulting
732.672.2356
Google

​​

By Brian Pasch

Recent research from Cobalt has shown that as vehicles get more VDP views, they will sell faster.  Vehicle Detail Page (VDP) views are a proxy for the stealth shoppers that do not submit a lead, call the dealership, or chat with your agents before they show up at the dealership.  Increasing VDP views should be a goal of every Marketing Manager. 

Since this is one metric that is aligned with increasing the velocity of sales at the dealership, are marketing managers keeping an eye on VDP view trends on their website?  Marketing professionals should make VDP data a part of their monthly marketing review and analysis of website traffic.

VDP Views By Source

One of the charts marketing managers should create is the VDP views by source so that they can see which marketing investments are generating the most VDP views.  By color coding the graph, marketing managers can also quickly see monthly increases in traffic by source.  

For example, in the last 30 days there was a 100%+ increase in referral traffic that generated VDP views on this dealer's website, shown in purple.  For this dealer, it would be a great time to see which referral sources generated that big increase (832 to 1,852). 

Another metric to look at is the number of people who looked at a Vehicle Detail Page (VDP) by source, which I will call a "shopper". This will show marketing managers the number of shoppers their marketing dollars are generating each month, by source.

Is Your Dealership Inspecting VDP Trends?

If VDP views are one metric that is related to the velocity at which cars at your dealership will be selling, shouldn't marketing managers make sure they are looking at VDP trends each month?  This data is readily available in Google Analytics and other software solutions.  

If your dealership is using Google Analytics, you will need to determine the "pattern" that your website provider uses for VDP URLs.  For example, Dealer.com uses three patterns: /new/, /used/, and /certified/. Vinsolutions uses one pattern: /vd/.  Once you know these patterns, Google Analytics can be configured to count visitors who visit a VDP and how many VDPs are viewed per month.

I hope you agree that this is another good metric to inspect as part of your monthly review of marketing investments.  I will be writing additional article on what metrics Marketing Managers should include in their monthly review of website performance. 

If you have any questions, ask them below.  Please also take a minute to share this post on Facebook, Twitter, and in your social network if you found this helpful. 

Brian

Brian Pasch, CEO
PCG Consulting
732.672.2356
Google

By Brian Pasch

There have been many articles written about the importance of Google author tags, but did you know that Google makes it easy to see how your authored content is performing.   In Webmaster Tools, there is a section called "Labs" and in that section you can see your author stats.

The dashboard shows you how many articles it found with your author tag and how many times the post was seen in organic search and clicked.  It does not count how many times the page was viewed.  According to GWT, there are 946 articles indexed that have my author tag.

The first article in the list that had 1,600 impressions in Google search was the "Six Horsemen of Automotive Innovation" and 70 people clicked on the article in organic search. You can use this tool to track your content and to see if anyone has copied the content with your author tag embedded.

So, if you haven't inspected your authored content, here is a quick way to see how well your articles are performing.   You might be surprised to find some articles that you did not think attracted much interest, get alot of action!

Brian

Brian Pasch, CEO
PCG Consulting
732.672.2356
Google

By Brian Pasch

The fall automotive conferences showcased a number of technology solutions that were mobile friendly, adaptive, responsive, or packaged as a mobile app.  The marketplace is getting flooded with new products.  The product ROI claims are getting hard to substantiate, so I'm turning to the dealer community to help me with some important research.

If you are using mobile apps or mobile friendly software for inventory management, sales, CRM, F&I, or Service would you please take a minute to send me your feedback on what is working in your dealership and what failed to deliver the results that were promised.

You can send your experiences confidentially to me via email at brian@pcgmailer.com.  I will not be publishing your quotes or mention the vendor feedeback you provide online.  I am working on a new research paper and upcoming book and I need dealer feedback from the field.

Automotive Software Solutions

For example, there are a number of companies offering desking tools and CRM software that format nicely on an iPhone or an iPad.  

Has your dealership implemented a mobile CRM app with your sales team and customers?  How did the rollout go? What did you learn?  What could be improved? Are you using iPads in the service drive or in the F&I office?  

Is there a missing iPad or iPhone app that your dealership needs? What should the next killer "mobile" solution for car dealers be?  Your feedback is important. Please send your experiences confidentially to me via email at brian@pcgmailer.com.

Brian

Brian Pasch, CEO

PCG Consulting

732.672.2356

Google

By Brian Pasch

Dealers looking for insights into which digital marketing and social media investments are helping them sell more cars may find the answer is much simpler than they thought!  

There are some differences in how dealers measure new car sales vs. used car sales, but both share a common ROI metric: Vehicle Detail Page (VDP) views.

Recent research from Cobalt shows that just 12 more VDP views can make a vehicle sell 44% faster!  Inventory "turns" a year is directly related to net dealer profits.  So let's see how we can accelerate car sales by focusing on Cost per Shopper (CPS).

If VDP views are one of the key metrics to define if a car shopper is coming to a dealership website, shouldn't dealers inspect the cost to drive a shopper to their website? For some advertising expenses, like Google Adwords, the cost per initial shopper visit can be calculated.

However, if the shopper comes back a second or third time organically, then the costs can be skewed due to the current limits in attribution modeling.

What Is A Car Shopper?

Companies are working to create better attribution models but there are also some privacy concerns that still might prevent true attribution.  In the meantime, I encourage dealers to look at the Cost per Shopper (CPS) for their advertising investments.

This focus is a step in the right direction. For this example, I will define a shopper as a consumer who looks at a Vehicle Detail Page (VDP) for one of the dealer's vehicles. Dealers who want to include other metrics or page visits in their "shopper" definition can follow along with their own definition.

For example, a visit to the hours and direction page, might be aligned with a shopper's behavior prior to a showroom visit. In Google Analytics, filters can be applied to see how many visitors viewed at least one Vehicle Detail Page.  

For this dealer example below, I wanted to see the sources of traffic coming to their website in the month of September:

The traffic from source #5, was from their group website, which was hidden to protect the dealership name.  

In September, this Toyota dealer paid ReachLocal, a national advertising agency, $10,000 for new and used car advertising.  The ReachLocal digital campaigns generated 4,352  initial visitors.

To stay consistent with the theme of this article, Cost Per Click (CPC) is not my focus but it comes out to $2.29.  Some dealers who focus on the CPC metric and their Cost per Lead (CPL) might be content with this ROI.  

However, only 30% of car sales are tracked to a "lead". The majority of car sales are from stealth shoppers who look at VDP's.

What I want to encourage dealers to calculate is the Cost per Shopper (CPS) because most sales are from consumers who visit your dealership website at least once!  CPS is part of the visibility of all shoppers that is directly related to car sales.

When you apply a Google Analytics filter to the September traffic, that tracks how many visitors viewed at least one Vehicle Detail Page (VDP), here is how drastically the numbers change:

Only 497 of the 4,352 clicks were consumers who visited a Vehicle Detail Page (VDP). That calculates out to 11.4% of the visitors were shoppers, according to my definition.  

The Cost Per Shopper (CPS) is $10,000 / 497 = $20.1 per shopper. 

This calculation excludes PPC costs for service and if you are doing this calculation for your store, make sure the Advertising budget for PPC does not include service campaigns.

Dynamic Inventory Advertising

Not all PPC campaigns have such a high Cost Per Shopper (CPS) and companies such as PCG, Dealer.com, and Haystak have the ability to advertise vehicles and drive consumers directly to a Vehicle Detail Page (VDP).  

These campaigns are normally part of a multi-campaign strategy that dealers utilize and can deliver a Cost per Shopper (CPS) under $2.00.

The challenge for dealers is to look at all campaigns that are designed to sell new and used cars, especially used cars, to see what the Cost per Shopper (CPS) is outside of dynamic campaigns.  

In many cases, the non-dynamic campaigns dealers think would supplement dynamic campaigns are actually very costly.  The costs can be in the range of $6.00 - $15.00 CPS, and that is where the opportunity exists to consider alternative strategies.

LotLinx Is The Perfect PPC Supplement

So how can dealers generate high quality shopper traffic?  A new vendor solution called LotLinx delivers consistent CPS under $4.00 and directs shoppers directly to a dealer's Vehicle Detail Page (VDP).  Dealers can drive low-funnel car shoppers to their website from over 130 third party classified advertising websites.  

When these shoppers arrive at the dealer's website they can be greeted with live chat agents, offered your latest promotional offers, and of course they are captured in the dealer's remarketing campaigns.

When dealers take a look at what they are paying for third party leads and some of the PPC campaigns, they will find that the LotLinx strategy is a perfect compliment for incremental sales and to accelerate the sales of their in-stock vehicles.  

If you have not watched the LotLinx overview video, take two-minutes to educate yourself on this advertising strategy.

Stop focusing on Cost per Click (CPC) when those clicks may not be the consumers that are ready to purchase a vehicle.

Brian 

Brian Pasch, CEO PCG Consulting

732.672.2356

Google

By Brian Pasch

Have you taken the time to submit a lead on your own website?  Many website platforms present a "thank you" page after the consumer submits their contact information on a lead form. 

The image shown above, is an actual page that is presented when a consumer submits a lead, on a dealership website. Are you impressed with the dealer's creativity?

What do you have to say about this page? I would love your feedback.  

Let me share a few of my thoughts:

• Dealers should consider the "thank you" page as an opportunity to re-engage a consumer and not tell them goodbye...someone will call you.
• The example listed above, does not take advantage of the opportunity to re-engage. Who is this man in a car?  Does this image give you a warm feeling?
• Does a consumer understand what an "Internet Manager" is?  Doesn't it sound like some IT geek? Didn't they inquire about a vehicle? 
• The "thank you" page should provide links to resources that would best serve the customer and the dealership.  Those links could include:
  • Customer Testimonials
  • Current OEM Rebates
  • Trade-In Incentives
  • Just Arrived Used Cars

I bring this up because this is not the ideal website page design to present to consumers after a lead form is submitted. However, this is a common occurrence in the automotive community.  Can't we do better?

You should also test submitting a lead from your mobile phone.  What is the post submission page shown on your mobile phone?

Do You Have A Great Thank You Page?

I encourage DrivingSales readers to share their creative "thank you" pages that are increasing post lead submission engagement.  Do you have a better customer experience after someone submits a lead? 

Brian

Brian Pasch, CEO
PCG Consulting
732.672.2356
Google

By Brian Pasch

Danny Sullivan addressed the 2013 DrivingSales Executive Summit today, and the crowd was glued to his insights into Google search and the latest digital strategies for car dealers.  There were many points that resonated with the audience, just check the Twitter feed for #DSES2013.  Of course, the Hummingbird update was discussed.

To download a copy of Danny's presentation, using this link: http://selnd.com/1fAsZ6Y

One point that I wanted to share with the DrivingSales community that could not attend was that there is no longer a standardized Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Every search that Google presents is customized based on relationships it establishes directly or indirectly about the consumer conducting the search.

This creates an interesting dilemna for SEO and Digital Marketing vendors, because what their dealer clients "see" locally can be very different from what the vendor sees from their corporate offices.  

Social Signals and Semantic Web

This observation is very important when you consider the factors that impact personalization and how much social media engagement will define future search Google results.  Dealers who have avoided investments in Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and customized website content need to wake up and smell the coffee.

The semantic web will require dealership websites to evolve, and dealers who educate themselves on this change will be first to market with better search results.  Websites must adapt to include machine-readable metadata about pages and how they are related to each other, enabling automated agents to access the Web more intelligently and perform tasks on behalf of users.

Change Is Constant

What is the takeway?  Google will adapt search results to meet the specific known and implied needs of the consumer.  Dealers who realize that Google is using social signals, Google+ Local, and other digital sources to serve up relevant content will diversify their marketing investments. 

If a Dealer Principal or General Manager is not personally using Facebook or Google+ that is their choice.  However, they cannot allow their personal choices to impact their marketing investments for the dealership.

Brian

Brian Pasch, CEO
PCG Consulting
732.672.2356
Google

By Brian Pasch

Dylan Swift from Yelp addressed the dealers at the 2013 DrivingSales Executive Summit (DSES) and of course the room was packed.  Yelp impacts dealers in many ways especially since Yelp is integrated with Apple Maps, Siri, and even some OEM vehicles.  Yelp reviews often appears on Google Page One search results when a dealer name is searched. 

According to Dylan, dealers should not ask their customers for a review.  That means no kiosks in the dealership, and no direct requests to post a review online when they get home, from inside the dealership.  

Does this mean that every OEM Co-Op Reputation Management program that sends out emails asking for consumers to post reviews is violating Yelp terms of service, if they list Yelp as a link?

Dylan suggested that dealers could put Yelp stickers on their showroom windows.  This would be passive engagement with customers which basically says that the store has a listing on Yelp.

Yelp Believes In Organic Review Growth

Dylan felt that if dealers have hundreds of transactions a month, organically some of those customers will post a positive review on their own, without any prodding.  However nice that sounds, this is NOT the reality for so many dealers.

There are dealers that have service centers that perform THOUSANDS of repair orders every month, and their positive Yelp reviews do not budge.  If we would believe Dylan's hypothesis, dealers should see more positive reviews being posted each month.  Many do not!

Are customers of auto dealerships that different that Dylan's advice is not working?

I would like to hear what readers of DrivingSales have to say!  I would love for you to share how many service RO's your store does each month and how your Yelp reviews are increasing each month.

Brian

Brian Pasch, CEO
PCG Consulting
732.672.2356
Google