Everyday I wake up and head into the offices of Dealer e Process, I am systematically doing searches on Google to see what has changed from 24 hours ago. And guess what - here we go again! Do a search on your dealer name and take a look at Google's latest change to the bread crumbs for your dealers website.

These links, Search Inventory, Used Specials, Hours & Directions, Used Specials, Parts Department, Certified Inventory,  were known as bread crumbs to a website. Now, Google has quadrupled the size of these bread crumbs including a description and link to the appropriate portion of the website resulting into a loaf of bread!

Here is the golden question; How is your dealer website going to dictate which links Google decides to pull as a bread crumb? I would highly suggest that you make sure that all images and buttons on your website have the proper alt image tags in place, and every page of your website have unique meta data.

How does this benefit the dealer? The great part of all about this change, is it pushes the majority of third party listing for your dealership name "under the scroll", where nobody looks!

Everyday I wake up and head into the offices of Dealer e Process, I am systematically doing searches on Google to see what has changed from 24 hours ago. And guess what - here we go again! Do a search on your dealer name and take a look at Google's latest change to the bread crumbs for your dealers website.

These links, Search Inventory, Used Specials, Hours & Directions, Used Specials, Parts Department, Certified Inventory,  were known as bread crumbs to a website. Now, Google has quadrupled the size of these bread crumbs including a description and link to the appropriate portion of the website resulting into a loaf of bread!

Here is the golden question; How is your dealer website going to dictate which links Google decides to pull as a bread crumb? I would highly suggest that you make sure that all images and buttons on your website have the proper alt image tags in place, and every page of your website have unique meta data.

How does this benefit the dealer? The great part of all about this change, is it pushes the majority of third party listing for your dealership name "under the scroll", where nobody looks!

For those of you who know me, you know how I love to keep an eye on others industries in hopes of bringing great technology and insight to the auto industry. That being said, I was doing some searches this morning as I was working on a new SEO strategy for the Fixed Ops side of the business for Dealer e Process and dealer websites, when I discovered something new AGAIN.

Above the Place Page Listings, there is now Related Searches broken down by Brands, Stores, Types.

How will Google eventually determine which car BRAND manufacturers to show, which dealership STORES, to show, and which vehicle TYPES to show is anyones guess.

Take a look at the screen shot below of a search for "Brakes".

I'm sure it wont be long before we see this affecting your dealership, so stay tuned for more on this topic as I investigate further. I have performed numerous searches and at this point its hit or miss which searches pull this new special box. Here are a few examples; watches, tires.

Do some searches in your area, as this might be a market thing (I am doing searches from Chicago) and let's see if the results are the same.

Could you imagine what would happen if your searches the word "Cars" and the results for Brands, Stores, and Types left your dealership out of the mix? What is powering these results and when will it hit our industry?? Let's get in front of this change now.

For those of you who know me, you know how I love to keep an eye on others industries in hopes of bringing great technology and insight to the auto industry. That being said, I was doing some searches this morning as I was working on a new SEO strategy for the Fixed Ops side of the business for Dealer e Process and dealer websites, when I discovered something new AGAIN.

Above the Place Page Listings, there is now Related Searches broken down by Brands, Stores, Types.

How will Google eventually determine which car BRAND manufacturers to show, which dealership STORES, to show, and which vehicle TYPES to show is anyones guess.

Take a look at the screen shot below of a search for "Brakes".

I'm sure it wont be long before we see this affecting your dealership, so stay tuned for more on this topic as I investigate further. I have performed numerous searches and at this point its hit or miss which searches pull this new special box. Here are a few examples; watches, tires.

Do some searches in your area, as this might be a market thing (I am doing searches from Chicago) and let's see if the results are the same.

Could you imagine what would happen if your searches the word "Cars" and the results for Brands, Stores, and Types left your dealership out of the mix? What is powering these results and when will it hit our industry?? Let's get in front of this change now.

“I play a doctor on television”……………..

……..would you let him operate on you? Probably not- yet we still see time and time again people holding “Internet Marketing, Management, Director and/or Guru” titles in dealerships who have absolutely no right being at the helm of the Internet Sales Department ship. He or she interviewed well for the job, threw around the right buzz words and was convincing enough to get an offer letter. He or she talked a good talk, but once on the job they struggle to walk the walk.

Why is that? How does this happen and more importantly what can you do to make sure that when you are hiring for your Internet Department’s Manager you know what you are looking for?

You need to know and document (job description) what experience and skills you need for the sales end of things within your internet department and then identify what experience and skill you need for the technical, operational and promotional aspect of your Internet marketing- 2 separate individuals and/or skill sets. More often than not a store hires an Internet Manager with the expectation that the manager will:

• Provide IT support
• Manage the store(s) network
• Troubleshoot for end users of systems
• Manage the dealer’s websites(s)
• Promote the website (SEO and SEM)
• Promote the store (merchandizing of inventory and ecommerce marketing)
• Manage the departments staff- develop and motivate
• Manage the CRM and its users
• Manage Third Party lead providers
• Manager inventor on websites such as Cars.com & Autotrader
• Manage a pricing tool such as VAuto or Firstlook
• Sell the appointment, and in some stores sell the vehicle

These expectations are a very tall order for one person alone to pull off. The reality is that it will be like finding a needle in a haystack to fill a job description that lists all of those performance requirements. To fill that would mean finding someone who has the ability to deliver soft skills (sales, negotiating, communicating, rapport building –people skills etc) along with hard skills (vast technical knowledge, computer skills etc.)

Don’t get me wrong, it can be done, but it is very tough to find a candidate that possesses all of the skill sets necessary to fulfill each one of these requirements. Usually if a person is strong in soft skills they have a tendency to be weaker in the hard skills and vice a versa. Not impossible, just unlikely.

We have a tendency to do what I call “easy hires” in dealerships. Here is the scenario; we like a particular sales guy or girl, she or he is just not quite cutting the mustard in the sales department, they have a knack for computer knowledge, you find yourself going to him or her when there is a “technical issue” with your network or something computer related. What do you do? Well a lot of stores take someone like this and place them at the helm of that Internet Department ship or the BDC- you give them the scalpel and sutures and tell them to get to work. Best intentions are usually at play here but a set up for mediocrity at best for the employee and the department.

Your Internet Department cannot thrive with mediocrity. If you want to own your segment of the market you have to do what everyone else isn’t doing.

If your hiring for the department is an outside job be careful that you are not looking for the “Geek Squad” guy or girl to come cruising in with a pocket protectors, radiation burns from their computer screens and a plethora of Internet Marketing and technology buzz words they throw around……this is not a sound criteria in which to decide to offer them the Internet Department Manager position either. This type will do well with your technical and operational end of things but typically fail miserably when it comes to people skills necessary for sales.

The most successful Internet Departments I ever worked with had 2 captains at the helm. They did not necessarily share “captain” title either. The Internet Manager was the driver of the department- the people driver and his or her “assistant” was the technical guru. A good Internet Manager will see to it that his or her department is structured that way. A good Internet Manager (or any manager for that matter) knows exactly his or her weaknesses and hires and develops people around themselves accordingly.

I recommend when interviewing, that first and foremost on your interview question sheet is how the candidate plans on creating a fine oiled machine. This will help you to determine with all that is needed to be done well in your Internet Department if this person has the leadership qualities necessary to identify deficiencies and find or develop their people to support them..

Dave Page

Dealer e Process

“I play a doctor on television”……………..

……..would you let him operate on you? Probably not- yet we still see time and time again people holding “Internet Marketing, Management, Director and/or Guru” titles in dealerships who have absolutely no right being at the helm of the Internet Sales Department ship. He or she interviewed well for the job, threw around the right buzz words and was convincing enough to get an offer letter. He or she talked a good talk, but once on the job they struggle to walk the walk.

Why is that? How does this happen and more importantly what can you do to make sure that when you are hiring for your Internet Department’s Manager you know what you are looking for?

You need to know and document (job description) what experience and skills you need for the sales end of things within your internet department and then identify what experience and skill you need for the technical, operational and promotional aspect of your Internet marketing- 2 separate individuals and/or skill sets. More often than not a store hires an Internet Manager with the expectation that the manager will:

• Provide IT support
• Manage the store(s) network
• Troubleshoot for end users of systems
• Manage the dealer’s websites(s)
• Promote the website (SEO and SEM)
• Promote the store (merchandizing of inventory and ecommerce marketing)
• Manage the departments staff- develop and motivate
• Manage the CRM and its users
• Manage Third Party lead providers
• Manager inventor on websites such as Cars.com & Autotrader
• Manage a pricing tool such as VAuto or Firstlook
• Sell the appointment, and in some stores sell the vehicle

These expectations are a very tall order for one person alone to pull off. The reality is that it will be like finding a needle in a haystack to fill a job description that lists all of those performance requirements. To fill that would mean finding someone who has the ability to deliver soft skills (sales, negotiating, communicating, rapport building –people skills etc) along with hard skills (vast technical knowledge, computer skills etc.)

Don’t get me wrong, it can be done, but it is very tough to find a candidate that possesses all of the skill sets necessary to fulfill each one of these requirements. Usually if a person is strong in soft skills they have a tendency to be weaker in the hard skills and vice a versa. Not impossible, just unlikely.

We have a tendency to do what I call “easy hires” in dealerships. Here is the scenario; we like a particular sales guy or girl, she or he is just not quite cutting the mustard in the sales department, they have a knack for computer knowledge, you find yourself going to him or her when there is a “technical issue” with your network or something computer related. What do you do? Well a lot of stores take someone like this and place them at the helm of that Internet Department ship or the BDC- you give them the scalpel and sutures and tell them to get to work. Best intentions are usually at play here but a set up for mediocrity at best for the employee and the department.

Your Internet Department cannot thrive with mediocrity. If you want to own your segment of the market you have to do what everyone else isn’t doing.

If your hiring for the department is an outside job be careful that you are not looking for the “Geek Squad” guy or girl to come cruising in with a pocket protectors, radiation burns from their computer screens and a plethora of Internet Marketing and technology buzz words they throw around……this is not a sound criteria in which to decide to offer them the Internet Department Manager position either. This type will do well with your technical and operational end of things but typically fail miserably when it comes to people skills necessary for sales.

The most successful Internet Departments I ever worked with had 2 captains at the helm. They did not necessarily share “captain” title either. The Internet Manager was the driver of the department- the people driver and his or her “assistant” was the technical guru. A good Internet Manager will see to it that his or her department is structured that way. A good Internet Manager (or any manager for that matter) knows exactly his or her weaknesses and hires and develops people around themselves accordingly.

I recommend when interviewing, that first and foremost on your interview question sheet is how the candidate plans on creating a fine oiled machine. This will help you to determine with all that is needed to be done well in your Internet Department if this person has the leadership qualities necessary to identify deficiencies and find or develop their people to support them..

Dave Page

Dealer e Process

I had an epiphany the other day. The number one concern that people have when doing business with a dealership is that they are going to be taken advantage of. People are afraid of the car buying process and even more concerned when bringing their vehicle in for service. My epiphany concerns the later.

Minimize the “fear” and uncertainty for a customer visiting a service department and you can only increase business. It’s that simple. Where do you start? With your website!

With a few simple steps you can not only lead the horse to water (your website/service department) but you can also dramatically increase their likelihood of drinking (setting an appointment to visit your service department).

Statistically 83% of customers who buy from a dealership do NOT return the vehicle to that dealerships service department after the sale. That is a lot of lost service opportunity for a store.  A sure fire way to increase service traffic off of your sold units and capture some of that 83% is to drive these people to your website and reiterate to them the benefits of servicing their vehicles with you. In order to do this effectively there are a few steps you can take to lead the horse to water and to make him drink. Here are a few recommendations:

1)      48 hours after the sale have an email sent (another incentive to get this from the customer as they are buying!) from the Service Director introducing their department and directing the customer to the website for all future service needs. Provide sold customers an online incentive to visit your service department. For instance, provide that first oil change at a discounted or no charge rate, offer a free car wash, etc.  In other words, make it worth their while to come back.

2)      Remember service clinics? When was the last time you had one at your dealership? What a perfect time to cover the vehicle and its needs and explain to them the new way you do business, ONLINE.

3)      Have a dedicated web page exclusively representing your service department; better yet invest a little money in a auto dealer service website. Divert a few bucks from your ad budget to drive traffic to your service department. After all isn’t it your service department that keeps your dealership afloat during stormy weather?

4)      Make sure that you have a live chat option so that visitors can ask questions as they navigate through your service page or site.

5)      Create an intuitive experience- an experience that gives the visitor a sense you KNOW the vehicle they are driving as well as the preventative care it requires in order to be well maintained. Perhaps a Virtual Service Consultant. When a customer visits your service website and puts his or her information in to start an investigative or appointment setting process, provide manufacturer maintenance recommendations and/or dealer recommendations and services for their specific vehicle.

6)      Create a fear relieving experience for your service “shopper”. Post awards, testimonials, and community involvement information along with printable coupons and incentives to visit your store.

7)      Provide a comparative price schedule for regular maintenance needs. For instance create a matrix that outlines, oil change, tire rotation, brakes, A/C checks etc. and a list of local aftermarket shops/competitors such as Midas, Firestone, Jiffy Lube. Give your shoppers what they need so they do not have to leave your site and possibly not return.

8)      Do not be afraid to quote a price. We overcame this fear with cars shoppers and we need to do the same with our service shoppers.

It is time that we dismiss the perception consumers have regarding our dealerships service departments. Our advisors, writers, techs and mechanics are highly trained and more qualified than the aftermarket place down the street. It is time that we take back what we gave away by leading the horse back to the water and making them WANT to drink it. You can most cost effectively do that starting with your internet marketing. Make these tweaks today and watch your service appointments start to increase tomorrow.

Dave Page

Dealer e Process

I had an epiphany the other day. The number one concern that people have when doing business with a dealership is that they are going to be taken advantage of. People are afraid of the car buying process and even more concerned when bringing their vehicle in for service. My epiphany concerns the later.

Minimize the “fear” and uncertainty for a customer visiting a service department and you can only increase business. It’s that simple. Where do you start? With your website!

With a few simple steps you can not only lead the horse to water (your website/service department) but you can also dramatically increase their likelihood of drinking (setting an appointment to visit your service department).

Statistically 83% of customers who buy from a dealership do NOT return the vehicle to that dealerships service department after the sale. That is a lot of lost service opportunity for a store.  A sure fire way to increase service traffic off of your sold units and capture some of that 83% is to drive these people to your website and reiterate to them the benefits of servicing their vehicles with you. In order to do this effectively there are a few steps you can take to lead the horse to water and to make him drink. Here are a few recommendations:

1)      48 hours after the sale have an email sent (another incentive to get this from the customer as they are buying!) from the Service Director introducing their department and directing the customer to the website for all future service needs. Provide sold customers an online incentive to visit your service department. For instance, provide that first oil change at a discounted or no charge rate, offer a free car wash, etc.  In other words, make it worth their while to come back.

2)      Remember service clinics? When was the last time you had one at your dealership? What a perfect time to cover the vehicle and its needs and explain to them the new way you do business, ONLINE.

3)      Have a dedicated web page exclusively representing your service department; better yet invest a little money in a auto dealer service website. Divert a few bucks from your ad budget to drive traffic to your service department. After all isn’t it your service department that keeps your dealership afloat during stormy weather?

4)      Make sure that you have a live chat option so that visitors can ask questions as they navigate through your service page or site.

5)      Create an intuitive experience- an experience that gives the visitor a sense you KNOW the vehicle they are driving as well as the preventative care it requires in order to be well maintained. Perhaps a Virtual Service Consultant. When a customer visits your service website and puts his or her information in to start an investigative or appointment setting process, provide manufacturer maintenance recommendations and/or dealer recommendations and services for their specific vehicle.

6)      Create a fear relieving experience for your service “shopper”. Post awards, testimonials, and community involvement information along with printable coupons and incentives to visit your store.

7)      Provide a comparative price schedule for regular maintenance needs. For instance create a matrix that outlines, oil change, tire rotation, brakes, A/C checks etc. and a list of local aftermarket shops/competitors such as Midas, Firestone, Jiffy Lube. Give your shoppers what they need so they do not have to leave your site and possibly not return.

8)      Do not be afraid to quote a price. We overcame this fear with cars shoppers and we need to do the same with our service shoppers.

It is time that we dismiss the perception consumers have regarding our dealerships service departments. Our advisors, writers, techs and mechanics are highly trained and more qualified than the aftermarket place down the street. It is time that we take back what we gave away by leading the horse back to the water and making them WANT to drink it. You can most cost effectively do that starting with your internet marketing. Make these tweaks today and watch your service appointments start to increase tomorrow.

Dave Page

Dealer e Process

Recently I had a candid conversation with a dealer regarding his “weathering” of our recent economic storm. He emphasized that he was able to keep his stress level to a minimum due to his experience and forward thinking and execution of a sound plan in good times.

He shared with me that the 5 years prior to this recession he put his past experiences to work and created a plan to cultivate and maintain a strong service department. As he put it “I had seen as a young professional in this industry the power of a strong service department in tough economic times and its ability to carry a store until the storm had passed. I took that first-hand experience and when I obtained my own store made that part of my long term business plan and it worked again, just as it had in the past”

As I listened to his strategy in a nutshell; marketing, advertising, appreciation of solid service employees and follow up along with his monetary investment in building the service side of his dealership- there was not even one mention of his using his website as a service revenue generating tool. He used the standard old school techniques which in the grand scheme of things capped him from an affordability standpoint on the size of the market he could capture. Old school advertising and marketing using print, radio and mail could not reach the size audience he could have reached using the Internet. In spite of this though, he was successful. I can only imagine how much more successful he could have been had he placed priority on using his website as a service revenue generating tool.

This got me to thinking- how many dealers out there really give the marketing, advertising and development of their service departments the attention they deserve? When you take into consideration that 20% of people who walk onto a showroom floor buy and 100% who walk into a service department buy- might make sense to pay this red headed stepchild of a store a little attention.

When is the last time you saw a dealership website emphasize it’s service department on the Internet and focus on driving traffic in with it? For grins, go to Google and search “oil change” or “brakes” or “automotive repair”…….if you find what I found you will be hard pressed to find a dealership on the first 1-2 pages and most likely not at all in sponsored links. You might as well have a banner in the desert at this point, considering 87% of all Internet shoppers never go past the first page, 4.4% will go to the second and less than 2% will flip to the 3^rd page on a search engine result page.

When you search these keywords or key phrases you will see nothing but aftermarket service providers, Jiffy, Midas, Merlin…these are the guys that are taking your service business and doing quite well with it thank you very much. As a dealer, you have the advantage with a customer who has bought a vehicle- and statistically you keep 11% of your sold customers as service clients. REASON- the only thing the general public has ingrained in their heads is that a dealership charges more and takes more time than an aftermarket “service providers”.

Time to change that, give the attention to your service department that it deserves after “carrying” you more times than not. Market, advertise, educate consumers as to the value, features and benefits of using your service department versus one of those “other guys”….and whatever you do- USE YOUR WEBSITE…that’s where consumers are looking and from what I have seen that’s exactly where your competition is corralling them to their bays…….while maybe yours sit empty…

Just a thought.

Recently I had a candid conversation with a dealer regarding his “weathering” of our recent economic storm. He emphasized that he was able to keep his stress level to a minimum due to his experience and forward thinking and execution of a sound plan in good times.

He shared with me that the 5 years prior to this recession he put his past experiences to work and created a plan to cultivate and maintain a strong service department. As he put it “I had seen as a young professional in this industry the power of a strong service department in tough economic times and its ability to carry a store until the storm had passed. I took that first-hand experience and when I obtained my own store made that part of my long term business plan and it worked again, just as it had in the past”

As I listened to his strategy in a nutshell; marketing, advertising, appreciation of solid service employees and follow up along with his monetary investment in building the service side of his dealership- there was not even one mention of his using his website as a service revenue generating tool. He used the standard old school techniques which in the grand scheme of things capped him from an affordability standpoint on the size of the market he could capture. Old school advertising and marketing using print, radio and mail could not reach the size audience he could have reached using the Internet. In spite of this though, he was successful. I can only imagine how much more successful he could have been had he placed priority on using his website as a service revenue generating tool.

This got me to thinking- how many dealers out there really give the marketing, advertising and development of their service departments the attention they deserve? When you take into consideration that 20% of people who walk onto a showroom floor buy and 100% who walk into a service department buy- might make sense to pay this red headed stepchild of a store a little attention.

When is the last time you saw a dealership website emphasize it’s service department on the Internet and focus on driving traffic in with it? For grins, go to Google and search “oil change” or “brakes” or “automotive repair”…….if you find what I found you will be hard pressed to find a dealership on the first 1-2 pages and most likely not at all in sponsored links. You might as well have a banner in the desert at this point, considering 87% of all Internet shoppers never go past the first page, 4.4% will go to the second and less than 2% will flip to the 3^rd page on a search engine result page.

When you search these keywords or key phrases you will see nothing but aftermarket service providers, Jiffy, Midas, Merlin…these are the guys that are taking your service business and doing quite well with it thank you very much. As a dealer, you have the advantage with a customer who has bought a vehicle- and statistically you keep 11% of your sold customers as service clients. REASON- the only thing the general public has ingrained in their heads is that a dealership charges more and takes more time than an aftermarket “service providers”.

Time to change that, give the attention to your service department that it deserves after “carrying” you more times than not. Market, advertise, educate consumers as to the value, features and benefits of using your service department versus one of those “other guys”….and whatever you do- USE YOUR WEBSITE…that’s where consumers are looking and from what I have seen that’s exactly where your competition is corralling them to their bays…….while maybe yours sit empty…

Just a thought.