What is a brand? If reputation is a brand, a visit to a dealer ranks below one to the dentist. If awareness is a brand, most portals slaughter dealers in search where roughly 90% of automotive shopping takes place. If trust is a brand...well let's not go there. What is your brand and how do you build a brand today?

Recently my most engaged response to someone describing a brand was after spending some time on Dave Armano's blog http://darmano.typepad.com/ (click on the video on the right side about personal branding). You see, 'brand' has nothing do to with your inventory, your facility or your finely made espresso. Brand has everything do to with the experience your provide, your customers' beliefs in you, your handshake, your smiling staff and your ability to invite people back like they're coming some place special.

At the end of the day, your brand is all you have. Yes folks, 'what have you done for me lately' is in lockstep with 'will I ever return here'. While there are some great companies out there that will take your money and promote you online, offline, inline and out of line...what in the heck will they promote?

Sitting down with dealer principals and general managers, their responses to identifying their own brands are as canned as the marketing emails that every dealer in the same DMA sends out (yes, I've mentioned that lately and will again until dealers stop doing it). Everyone knows that a Lexus dealer will treat you like a guest in their own home, it's part of the covenant. Frankly Scarlet, we want to give a damn about something else.

With dealers (and other businesses) unfortunately in a position to provide much less to their communities as of late, the real brand and equity test is soon to come. If you do one thing this year well, build a brand. While there is no guarantee of eminent success, chances are your positive results will follow. Nobody asks for facial tissue, they ask for Kleenex. Nobody makes a photocopy, they make a Xerox. Unless you're from the Midwest, you ask for a Coke (but asking for a 'pop' just has a certain ring to it!) and not a soda.

Do everything you can to become a brand and more. There are those of you that do, don't get this message wrong. It's just that for most of the car dealers out there, your brand ends where the driveway meets the street. There is more you can and must do.

Start with your entire staff. Get them together. Ask what they believe your brand is. If the meeting lacks consensus, you have your work cut out for you. If you have one, get your customers to help. Want to get really 'techno-dealer'? Set up Facebook, Twitter and other networks that will work for you. Get reciprocal links from local businesses that are your clients and partners. Get influential people in your local area into your store, take care of them and they'll blog or contribute to forums about your business!

OK, enough for today. But Just Do It...and do it now...(you recognize that brand, don't you?)

Best practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

When it comes to the 'new age' of Internet existence for your business, it is important that you appear as good as possible when people find you online. When it comes to reputation, shoppers want to know what your customers say rather than what you say. They want to have transparency in inventory, see the actual cars and features. Online visitors want to know what you'll do for them, to understand how you work, dealership history, who makes up the team, what specials they can get and so much more.

So hop to it...get your blog entries published, inventory fixed, Twitter your specials, text your new inventory, moderate the discussion for your local enthusiast group's site, shoot videos of your CPO vehicles and stream them on your site and push them onto YouTube, get all of your clients to write online testimonials and refresh your website's content monthly and SEO every quarter (if not monthly). Done! Oops...not yet...sell 50 cars a month via the web while you're at it.

Stop the press! We've only be gathering email addresses regularly for a year? We haven't gotten our customers' cell phone numbers and carriers to message them? Nobody has been putting the most valuable client information in the CRM? How do 50% of our leads fall through the cracks, how do you truly track them? And why does the factory blind shop us 10 times a month? Hold on...how do you ask a customer to write an online recommendation? Where do I even send them?

OK, that may be a little tongue and cheek but it's not too far off for many dealers today. So how do you start from zero and get up to 75 immediately on the information superhighway? The best recommendation I can provide here is...act like a customer! What do your customers talk about more and ask from you daily? Consider that one of, if not the greatest influence on consumers is search.

Fact is that you have no choice but to trust more people with your dealership than ever before: vendors, customers and employees. Things are changing at breakneck speed with technology, social media and engagement. One bad customer experience written online may not ruin you overnight but it will affect people's opinion and become pervasive if not offset by more positive assertions.

Make it a goal in January to spread the online responsibilities among all of your front-end staff. Get your people comfortable with your online existence and build your brand, reach and reputation. Become a truly trusted brand with the best advocates out there. Your option is having someone else beat you to it.

It starts with one thing at a time, just do it all at once.

Best practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

Boy, 2008 put the 'oh crap' in everyone's to-do list. It was a lot of things but fun. So what are we to do now? For one, plan on at least a few things to succeed in 2009 and 2010 (as the real experts suggest we should be levelling out on our ride about then). In short the last year, actually the past 18 months, has shown us the following (with the caveat that the OEMs and dealers are very appreciated clients):

1. Most auto companies have gaping holes in their retail business and marketing plans
2. Auto companies and franchises don't have proactive plans or contingencies for 'very rainy' days
3. Online marketing and eCommerce in general are still horribly overlooked, misunderstood and underutilized
4. Both process and brand identity are desparately missing from retailers (the retailer has always been the brand)
5. Hiring practices, mostly at retail, need to be completely assessed and changed

So, who knew 18 to 24 months ago that the bottom would drop out? Nobody I talk with...and this article is not to imply that anyone here is claiming to. But the fact is that more needed to be done at retail than would have ever been acknowledged. Until now at least. Dealers that are semi-concious are asking for help (where most wouldn't have hired an Internet consultant just one short year ago) and those that aren't cutting everything in sight back to nothing are starting to put effective sales and marketing strategies together. Here's a few areas of growth and likely some of the only places to effectively capitalize:

1. SEO, SEM/PPC (ok: search engine optimization, search engine marketing and pay-per-click)
2. Online marketing
3. Text messaging/marketing
4. CRM/email marketing*
5. Retention/VIP/Loyalty marketing, especially service, parts and accessories
6. Online reputation management

*If you're going to hire a company to email market your datase, it is important to understand your brand (not your franchise) and who your marketing to. Do not send the same content your competition, both in-brand and out-of-brand, sends. If you end up using the same vendor, change the message, color, format or something that makes it yours. Your cars, oil, filters, headlights, free WI-FI, flat-screen monitors, emblazoned umbrellas, loaner cars and cheeky grins are identical to every other dealership. So please make an effort there. Also, start actually using the great customer data you get during qualifying, walking, driving and selling the customer and put it into your database. That way you're not sending the same marketing messages to your 21-year-old first-time buyers and 44-year-old exeuctives.

Let's see, we've got NADA, JD Power Automotive Roundtable, Digital Dealer Conference, Dealer ADvantage Webinars, Auomotive Congress and a slew of other events coming up. So you have the chance to meet every Tom, Dick and Harry service provider, expert and presenter. How do you make sense of 374 CRM systems, 614 SEO companies and 1,629 website builders?

Don't buy what you think works or necessarily what your 20 Group buddy uses. Buy after you've made a real effort to understand how it will benefit your business and how they will work with you. Stop signing 2+ year agreements that cost you another year to back out if the vendor isn't holding their end of the deal. Start with a plan that has buy-in from the whole of your staff, understand what you want out of every relationship and remind them what is expected, don't lose sight of your indentity and stay in touch with the fact that you need customers to buy products and services and not a beautiful building to warehouse shiny objects that cost more that the average American makes in their lifetime.

In short, understand clearly why you are in business and what is the best route to be successful. There are people out there that will help you. They are represented in this website. And please remember that while, ahem, stores are managed from the top down, every person in your staff is the greatest asset you'll ever have. 2009 is here...go out there and invite some people over to buy some of your whoziwhatsies...
 

If there has ever been a time to realize the benefits of creating and executing on new strategies, it is the coming year. For those who went digital, got behind online completely, build their brand and reputation where the public actually spends their time, engaged their clientele via effective software and database activities, you will already have a great look into how your 2009 will sort out. Keep doing what you're doing and don't worry.

Now, if you haven't spent time assessing, looking at, determining and then executing your Interactive strategy, you have one decision with two options. And if you do opt for the 'stay in business' route, be prepared for a significant amount of technology this year, even simply from an integration standpoint. Things on the software, video, mobile and other aspects of marketing are going to accelerate.

Over the weekend, a number of conversations I was around included statements about newspapers, relevancy and readership, none of them positive. Separately, two people will be buying vehicles by March, their impressions already biased by sites they like. Others talked about past experiences being indicative of the future. Many people talked about making brand decisions based on the automotive industry coverage in the media, so I straightened those out at least. But overwhelmingly, people are using the web and not thinking about stepping foot in a dealership that is not in their specific scope of consideration.

Everything points to us having to do a better job attracting and connecting to our customer base online. It's winter, when is the last time you've had a banner ad on the local online traffic reports or weather updates on your local network news' website? Do you have links from local businesses' websites that have purchased vehicles from you? Even though we've focused a lot of attention on this lately: how many customers are providing online testimonials for you? (read: not many! Need ideas to get your customers to do that? here's one: ask them).

Your 2009 results will be based on what you are doing today and have been doing for the past few months. Those leads and customers are going to share their experience with others. The brand impressions people received months ago will undoubtedly affect who walks in your door tomorrow. There is no denying that your 2009 will be build on your ability to create a more significant presence in the areas where people consume media and data. Who's blogging, commenting and Twittering for you?

Challenge yourself to layout a plan for the first quarter that is web-based, create an environment of support throughout your entire store and get everyone to assist in deploying your new brand strategy. Get creative, become savvier, see yourself doing things that are not comfortable but will deliver results and ultimately take back ownership of your future.

There are a number of events that are dedicated to the Internet side of the business at the beginning of 2009. Commit to making those a part of your strategy and don't back out. Go the extra mile to figure out what you are going to do instead of being a victim of current circumstances.

Leave the worrying to others that don't take the time to invest in their future. Be confident in your direction and commitments. Spend your time and energy on things that deliver results rather than doubt. Thank you for reading this, now do something else online to further your business!

Best practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results