Science rules in digital marketing.

Social media is a place of vanity. Those of us who use social media often get to see flattering images of just about everything - people, places, food, cars, whatever. Have you ever seen a picture of a friend posted as their new profile picture and thought, "Wow, that's a good picture of them."

One might believe that the same holds true for automotive ads. On websites, it has been widely accepted that real pictures of inventory work better than stock photos, but on social media we have access to the gorgeous pictures that are supplied by the OEMs. Will pretty advertising pictures outperform pictures of live inventory on ads that are sending traffic to the vehicle details pages and search results pages?

We have done a ton of A/B testing over the past few months and we have pretty compelling data, but I want to get the opinion of the community here before posting those results. What do you think?

Here are some of the criteria for a test we ran for a Hyundai client:

• All ad copy had the same titles, status text, and link description
• The ads linked to the search results page for new Hyundai vehicles
• They were targeted at intenders - people within driving distance to the dealership who had indicated they intend to buy a new Hyundai in the next 180 days
• The only difference was the image

We ran two concurrent campaigns for 1 month. One had beautiful images pulled from the OEM. The other had live inventory images. Here are samples with the branding omitted:

Which type do you think got more clicks to the dealer's website?

Take your pointer finger and your thumb and spread them out as far as you can. That represents the gap between good and great when it comes to most automotive digital marketing practices such as SEO. Now, take you arms and spread them as wide as you like the image above. That represents the gap between really good automotive social media and great social media.

If we tried to demonstrate simple "good" instead of very good, the gap would be wider than Shaquille O'Neal's wingspan and "good" is where a good portion of today's car dealers are today with their social media. It's a dramatic improvement from just a couple of years ago, but there's a long way to go.

Keep in mind that this is not a completely biased opinion. My company does SEO and we'll readily admit that having a good presence through SEO is not very far off from having a great one. With social media, the differences are exceptionally clear.

Good social media means having a strong presence. Posting on Facebook several times a week, keeping it relevant to the dealership and the local community, participating in meaningful communication, perhaps throwing a little money at it - these are the things that make for a good social media presence.

To be great, you should be taking advantage of the immense amount of data that social medai sites give us and then properly target the exact right messages to them in order to bring people to your website and to drive shoppers to your showroom floor. The biggest challenge is that so few are truly taking advantage of the medium in a great way that for many, it's simply a mythical beast. Many have tried social media vendors, hiring social media specialists, or putting a good amount of effort into social media without seeing a meaningful return on investment.

It's out there. We've seen it. Great social media that actually drives business is not a myth. It's really not even that hard to find. Unfortunately, it's much easier to find poor practices or bad strategies that are allegedly supposed to be good that it has made many dealers lose faith.

The same was true about SEO a few years ago. Dealers were thinking they were getting great SEO, only to find out that the methods being sold to them were little more than fancy reporting and technobabble designed to keep the $500 invoices paid for as long as possible. Today, more dealers are able to recognize bad SEO, good SEO, and great SEO, which is why the gap between them is tightening. "Good" is judged on a sliding scale and as more dealers and vendors get better, the bar is raised.

This should be happening very soon with social media. That's our hope. As more dealers move forward with their social media practices, hearing of things that really work and trying them at their dealership, it's likely that the bar will be raised for social just as it has been with SEO. The gap is wide today, but in the future it will be narrowing. That is when those who started early at doing the right things or working with the right people will truly see the benefits of their decisions.

Who at Driving Sales has seen something extraordinary? Something great? Something that's much better than good? Please post your experiences in the comment section below.

Take your pointer finger and your thumb and spread them out as far as you can. That represents the gap between good and great when it comes to most automotive digital marketing practices such as SEO. Now, take you arms and spread them as wide as you like the image above. That represents the gap between really good automotive social media and great social media.

If we tried to demonstrate simple "good" instead of very good, the gap would be wider than Shaquille O'Neal's wingspan and "good" is where a good portion of today's car dealers are today with their social media. It's a dramatic improvement from just a couple of years ago, but there's a long way to go.

Keep in mind that this is not a completely biased opinion. My company does SEO and we'll readily admit that having a good presence through SEO is not very far off from having a great one. With social media, the differences are exceptionally clear.

Good social media means having a strong presence. Posting on Facebook several times a week, keeping it relevant to the dealership and the local community, participating in meaningful communication, perhaps throwing a little money at it - these are the things that make for a good social media presence.

To be great, you should be taking advantage of the immense amount of data that social medai sites give us and then properly target the exact right messages to them in order to bring people to your website and to drive shoppers to your showroom floor. The biggest challenge is that so few are truly taking advantage of the medium in a great way that for many, it's simply a mythical beast. Many have tried social media vendors, hiring social media specialists, or putting a good amount of effort into social media without seeing a meaningful return on investment.

It's out there. We've seen it. Great social media that actually drives business is not a myth. It's really not even that hard to find. Unfortunately, it's much easier to find poor practices or bad strategies that are allegedly supposed to be good that it has made many dealers lose faith.

The same was true about SEO a few years ago. Dealers were thinking they were getting great SEO, only to find out that the methods being sold to them were little more than fancy reporting and technobabble designed to keep the $500 invoices paid for as long as possible. Today, more dealers are able to recognize bad SEO, good SEO, and great SEO, which is why the gap between them is tightening. "Good" is judged on a sliding scale and as more dealers and vendors get better, the bar is raised.

This should be happening very soon with social media. That's our hope. As more dealers move forward with their social media practices, hearing of things that really work and trying them at their dealership, it's likely that the bar will be raised for social just as it has been with SEO. The gap is wide today, but in the future it will be narrowing. That is when those who started early at doing the right things or working with the right people will truly see the benefits of their decisions.

Who at Driving Sales has seen something extraordinary? Something great? Something that's much better than good? Please post your experiences in the comment section below.

A good social media advertising campaign (or any marketing campaign at all, for that matter) should be guided by science. Testing, monitoring, adjusting, and testing again are the cornerstones of a good marketing strategy.

Much of what we do in the car business comes with assumptions. We do things that we have known from past experience to be successful. Sometimes, we have to take those assumptions and adjust them to modern sentiment, trends, and technologies. Other times we have to take those assumptions and throw them out the window.

Below are 6 images. These images were built to plug into a single Facebook advertising campaign designed to drive traffic to the website. The wording of the ad was the same across the board. The budget was a strong one and the activity was left in the hands of the Facebook algorithm to serve the ads based upon activity and popularity.

Look at the images and come to a conclusion in your mind which one yielded the most clicks to the website. The orange section represents where the logo is. Keep in mind that the wording of the ad was generally geared towards Chevrolet - no model indicators were used in the ad other than the image. Given this limited amount of information, which do you think performed the best and yielded the most clicks to the inventory for the dealership?

1. Red Camaro

2. Tahoe

3. Black Camaro

4. Keys

5. Silverado

6. Corvette

Think you have the right answer? I'll tell you up front - it wasn't even close. The ad that performed the best had more than double the click-thru rate in the first few hours. After it started going, it ended up with more than 3 times the clicks of all of the other images combined.

If you have an answer, like this post and comment with which one you think performed the best in the ads. One name will be drawn from the correct answers before the end of the month. If you're a dealer, you'll get a cool prize in the form of some sort of service from Dealer Authority. If you're a vendor, we'll reward you with a contextual followed link to your website from a PageRank 5 site (great for SEO, and if a dealer wins and would prefer that, they can take it instead).

Who's up for the challenge?

A good social media advertising campaign (or any marketing campaign at all, for that matter) should be guided by science. Testing, monitoring, adjusting, and testing again are the cornerstones of a good marketing strategy.

Much of what we do in the car business comes with assumptions. We do things that we have known from past experience to be successful. Sometimes, we have to take those assumptions and adjust them to modern sentiment, trends, and technologies. Other times we have to take those assumptions and throw them out the window.

Below are 6 images. These images were built to plug into a single Facebook advertising campaign designed to drive traffic to the website. The wording of the ad was the same across the board. The budget was a strong one and the activity was left in the hands of the Facebook algorithm to serve the ads based upon activity and popularity.

Look at the images and come to a conclusion in your mind which one yielded the most clicks to the website. The orange section represents where the logo is. Keep in mind that the wording of the ad was generally geared towards Chevrolet - no model indicators were used in the ad other than the image. Given this limited amount of information, which do you think performed the best and yielded the most clicks to the inventory for the dealership?

1. Red Camaro

2. Tahoe

3. Black Camaro

4. Keys

5. Silverado

6. Corvette

Think you have the right answer? I'll tell you up front - it wasn't even close. The ad that performed the best had more than double the click-thru rate in the first few hours. After it started going, it ended up with more than 3 times the clicks of all of the other images combined.

If you have an answer, like this post and comment with which one you think performed the best in the ads. One name will be drawn from the correct answers before the end of the month. If you're a dealer, you'll get a cool prize in the form of some sort of service from Dealer Authority. If you're a vendor, we'll reward you with a contextual followed link to your website from a PageRank 5 site (great for SEO, and if a dealer wins and would prefer that, they can take it instead).

Who's up for the challenge?

I get it. I understand the need for more content to serve to an ever-growing flow of content consumers. The art of recycling content is important, particularly on sites like Twitter where a piece of content can and should be used multiple times in order to get the message out to everyone. It's a chronological feed, after all, and posting it once will only get it seen by an extremely small portion of your audience.

With that said, it's getting out of hand. I have been finding posts that are months old and no longer relevant hitting my feed from car dealers around the country. There's a limit. Old news is old news. In the case of the Tweet above, the article posted on Twitter by a Toyota dealer on March 30, 2014, is a link to an article from July 4, 2013. That's too long for this type of news.

When recycling posts on Twitter, here are some things to keep in mind:

• Is it relevant? Old posts are find if there's context that makes it work today. For example, posting an article about Tesla's early days in trying to launch with dealerships would make sense to post considering their current stance.
• Is it timeless? Some posts, particularly advice posts that give the reader information they can use today, can be posted up until the point that they're obsolete. An example of this would be a video that demonstrates how to change the batteries in a key fob. Until they change the way you open the key fob, it still makes sense to post for months, even years after the original.
• Is it nostalgic? There are times when old posts are even better than new ones. A picture of an old Honda ad from the 70s would play well to show how far the company has come over the years.
• Has it been posted very recently? This is one of my biggest pet peeves. If a post comes through today that is just a different wording on something posted yesterday, than it's not acceptable. The exception: timely events. If you have a big sale or charity event this weekend, then posting a different variation of the same thing over and over again is acceptable and demonstrates focus on the event.

As more companies use content libraries to keep the feeds flowing, it's important to keep in mind that the libraries must be refreshed. They must be pruned. In the case of the post above, it's simply not acceptable. That was news for about a month. There is plenty of content out there in the form of current news about every manufacturer and the local area. Don't get stuck beating a dead horse with your posts.

I get it. I understand the need for more content to serve to an ever-growing flow of content consumers. The art of recycling content is important, particularly on sites like Twitter where a piece of content can and should be used multiple times in order to get the message out to everyone. It's a chronological feed, after all, and posting it once will only get it seen by an extremely small portion of your audience.

With that said, it's getting out of hand. I have been finding posts that are months old and no longer relevant hitting my feed from car dealers around the country. There's a limit. Old news is old news. In the case of the Tweet above, the article posted on Twitter by a Toyota dealer on March 30, 2014, is a link to an article from July 4, 2013. That's too long for this type of news.

When recycling posts on Twitter, here are some things to keep in mind:

• Is it relevant? Old posts are find if there's context that makes it work today. For example, posting an article about Tesla's early days in trying to launch with dealerships would make sense to post considering their current stance.
• Is it timeless? Some posts, particularly advice posts that give the reader information they can use today, can be posted up until the point that they're obsolete. An example of this would be a video that demonstrates how to change the batteries in a key fob. Until they change the way you open the key fob, it still makes sense to post for months, even years after the original.
• Is it nostalgic? There are times when old posts are even better than new ones. A picture of an old Honda ad from the 70s would play well to show how far the company has come over the years.
• Has it been posted very recently? This is one of my biggest pet peeves. If a post comes through today that is just a different wording on something posted yesterday, than it's not acceptable. The exception: timely events. If you have a big sale or charity event this weekend, then posting a different variation of the same thing over and over again is acceptable and demonstrates focus on the event.

As more companies use content libraries to keep the feeds flowing, it's important to keep in mind that the libraries must be refreshed. They must be pruned. In the case of the post above, it's simply not acceptable. That was news for about a month. There is plenty of content out there in the form of current news about every manufacturer and the local area. Don't get stuck beating a dead horse with your posts.

There's a disturbing trend I'm seeing in the automotive industry when I visit websites. Perhaps it's been like this for a while and I simply took my eye off the chat ball. When I see chat windows that instantly prompt for the customer's contact information, it makes me cry a little inside.

This isn't what chat is supposed to be about. I'd love to have that debate with anyone. Chat is an alternative means of instant information. In other words, it's more akin to phone calls than to anything else. If you believe in having a barrier of entry for your customers to chat, then you should have your receptionist answer the phone with, "Thank you for calling XYZ Motors. Can I have your name, phone number, and email address, please? No? Okay, thank you for calling."

Click.

I totally understand how this came about. Chat companies were pressured to generate leads and that became the only goal. If you, as a car dealer, believe this, then I would contend that you've either been misled or you've lost touch with what chat should really do. There are two parts: lead generation AND customer service. Some people call the dealership to find out when the parts department closes. You don't need their contact information in order to tell them a time over the phone just as you should not require their contact information to give them the time over chat.

Whether you believe it or not, here's a fact that common sense should tell you: you're making some of your website visitors unhappy by creating a barrier to inquiry. Some people (more than we all want to admit) will never give their contact information before coming in. Unless your leads have a 100% appointment ratio, a 100% show ratio, and your lead volume is at 90% of your total traffic to the dealership itself, this fact should be clear. Despite what the up-log says, your customers are not driving by randomly. They went online. They've probably been to your website.

With that understanding, why would a dealership want to put a bad taste in their customers' mouths before they even decide to come by the dealership?

Serve your customers the information they want online without prejudice. Don't force them to fill out a lead form first. A skilled operator should be trained to work with people during chat, determine if they're a valid prospect, and gather the information the dealership wants DURING the chat process, not before. Will volume decrease? Maybe. Maybe not. I am no expert but I would imagine that the people who come into chat that wouldn't have entered because of the lead information wall will be more likely to leave their information as their questions are being answered.

You don't just want leads. You want good leads. You want great leads. Chat should be the best of both worlds, combining the dialogue potential of the phone with the information gathering of a lead form. If you make them fill out the form ahead of time, you're pushing away many who want to have a dialogue first. This is a big mistake.

Some would say, "If they're serious, they'll fill out the form, first." BS. There are plenty of serious buyers who want information but who have had bad experiences when they fill out lead forms. There's a reason lead form submissions are on the decline. People have been burnt in the past. Get them into a conversation first, then pursue the lead when appropriate. That's the right way to handle it.

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, "Mr. Chat Provider - tear down this wall."

There's a disturbing trend I'm seeing in the automotive industry when I visit websites. Perhaps it's been like this for a while and I simply took my eye off the chat ball. When I see chat windows that instantly prompt for the customer's contact information, it makes me cry a little inside.

This isn't what chat is supposed to be about. I'd love to have that debate with anyone. Chat is an alternative means of instant information. In other words, it's more akin to phone calls than to anything else. If you believe in having a barrier of entry for your customers to chat, then you should have your receptionist answer the phone with, "Thank you for calling XYZ Motors. Can I have your name, phone number, and email address, please? No? Okay, thank you for calling."

Click.

I totally understand how this came about. Chat companies were pressured to generate leads and that became the only goal. If you, as a car dealer, believe this, then I would contend that you've either been misled or you've lost touch with what chat should really do. There are two parts: lead generation AND customer service. Some people call the dealership to find out when the parts department closes. You don't need their contact information in order to tell them a time over the phone just as you should not require their contact information to give them the time over chat.

Whether you believe it or not, here's a fact that common sense should tell you: you're making some of your website visitors unhappy by creating a barrier to inquiry. Some people (more than we all want to admit) will never give their contact information before coming in. Unless your leads have a 100% appointment ratio, a 100% show ratio, and your lead volume is at 90% of your total traffic to the dealership itself, this fact should be clear. Despite what the up-log says, your customers are not driving by randomly. They went online. They've probably been to your website.

With that understanding, why would a dealership want to put a bad taste in their customers' mouths before they even decide to come by the dealership?

Serve your customers the information they want online without prejudice. Don't force them to fill out a lead form first. A skilled operator should be trained to work with people during chat, determine if they're a valid prospect, and gather the information the dealership wants DURING the chat process, not before. Will volume decrease? Maybe. Maybe not. I am no expert but I would imagine that the people who come into chat that wouldn't have entered because of the lead information wall will be more likely to leave their information as their questions are being answered.

You don't just want leads. You want good leads. You want great leads. Chat should be the best of both worlds, combining the dialogue potential of the phone with the information gathering of a lead form. If you make them fill out the form ahead of time, you're pushing away many who want to have a dialogue first. This is a big mistake.

Some would say, "If they're serious, they'll fill out the form, first." BS. There are plenty of serious buyers who want information but who have had bad experiences when they fill out lead forms. There's a reason lead form submissions are on the decline. People have been burnt in the past. Get them into a conversation first, then pursue the lead when appropriate. That's the right way to handle it.

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, "Mr. Chat Provider - tear down this wall."

Over the last couple of months, I've been researching reputation management companies in and out of the automotive industry. On one hand, I found a couple of shining stars that stood out from the competition. On the other hand, they were only the best but were still missing the boat when it comes to the true potential of what reputation "management" should be.

I've been told that my posts are too long, particularly when I'm in rant-mode, so I'll keep this as brief as possible. Car dealers deserve better. The industry started getting flooded with reputation management services a few years ago and they all migrated to the same basic premise: solicit reviews through emails. While this in itself isn't a bad thing (and I'd debate anyone who thinks it is a bad thing, including anyone at Yelp), it's only a small piece of the puzzle. For a true reputation management solution to work, it needs to have an holistic understanding of how to utilize the components of online reputation as well as a grasp of how to turn a quality reputation into an amazing marketing tool.

Again, I'll try to keep this brief. It will be challenging.

More than Defensive

We've learned that defense wins championships. However, the concept that reputation management is about keeping your review star-ratings high is like saying that a car is about having a place to sit while you travel. Your reputation can do so much more for you than a star-rating just as a car can do so much more for the owner than just act as a moving seat.

The concept of reputation marketing is completely underutilized at best and butchered by some at worst. The first step, getting your star-ratings higher, is good to keep people from dismissing you altogether when searching for you. That part's fine. However, those who click through to the review sites are most likely looking for dirt. They want to know what you've done wrong. They're scanning beyond the good reviews and going straight to the bad ones.

A strong reputation management solution should go on the offensive. Expose the great reviews. When someone is out there talking about how they just bought their fifth vehicle in the last decade from your dealership, your reputation management company should be getting that out to as many people as possible. No, that doesn't mean an automated feed from the review site to your Facebook page that will end up getting seen by 50 people in their news feed and actually read by somewhere between zero and one of them. It takes more effort than that and I haven't seen anyone doing it properly yet at the vendor level.

The Search Component

How in the world has nearly every reputation management firm in the automotive industry missed the tremendous benefits (and potential pitfalls) of utilizing reputation for search engine optimization? When I was at the SXSW convention last year, Google pretty much declared that online reputation and review sites would play a role in organic rankings as well as PPC exposure, yet I haven't heard a peep about it other than a mention on another site noting that Google had taken down an Adwords account because the dealership had a bad reputation.

The two companies that had the best solution that I reviewed both touched on the benefits of reputation from a search perspective but neither have taken the appropriate actions to put together a working strategy, yet. Hopefully, that will be coming, but most in the industry haven't even made the connection despite the clear message from Google.

Botching Social Media

I'm going to keep this part extremely short because I'll start spitting and foaming at the mouth if I talk about it too long. The absolute butchering of dealership social media pages and profiles by reputation management companies and their 2008 social media strategies makes me insane. I want to grab them by the shoulders and force them to listen to reason.

Just because reputation management and social media have a connection doesn't make a RepMan consultant a social media expert. Cars and planes are similar - they're vehicles that get people from point A to point B - but that doesn't mean that having a driver's license gives you the skills to fly a 747. The potential synergies between social media marketing and reputation management are clear, but so far I've seen nothing that even remotely approaches a cohesive and intelligent plan of attack to make them sing in harmony. It's like they took peanut butter, jelly, and bread, tossed them all in a blender and said, "Look, I made a PBJ!"

(wiping foam from mouth now)

Sorry for the Rant

Okay. I'm done. It's been bugging me since NADA and after seeing what I saw last night I had to get it out there. At the end of the day, it's the responsibility of a dealership to train employees on the art of treating customers well. Those of us who have been on the retail side of the car business know that you'll have customers who will burn you no matter how hard you try to please them, but their frequency can be minimized by an appropriate company culture and a well-trained staff.

That's the onus of the dealer. On the vendor side, I'm making it a personal mission to educate reputation management companies on the proper way to position this potentially powerful marketing tool. We deserve better. You deserve better.