Autonomous vehicles aren’t nearly as safe as the manufacturers would lead you to believe.  As the amount of AVs increase, so will issues involving the jamming and interference of radar technologies meant to keep the consumer safe from harm. A solution may have already been invented and was put on display at the LA Automobility show this past week.

In December 2016, the Microwave Journal published this piece of advice to autonomous vehicle manufacturers everywhere: “Automotive radar sensors will need to cope with mutual interference mitigation techniques”

In 2105, a report to the FCC stated: “If two radars operating in overlapping bands are within the same vicinity, then some mutual interference will occur.”

There are expected to be 10 million cars on the road by 2020 with a self-driving feature. Current radars used in the automotive industry are not protected from “jamming” or being interfered with by other electrical devices within a radar’s region of coverage.  Hackers with mischief or disruptive intent could produce a signal capable of incapacitating the vehicle’s radar, making the autonomous systems useless.

Likewise, even during normal operation, radar-based sensors are highly susceptible to interfere with or be interfered with by other electrical devices!  This can lead to malfunction, disablement of sensors impacting safety, traffic flow, and driving convenience, especially in high-traffic areas.  For those folks currently driving Teslas or other AVs, this doesn’t increase consumer confidence in a vehicle they took a leap of faith to buy in the first place.

Most sensors can only detect an object and its distance and alert the driver if they are getting close.  Systems that rely on sound waves have difficulty in rainy conditions.  Cameras do not detect objects or alert the driver in poor visibility.

The solution to this very real problem was developed by The Ohio State University which owns four patents for radar-based systems and deal with RF noise and radar that identifies and classifies obstacles.  It breaks the issue down into two categories; RF Noise Radar and Vehicle Obstacle Radar.

RF Noise Radar: This is a small, low power stealthy radar that cannot be easily detected and is less susceptible to interference from other electronic devices.  It also optimizes the signal to clutter ratio and adapts to identify and/or classify specific targets, which means it’s less likely to be impeded by other vehicles signals or electronic hijinks.

Vehicle Obstruction Radar:  VOR combines a radar array with a unique algorithm and uses a single continuous wave frequency, (very narrow band) and cannot interfere with signals at other frequencies. The beauty of this technology is that can accurately detect distance, angle, position, and the size and shape of objects, thus discriminating between “high priority” and “low priority” objects.

The technology was licensed by Mr. Dean Zody, CEO of GhostWave from the Ohio State University.  GhostWave has partnered with Eric Walton PH.D, a retired professor at OSU and the inventor of this crucial technology in an effort to equip tomorrow’s autonomous vehicles with the necessary safety features to provide consumers with peace of mind and a safe, enjoyable driving experience.

Kelly Kleinman

Kelly@DealershipNews.com

www.Dealershipnews.com

DealerLeads: An Exceptional Exception to the Rule of Automotive Marketing Online

    As I search the web for positive reviews about outstanding vendors serving the automotive industry, I tend to have a hard time finding legitimate 5-star reviews about anyone.  It’s not that outliers don’t exist, it’s just difficult to identify them through a miasma of bogus review sites, poorly written press releases, and company-generated hyperbole.  With that said, difficult doesn’t mean impossible.

    One such company is DealerLeads (www.DealerLeads.com).  This company approaches lead generation in a completely unique fashion and in essence, doesn’t really sell leads at all.  Rather, they provide state-of-the-art SEO optimization on a level no one within the scope of my research can even come close to matching.  

    DealerLeads builds websites that are harmoniously in-tune with Google’s best practices. Because of that, their sites frequently rank high and attract a great deal of organic traffic, thus displacing other competitive dealerships and publicly traded classified sites that would otherwise box the DealerLeads client out of the local organic rankings.

    Leads that dealers receive are actually enveloped within that organic traffic consisting of a higher percentage of “likely” buyers based on legit conversion metrics.  Those leads are aggregated via a stack of practices that include research pages, on-site SEO, tens of thousands of backlinks, and placement on up to 350 behaviorally targeted (O&O) classified sites with domains based on popular search engine queries.  They also run highly efficient ppc campaigns for dealers with such needs in more competitive markets seeking maximum visibility.

    This next anecdote may sound like an advertisement but to those at DealerLeads, it’s a real problem. By July of 2017, the company had literally over-delivered some $,1,650,000 worth of leads in the form of dealership web traffic it will never collect on.  That means dealers most likely sold cars on traffic/leads emanating from DealerLeads at under a dollar.  Some quick math also suggests some dealers are selling as many as 10-15 cars based on DealerLeads traffic for free!  

There are clearly two scenarios at play, one bad and one very good:

A) DealerLeads had a serious issue with over-delivery

B) Their system is extremely effective at delivering qualified traffic and dealers love it

Here is a sample of DealerLeads reviews from actual car dealers taken from DrivingSales.com

1) DealerLeads is great to work with

Reviewed by an Internet Director November 15th

Recommended:  YES

Pros: Have been working with DealerLeads for 3 years, would recommend Tracie and her team to anyone who wants to drive leads.

2) Best ROI Vendor we have. Hits our Google Analytics Goals more than any other vendor.

Reviewed by an Internet Director November 14th

Recommended:  YES

Pros: We signed up with Dealer Leads a little over two years ago. These guys are the one vendor I don’t have to worry about. Nobody else performs month in, and month out, so predictably. We actually hired an outside attribution company to come in and assess all our vendors. Even they were amazed with the results delivered by Dealer Leads, and if you’ve ever hired one of these companies, you know it takes a lot to impress them.

3) Great product! Crushes SEO and Great for Google Analytics

Reviewed by a Dealer Professional Sep 30, 2016

Recommended:  YES

Pros: I am a huge fan of DealerLeads! Their reporting is through Google Analytics so you know there are no shady statistics. They are the champs of backlinking as well. They are great about meeting each month to go over the stats and even helped us set up Goals in GA!

Cons: none

    You can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please everyone all of the time and that goes for DealerLeads as well.  Customers come and customers go, and some like to get snippy with bad reviews.  Still,  vendors have ways of filtering out bad reviews via reputation management software but DealerLeads has no such implementation in place.  For those who may not have had a successful experience with them, or had a management change that cleared the vendor cache, none apparently felt it necessary to voice their displeasure with DealerLeads.

So here’s to www.DealerLeads.com, a true industry outlier, and the first subject of my “best vendor” All-Star reviews.

Kelly Kleinman/Content Director

DealershipNews

Kelly@dealershipnews.com

818-817-6343

While at the IADAC Conference in Lake Tahoe, we took a few minutes to chit chat with the used car Queen of Orland, Ca. Brittany Hibdon of the Hibdon Auto Center

Dealership News: As a woman owner/operator, do you find it gives you an advantage or a disadvantage in dealing with customers? Is it easier dealing with male buyers or do you find the women are more trustworthy of you than they would be a man?

Brittany: I believe talent and personality play more of a role than gender. However, there is a lot of stigma attached to the idea of a “typical salesman.” The majority of my sales staff is female, and we’ve had people walk in the showroom and comment in surprise at the number of women employed. Breaking the stereotype expected might be an advantage all on its own! Women also tend to have more empathy – nurturing is in our make-up. With male or female customers, we tend to wear our hearts on our sleeves, and customers see that we care. I think this may allow us to break down walls and connect faster with our customers. I’ve actually found that customers are less concerned with my gender than fellow industry members! When I first started buying cars at the auction, it was clear I had entered a man’s world. I think since it’s still fairly uncommon to meet a female dealer, most dealers are simply surprised by it. I’m very grateful for the friends I’ve made and the respect I’ve been given as I’ve made my mark in this industry.

Dealership News: Tell us a little bit about the dynamic of working with your husband who runs the service dept. Who gets in who’s hair the most?

Brittany: That’s debatable (LOL). In all seriousness, we get along quite well. My husband does a fantastic job of overseeing our Service Department, and knows more about fixing cars than anyone I’ve ever met. Even other shops in town call him for advice. I stick to my role of General Manager and we stay out of each other’s hair for the most part. In addition to regular managers meetings with our leadership team, he and I recently started a “Same Page Meeting” once a week, and that helps us by purposely setting aside time to discuss any issues that we both need to work on together.

Dealership News: Every small-town dealer has its main competitor, without naming names (we know who it is LOL), what do you do better than they do, is it service, is it sales, is it selection?

Brittany: I have a lot of respect for our largest competitor. However, I believe that our niche separates us from all of our competition. Our mission statement says it best:

Brittany: We put our customers first, before everything else. We believe everyone deserves to drive a Nicer, Newer car®. Our business is different- our business is not selling cars. Our business is finding solutions to the everyday problems that keep most people stuck in a car they hate. We’re on a mission to change the world one person at a time by helping them get the car they want and deserve.

Dealership News: Who are your favorite vendors and do you use classified listing sites so you can pull from surrounding cities or do you use other methods such as social media, radio, or cable TV to bring folks in?

Brittany: We’ve done well with radio and social media. We work with an incredibly talented marketing company that has helped us increase our reach to surrounding cities and grow our customer base. We’ve found that speaking to masses works better for us than targeting specific buyers or spending money on classified listing sites. It’s not for everyone, but it works well for us!

Dealership News: You can’t satisfy all of the people all the time but you sure can try, what measures do you have in place to make sure you aren’t held hostage by negative reviews or questionable review sites like the good folks at Yelp?

Brittany: I appreciate your classification of Yelp as “questionable!” I think best way to handle a negative review is to respond. If the customer is upset or frustrated about something, I try to leave a short reply and then take the conversation off-line. We reach out and often can get to the bottom of the situation and find resolution. Some people just like to complain and won’t respond to us, but that’s OK too. I’ve had situations where customer see our replies to negative reviews and “like” or comment in agreement with us! People want to see that we are real, and that we care about the things they care about.

Dealership News: Where do you see the future of the automobile industry after the electric and autonomous cars kick in, say 10 years down the road? Will the used car business survive?

Brittany: Since I am in the solutions business, not the car business, I think there will always be customers to help and problems to solve. I also believe customers want great service, they want human interaction, they want to touch and drive and smell and see. Electric or autonomous cars are probably not for everyone, and as the industry shifts beyond just new technology to buying online, etc. I believe giving the customer an unexpectedly wonderful experience will stand out even more.

Kelly Kleinman

Dealership News

Kelly@Dealershipnews.com

818-817-6343

SEO aficionado and prodigious automotive domain collector Steve Tackett has just launched yet another automotive classified listing site. Says Taylor Buchanan GM of Automotiveleads.com; “Usedcarsnearme.com promises the consumer a very satisfying experience, this new site is the perfect platform for local used car dealers to list on, the listings look fantastic and it’s a very easy navigation for the consumer, best looking new classified site I’ve seen by a long shot.”  

Tackett, the owner of 350 classified listing sites and 5,000 automotive domains has modeled all of his sites on popular search queries in order to drive organic traffic (buyers) to those sites.  Says Tackett, “The key is in drumming up enough real inventory for the sites to rank in the search engines. The exact number of vehicles needed on a site to goose Google into ranking it isn’t exactly known, but it’s a heck of lot of iron”.  Once his sites become searchable, they tend to achieve a fairly high organic rank and attract a lot of car shoppers which puts smiles on the faces of his listing dealerships who tend to pay a lot less for leads than they would on other sites.  

Usedcarsnearme.com’s sister site is Usedcarsforsale.com which was recently launched as a  free listing site available to any licensed used car dealer in the industry in the US and Canada. Usedcarsforsale.com actually gets up to one million exact match search queries per month before any advertising even kicks in and is projected to sign close to 30,000+ dealers when all is said and done.  

Having two classified sites launching at the same time may seem to some as being in conflict.  According to Tackett, the key to selling a car online is visibility, “we have 350 listing sites and I’m more than willing to accommodate any dealer who wants to get his or her inventory as visible as possible on our sites...which by the way, are sites that have carried zero conquest or dealer advertising to date. Paying to list on a classified site is a pure advertising investment, why would I pay for listing fees and lead fees and advertising and then have some other dealer’s ads distract a potential customer from my listings?  It makes no sense”. 

He went on to state that he sees no conflict in getting dealer inventory  loaded up for free on usedcarsforsale.com, and offering them high visibility on the new site as well.  “It’s all good, we like the model of a basic referral site option, that’s why Craigslist outperforms all of the major automotive classified sites hands down when it comes to making car sales...and that’s the bottom line to our ever-growing client base.

Kelly Kleinman

Content Manager/Dealer News

www.dealershipnews.com

Office: 818-817-6343

Kelly@dealershipnews.co

Historically, there’s nothing like Mother Nature to surge sales as well as flood waters. Remember Hurricane Katrina, up until now, the costliest disaster in US history? She wiped out nearly a half a million vehicles and consequently, automotive sales peaked at all-time record volume in 2005 which is no surprise considering the need to replace the water-ravaged wrecks. As fodder for another story, 10,000 of those totals ended up in Bolivia being sold as low-priced dream cars turned nightmares when the corrosive nature of the saltwater eventually totaled those vehicles for a second time.

Vehicle replacement sales in September and October continue a rally in car sales that is expected to continue into November and creep into December. As one would expect, the best performing brands in Q3 were representative of the three manufacturers historically favored by those geos hit hardest by the weather such as Texas, Florida, S. Carolina, Louisiana, and Georgia. Here’s the scoreboard; GM has experienced an 11.8% increase in sales, Ford at a 14.9% lift, and Toyota at an 8.9% spike.

GM and Ford pickups led the sales salvo with the Toyota cranking out record transactions as well. Nissan reported that its popular Rogue also set a record, selling just 4,000 units less than the Rav4.

Overall, it was a killer quarter for Nissan that set a wind-related record for September enjoying a 9.5% increase in sales, with a total of 139,969 units finding new, drier homes led of course by crossover King the Nissan Rogue. Toyota’s Rav4 continues to get raves from the public and continues to be the big T’s top seller into Q4.

Even new used car sites Usedcarsforsale.com and Usedcarsnearme.com have reported a prodigious increase in dealer listing activity for replacement inventory.

Will the trend continue with the absence of another natural disaster or is the industry rallying up on an upsurging economy? Perhaps Asteroid TC4 will decide to make an unexpected crash landing and bring on a whole new of car sales opportunities that are out of this world! Only time will tell!

Kelly Kleinman Content Manager/Dealership News www.dealershipnews.com 818-817-6343

Steve Tackett’s “Carweek.com” has it’s big 20th anniversary coming up in November. “As a big thank you to the industry that’s been great to me and my team, I thought I’d give back by making www.usedcarsforsale.com absolutely free. I like the trade-off, dealers get great leads, traffic, and sales for free, we get to see which emerging technologies are the most effective at driving car shoppers to their sites, it’s a win-win”.

Tackett is taking the entire automotive listing concept back to its roots and is creating an environment where a dealer can list their entire inventory for free, forever as part of his rather unusual, if not eccentric gift to the used car industry.  The consumer can shop on a clean, user-friendly listing site and the car dealer will never have to hassle with billing issues or their leads being shared among other local dealers.  Tackett will have the only automotive listing site that is completely free to the industry and so far the response has been as expected, off the charts.

Used Cars for Sale has been a search engine query keyed in by millions of car shoppers every year. It is now a classified automotive listing site that will be driving millions of car buyers to used car dealer’s websites absolutely free, forever according to Mr. Tackett.  Once the advertising campaign kicks in, traffic to the new site will increase substantially as will leads, and sales to the dealers who have listed their inventory on the site.

Tackett, an upper 1% Google SEO expert who has collected over 5,000 search engine-based domain properties, has a plan that will help used car dealers increase sales while he drives traffic to them utilizing technologies and strategies few have the ken to imitate and or initiate. Says Tackett, “Dealers who have used car inventory now have a platform that charges them nothing to list their inventory, generate leads, or drive traffic.  We expect to make many car dealers very happy and the pay for lead sites very upset.  When you can get quality leads for free, why would you pay for it?".

Used Car Dealers Rally en Masse for Free Leads, More Visibility, and Increased Sales at No Charge.

Classified listing sites used to be basic referral sites with an ad revenue model.  Now, the big classified listing sites charge for leads, ad position, traffic, and listings.

The bottom line is that this free approach creates no ambiguity between vendor and dealer, allows car shoppers the necessary comparables all of the paid sites do, and the only ones making money are the used car dealers.  Used car dealers have long been clamoring for an affordable listing site and now they have one that provides exactly what they’ve needed for years along with a 0-cost CPA.

Kelly Kleinman

Dealership News/Content Manager

www.dealershipnews.com

818-817- 6343