I have been in an interesting discussion on dealerrefresh.com with dealers, vendors, representatives of ATC and Cars.com over the last few days regarding the recent ATC acquisitions and their implications on dealers and this discussion has morphed into how to measure ATC, Cars and eBay Motors as classified listing services.

I have made my position very clear on this “You measure by conversion” Lead, Call, email or chat. However this discussion did morph into whether or not VDP views (Vehicle Display Pages) were a valid measurement and did they help the dealer?

This prompted me to do a thorough analysis from a conversion stand point of the listings and VDP view within each service ATC, Cars and eBay. Below in this power point is are my findings. I will leave it to the dealers to use this data to make up your mind as you will and to lend whatever wait you deem necessary in using it.

I have been in an interesting discussion on dealerrefresh.com with dealers, vendors, representatives of ATC and Cars.com over the last few days regarding the recent ATC acquisitions and their implications on dealers and this discussion has morphed into how to measure ATC, Cars and eBay Motors as classified listing services.

I have made my position very clear on this “You measure by conversion” Lead, Call, email or chat. However this discussion did morph into whether or not VDP views (Vehicle Display Pages) were a valid measurement and did they help the dealer?

This prompted me to do a thorough analysis from a conversion stand point of the listings and VDP view within each service ATC, Cars and eBay. Below in this power point is are my findings. I will leave it to the dealers to use this data to make up your mind as you will and to lend whatever wait you deem necessary in using it.

Monday morning I am sitting at my computer with my peripheral vision on my twitter feed when I see @jimziegler tweet “Alpha dog is on the point”. Now I have seen this tweet before and not really thought about it too much until someone tweets back “jim what is the point?” Now to set this up for you people that haven’t sold cars in a dealership before the point is a place on the lot usually around where the customers park where all of the salespeople will congregate and wait for an up (if you don't know what an up is ask someone who sells cars, can’t explain every car term not enough time or room on this post).

That’s  when an interesting analogy occurs Jim’s tweet back “I am on social media communicating with my customers and friends” and it hits me Social Media is the new “Point” for your dealership, the “Virtual Point”.

Now instead of the salespeople out on the physical “Point” smokin and Jokein they are on the “Virtual Point” communicating and updating friends and customers on happening in the dealership and their lives, which if you have ever sold cars retail you would understand they are one in the same.

On this same day I read a blog post “Are You Building A Social-Ready Organization” in this pot the author Alan See Says “At a high-level social media marketing is about influencing the customer experience by engaging in dialogue with the customer in order to build a trusted relationship over time.”

Again I think back to my basic car training:

Step 1 – Meet & Greet , now look at Alan’s statement above “Influencing the customers experience by engaging in dialogue with the customer” same thing.

Step 2 – Establish Common ground – Now look at the rest of Alan’s statement “In order to build a trusted relationship over time” again same thing.

Now anyone that has ever sold cars knows that if you don't get these two you're not likely to sell the car and even if you do it’s a mini commission and a bad CSI survey.

So think about what you are doing if you are a dealership that is blocking your salespeople from Facebook would you block them from the lot and the “Point”? If you are a salesperson who is not using social media will you go to the dealership tomorrow and not get out on the “Point”

How are you looking at this?

Monday morning I am sitting at my computer with my peripheral vision on my twitter feed when I see @jimziegler tweet “Alpha dog is on the point”. Now I have seen this tweet before and not really thought about it too much until someone tweets back “jim what is the point?” Now to set this up for you people that haven’t sold cars in a dealership before the point is a place on the lot usually around where the customers park where all of the salespeople will congregate and wait for an up (if you don't know what an up is ask someone who sells cars, can’t explain every car term not enough time or room on this post).

That’s  when an interesting analogy occurs Jim’s tweet back “I am on social media communicating with my customers and friends” and it hits me Social Media is the new “Point” for your dealership, the “Virtual Point”.

Now instead of the salespeople out on the physical “Point” smokin and Jokein they are on the “Virtual Point” communicating and updating friends and customers on happening in the dealership and their lives, which if you have ever sold cars retail you would understand they are one in the same.

On this same day I read a blog post “Are You Building A Social-Ready Organization” in this pot the author Alan See Says “At a high-level social media marketing is about influencing the customer experience by engaging in dialogue with the customer in order to build a trusted relationship over time.”

Again I think back to my basic car training:

Step 1 – Meet & Greet , now look at Alan’s statement above “Influencing the customers experience by engaging in dialogue with the customer” same thing.

Step 2 – Establish Common ground – Now look at the rest of Alan’s statement “In order to build a trusted relationship over time” again same thing.

Now anyone that has ever sold cars knows that if you don't get these two you're not likely to sell the car and even if you do it’s a mini commission and a bad CSI survey.

So think about what you are doing if you are a dealership that is blocking your salespeople from Facebook would you block them from the lot and the “Point”? If you are a salesperson who is not using social media will you go to the dealership tomorrow and not get out on the “Point”

How are you looking at this?

Good News… I am seeing and hearing a lot more dealers thinking about using microsites and landing pages.

Bad News… I don't hear a lot about the strategy behind their use or what they intend to use them for.

It reminds me of the early CRM years when a lot of us rushed to get us some of that CRM without understanding how we would implement CRM in our store. I wrote an article for Dealer Magazine back then called “Just Because You Built It Doesn’t Mean They Will Come”.

“Just Because You have a Microsite, Doesn’t mean they will come”

If you are building a Microsite in WordPress thinking that it will have some magical SEO value and be so optimized that you will get all this traffic and somehow sell more cars as a result, I hate to be the one to break it to you but…

IT WON’T

All you will succeed in doing is placing property on the web that requires your time, effort and mone for you to try and rank, takes your focus off of the ball trying to get traffic to it, which ultimately produces very little. You become frustrated and just quit leaving the sites out there that you paid good money for to die in internet wasteland.

If you think you are going to use Microsites & Landing Pages as an offsite SEO mechanism to build back links.

“This is a tactic not a strategy”

Back links from you Microsite network are a good side benefit but they are not what Microsites and Landing Pages are for.

The best Microsites and Landing Pages are the ones that convert. Call them High Performance Landing Pages. High Performance Landing Pages have 4 characteristics. They are:

Engaging

Dynamic

Disposable

Aagile

An Engaging landing experience uses an arsenal of tools like flash, video, social media and pre-conversion segmentation to capture and keep the user’s attention and drive them through conversion.

Dynamic landing experiences are those that are highly context specific, perhaps even personalized with content based on where the user has come from, what they have searched on or what they’ve done in the past. They aren’t static, they are specific.

Most importantly, landing pages should be Disposable. The best online marketing campaigns employ continuous testing for continuous improvement and that means we can’t get too tied down to any one landing page concept. We can’t invest so much into a landing page that it becomes too expensive to trash it and move on if it’s not working.

Finally Agile Landing pages need to be conceived, executed and launched in minutes, hours or days. Not weeks or months. I hear dealers every day who can’t get Microsites or Landing Pages developed and launched in under 4-12 weeks. That’s too long… Way too long. A 4-12 week development cycle on a landing page probably means that too many resources are being spent on the page and you are paying a lot of money to have it developed - from IT to agencies to marketing resources, and it probably means it is no longer disposable as well.

So, take a look at your landing pages. Can you use the words engaging, dynamic, disposable and agile to describe them?

Good News… I am seeing and hearing a lot more dealers thinking about using microsites and landing pages.

Bad News… I don't hear a lot about the strategy behind their use or what they intend to use them for.

It reminds me of the early CRM years when a lot of us rushed to get us some of that CRM without understanding how we would implement CRM in our store. I wrote an article for Dealer Magazine back then called “Just Because You Built It Doesn’t Mean They Will Come”.

“Just Because You have a Microsite, Doesn’t mean they will come”

If you are building a Microsite in WordPress thinking that it will have some magical SEO value and be so optimized that you will get all this traffic and somehow sell more cars as a result, I hate to be the one to break it to you but…

IT WON’T

All you will succeed in doing is placing property on the web that requires your time, effort and mone for you to try and rank, takes your focus off of the ball trying to get traffic to it, which ultimately produces very little. You become frustrated and just quit leaving the sites out there that you paid good money for to die in internet wasteland.

If you think you are going to use Microsites & Landing Pages as an offsite SEO mechanism to build back links.

“This is a tactic not a strategy”

Back links from you Microsite network are a good side benefit but they are not what Microsites and Landing Pages are for.

The best Microsites and Landing Pages are the ones that convert. Call them High Performance Landing Pages. High Performance Landing Pages have 4 characteristics. They are:

Engaging

Dynamic

Disposable

Aagile

An Engaging landing experience uses an arsenal of tools like flash, video, social media and pre-conversion segmentation to capture and keep the user’s attention and drive them through conversion.

Dynamic landing experiences are those that are highly context specific, perhaps even personalized with content based on where the user has come from, what they have searched on or what they’ve done in the past. They aren’t static, they are specific.

Most importantly, landing pages should be Disposable. The best online marketing campaigns employ continuous testing for continuous improvement and that means we can’t get too tied down to any one landing page concept. We can’t invest so much into a landing page that it becomes too expensive to trash it and move on if it’s not working.

Finally Agile Landing pages need to be conceived, executed and launched in minutes, hours or days. Not weeks or months. I hear dealers every day who can’t get Microsites or Landing Pages developed and launched in under 4-12 weeks. That’s too long… Way too long. A 4-12 week development cycle on a landing page probably means that too many resources are being spent on the page and you are paying a lot of money to have it developed - from IT to agencies to marketing resources, and it probably means it is no longer disposable as well.

So, take a look at your landing pages. Can you use the words engaging, dynamic, disposable and agile to describe them?

We were all taught the 10 step road to a sale when we were little in the car business.

Step 1 – Meet and Greet: Walk confidently up to your customer, extend your hand and say “Hi Welcome to ABC dealership my name is Larry, and you are?” Firm hand shake look the customer in the eye.

Anyone who has ever sold a car knows the importance of this step. It sets the tone for the rest of you sales process with that up. Get it right you’ve got a 10x better chance of selling that up, get it wrong and you're up will immediately start looking for ways to bail.

Visitor landings are ups driving on to your digital lot. So what's your meet and greet like?

A confident, strong handshake viewed as trustworthy and engaging?  A wimpy, sweaty handshake depicting nervousness and mediocrity or the blow off like when someone puts out their hand, invites a handshake, and just as they’re about to shake hands, they lift their hand up quickly and says “syke!”.

In the digital world we live in today your ad is the invitation to shake hands — the extended open hand. Your landing page is the connection, the actual handshake. The “Hi Welcome to ABC dealership my name is Larry, and you are?” and sets the tone for a deeper conversation and / or purchase.

Are your landing pages wimpy, strong, or do they blow off potential customers? Here are three basic types of landing page meet and greets.

The sweaty palm (the deep link or single dynamic landing page)

Sending your traffic to a deep link or a dynamic landing page is easy, but it’s also wussy handshake, like a sweaty palm. Sure, there’s no work involved — you simply take the most relevant page on your site and send your paid traffic there. But when you invite a user to click on your ad with a specific message, and send them to an informational deep link that doesn’t clearly match the message of your ad, you disappoint the user and they lose confidence in you. Like when you meet someone with a sweaty, wimpy handshake.

The blow off (the home page)

Sending your paid traffic to your home page of your random access website is the ultimate in disrespect. For example you do a email or a search marketing campaign on special offer. Your email / ad is all about this offer and puts its hand out with the offer, but links directly to your home page — no mention of the coupon code to be found. SYKE! This is a complete blow off. You dangled the offer right in front user, only to disappoint them with no mention of the offer on your home page. Don’t stick out your hand unless you can deliver the goods.

The confident (the message matched experience)

Ah yes, the confident landing page. This handshake is well-designed and on-target. It’s slick and adapts easily to different people or segments. A confident landing page is message-matched, features high-quality design & delivers a great brand experience. This is the type of landing page that “Hi Welcome to ABC dealership my name is Larry, and you are?” and the type of landing page that delivers the goods and converts visitors.

Remember, first impressions count. Don’t blow off your potential customers with a wimpy landing. Put your hand out and deliver a great handshake.

We were all taught the 10 step road to a sale when we were little in the car business.

Step 1 – Meet and Greet: Walk confidently up to your customer, extend your hand and say “Hi Welcome to ABC dealership my name is Larry, and you are?” Firm hand shake look the customer in the eye.

Anyone who has ever sold a car knows the importance of this step. It sets the tone for the rest of you sales process with that up. Get it right you’ve got a 10x better chance of selling that up, get it wrong and you're up will immediately start looking for ways to bail.

Visitor landings are ups driving on to your digital lot. So what's your meet and greet like?

A confident, strong handshake viewed as trustworthy and engaging?  A wimpy, sweaty handshake depicting nervousness and mediocrity or the blow off like when someone puts out their hand, invites a handshake, and just as they’re about to shake hands, they lift their hand up quickly and says “syke!”.

In the digital world we live in today your ad is the invitation to shake hands — the extended open hand. Your landing page is the connection, the actual handshake. The “Hi Welcome to ABC dealership my name is Larry, and you are?” and sets the tone for a deeper conversation and / or purchase.

Are your landing pages wimpy, strong, or do they blow off potential customers? Here are three basic types of landing page meet and greets.

The sweaty palm (the deep link or single dynamic landing page)

Sending your traffic to a deep link or a dynamic landing page is easy, but it’s also wussy handshake, like a sweaty palm. Sure, there’s no work involved — you simply take the most relevant page on your site and send your paid traffic there. But when you invite a user to click on your ad with a specific message, and send them to an informational deep link that doesn’t clearly match the message of your ad, you disappoint the user and they lose confidence in you. Like when you meet someone with a sweaty, wimpy handshake.

The blow off (the home page)

Sending your paid traffic to your home page of your random access website is the ultimate in disrespect. For example you do a email or a search marketing campaign on special offer. Your email / ad is all about this offer and puts its hand out with the offer, but links directly to your home page — no mention of the coupon code to be found. SYKE! This is a complete blow off. You dangled the offer right in front user, only to disappoint them with no mention of the offer on your home page. Don’t stick out your hand unless you can deliver the goods.

The confident (the message matched experience)

Ah yes, the confident landing page. This handshake is well-designed and on-target. It’s slick and adapts easily to different people or segments. A confident landing page is message-matched, features high-quality design & delivers a great brand experience. This is the type of landing page that “Hi Welcome to ABC dealership my name is Larry, and you are?” and the type of landing page that delivers the goods and converts visitors.

Remember, first impressions count. Don’t blow off your potential customers with a wimpy landing. Put your hand out and deliver a great handshake.

This is a short post because you need to read evey one of the 32 proclaimations in this Manifesto. Then think before you post or comment ever again.

Proclaimation #1 - There are tools. There are people who use the tools. And then there are people who are tools. Know the difference. 

You can read the rest here http://bit.ly/socialmanif

Pay paticular attention to #19, #31 &#32

This is a short post because you need to read evey one of the 32 proclaimations in this Manifesto. Then think before you post or comment ever again.

Proclaimation #1 - There are tools. There are people who use the tools. And then there are people who are tools. Know the difference. 

You can read the rest here http://bit.ly/socialmanif

Pay paticular attention to #19, #31 &#32