An interesting report from comScore and I think some premonitions for retail automotive.

1. Could FREE shipping break open real eCommerce for automotive? I think it is certainly a big hurdle right now logistically and monetarily. Taking away the monetary factor may go a long way toward opening this up. Of course there are still some logistics involved and there is the tactile factor. The need to touch and feel the vehicle is diminishing slowly and logistics can be overcome… Thoughts?
2. Pricing in the palm of the customers hands. Like it or not that part of eCommerce is upon us, the whole TrueCar mess may have brought it to our attention on a large scale but it was going to get there anyway. It’s not yet main stream but customers walking around your showroom with iPhones in hand comparing your cars, dealership and prices is coming like a freight train. If you try to fight it you’ll just be run over by it. So here are a few ideas to help you embrace it.
   1. Use SMS short codes on your window stickers. Better than QR code because customers are more used to it and because you get to capture the cell number of the customer and have a possibility to continue the conversation.
   2. Use QR codes to direct customers to Google places to review your dealership and see your reviews. On your Repair receipts, on your envelope the license plates the customer gets, on posters in your showroom and just about any other correspondence you have with customers. It will pick up reviews. While you’re at it use QR to direct them to a mobile coupon as well, might as well get the service business there’s a little bit of money there.
   3. Remember people do things with mobile not research so much so help them do those things. If they want to compare on your floor have an SMS short code that gives them a special discount or incentive and links to other prices…Remember they are on your showroom, you’ve got home court advantage and they’re going to do it anyway might as well direct the process to your advantage.
3. The day of the “Big Lot” is coming to an end. I can foresee a day in the not too distant future where there are small retail dealerships in high traffic down town locations where you pick out your vehicle; it is stored in a central much cheaper storage facility outside the city but it goes much deeper than that however. I can see this going to mass customization where you pick the car, and the paint job and the electronics package, the wheels, tires, ground effects etc. and there is an assembly line type factory on the storage facility site that customizes that car for you in a few days then delivers it to your house. I would love to see someone try this on a small scale it would shake up the car world.

These are a few thoughts that come to my head as I watched the video above, let’s here yours.

See the full comScore report here.

One of my most favorite sayings in the world goes like this:

This was a question asked on Dealerrefresh by Ed Brooks of vAuto. I find this a very interesting question for a lot of reasons and my answer is YES where you have control over it.

Obviously in a new car franchise you have less control as your inventory is dictated a great deal by the OEM but even they somewhat dictate your allocation by marketing. In our Toyota store here in Houston that I ran in the 90’s GST would give us our allocation based on our “Rolling 90” the average number of vehicles we sold in a 30 day period for the last 90 days. In a sense you could say they were dictating what we stocked by Marketing.

During the worst days of GM’s VOMS program at our Chevrolet store we fought to get the best vehicles including the Avalanche a very popular vehicle from 99 – 2001 Why? They sold better “Marketing”.
 

In a sense one could say and I will say it, what you stock has ALWAYS been a “Marketing Decision”.
 

Back then I would line up Chevrolet and Ford Trucks on the front line or our Toyota store, this would just twist our GST reps head, but my point then was the same then as it is now.
 

“I have huge sign that says I sell Toyota’s and people know that what they don’t know is what else I have and there are a lot of potential customers driving by our store that are going to buy a Chevy or Ford pickup and I want them to know we are a choice for them.” –

I made it a point to stock that “Product” on our Toyota lot and “Place” it where I did: IE “A Marketing Decision”.
 

In used cars you are 100% in control of what you stock (one of the reasons why I love that business) and if you are doing that right you are basing what you stock on marketing decisions “What Sells” NOT what you can buy cheap!
 

THE VERY FIRST QUESTON YOU SHOULD BE ASKING YOURSELF WHEN YOU GO TO BUY OR TRADE FOR A USED CAR – “HOW AM I GOING TO GET OUT OF THIS USED CAR?” THAT IS A MARKETING DECISION
 

The “Book” really no longer has any value from a purchase perspective; the only thing that does have value is what cars are selling now and how much you can get for it. If you have a good recon dept. a great sales process and great marketing you can pay more for a car than the other guy because you can sell it for more and you can get out of it faster.
 

This was true 20+ years ago when I started in the car business and its true today, the only difference you have better tools and information to make those decisions but make no mistake if you are doing it right you are making them based on marketing.
 

Those are my thoughts what say you?  
 

Larry Bruce @pcmguy

Some people have heard me say this in the past
 

“It’s not your website provider’s job to give you a working website. It’s their job to give you a functional one; it’s your job to make it work”
 

What does that mean…REALLY?
 

     • It’s Your Job – to know what keywords to rank for
     • It’s Your Job – to create good content to make that site rank
     • It’s Your Job – to work to get the backlinks to your site
 

At the end of the day that is exactly what SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is Keywords, Good Content & Backlinks it is really that simple and also that hard…Why?

Because we have been conditioned to think our website provider is going to do it for us. I can’t tell you how many times I hear website providers tell dealers “Our sites rank better and have better SEO than what you have now” and how many times dealer change website providers because they think the new website will be the magic bullet to get them ranked better, more traffic and more leads…WRONG!

In fact the website is pretty much worthless without the right online marketing strategy.

“Reality… the website should be FREE”
 

It is the tool of the online marketer not the online marketing strategy and that’s why I say…
 

“You don’t need a website provider you need a web marketing company that provides websites”
 

Without the marketing the website has NO VALUE.
 

What does a good online marketing strategy look like? Like this:
 

Now here comes the sad part ¾ of this you can’t even do because you lease you website presence from your provider you don’t own the property, and even if you did manage to find a good way to optimize your site it would only be a matter of hours before the other guy down the road on the same website platform had it too.

“The Law of equal incompetence” You can be no better than the network you’re on.
 

“AS LONG AS YOU LEASE THE PROPERTY YOU CAN GET NO COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE”
 

So what’s a web marketer to do? Optimally?
 

1. Get your own website
2. Start an aggressive PPC & landing page campaign find the keywords that convert and start your online marketing efforts with them
3. Create a lot of good relevant content in your website 400 pages plus around those keywords
4. Get a wordpress.org blog make sure you set it up as a subdomain of your website
5. Create 30 plus relevant SEO optimized blog posts per month around your target keywords
6. Profile your customers & Facebook friends for interests
7. Share through social 20 pieces of content per day relevant to your audience
8. Integrate your social campaigns to your web presence to get the maximum traffic, SEO & conversion value
9. Use behavior targeting to drive organic traffic to high converting landing pages
10. ABT (ALWAYS BE TESTING) Split test everything often

I hope this post gets you thinking about your website and web marketing in a very different way, that was my goal.

If you want to know more or have questions we do a webinar on these very topics every Tuesday 1pm Central Standard Time , Click Here - Own Your Web Presence
 

Hope this helps
 

Larry Bruce - @pcmguy
 

All too often what we think are strategies are mere tactics and are driven by technology vendors want to sell us. I put together this 2.5 day class for our clients and perspective clients on Strategies to help them better define their own strategy online & off.

This is a 2hr version of a 2.5 day class.

I love reading Jim Ziegler’s articles there is a lot of hard core truth in what he writes, most of all you can bet he is passionate and believes and lives every word. While reading this latest article “Coffee’s for Closers” it floored me that we still see this connection between the “PRICE” and the close. What’s even more ironic is that is that what actually “CLOSES” a car sale is as old school as it gets and hasn’t changed in the last 50 years.

You all know what I am talking about…To put in James Carville terms “It’s about the relationship…stupid”

Now I am certainly not going to say that price isn’t a concern, you will address, it but I will say… IT AINT THE CLOSE and I will go even further and say… IT NEVER HAS BEEN.     

Back in march of last year after South By Southwest I wrote a post called “The Currency of Trust” in this post I shared my ideas on how trust was built in a car sale before the introduction of the internet and social media and how the internet and social media is redefining the building of trust today, and therein lies the CHANGE in the sales pr

ocess.

It’s not a change in human behavior for the last 30 years people have been shopping for a car salesperson not a car. It’s a change in how long we now have to engage with customers a change in the channels we engage with those customers in and the way in which customers are starting to use the internet to formulate their opinions of how trustworthy your dealership really is.

This is a part of the “Old School” sales training I received from a set of Clint McGee Auto Sales Training tapes back in 1984 when I first started selling cars…yes I am that old.

The premise of this graphic was that if you took the time with the customer to get to know them, answer their questions, sell yourself, the dealership and the benefits of that car for their needs the “Close” would be relatively short and you would make more gross profit.

You had 3 days to do this over the phone and most of it was accomplished on the lot.

The “New School” and the fool here is the one that ignores this:

The customers process starts earlier because they have access to more information and with that access most feel very uncomfortable if they don’t at least do some research before they buy.

Make no mistake the customer shops for the car first and the dealership a distant second, but now the process of shopping for a dealership can involve multiple channels and there is a lot more opportunity for a lot more “Second Basemen” to be involved in that dealership shopping process.

Ease of access to information about your dealership and the ability to engage remotely has stretched the time a customer is willing to take to shop for a dealership & what used to take place in 3 days can now take as much as 90 days.

Why?

Because the customer CAN…

So what do you do about it?

You do what GOOD salespeople have done for over 50 years.

Listen and help the customer with THEIR needs

Be responsive to information on the customer’s timeline

Be transparent with the information you provide

Be authentic and genuine in your desire to get the customer the best buying experience for them

This again hasn’t changed in 50 years.

So… “Excuse Me” but “One Price”… “No Haggle” these are just tactics they are not sales skills and for that matter neither is “negotiation”.  You wanna be a good salesperson be good at the above, be prepared to a talk about your price what the customer gets and why they should want to pay that amount and buy from you. In many ways you have to be a better salesperson if you are a “One Price” store.

That’s my $0.02 cents…what say you?

“Communication with you customers has never been easier…and yet your customers have never been further away.”

For some time now I have been thinking and battling it out with several blog opponents on conversion and why it is so important. It really comes down to breaking through the Digital Divide between you and the customer.

To do that you need to PERSONALLY INTERACT WITH THEM and to do that you need contact information… PERIOD.

The Digital Divide is the growing digital gap between the customer and the personal connection to a salesperson.

“Whether you like it or not there is a huge technological wedge between you and the customer.”

No matter how hard you rail against it the technological wedges keep growing. When you think about it the Digital Divide didn’t just sneak up on us it’s been happening for some time.

In the 50’s the way you shopped and bought a car was you went to church, rotary, some social function

 ect. with the person who was selling you the car that’s how you knew them and why you bought from them. In the late 60’s as the Telephone became more ubiquitous people started calling the local dealership to get more information, talking to more salespeople (shopping), the first digital wedge creating a small divide between buyer and seller.

In the 70’s and 80’s as Radio and Television became more affordable and these technologies drive another wedge to the Digital Divide further disconnecting the customer from the salesperson.

In the early and mid 90’s technology hits the showroom with CRM systems and we begin to ad our own wedge to the Digital Divide as our communication starts to become more systematic and less personal.

In the late 90’s the mother technology hits… the internet... driving the largest technological wedge between buyer and seller in history, so large was the belief in this disconnect between buyer and seller that even JD Power and many others were predicting  the end of the connection between buyer and seller in the retail auto business completely. We all rushed to get websites and drive another technological wedge between us and our customer.

In early 2000’s when it became apparent that the personal connection would not be substituted by a website along came the listing company (Cars.com & AutoTrader) and in consistent fashion we happily turned our inventory over to these online classifieds helping to establish themselves as the online retail automotive authority and driving the next technological wedge between us and our customer;

Are you starting to see a sadistic pattern here yet?

2004 enter social media a twist on the mother technology and another wedge between us and our customer. By now there are so many technological wedges between us and the customer the Digital Divide is incredible.

SO HOW DO YOU CLOSE IT?

The only way I know how… a good proactive personal interaction with a knowledgeable, professional salesperson. 

WE NO LONGER SELL A PRODUCT WE ARE SERVICE COMPANIES WITH PRODUCT OFFERINGS (CARS).

To do this you have to get the customer to share contact information with you, you have to work to break through the Digital Divide. Make no mistake car sales has become a step by step process that starts online and you break through the Digital Divide wedge by wedge with good direct response marketing tactics.

However if you just leave it to the customer cross your fingers and hope you did a good enough job online for them to come to your store, if you think you just need to be out there and the internet is an “influencing medium” it won’t be too much longer before the Digital Divide erodes your customer base and you’re left with a smaller and smaller group. Gone are the days we spend huge sums of money to drive people into your store to close that miniscule percentage and out run the ad budget. There are more than a few dealerships within the last few years that found that is no longer a sustainable strategy, due in large part to the Digital Divide.

Bottom-line Connect… as early as possible and as often as possible with good relevant information, this can only be accomplished if you have contact information (a conversion).

At my Digital Dealer sessions in Orlando and the Digital Dealer workshop I go into more detail tactics needed to break through the Digital Divide.

How are you breaking through the Digital Divide, let’s hear about your strategies and tactics…

For those attending Digital Dealer here are my session dates and times:

Tuesday 4/19 – 3pm Microsites What Are They & What Do They Do Really

Wednesday 4/20 – 9am General Session What You Thought You Knew About Online Car Shoppers

Wednesday 4/20 – 11am Local, Mobile, Social This Future Has Arrived

Looking forward to seeing every one there and hearing great ideas to break through the Digital Divide. 

You know for last few months I have been hearing a lot about leadership in our industry, about education and how there needs to be more of both, I ABSOLUTELY AGREE!

I met up with Bill Playford at SWSXi (South By Southwest Interactive) for those not familiar with the acronym. We talked about this very thing. I found myself getting very excited at some of the ideas we were discussing, so much so I was writing curriculum in my head as I was driving back to Houston Friday afternoon.

On the way home I made several calls that to be frank…were a total buzz kill on the subject. I was quickly reminded of the agendas of some of the broadcasters, large vendors with money, resources and a voice and the influencers in our industry and the task of bringing true leadership and honest education seemed to be almost too daunting a task for anyone to take on.

This morning I wake up still thinking about this subject and as I going through my normal morning reading ritual and I ran across this post by Seth Godin. Seth has a way in of summing up a topic in very few words I hope to someday master that for now I am not doing very well.

7 Questions For Leaders

1. Do you let the facts get in the way of a good story? Think about that for a second beyond the obvious. What is a good story? It’s a vision right? Are you letting the fact that something isn’t that way right now or that something is hard get in the way of a good story / vision being told? If you are you are killing creativity and innovation in our business…Stop It!

2. What do you do with people who disagree with you…do you call them names in order to shut them down? THIS ONE YOU REALLY NEED TO PAY ATTENTINON TO! Who do you know that is doing this regularly? Get away from that person, this is happening all too often and on some blogs more than others. Bottom line we should be welcome disagreement and healthy debate, when that debate is constructive. People are allowed to have opinions and you are allowed to have yours. In today’s world we are all allowed to express them and there is nothing wrong with this process. It goes wrong when you start the name calling and the personal attacks in an attempt to belittle that person. You have an opinion express it…don't be offended if someone else has a different one, don't expect someone else just to roll over if you disagree. STOP BELIVEING AND READING YOUR OWN PRESS. Cars are gonna get sold with or with our any of us.

3. Are you open to multiple points of view or do your demand compliance and uniformity? Too many of us are not we go beyond constructive debate and defending our position to the point of my way is the only way.

4. Is it ok if someone else get the credit? – Think about that… is it really?

5. How often are you able to change your position? – None of us knows it all is it possible that someone has a piece to the puzzle you don't is it possible that you could be wrong? This doesn't mean you don't have conviction or believe in your position, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t defend it. Just make room for the possibility and keep your mind open.

6. Do you have a goal that can be reached in multiple ways? – Fact is every goal can be reached in multiple ways. There is no one best way to anything anymore. Just because your goal has to change to include others doesn’t mean it can’t be reached it’s just another path to get there.

7. If someone else can get us there faster, are you willing to let them? Are you? How often do you stand in the way of someone because you don't like them or think you don't? Do you even know them?

There is no doubt that we need more leadership that can take these 7 questions above to heart and really work to improve the industry and thereby improving their business along with it. We all need to ask ourselves these questions and honestly answer them.

Larry Bruce @pcmguy

This NADA was riddled with the Microsite buzz or at least where I was. I heard more than a few sessions on this topic and it amazes me sometimes that these “Experts” who talk about microsites and conversion still think that if you just throw a Microsite out there it will instantly get traffic or if you build a lot of them somehow visitors will just trip into them.

Just quit it…Please!

Don't ruin a good thing before it ever gets started with these crazy notions of volume of sites and bad content.

A Microsite is:

1.       Written and designed for a specific audience

2.       Optimized to the visitors intent

3.       Fulfills the promise made by the ad that drives the traffic

4.       Simple easy to navigate with a specific purpose

5.       Ultimately visitor generated through testing

A Microsite is not:

1.       A deep link landing page within your Random Access Website

2.       A duplicate of your Random Access Website

3.       A copy of a vehicle brochure online

4.       A duplicate of a vehicle listing (Your VDP)

I have heard there are now vendors duplicating the VDP (Vehicle Display Page) of your website or online listing into a Wordpress site and calling this a Microsite… Are you kidding me!

That’s just what you DON'T want to do: take something that is converting terribly, pay more money to duplicate it several times so we can get bad conversions for more money in other places…REALLY?

Dealers please understand what your goal is with conversion marketing through microsites before you jump in with these crazy Microsite schemes.

Vendors that are pushing this, stop understand what a Microsite is for before you get into conversion rate optimization. Don't just jump into this because it’s the buzz word of the day.  

Larry Bruce @pcmguy

Who are we putting in charge of our business?

As I watched this video of Groupon’s CEO Andrew Mason apologizing for a business in Japan that couldn’t handle the orders that Groupon generated for them over New Years I couldn’t stop thinking; VIDEO

“Here is a vendor that set a marketing strategy in place for a business using price positioning and email executed on it and then when the business wasn’t prepared to deliver, HE’S apologizing to HIS customers for it?” A nobal gesture.

This is amazing, these businesses that work with Groupon have virtually no margin in what they sell through that channel, they are told what they need to price or discount their services at to work with Groupon and all the while making the customer more and more loyal to Groupon, Yes Groupon looks at the customers at their customers not the businesses customers…

How did Groupon get their customers? Do they have a product to sell? NO they got those customers on the backs of the business they convinced to deeply discount their product to get Groupon the loyalty they have at the businesses cost not Groupon, in fact Groupon got paid to do it.

"Groupon bought its loyalty with money from its clients"

HMMM who does that sound like in the Retail Auto Industry?

Wake up dealers take charge of your own marketing or you’re going to end up like these small business sheep that follow Groupon to the slaughter.