All online marketing is designed to get users to engage that’s the point and the great thing about it, engagement is clicking—clicking your ads, your links, your content, your experiences. You want clicks lots and lots of clicks. When users are clicking, things are happening, moving and shakin.  But not all clicks are equal. There are those clicks you can control, and those you can’t really control.

Clicks you can’t control are like a busy highway interchange. You optimize the hell out of your content; throw it out there with some hope that if you did your job, you’ll get the traffic.  Where users end up and what they do when they arrive is entirely up to them, your ability to control what they click on is very limited. These clicks like a busy highway spaghetti junction interchange are a good thing and sometimes a bit scary:

You want your content out there for users to discover and explore. You want to be well placed so you get clicks (traffic). But there is a limit to how far you can take this. There comes a point when the internet takes over (actually, the users take over) and here we go...you’re just along for the ride.

Some examples of clicks you have very limited to no control over:

•  SEO – your main website
• Social – think of this as an online party / mixer don’t do anything here you would do there (and don’t do some things here you would do at a party, for some of the people I hang with you know who you are ;) )
•  Viral – completely out of your control, totally user driven some will take it good and some bad. It is what it is.

Ok so this is where you take broad strokes about all your store is doing to appeal to as many people as possible. Don’t write a novel short 3 to 4 sentence paragraphs. Some suggestions for the above:

•  Video testimonials, ON YOUR HOME PAGE! Absolutely the best thing you can do.
• Your eBay rating (if it is 99% positive +) on your home page with a link to the feedback section on eBay. Come-on yall here are a bunch of people saying great things about you but you only want eBay shoppers to know about that?
• Have a party at the store invite your customers place the photos on Facebook. Do this once a quarter when you have a good Facebook following then check out the local bands on MySpace ask them to come play at your party with a good following many will do it FREE and you are now helping local talent, tell people about  that, nothing connects people like a common interest in music.  As for Viral well nothing can help you there, but it’s good when some of the things above go there.

And then there are the clicks you do have control over, such as:

• SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
• Display/banners ads
• Email
• Affiliate Marketing

Your control here is explicit. You create a message (an ad or content), you place it (your buy or email), and you are entirely in control of where people land where they click. A great landing experience is marketer-controlled and user directed environment. Sort of like a cross roads:

You can, and should, send these clicks to landing pages, microsites and conversion paths that have limited, well-defined choices to get users to move from point A to point B (where B is usually your desired action for the campaign).

Most likely you are paying for these clicks. So seize the opportunity to be in control and craft conversion-focused experiences and optimize every user action within them. “Let no click be wasted” is your mantra.

Have a broad focus for the clicks you don’t control and a singular strategy and focus for the clicks you can control. Leave nothing to chance test... test... test and keep testing to keep winning. Convert your traffic that is the ultimate goal for every click no matter the level of control.

Hope this helps

I get asked this a lot when I talk about it. Everyone knows the 10 step sales process in the industry, or at least I hope they do.

1.       Meet & Greet

2.       Establish common ground

3.       Select a vehicle

Ect… ect… if you don’t know it and you want to post a comment here and I’ll send it to you. What does this have to do with Post-Click-Marketing? Well it has the same characteristics both have the same goal…the sale. For Post-Click-Marketing that sale is a conversion or lead.

Try this….

Go to a few local car dealerships (not yours) you need a completely unbiased subject. Now pay close attention to how your conversation goes with the salesperson. When you get a real salesperson – not some reject from the past 5 dealerships they couldn’t make it at – meaning they know how to sell and have practiced their craft, he or she will find your hot buttons in the course of seemingly innocent conversation, and they’ll also ferret out how serious you are about buying. All of this will happen in natural course of short conversation, and if your salesperson is a good one it will be conversation you are happy to engage in because they’re offering you valuable information in your search for the car you want. Over the course of those few important minutes they will increase your desire to buy and build your trust that they are the people you should be buying from and this is the dealership to buy at. Hopefully for the salesperson and the store even if you don’t buy then and there they will have built enough rapport with you that you’ll remember them as the people I want to buy from when I am ready to do it.

Study good auto salespeople this is the offline equivalent of Post-Click-Marketing.

When you walked onto the lot and looked at the vehicles: that was the click (from a banner ad, an email or a search keyword ad). The subsequent conversation the salesperson struck-up with you was the Post-Click-Marketing conversion path. Every time they prodded your motives and gave you information in return was the post-click segmentation and trust cycle repetition within the conversion path. As they ferreted out how serious you were: that was the post click grading or “lead scoring”. When they asked you to buy and you said no, they made sure to give you their business card anyway, that was a conversion for your remarketing bucket and of course if you bought that was the full-on conversion.

Post-click applies basic selling methodology to what happens after the click, and although I used an automobile sales model here it really doesn't matter, it has little to do with what you are selling. Treat what happen after the click as a conversation…it works, and what happens there is more important than anywhere.

Hope this helps.

 2 days ago I wrote a blog post on cash for clunkers entitled “Cash for Clunkers”… Most likely a clunker. After reading the bill cover to cover 3 times I was amazed at the number of holes in this thing. I listed 7 major holes in the bill that were seriously detrimental to dealers. As I do with many posts that have to do with OEM’s or Automotive and the Government I sent it to my good friend Cliff Banks at Wards Dealer Business to review before I posted it. Cliff is by far the most connected individual in the business and I can always count on him to keep me on the right path for the dealership, as he believes as I do that dealers are the Key to an automotive turn around not a speed bump between the OEM and the customer. Cliff asked me not to post until he could check a few things with NHTSA. Surprisingly NHTSA was very receptive and it appears that at least 5 of the holes will be addressed before the July 24^th deadline…hopefully.

As you can tell I did not post the original but here are 5 things your dealership needs to do to capitalize on “Cash for Clunkers”

1.       The biggest problem your dealership will face with this bill is CREDIT. The people that are driving around in a $500 beater are in that beater for a reason, and it aint because they are being frugal.

a.       Get with your captive lender and establish 2 other back-up lenders and start laying down some ground rules that you will work with them to enforce so they can feel comfortable in buying deeper. They official line we are hearing from most captives and banks is that they will be keeping their consistent buying policies. Below are a few standards you can set with lenders to help them get over that.

      i.      Establish a price range to credit score matrix that will help the lender feel more          comfortable that these loans will perform below is an example one. Give these to   your salespeople so they know what cars to take the customers to when they come in. These is nothing harder than moving a customer down from what they want to buy, people will generally pay more for what they want, and most time more than they can afford. 

2.       Get cars in the above price range make sure you have a good selection. If you only have a few the customer will go elsewhere…if you think you own them because you “Got them done” think again.

3.       Establish rules for applying the Cash for Clunkers credit to the equity in the car with your lender. Not rules that have the dealership making nothing but rules to let the lender know you're not going to try to rip the head off of every customer that walks though the door on this thing an you're working in partnership with the lender for the good of them, you and the customer.

a.       Look at loan to value between 80% to 85%.

4.       Establish rules for max payment to income.

a.       Comfort range for most customers and lenders is between 15% and 20% of monthly gross.

b.      Establish rules for debt to income

c.       Again a good rule of thumb here is 60% and 80%

5.       Establish rules for stability

a.       Min. 1 yr. job

b.      Min. 1 yr. residence

c.       Verifiable references

DON’T MAKE THE LENDER HAVE TO THINK…send the deal in with all verifiable information above.

1.       Check stub

2.       Utility bill

3.       References

Structure the deal right going in and make it easy for them to make a decision. PLEASE…PLEASE verify all of this for yourself BEFORE you send it to your lender. A war is won by many battles and lost by one, it will only take one time for these things not to check out before your lender has to check everything you send to them then it becomes easier to turn the deal down than it does to approve it.

Last note I will leave you with and it’s a biggy so read… there still are some tax questions here. It appears from what I have read in this bill that the credit is a dealership income taxable thing, watch. I believe this will change as I don’t think any of us will be taking this as profit. And finally if you are going to try to beat the market and do this now before all the rules are established “roll those bones” DON’T SCRAP THE CAR.

 Hope this helps.

 I recently read an article that started like this, I am changing some of the language to fit the car business.

“In the beginning there was your dealerships website and it was good. But then it grew, and grew and grew, until it encompassed the heavens the earth in content and scope. There was something for everyone and everything for someone, and it ceased to be a coherent presentation to anyone in particular.”

“It became an Encyclopedia Corporatica – a massive tomb of information. It contained inventory, employment information, staff information, Green Dealer information, press releases from years gone by. An impressive body of work to be sure…but a sales tool, as a marketing vehicle it sags under its own weight.”

These two paragraphs sparked this post and / or rant. Hope that doesn’t turn you off but this is something I have been very passionate about for the last 18 months or so and in the lightening fast pace of online marketing world your website has actually become less nimble, and now more than ever before you need to be nimble, you need to be relevant to a lot of very different people. If you try to talk to the average respondent through your random access website then you will get average results.

Those who have been around me have heard me beat the Microsite Network into the ground…probably so much so they may be tired of hearing it, but I have to say it again…and again. If you're a dealership with a single website trying to talk to everyone through it then you are sorely lagging behind the rest of the online marketing world. You can break free of this paradox by separating the two; your dealership customer service focused website from your marketing and sales focused Microsite Network.

Now let me clarify a few things:

1.       A Microsite is not a single landing page with a submission form. A Microsite is a 4 to 5 page singularly focused message gently leading the customer down the path to conversion with a series of choices each fulfilling the promise made that got the click in the first place.

2.        You're not hurting your organic search rankings using Microsites for your online marketing purposes, in fact the back links from these microsites and conversion paths to your main website help your organic rankings at least as much as traffic.

3.       A Microsite / Conversion Path DOESN'T have to match side-by-side to preserve the paradigms of you main dealership website. Each one is a clean slate if something isn’t working it’s easy to swap out, that’s the point. This creative freedom is inspiring, revitalizing the energy of your online marketing. Of course you should always work hard to maintain your brand integrity, but it is important to remember your brand is bigger than your dealership website. The internet is a broad mural and your website is only “one” canvas. Online marketing conversion paths and Microsite customer landing experiences in your post-click-marketing lets you paint a much wider world.

To me this is a “NO BRAINER” with the cost of clicks ever rising and the demands on marketing increasing exponentially, post-click-marketing with a Microsite / Conversion Path network strategy just makes sense. Create conversion focused experiences test them, find a winning formula, then keep testing to keep winning. Get results in real-time. Forget the post partum analysis and start changing the outcome of your campaigns while they are still happening.

Hope this helps and doesn't sound too much like a rant.

I was recently asked by a dealer “What is Twitter?”, I thought about that a bit and my answer came out like this. “Twitter is a one-to-many, one-way, Instant Messenger”. That got the point across in an easy way, I thought. Then I got the harder question… “Ok how do we use this in our dealership?”

Well, that one stumped me for a moment. Like all social media, a marketer must find the right way to use these things- using them the wrong way can have really negative repercussions. The thing about social media is that it’s TOTALLY controlled by the community.  You must tread lightly.  People choose to want to hear what you have to say- and can just as easily turn you off. With all that said, the best use for Twitter I have found, particularly for a dealership, is as a message board to announce the OCCASSIONAL, really good specials that will get people into your store.
Here are a few examples of what I mean:

1.       Find a day that your drive is slow and send out a Twitter message:
$5.00 oil change special for the next 50 customers today who mention this Tweet!

2.       Free Car Wash Today at ABC Motors 123 Main St. Anytown ST. 77000 (make this a link to a Google map)

3.       Any Recall campaign that you have enough techs and parts for

4.       Free iTunes gift card for the next 20 customers that mention this Tweet in our service dept! NO PURCHASE NECESSARY! (very important) This is a “get to know them” thing, so be prepared to treat them like kings and queens and show them that you are there to take care of them.

5.       If your dealership sponsors a little league team, or any type of charitable event , Tweet the results

6.       10 New Camero’s just arrived!  click here for the listings and prices

7.       Tweet about a nice, low-mile, hard-to-find trade or used unit that just arrived

8.       Free 130 point inspection today! or on the Wednesday before a long weekend: Free! Travel inspection

9.       Free Loaner car for ANY service on Tuesdays or Thursdays (typically slower days on the drive)

10.   Free! Nitrogen tire fill up today until 4PM!

DON’T TWEET YOUR ENTIRE INVENTORY EVERY DAY…PLEASE! That is the worst way to use Twitter.
As with any social media, DON’T OVERDO IT, or you’ll lose your audience. Here are some more tips:
                                                - Keep you Tweets to max 1 per week
                                                - Tweet about nice, high value items
                                                - use short, one-sentence descriptions
                                                - put your phone number- or a local tracking number- in your Tweets

Remember, these are “get to know ya” encounters, so be prepared to be social when the customer visits your dealership. Also, educate your Service Writers on why customers want to follow the dealership on Twitter, and then deliver good, meaningful Tweets to your customers.

Hope this helps.

I recently read a great article on Global Consumer Email Trends. This article discussed the various ways North Americans, Europeans and Asians view and use email. While each were very different in their usage and most interestingly in the way they respond to email, there are some bottom line truths when it comes to email and how we use it to market and how the multiple cultures we are marketing to view it. No matter what the ethnicity there are clear rules for effective email communication.

Permission Based Email (PBE) is the only way you will be getting to a consumers inbox in the very near future. According to a recent study by Messages Lab, SPAM hit an all time high in February of this year at 85% of what is being sent to your inbox. Major ISP’s like MSN, AOL, GMAIL, Yahoo and other have already begun to crack down. If you are one of those marketers out there that is doing EMAIL BLASTS… STOP you’re wasting your time and most of the emails you send are not even getting to your customer. 

You must allow the customer to decide how you will connect with them and most importantly you cannot betray that trust.

DO NOT LOAD UP A CUSTOMERS INBOX! A recent study by Forrester Group sited the number one reason for a customer opt out is too much email from a sender. Even if you have permission and even if your content is relevant if you send too much you abuse my generosity in allowing you to contact me. If you're lucky I will only opt out, if it’s really bad I will turn you in as spam. see a screen shot below of how easy it is for your customer to turn you in as spam and block you from all customers on a particular ISP.

1. North American consumers lead the way in email usage as personal communication at 87%. More than one third of all Americans have replaced traditional methods of communication in favor of email for the following items. Communications from their bank (40%), Promotional Postal Mail (38%), Telemarketing (34%). If you didn’t already believe that broadcast voice was fading as an effective marketing tool, you need to now. There is also a continuing desire for email to displace offline coupons (14%) and telemarketing (28%). Asian customers are more likely to elicit action directly from the email including clicking a link to a website or watching a video clip.

All regions of customer continue to take a variety of offline actions as a result of email communications.

1. Visiting a store (49%) – if your are measuring open rate or click through rate as a bench mark for email marketing success you need to keep this number in mind.
2. Purchasing by phone (25%) – Call tracking a must for every campaign you do, this also stresses the need for a multi-channel approach to all marketing.

Also notable was what compelled customers to open permission-based email. Over 50% of the Asian ethnicity felt the subject line was the compelling reason to open an email, more than two thirds of North American respondents looked at the from line as the most compelling reason to open an email. This again stresses the importance for having explicit permission to communicate with your customers and ask them to put you in their safe senders list. Additionally, discount offers, free product offers, familiar brand names and personalization of subject lines increase the likelihood of opening.

It is worth stating here that getting permission once doesn’t give you permission forever. You should constantly reinforce with your email base the permission to communicate via email. Also you should make it very easy to opt out. The bottom line if the customer doesn't want to receive email from you…you don’t want to send it and if they do want out you want them to be able to do so through you not by adding you as SPAM.

Additional Notes:

* Spam is the most common type of email received in all regions. Other types of emails include retail offers, work-related emails, emails related to personal interests, emails from friends and family, business newsletters and account statements.

* Security concerns and a lack of attractive offers/promotions are the primary reasons they do not interact with the emails they receive. This doesn't mean the email needs to be pretty, that is not what they mean here by attractive. In this case attractive means a compelling offer (one of high perceived value). Pretty will not show well in the most common email client “Microsoft Outlook” and a great deal of HTML will set your email higher on the SPAM list with the major ISP’s.

* North Americans are the most likely to unsubscribe to emails; Irrelevant content and frequency are cited as the two most likely reasons for un-subscription; I cannot stress this enough!!!!!

* About eight in 10 North American respondents have added PBE addresses to safe sender lists. Overall, more than half of respondents have added PBE addresses to safe sender lists. Customers will do this if you don’t load up their inbox, make sure your content is relevant, match you message to the content you direct them to and keep your marketing promises.

* The biggest concerned about viruses, identity theft, phishing, and scams. Concerns about phishing and pharming have increased significantly from 2005 to 2009 for US. This is why if you place high graphics and video that must be downloaded into your email very few will get the message. They don’t want to get the images out of fear.

* While most consumers manage one primary inbox for the programs they subscribe to, mobile phones and PDAs are gaining popularity for time-sensitive alerts such as news, weather and finance/stock information. This is where a Twitter account would come in handy. Keep in mind TIME SENSITIVE ALERTS don’t tweet me unless its important or will help significantly.

* The highest percentages in all regions say they prefer to receive emails in HTML format, while those in Asia-Pacific are most likely to say they have no preference.