For too long I’ve stayed silent. For too long I’ve watched as the industry experts have talked about socially engaging and response times and show ratios and acronyms. For too long I’ve watched as dealer ad budgets have gone up and up and up as the buy-in on vendor reliance taken hold. Enough is enough.

Process is important. No question. And yes, vendor partners can serve a useful purpose. But I can’t remember the last article I’ve read on an automotive centric site that talks about dealer managed content or the merchandising of the dealer’s products and services. Everything seems to rely on this false dependence on AutoTrader, or cars.com or Edmunds, or (insert billion dollar vendor here).

Consumers want to connect to the products and services and, wait for it… PEOPLE they buy from more now than ever. The writing has been on the wall forever too. Thats why you see sales reps leaving these big companies in droves. Why do you think the Tesla model continues to baffle auto experts? Its no surprise when people can pull up a YouTube video of the keys to their tesla being handed to them by Elon Musk.

I’ve still listened to dealer principals talk about bill boards and seeing their name on the side of public busses and try to convince themselves that “not all of our consumers are using the internet!”

Taking the last insane statement out of the mix, why am I so pissed off about this? Because we still spend so much damn time talking about the peas when we should be focussing on the the steak. And no one seems to want to do it. Spend more than 5 minutes outside of automotive and every expert in the world talks about content and context. And lets face it, in the world of automotive retail we suck at it. We’ve allowed all of that voice to come from someone other than the dealer. And its just plain wrong. We’ve become convinced that the dealership voice will become drowned out by the big names and it just isn’t true. I see it again and again even when I bring on a store in the biggest markets with the toughest competition. The dealer’s voice is unique in a sea of the same regurgitated copied crap that exists all over the web.

I know I’m going to lose either way I go here. Because how do I substantiate what I’m saying without some stats. So I’m going to include a random 30 day look YoY that I just pulled off the cuff. Some will say Its self serving. Yep. I’m in business to make money. But truthfully, I don’t care if a single person calls me up about this. I really just hope more than anything else I make some of you think. Because you’ve been sold a lie for so long that you can’t make it without these big vendors and its going to be the demise of dealer profitability.

1. 99% of the OEM approved website vendors are making it impossible for you to have a voice and merchandise your products because they are blatantly violating Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. And they don’t care and the OEM doesn’t care because the web providers pay a huge percentage of the website monthly fee back to the OEM. It has no basis in meritocracy.
2. Because of #1, all the great content you might try to use to get your voice out there in the web is shut down by the fact that Google just took a giant crap on your website that is primarily filled with duplicate content and in direct violation of Google’s guidelines. And you’ll never even know about it anymore because all of this happens automatically without notification of a manual penalty.

This is the steak! This is your website! This is YOUR voice as the dealer to YOUR consumers. And somewhere along the line we’ve subscribed to the idea that the middlemen deserve the right to sell your consumers to you. And the OEM makes it almost impossible for you to even try to make your own money when they hit you over the head with co-op.

If I told you I’d pay you $50,000/month guaranteed to do something thats going to lose you $500,000/month in gross profit how quick would you be to take me up on that offer? But that’s exactly what has happened to our industry.

I could rant on, but I’m just going to leave it here. Hit me with your critique. Tell me I’m a mad man if you must, but maybe, just maybe do a little soul searching and tell me it wouldn’t be worth just trying to make more money on more cars by connecting to your customers directly instead of through 5 other middlemen who take a piece of the action first.