It appears to me that Mark Twain was light years already ahead in regards to automotive digital marketing, when he stated “Find out where the people are going and get there first” – remarkable because Twain lived from 1835 – 1910, the first automobile was introduced to the masses in 1892 and Al Gore hadn’t invented the internet yet…

However Twain early on seemed to have had developed a common sense business acumen “to capture people’s interest in your story, product, your business and show them along the buying cycle, that you’ll be always there, on their side not leaving them out of sight – be already there when they (the consumers) arrive…

I believe we all can agree on the fact that the old purchase behavior and model has changed. From the prior rigid and linear path of offline marketing stimulus to a more circular online advertising stimulus – capturing buyer’s through metrics and their online behavior.

Similar to the old offline marketing and advertising approach, creating a lot of noise, occupying ad clutter exposure of e.g. Home Décor magazines of more of 60% advertising pages – the online world is experiencing a renaissance of this ad-noise, which I will compare to the virtual “Time Square” of online exposure. Instead having high raise buildings with neon boards and messages flashing up and down the strip some of the websites you are opening in your browsers are giving me the same feel – over exaggerating ad messages from all kind f businesses, display ads, tower displays, etc…it almost feels like that marketers and advertisers using the exactly same marketing strategies we have used for decades – this time only online, flashy, blinking and even more overkill.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to accommodate in today’s buyer world their needs, their online habits, their time on how the decide to research and buy – especially knowing so much more through our analytics websites and web traffic is revealing?

With an extensive research and a goal to create “smart advertising”, David Winter, VP of Business Intelligence at Cobalt asked his team of 70 “analytical geeks” and “introverted metric junkies” and to look at the online behavior of thousands of anonymous automotive shoppers across dealer, OEM and 3^rd party websites.  What they found were numerous indicators that the linear shipping behavior “Stimulus – Negotiation – Purchase” of car shoppers is a thing of the past.

Today’s car buyer wants to buy and/or research on their time card and their leisure and not on the pushy approach too many marketers are still suggesting is working – like the so well know “email blast”, mailers and one-pager ads in Saturdays newspaper.

Like Twain said “….find out where people going….” – Winter’s research explored numerous different types of buyers. Three generic shopping personas in particular, the Modern Family, Miss Pop-culture and Mr. Contractor had one thing in common – while they never send an email lead to any of their dealerships, the research captured what inventory they were surfing, which VDP’s they were researching, which Hours and Directions pages they viewed as they planned a visit to the dealership.    If we only have this information, and not an email lead how do we “…find out where the people are going…”, or more importantly, guide them to come to our stores?

These insights emphasize the role Remarketing can play in your store’s marketing strategy. Thanks to a Remarketing tool (cookie), which were embedded inside the surfed websites and could relocate the three buyer types mentioned above during their daily online behavior, the dealership and the OEM marketing messages could be reapplied for exposure over and over again on all other 3^rd party websites the consumers surfed and visited from there on.

The research and results indicated that when a Remarketing Cookie was applied and the message was brought to the consumers over and over again, the dealership had a chance again to re-win this consumer to sell a car or win the business. In our case of the 3 consumers…

Miss Pop-Culture went back to the dealership she initially had visited and surfed their VDP over and over again after 30 days – ending up buying a car

Mr. Contractor ended up buying the brand and model he decided on from the get-go after 20+ days, and even so he did not cross-shop Makes, he shopped more than 20 different dealerships only then to go back to the “guys” who he had visited first and who were using smart advertising in form of remarketing.

The Modern Family showed exactly the same pattern than the other two above – the only mayor difference was that their purchase process ended up being more than 90 days. Understandable considering how a modern family functions today with all the errands like Mini League on Tuesday and Saturday, Sophie’s ballet on Wednesday, Girl’s night out for mom on Friday and so on…

With the age of remarketing your dealership will have the opportunity to be always first in row for all these shoppers researching your inventory and website. With this first virtual touch-point your chance are increasing dramatically to close a deal down the new purchase path. Your dealership name can and should be out there with any minute, showing your future customer’s “that you know where the people are going”, and you’ll be already there and waiting. 

It appears to me that Mark Twain was light years already ahead in regards to automotive digital marketing, when he stated “Find out where the people are going and get there first” – remarkable because Twain lived from 1835 – 1910, the first automobile was introduced to the masses in 1892 and Al Gore hadn’t invented the internet yet…

However Twain early on seemed to have had developed a common sense business acumen “to capture people’s interest in your story, product, your business and show them along the buying cycle, that you’ll be always there, on their side not leaving them out of sight – be already there when they (the consumers) arrive…

I believe we all can agree on the fact that the old purchase behavior and model has changed. From the prior rigid and linear path of offline marketing stimulus to a more circular online advertising stimulus – capturing buyer’s through metrics and their online behavior.

Similar to the old offline marketing and advertising approach, creating a lot of noise, occupying ad clutter exposure of e.g. Home Décor magazines of more of 60% advertising pages – the online world is experiencing a renaissance of this ad-noise, which I will compare to the virtual “Time Square” of online exposure. Instead having high raise buildings with neon boards and messages flashing up and down the strip some of the websites you are opening in your browsers are giving me the same feel – over exaggerating ad messages from all kind f businesses, display ads, tower displays, etc…it almost feels like that marketers and advertisers using the exactly same marketing strategies we have used for decades – this time only online, flashy, blinking and even more overkill.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to accommodate in today’s buyer world their needs, their online habits, their time on how the decide to research and buy – especially knowing so much more through our analytics websites and web traffic is revealing?

With an extensive research and a goal to create “smart advertising”, David Winter, VP of Business Intelligence at Cobalt asked his team of 70 “analytical geeks” and “introverted metric junkies” and to look at the online behavior of thousands of anonymous automotive shoppers across dealer, OEM and 3^rd party websites.  What they found were numerous indicators that the linear shipping behavior “Stimulus – Negotiation – Purchase” of car shoppers is a thing of the past.

Today’s car buyer wants to buy and/or research on their time card and their leisure and not on the pushy approach too many marketers are still suggesting is working – like the so well know “email blast”, mailers and one-pager ads in Saturdays newspaper.

Like Twain said “….find out where people going….” – Winter’s research explored numerous different types of buyers. Three generic shopping personas in particular, the Modern Family, Miss Pop-culture and Mr. Contractor had one thing in common – while they never send an email lead to any of their dealerships, the research captured what inventory they were surfing, which VDP’s they were researching, which Hours and Directions pages they viewed as they planned a visit to the dealership.    If we only have this information, and not an email lead how do we “…find out where the people are going…”, or more importantly, guide them to come to our stores?

These insights emphasize the role Remarketing can play in your store’s marketing strategy. Thanks to a Remarketing tool (cookie), which were embedded inside the surfed websites and could relocate the three buyer types mentioned above during their daily online behavior, the dealership and the OEM marketing messages could be reapplied for exposure over and over again on all other 3^rd party websites the consumers surfed and visited from there on.

The research and results indicated that when a Remarketing Cookie was applied and the message was brought to the consumers over and over again, the dealership had a chance again to re-win this consumer to sell a car or win the business. In our case of the 3 consumers…

Miss Pop-Culture went back to the dealership she initially had visited and surfed their VDP over and over again after 30 days – ending up buying a car

Mr. Contractor ended up buying the brand and model he decided on from the get-go after 20+ days, and even so he did not cross-shop Makes, he shopped more than 20 different dealerships only then to go back to the “guys” who he had visited first and who were using smart advertising in form of remarketing.

The Modern Family showed exactly the same pattern than the other two above – the only mayor difference was that their purchase process ended up being more than 90 days. Understandable considering how a modern family functions today with all the errands like Mini League on Tuesday and Saturday, Sophie’s ballet on Wednesday, Girl’s night out for mom on Friday and so on…

With the age of remarketing your dealership will have the opportunity to be always first in row for all these shoppers researching your inventory and website. With this first virtual touch-point your chance are increasing dramatically to close a deal down the new purchase path. Your dealership name can and should be out there with any minute, showing your future customer’s “that you know where the people are going”, and you’ll be already there and waiting. 

It hit me like a ton of bricks while reading about Coca Cola's and Content Marketing Institute Guru Joe Pulizzi’s vision last month.  Pulizzi stated that "Coca-Cola is betting their farm on content creation." Going forward, the soft drink giant will rest most of its strategic marketing vision on the principles of content marketing.

As I stated in my late 2011 article “Why Context is King – and not Content!” one thing is crystal clear in my view – companies are beginning to finally see the value in creating rich content, the kind which inspires more valuable context and interaction.

So, how will Coca Cola address this new approach dubbed “Content 2020?”

They came up with ten chapters of their Liquid Content vision, from which I took three topics and transferred them into my vision on how I would set them into action for my dealership(s).

VJ’s Chapter 1: MOVE FROM CREATIVE EXCELLENCE TO CONTENT EXCELLENCE

Creative Excellence:

I am sure you have heard and seen dealerships announcing their yearly scholarship award on Facebook or the local press. They select a student and highlight their achievements. The scholarship award is often a car, which will be given to the student for a certain time, photos are taken, maybe even some large advertising stickers are placed on the vehicle. The ceremony comes to an end – the student leaves the lot – the story is a wrap (End of the creative excellence).

Content Excellence:

Take it up a notch. To make this student/car story a liquid and linked content development story you may consider contracting this student - to write and report about her endeavor in the new ride. Let her take videos on how 17 or 18 people actually will fit in the Beetle; let her Foursquare about the spring break road trip and the gas she was saving with the Civic or how much she actually is in love with her new Yaris, which now carries the name “Puggle, which was found during a Facebook friends poll…

Similar to a shaken Coca Cola bottle  – this so-called liquid content will swap and spray all over, and a formerly stale story just became a more emotional and impacting life cycle story.

VJ’s Chapter 2: POSITIVELY IMPACT THE LIFE OF YOUR CONSUMERS

With its new marketing umbrella theme “live positively,” Coca Cola has found a way to outline stories on how their products will add significant value to people’s lives. The campaign reminds of the Volkswagen’s BlueMotion Roulette story, which took place in Norway and consisted of more than 40,000 participants (and NEW Facebook friends) placing bids on how far the Golf can drive with just one tank on diesel.

The message was clear defined: save at the gas pump and perserve nature by lessening your impact on the environment. Because you could only guess once 160.000 consumers actually went to the VW Blue Motion site in a time span of two weeks, studied the technology and fuel consumption, calculated potential gas mileage and placed bids for a chance to win the BlueMotion Golf.

With this kind of 21^st century scavenger hunt, the consumer took engagement with a brand in their own hands. 6,000 Facebook posts from eager spectators were answered by VW – incredible number considering Norway is a small country.

So can you as a dealer duplicate this kind of success?

Yes, you can – maybe not in form or the scale of tens of thousands ofinteractions, but certainly you can apply these same principles. Just consider the Drive for the Cure event hosted by the Bergstrom Automotive, Grand Chute, WI in August 2011. With a Facebook Fellowship of almost 6,000 fans, news coverage on Channel Fox11 and an active approach of Q&A on the social media front, the group was able to raise their donation goal of $50k.

During the event, followers were able to follow the event’s progress – seeing spikes of Facebook interaction of more than 60 conversations, 70 views on YouTube – not even considering the word-of-mouth action which took locally place at the dealership grounds.

Even after the event, people were still commenting on the success and the approach for volunteering the next event! I guess you can say that here were some “Bergstrom” brand evangelists created.So,do we think this business was “positively impacting the life of their consumers” and used a good portion of social engagement and the principles of liquid content? Yes! And I love this story!

VJ’S CHAPTER: USE THE 70/20/10 FORMULA FOR CREATIVE BRAVERY

Coca-Cola wants to encourage creativity and bravery inside their marketing operations and developed the formula 70/20/10 which reads

• <>70% of new content will be considered low risk content. Another name you can call it “bread and butter content.” This content should not take long to create and will weave into your entire content strategy
• <>20% is an extension of the bread and butter content which has worked so far well in the past – this time newly packed with wording and “content”
• <>10% of your content strategy will be new and totally hit on the meaning of creativity. It needs to revolve around your brand and totally new ideas, never done and/or used before.

The recipe will be successful when your new approach on content and context is continuously revamping new ideas and imagination and avoids recycling already portrayed ideas and themes from the past.So the proverb "No Risk - No Gain" seems to be the new approach on delivering genius content ideas spreading into a much wider context strategy down the road.

Please take also a look on how Coca Cola’s Joe Pulizzi had these videos for his Marketing team made, and to show them visual context of his brilliant ideas.

------------------------

It hit me like a ton of bricks while reading about Coca Cola's and Content Marketing Institute Guru Joe Pulizzi’s vision last month.  Pulizzi stated that "Coca-Cola is betting their farm on content creation." Going forward, the soft drink giant will rest most of its strategic marketing vision on the principles of content marketing.

As I stated in my late 2011 article “Why Context is King – and not Content!” one thing is crystal clear in my view – companies are beginning to finally see the value in creating rich content, the kind which inspires more valuable context and interaction.

So, how will Coca Cola address this new approach dubbed “Content 2020?”

They came up with ten chapters of their Liquid Content vision, from which I took three topics and transferred them into my vision on how I would set them into action for my dealership(s).

VJ’s Chapter 1: MOVE FROM CREATIVE EXCELLENCE TO CONTENT EXCELLENCE

Creative Excellence:

I am sure you have heard and seen dealerships announcing their yearly scholarship award on Facebook or the local press. They select a student and highlight their achievements. The scholarship award is often a car, which will be given to the student for a certain time, photos are taken, maybe even some large advertising stickers are placed on the vehicle. The ceremony comes to an end – the student leaves the lot – the story is a wrap (End of the creative excellence).

Content Excellence:

Take it up a notch. To make this student/car story a liquid and linked content development story you may consider contracting this student - to write and report about her endeavor in the new ride. Let her take videos on how 17 or 18 people actually will fit in the Beetle; let her Foursquare about the spring break road trip and the gas she was saving with the Civic or how much she actually is in love with her new Yaris, which now carries the name “Puggle, which was found during a Facebook friends poll…

Similar to a shaken Coca Cola bottle  – this so-called liquid content will swap and spray all over, and a formerly stale story just became a more emotional and impacting life cycle story.

VJ’s Chapter 2: POSITIVELY IMPACT THE LIFE OF YOUR CONSUMERS

With its new marketing umbrella theme “live positively,” Coca Cola has found a way to outline stories on how their products will add significant value to people’s lives. The campaign reminds of the Volkswagen’s BlueMotion Roulette story, which took place in Norway and consisted of more than 40,000 participants (and NEW Facebook friends) placing bids on how far the Golf can drive with just one tank on diesel.

The message was clear defined: save at the gas pump and perserve nature by lessening your impact on the environment. Because you could only guess once 160.000 consumers actually went to the VW Blue Motion site in a time span of two weeks, studied the technology and fuel consumption, calculated potential gas mileage and placed bids for a chance to win the BlueMotion Golf.

With this kind of 21^st century scavenger hunt, the consumer took engagement with a brand in their own hands. 6,000 Facebook posts from eager spectators were answered by VW – incredible number considering Norway is a small country.

So can you as a dealer duplicate this kind of success?

Yes, you can – maybe not in form or the scale of tens of thousands ofinteractions, but certainly you can apply these same principles. Just consider the Drive for the Cure event hosted by the Bergstrom Automotive, Grand Chute, WI in August 2011. With a Facebook Fellowship of almost 6,000 fans, news coverage on Channel Fox11 and an active approach of Q&A on the social media front, the group was able to raise their donation goal of $50k.

During the event, followers were able to follow the event’s progress – seeing spikes of Facebook interaction of more than 60 conversations, 70 views on YouTube – not even considering the word-of-mouth action which took locally place at the dealership grounds.

Even after the event, people were still commenting on the success and the approach for volunteering the next event! I guess you can say that here were some “Bergstrom” brand evangelists created.So,do we think this business was “positively impacting the life of their consumers” and used a good portion of social engagement and the principles of liquid content? Yes! And I love this story!

VJ’S CHAPTER: USE THE 70/20/10 FORMULA FOR CREATIVE BRAVERY

Coca-Cola wants to encourage creativity and bravery inside their marketing operations and developed the formula 70/20/10 which reads

• <>70% of new content will be considered low risk content. Another name you can call it “bread and butter content.” This content should not take long to create and will weave into your entire content strategy
• <>20% is an extension of the bread and butter content which has worked so far well in the past – this time newly packed with wording and “content”
• <>10% of your content strategy will be new and totally hit on the meaning of creativity. It needs to revolve around your brand and totally new ideas, never done and/or used before.

The recipe will be successful when your new approach on content and context is continuously revamping new ideas and imagination and avoids recycling already portrayed ideas and themes from the past.So the proverb "No Risk - No Gain" seems to be the new approach on delivering genius content ideas spreading into a much wider context strategy down the road.

Please take also a look on how Coca Cola’s Joe Pulizzi had these videos for his Marketing team made, and to show them visual context of his brilliant ideas.

------------------------

Provocative question but the studies shown here can explain why using a mobile advertising strategy in your digital marketing mix could be a valid Millenial strategy for your business.

Provocative question but the studies shown here can explain why using a mobile advertising strategy in your digital marketing mix could be a valid Millenial strategy for your business.

No turning back anylonger - Mobile is a rolling thunder and won't disappear. As the IBM study in the article "The Year of Mobile Marketing" as well as the just yesterday released Forrester Research prediction "having One-Billion Smartphone users by 2016 is pointing out - everybody wants to be mobile.

The integrated graphic on Local Mobile Search below is making an even stronger point: Search was used strongly performed on the desktop just a year ago - this model is changing. 80% of searchers research online are being today performed in a radius between 10 - 20 miles of the businesses they possibly will consider as a vendor.

Check out a few more brilliant facts below:

No turning back anylonger - Mobile is a rolling thunder and won't disappear. As the IBM study in the article "The Year of Mobile Marketing" as well as the just yesterday released Forrester Research prediction "having One-Billion Smartphone users by 2016 is pointing out - everybody wants to be mobile.

The integrated graphic on Local Mobile Search below is making an even stronger point: Search was used strongly performed on the desktop just a year ago - this model is changing. 80% of searchers research online are being today performed in a radius between 10 - 20 miles of the businesses they possibly will consider as a vendor.

Check out a few more brilliant facts below:

Shocking! Survey finds Ad Agencies are slow when adapting online marketing!

Today’s top story on Marketing Profs (insert link) literally hit me like a ton of bricks, and I’m guessing you’ll be just as surprised and maybe even shocked as well.  According to the latest questionnaire  from-CMO Council  addressed to Senior Level Marketing professionals, just one out of ten business marketing leaders are saying that traditional advertising companies are doing a good job in offering, evolving and servicing their clientele well in regards to online marketing and the challenges the Digital Age brings.

Taking an even closer look to the CMO Council survey; more senior marketers (48%) are on the move – from their prior hired ad agencies over to digital marketing solution and service providers, who can provide seamless integrated digital capacities like social media, mobile and interactive strategies. Further, senior marketers are concerned about agencies lagging or struggling to adapt their core competencies, showing:

• 1.) Even though agencies are acquiring digital marketing capabilities, they are not able to fully integrate their efforts (29%)
• 2.) 22% of senior marketers are of the opinion that agencies are still playing catching up to new technology
• 3.) And 22% say agencies are still struggling with their transition from their “old” business models and service offerings into “new” digital
• 4.) Just 9% are thinking ad agencies doing a good job on “Digital”

Does that mean your agency won’t show the results you are hoping for - especially on the digital front? Hopefully not, but to combat this possibility, make sure you create a “cheat-sheet” with questions you will ask your current ad agency at your next meeting. Find out if they are able to produce the results you are craving right away:

• a) Have them describe how automotive shoppers use traditional and online media today. Are they current with the latest research?
• b) How do you leverage our consumer’s interest in our Brand, Make and Model, combining the national OEM digital marketing efforts with our ambitions to steer created curiosity towards our website and brick & mortar location(s)?
• c) How fast is your turnaround when ad messages on national campaigns are changing? What does your turnkey support look like?
• d) Knowing that a consumer needs around 7 triggers/ad impressions to take (such as researching or even submitting a leads on the advertised campaign, how do you assure to have our ads “in their face” all the time?
• e) How will you remarket our efforts?How can you reinforce our advertising by driving traffic towards our campaign message?
• f) Can you provide a personalized campaign website anytime when OEM messages will change?
• g) Let them walk you through their reporting and what kind of metrics they will provide to you. We all know by now that online measurability will show you clear and actionable data and results helps you to understand the impact of your online advertising and will easily validate the return of your digital marketing investment.

It seems to be that these are tough questions – but think about it – it is your money you are spending, and you want to make sure that you leverage all the new, digital goodies which make online marketing oriented dealer(s) successful.

Every agency will tell you they are digital experts. The best way to judge their expertise is for them to walk through the details of campaigns they have run for others, and the results they have achieved. The great thing about digital is its measurability – have them show their numbers, and tell you what they can deliver for you!

Shocking! Survey finds Ad Agencies are slow when adapting online marketing!

Today’s top story on Marketing Profs (insert link) literally hit me like a ton of bricks, and I’m guessing you’ll be just as surprised and maybe even shocked as well.  According to the latest questionnaire  from-CMO Council  addressed to Senior Level Marketing professionals, just one out of ten business marketing leaders are saying that traditional advertising companies are doing a good job in offering, evolving and servicing their clientele well in regards to online marketing and the challenges the Digital Age brings.

Taking an even closer look to the CMO Council survey; more senior marketers (48%) are on the move – from their prior hired ad agencies over to digital marketing solution and service providers, who can provide seamless integrated digital capacities like social media, mobile and interactive strategies. Further, senior marketers are concerned about agencies lagging or struggling to adapt their core competencies, showing:

• 1.) Even though agencies are acquiring digital marketing capabilities, they are not able to fully integrate their efforts (29%)
• 2.) 22% of senior marketers are of the opinion that agencies are still playing catching up to new technology
• 3.) And 22% say agencies are still struggling with their transition from their “old” business models and service offerings into “new” digital
• 4.) Just 9% are thinking ad agencies doing a good job on “Digital”

Does that mean your agency won’t show the results you are hoping for - especially on the digital front? Hopefully not, but to combat this possibility, make sure you create a “cheat-sheet” with questions you will ask your current ad agency at your next meeting. Find out if they are able to produce the results you are craving right away:

• a) Have them describe how automotive shoppers use traditional and online media today. Are they current with the latest research?
• b) How do you leverage our consumer’s interest in our Brand, Make and Model, combining the national OEM digital marketing efforts with our ambitions to steer created curiosity towards our website and brick & mortar location(s)?
• c) How fast is your turnaround when ad messages on national campaigns are changing? What does your turnkey support look like?
• d) Knowing that a consumer needs around 7 triggers/ad impressions to take (such as researching or even submitting a leads on the advertised campaign, how do you assure to have our ads “in their face” all the time?
• e) How will you remarket our efforts?How can you reinforce our advertising by driving traffic towards our campaign message?
• f) Can you provide a personalized campaign website anytime when OEM messages will change?
• g) Let them walk you through their reporting and what kind of metrics they will provide to you. We all know by now that online measurability will show you clear and actionable data and results helps you to understand the impact of your online advertising and will easily validate the return of your digital marketing investment.

It seems to be that these are tough questions – but think about it – it is your money you are spending, and you want to make sure that you leverage all the new, digital goodies which make online marketing oriented dealer(s) successful.

Every agency will tell you they are digital experts. The best way to judge their expertise is for them to walk through the details of campaigns they have run for others, and the results they have achieved. The great thing about digital is its measurability – have them show their numbers, and tell you what they can deliver for you!