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. 

A survey of social brand reception by gender, country and age

With my two posts “Why Online & Offline Marketing could be best partners in crime” and “Why should you listen to the Consumer Voice” I am concluding today with “Brands and Friends – Your Social Opportunity” the series of reflections on the TNS Digital Life Study. 

The question was: “How open are people to brands on Social Networks?”

The Findings: The big elephant in the room here – There is great acceptance and openness from consumers to brands in socially networked brands when the market in the country is considered “fast growing”. On the other hand, there is much higher brand resistance from consumers when in a developed market. For us here in the U.S., this means that the approach to connecting with potential customers needs to be carefully planned. According to the TNS study, the stakes are for damaging a brand, image, and perception are much higher in countries like the U.S. and Central Europe due to social resistance. The luckiest retailers are in Russia, where 17% of people are more open to brands than they are resistant to them.

Focus U.S.A.: People are more resistant to buy actually products they are not familiar with than they are open to learn about them online through social networks. Even so social networks are not considered the most ideal spaces for a retail business; it became clear that the growing popularity of group buying sites like Groupon, Yipit, Livingsocial and others opened up new opportunities as we can see here in the example below.

With localizing and personalizing the business’s digital footprint the retailers could be able to sell or offer a service more overtly rather than pushing too many offers in too frequent manner into their social media streams and networks. It is considered a more unapologetically approach to push these offers onto group buying sites rather than be a social spammer. Driving Traffic to the store – Yes! Creating profits – Depends!

Another interesting finding of this study was looking into gender behavior. Do Women approach brands on social networks different than men? – And? Any guesses? You have 3 more seconds to find out…Okay, here we go:

Survey question: How do you feel about finding out about a brand through a social network?

11% of women in the U.S. are more open to brands than they are resistant to them. Men on the other hand are  only 7% more open to connect via social.

Follow-up survey question: How do you feel about buying products through a social network connection?

[BUMMER ALERT!] 16% of the females are more resistant to brands than they are open to them and just 8% of the males showed more resistance to brands than openness.

VJ’s Question: Knowing now that there are indeed differences in brand acceptance and resistance between male and female – how does the research data reflects on age groups? Is there a chance for us dealerships to target in particular Boomers, Gen-X’s and Millenals (a.k.a. Gen Y’s)?  

VJ’s Answer: “Yes – and - No.”Hold on…I am not at all indecisive to provide you a clear answer. Here is why I came to this mixed conclusion.

According to the Data research of the TNS Digital Study – “Age Does NOT Matter”. [Quote]: Globally people’s openness or resistance for brands on social networks is NOT dependent on age. There is an assumption that younger people are more open, but this study shows that older age groups are as open to brands as their younger counterparts. [Quote-end]

Here are the figures I could dug out for you and indeed the fluctuation of the percentage points are minimal.

So YES, there is a chance to target your marketing messages and social network approach more towards your clientele, focusing on the more reciptive age groups discussed above.

Let’s take our future consumers here at the dealerships – The Millenials. From studies by Exact Target 2010, PEW Research and Morepace Omnibus Report we know that Millenials will “befriend” 51% of brands they like on Facebook. Keep in mind, BRANDS THEY LIKE, and not brands you think they should like! Furthermore, the study states that when Millenials are Facebook friends with an offline retailer (yes, that is you, the dealership) 26% LIKE special offers – again, please read carefully, - and I will spell it out for you “S P E C I A L offers”. Do not use social media “spam them to death” with countless oil-change coupons or car detail specials – they don’t care. Rather tease them with brand clothing and accessories, which appeals more to their brand loyalty. Hip is in! (Scion dealers, VW dealers, Hyundai – are you listening?!).

When looking at the Gen-X clientele consider communicating all the things what could make their life easier, when dealing with your dealership. No matter if you do it via social, in-store or in your marketing messages off- and online. A Nielsen study found that for this age group the convenience factor is considered huge. So when you have a 5-10 miles radius loaner car drop-off and pick-up, – communicate about it. When you want to display your monthly specials on let’s say Facebook, do so in a separate tab of your Facebook Business Page. Gen-X knows how and where to find your offers, believe me – you just need to make sure there are online, considering 80% are checking social networks on a daily basis.

Which brings me to the last group – the Baby Boomers. They are one of the fastest growing groups around social networking. They are still a little bit shy around Twitter, but Facebook plays a huge factor for them to re-connect with all school friends and colleagues. They love to see Reward Programs from businesses they follow. So similar to a frequent flyer card, why not create something similar for your fixed operations department and communicate with messages targeted to them. Loyalty is still highest priority for them and when combined with some savings during a service visit – you’ll win!

I hope you got some brain food reading throughout my “Trilogy” of this TNS Digital Life Study, and I hope you will see the word “Marketing” not any longer as a noun, but foremost as a verb…because it is!

Happy selling and do the right marketing!

A survey of social brand reception by gender, country and age

With my two posts “Why Online & Offline Marketing could be best partners in crime” and “Why should you listen to the Consumer Voice” I am concluding today with “Brands and Friends – Your Social Opportunity” the series of reflections on the TNS Digital Life Study. 

The question was: “How open are people to brands on Social Networks?”

The Findings: The big elephant in the room here – There is great acceptance and openness from consumers to brands in socially networked brands when the market in the country is considered “fast growing”. On the other hand, there is much higher brand resistance from consumers when in a developed market. For us here in the U.S., this means that the approach to connecting with potential customers needs to be carefully planned. According to the TNS study, the stakes are for damaging a brand, image, and perception are much higher in countries like the U.S. and Central Europe due to social resistance. The luckiest retailers are in Russia, where 17% of people are more open to brands than they are resistant to them.

Focus U.S.A.: People are more resistant to buy actually products they are not familiar with than they are open to learn about them online through social networks. Even so social networks are not considered the most ideal spaces for a retail business; it became clear that the growing popularity of group buying sites like Groupon, Yipit, Livingsocial and others opened up new opportunities as we can see here in the example below.

With localizing and personalizing the business’s digital footprint the retailers could be able to sell or offer a service more overtly rather than pushing too many offers in too frequent manner into their social media streams and networks. It is considered a more unapologetically approach to push these offers onto group buying sites rather than be a social spammer. Driving Traffic to the store – Yes! Creating profits – Depends!

Another interesting finding of this study was looking into gender behavior. Do Women approach brands on social networks different than men? – And? Any guesses? You have 3 more seconds to find out…Okay, here we go:

Survey question: How do you feel about finding out about a brand through a social network?

11% of women in the U.S. are more open to brands than they are resistant to them. Men on the other hand are  only 7% more open to connect via social.

Follow-up survey question: How do you feel about buying products through a social network connection?

[BUMMER ALERT!] 16% of the females are more resistant to brands than they are open to them and just 8% of the males showed more resistance to brands than openness.

VJ’s Question: Knowing now that there are indeed differences in brand acceptance and resistance between male and female – how does the research data reflects on age groups? Is there a chance for us dealerships to target in particular Boomers, Gen-X’s and Millenals (a.k.a. Gen Y’s)?  

VJ’s Answer: “Yes – and - No.”Hold on…I am not at all indecisive to provide you a clear answer. Here is why I came to this mixed conclusion.

According to the Data research of the TNS Digital Study – “Age Does NOT Matter”. [Quote]: Globally people’s openness or resistance for brands on social networks is NOT dependent on age. There is an assumption that younger people are more open, but this study shows that older age groups are as open to brands as their younger counterparts. [Quote-end]

Here are the figures I could dug out for you and indeed the fluctuation of the percentage points are minimal.

So YES, there is a chance to target your marketing messages and social network approach more towards your clientele, focusing on the more reciptive age groups discussed above.

Let’s take our future consumers here at the dealerships – The Millenials. From studies by Exact Target 2010, PEW Research and Morepace Omnibus Report we know that Millenials will “befriend” 51% of brands they like on Facebook. Keep in mind, BRANDS THEY LIKE, and not brands you think they should like! Furthermore, the study states that when Millenials are Facebook friends with an offline retailer (yes, that is you, the dealership) 26% LIKE special offers – again, please read carefully, - and I will spell it out for you “S P E C I A L offers”. Do not use social media “spam them to death” with countless oil-change coupons or car detail specials – they don’t care. Rather tease them with brand clothing and accessories, which appeals more to their brand loyalty. Hip is in! (Scion dealers, VW dealers, Hyundai – are you listening?!).

When looking at the Gen-X clientele consider communicating all the things what could make their life easier, when dealing with your dealership. No matter if you do it via social, in-store or in your marketing messages off- and online. A Nielsen study found that for this age group the convenience factor is considered huge. So when you have a 5-10 miles radius loaner car drop-off and pick-up, – communicate about it. When you want to display your monthly specials on let’s say Facebook, do so in a separate tab of your Facebook Business Page. Gen-X knows how and where to find your offers, believe me – you just need to make sure there are online, considering 80% are checking social networks on a daily basis.

Which brings me to the last group – the Baby Boomers. They are one of the fastest growing groups around social networking. They are still a little bit shy around Twitter, but Facebook plays a huge factor for them to re-connect with all school friends and colleagues. They love to see Reward Programs from businesses they follow. So similar to a frequent flyer card, why not create something similar for your fixed operations department and communicate with messages targeted to them. Loyalty is still highest priority for them and when combined with some savings during a service visit – you’ll win!

I hope you got some brain food reading throughout my “Trilogy” of this TNS Digital Life Study, and I hope you will see the word “Marketing” not any longer as a noun, but foremost as a verb…because it is!

Happy selling and do the right marketing!

Want it – Read it – Listened to it – or How to Build Your Context Library

It hit me like a ton of bricks when Gary Vaynerchuk entered the stage during the Driving Sales Executive Summit in Las Vegas this week and shouted out “SEO and Content is Dead – Context is the new King” – and I believe he has a very valid point here.  

With Google+ now open for everyone, Facebook announcing new changes on an almost weekly basis that allow fans to tell their friends not only what they “LIKE” but very soon even having buttons like “Want It” – have “Read It” and “Listened to it”.  

Because of this extension of features we will have an enormous avalanche of CONTEXT rolling towards us. With Google+ circles for example, we see not only what our friends have eaten, but when, where and if it was great. I can see which book my closer circle of friends just finished reading (the book “Go Giver”) and their praise, triggering me to buy it instantly on Amazon’s Kindle store. (Brian Pasch what I am referring to;))  

With this created context I as a consumer now have a much more pinpointed “search” result – even though I didn’t start my Google search engine at this point. The so-called Social Graph of immediate circles, friends or followers will be the new influential factors for checking out new businesses or weighing in on recommendations for which car to test drive or even to buy.  

As Gary Vaynerchuck said, “The more we create context, the more our wallet is going to be decided based on our friends.”

Let’s face it: Isn’t Google feeling more and more cluttered and diluted when it comes to finding exactly what you are craving or searching for? Even the so-called long-tail search terms sometimes leave me frustrated on search engines. I believe that just an SEO strategy alone is not cutting it any longer for dealerships or any other business. The task for 2012 is to have a well-balanced Content and Context strategy in place.  

So what would be my strategy in a dealership to build what I call a Context Index Library?

• Logging in everyday (as a ritual) into search.twitter.com and choose advanced search. In my example, I chose to look for tweets about “Honda” in “Atlanta” within a radius of “15 miles” – QUESTION: Do you think I could somehow engage with the following people below?! ANSWER: You bet! I see possibilities for Sales and Service (Dent removal) here, when approached right.

[Twitter search is next to Google, and YouTube the next "search engine" to consider to find context rich information]

• Make sure you ask your new or existing customers to join and LIKE you on Facebook. A study shown and presented by Kevin Root and Matt Murray during the DSES event showed that 25% of those questioned would say “Yes, I will like you” and 82% of these would actually follow through to “Like” you on Facebook. Pretty good outcome when you ask me, and again it tells us, “When you do not ask you won’t receive!”

• Last but not least. Create context for your clientele, not just context you have on your website, but context on your Facebook business page, your Twitter account, your YouTube channel and hopefully your blog. No die-hard sales pitch but context about everything and everybody.

Some Great Context Examples:

1) World Hyundai does movie reviews and movie ticket giveaways

2) Hare Chevrolet, who posted a “Favorite Things about Fall” poll and in no time received 10 comments.

Using techniques like these, you can then weave the fan responses into your next marketing gig, like hosting a “Warm Cider Tasting Event” or even a “Pumpkin Carving Event” with prices around the car…think about it!  

Please let me know in the comment section how you introduce your context into your marketing strategy and what you found “really works for you”.

Happy Selling and of course do your context marketing constantly!  

Want it – Read it – Listened to it – or How to Build Your Context Library

It hit me like a ton of bricks when Gary Vaynerchuk entered the stage during the Driving Sales Executive Summit in Las Vegas this week and shouted out “SEO and Content is Dead – Context is the new King” – and I believe he has a very valid point here.  

With Google+ now open for everyone, Facebook announcing new changes on an almost weekly basis that allow fans to tell their friends not only what they “LIKE” but very soon even having buttons like “Want It” – have “Read It” and “Listened to it”.  

Because of this extension of features we will have an enormous avalanche of CONTEXT rolling towards us. With Google+ circles for example, we see not only what our friends have eaten, but when, where and if it was great. I can see which book my closer circle of friends just finished reading (the book “Go Giver”) and their praise, triggering me to buy it instantly on Amazon’s Kindle store. (Brian Pasch what I am referring to;))  

With this created context I as a consumer now have a much more pinpointed “search” result – even though I didn’t start my Google search engine at this point. The so-called Social Graph of immediate circles, friends or followers will be the new influential factors for checking out new businesses or weighing in on recommendations for which car to test drive or even to buy.  

As Gary Vaynerchuck said, “The more we create context, the more our wallet is going to be decided based on our friends.”

Let’s face it: Isn’t Google feeling more and more cluttered and diluted when it comes to finding exactly what you are craving or searching for? Even the so-called long-tail search terms sometimes leave me frustrated on search engines. I believe that just an SEO strategy alone is not cutting it any longer for dealerships or any other business. The task for 2012 is to have a well-balanced Content and Context strategy in place.  

So what would be my strategy in a dealership to build what I call a Context Index Library?

• Logging in everyday (as a ritual) into search.twitter.com and choose advanced search. In my example, I chose to look for tweets about “Honda” in “Atlanta” within a radius of “15 miles” – QUESTION: Do you think I could somehow engage with the following people below?! ANSWER: You bet! I see possibilities for Sales and Service (Dent removal) here, when approached right.

[Twitter search is next to Google, and YouTube the next "search engine" to consider to find context rich information]

• Make sure you ask your new or existing customers to join and LIKE you on Facebook. A study shown and presented by Kevin Root and Matt Murray during the DSES event showed that 25% of those questioned would say “Yes, I will like you” and 82% of these would actually follow through to “Like” you on Facebook. Pretty good outcome when you ask me, and again it tells us, “When you do not ask you won’t receive!”

• Last but not least. Create context for your clientele, not just context you have on your website, but context on your Facebook business page, your Twitter account, your YouTube channel and hopefully your blog. No die-hard sales pitch but context about everything and everybody.

Some Great Context Examples:

1) World Hyundai does movie reviews and movie ticket giveaways

2) Hare Chevrolet, who posted a “Favorite Things about Fall” poll and in no time received 10 comments.

Using techniques like these, you can then weave the fan responses into your next marketing gig, like hosting a “Warm Cider Tasting Event” or even a “Pumpkin Carving Event” with prices around the car…think about it!  

Please let me know in the comment section how you introduce your context into your marketing strategy and what you found “really works for you”.

Happy Selling and of course do your context marketing constantly!  

Chapter IV - What not to do when looking into your website to figure out “is it working”?

As you will see down the line, a study confirms that we car sales people just obsess too much about it. What I mean is we constantly search for the “holy grail” in making a website flashy, pretty, and interactive with the latest gadget out there in the industry.

I get it – we possibly think we need to impress our potential new customers who have finally found our website – us picturing them glaring at their screen with Ohhhhs and Ahhhs coming out of their mouth. But sorry to disappoint you – we need to wake you up a little bit more roughly, like my grandma used to do when my brothers and I slept in too long, and poured a nice cold and refreshing glass of water in our faces.

The majority of customers reaching a desired website location wants just one thing: 

- “THE WEBSITE MAKES IT EASY FOR ME TO FIND WHAT I AM LOOKING FOR” – fact!

An entire 76% of questioned consumers by HubSpot in the second quarter of this year saw this as the most important factor for them to remain on the site and possibly purchase from the chosen vendor’s website.

Arguments from GMs and GSMs (and yes, even Internet Managers) such as “My website needs to look nice and pretty,” doesn’t fly and it is a presumption that we dealers just know it all. I heard it when I started back in a dealership, and I hear it still today as I am giving speeches or trainings on industry events. “My website looks too plain” or “why don’t I have anything moving in my website, like a running banner…?” – After seeing the results of the HubSpot study, it is very easy to give a response – because it won’t help!

Only 10% of consumers “want to see a pretty websites” and just 9% “love to experience a cutting edge interactive” website. Bummer…!!!

When I came back into the dealer world, the first thing I did was take down the “walking in lady telling me on the website how to appraise my current car”… I think she is just annoying and when getting into my backend looking at the websites duration time, the numbers pretty much told me “your conversion sucks.”

Looking again on the sites and pages duration time just 4 weeks later– surprise, surprise – the time my customers spent with me on the website had increased 38% and the numbers of pages visited tripled. Since I had these results with a minor adjustment (taking down the virtual spokesperson), I also saved some money on not paying any longer for this service.

I also love to de-clutter my websites. I go for clean, structured design with a natural feel of where to go next, well placed call to action buttons, and links inside the pages which will always lead back to the most profitable centers of my website – the service department, the used car inventory, used car specials, new car specials and the new car inventory.  

When having a smart linkage strategy, the success of page conversion and form submissions will naturally appear.

Chapter IV - What not to do when looking into your website to figure out “is it working”?

As you will see down the line, a study confirms that we car sales people just obsess too much about it. What I mean is we constantly search for the “holy grail” in making a website flashy, pretty, and interactive with the latest gadget out there in the industry.

I get it – we possibly think we need to impress our potential new customers who have finally found our website – us picturing them glaring at their screen with Ohhhhs and Ahhhs coming out of their mouth. But sorry to disappoint you – we need to wake you up a little bit more roughly, like my grandma used to do when my brothers and I slept in too long, and poured a nice cold and refreshing glass of water in our faces.

The majority of customers reaching a desired website location wants just one thing: 

- “THE WEBSITE MAKES IT EASY FOR ME TO FIND WHAT I AM LOOKING FOR” – fact!

An entire 76% of questioned consumers by HubSpot in the second quarter of this year saw this as the most important factor for them to remain on the site and possibly purchase from the chosen vendor’s website.

Arguments from GMs and GSMs (and yes, even Internet Managers) such as “My website needs to look nice and pretty,” doesn’t fly and it is a presumption that we dealers just know it all. I heard it when I started back in a dealership, and I hear it still today as I am giving speeches or trainings on industry events. “My website looks too plain” or “why don’t I have anything moving in my website, like a running banner…?” – After seeing the results of the HubSpot study, it is very easy to give a response – because it won’t help!

Only 10% of consumers “want to see a pretty websites” and just 9% “love to experience a cutting edge interactive” website. Bummer…!!!

When I came back into the dealer world, the first thing I did was take down the “walking in lady telling me on the website how to appraise my current car”… I think she is just annoying and when getting into my backend looking at the websites duration time, the numbers pretty much told me “your conversion sucks.”

Looking again on the sites and pages duration time just 4 weeks later– surprise, surprise – the time my customers spent with me on the website had increased 38% and the numbers of pages visited tripled. Since I had these results with a minor adjustment (taking down the virtual spokesperson), I also saved some money on not paying any longer for this service.

I also love to de-clutter my websites. I go for clean, structured design with a natural feel of where to go next, well placed call to action buttons, and links inside the pages which will always lead back to the most profitable centers of my website – the service department, the used car inventory, used car specials, new car specials and the new car inventory.  

When having a smart linkage strategy, the success of page conversion and form submissions will naturally appear.

This is the 3rd chapter of my "Diaries of an eCommerce Director", and the strategies and processes I am mentioning here are real life-time examples I did and implemented into my dealerships I had worked for.

I have visited hundreds and hundreds of dealerships over the past few years. Some of them were nice looking, some of them were elegant and others were just “awkward”. For example: Why would you as a GM or Owner love an idea during an upcoming Thanksgiving and Black Friday campaign and have your head lurking out of a turkey’s rear end – you want to be funny, alright, but do you think this idea brings you more customers during the holidays and want to buy a car from you because the idea is cute?

During my career I worked with several website providers and roughly 14 OEMs, and I discovered that website success relies on you - the eCommerce Director or Internet Manager and the support teams of the vendors working together. As so often in life, relationship is everything, and with a frequent exchange of ideas, suggestions and plans of these two parties, life should be getting easier when thinking about an ad campaign or message on your websites.

When you have an OEM endorsed website provider, I would invest in the endorsed solution first. Many shoppers are looking for that brand of car, not you, so make that “door” to the dealership as appealing and competitive as possible. It will help you as an Internet Manager to focus on the main duties of your job – processes, response time, coaching your crew, selling cars and reporting.

The other duties of creating specials, developing more content pages, graphic work are important as well, but let’s be clear here – how many of you are educated SEO specialists, graphic artists and writers – wouldn’t you rather leave it to a specialist? The good OEM programs even help you pay for these people to make your life easier. Some OEM endorsed providers will do a lot of the work of running their campaigns on your site for you. The advantage to a dealer is as clear as chicken broth, as we say in Germany. No delays to display your specials, the right numbers, the right models, the right small print. Campaigns like “Autobahn Event” or “Mr. Opportunity” are implemented right from the get-go compliant.

Be honest here, how often did you find yourself surfing hours for the right images on Google, only to create yourself an event on your website mirroring the national OEM campaign and then suddenly receiving an email of the OEM compliance department, stating that your “Civic special does show the wrong trim line and pricing”, and you need to take it down to get not flagged!

Do I hear “cookie-cutter” and “plainness” remarks? Remember what I wrote a few lines prior – you are responsible for success of your department and I expect from you to be pro-active to make your website stand out. If your site is “cookie cutter” it is because you didn’t invest to make it better. One of my sites was an OEM Cobalt site but I found out I had over 1700 design variations I could choose from.

You’ll be amazed at what you can do if you just work with your vendor.

Here are some ideas which helped me early on in my career to achieve my goal in having the best website in the city:

• Discuss with your website provider’s service person your creative ideas, and what restrictions the OEM. They look at other dealer’s sites – have them give you a tour of what they think is working well.

• Decide what keywords you want to add in the SEO of your website. Think about negative SEO keywords and competitor’s make and models to implement in your content.

• Make sure that each of the photos you want to have shown on specials, About Us and Direction pages are tagged with phrases, which are named after your models, dealership name and location. This will be easier to get picked up by our friends – the search engines.

• Develop with your service person additional pages of the models you are selling. Each model page needs to be created individual with some outbound links and cross links on some particular key phrases. Example: Model XYZ come with scheduled free maintenance for….” – scheduled free maintenance should be linked to your service page (service special, schedule service online or similar).

• DO NOT JUST COPY OEM content from the OEM website and say you have created a search engine relevant page inside your website. It actually will do nothing for you in regards to SEO. Written creative needs to be at least 70% unique in its content to be considered “worthwhile” for Google. So use the content of your OEM and just spice it up with your own words and messages, and do not forget to name your location in these model pages.

• Consider the OEM and website provider ad-packages, which will give you an entire array of digital online marketing tools. Retargeting, Mobile websites, designated phone numbers will bring you more traffic in form of phone calls. No doubt – no “yeah, but” – I am sticking to my statement, because I have had seen too often dealerships failing and to generate valuable leads, only to save a few bucks. It works, and it had worked always for me.

Last but not least – Let me reflect on the purpose of using an OEM endorsed website provider.

It is all about getting more sales by being consistent with the “personality” of the brand and leveraging the shoppers they are creating for you with their advertising.

For example, the OEM wants their customers finding a constant CI (corporate identity) and consistent message – from OEM website over to the franchise website – and so do many shoppers. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have an opportunity to convince shoppers that your store is better than the same franchise down the road. What happens when you don’t do this?

Volkswagen has a blue/white/gray scheme and I witnessed the following scenario. A dealer located in the Southwest thought it would be great to integrate a desert color palette of yellow, umbra, black and gold throughout the pages for their VW franchise. Not only was it hideous but totally denied the affiliation with the franchise. I actually listened to recorded phone calls generated from the website’s 1-800 numbers, where the customers were asking if they have VW Golf’s in their inventory! True story!

Do you think a McDonalds franchisee, who paid money, time and efforts to build his own burger restaurant and the brand in her city suddenly would come up with the idea to get rid of the branded yellow/red M and instead goes for a pink/purple expression?

Stick to the corporate identity and personality your OEM is providing to display and message your brand appropriately. You’ll get more sales.

This is the 3rd chapter of my "Diaries of an eCommerce Director", and the strategies and processes I am mentioning here are real life-time examples I did and implemented into my dealerships I had worked for.

I have visited hundreds and hundreds of dealerships over the past few years. Some of them were nice looking, some of them were elegant and others were just “awkward”. For example: Why would you as a GM or Owner love an idea during an upcoming Thanksgiving and Black Friday campaign and have your head lurking out of a turkey’s rear end – you want to be funny, alright, but do you think this idea brings you more customers during the holidays and want to buy a car from you because the idea is cute?

During my career I worked with several website providers and roughly 14 OEMs, and I discovered that website success relies on you - the eCommerce Director or Internet Manager and the support teams of the vendors working together. As so often in life, relationship is everything, and with a frequent exchange of ideas, suggestions and plans of these two parties, life should be getting easier when thinking about an ad campaign or message on your websites.

When you have an OEM endorsed website provider, I would invest in the endorsed solution first. Many shoppers are looking for that brand of car, not you, so make that “door” to the dealership as appealing and competitive as possible. It will help you as an Internet Manager to focus on the main duties of your job – processes, response time, coaching your crew, selling cars and reporting.

The other duties of creating specials, developing more content pages, graphic work are important as well, but let’s be clear here – how many of you are educated SEO specialists, graphic artists and writers – wouldn’t you rather leave it to a specialist? The good OEM programs even help you pay for these people to make your life easier. Some OEM endorsed providers will do a lot of the work of running their campaigns on your site for you. The advantage to a dealer is as clear as chicken broth, as we say in Germany. No delays to display your specials, the right numbers, the right models, the right small print. Campaigns like “Autobahn Event” or “Mr. Opportunity” are implemented right from the get-go compliant.

Be honest here, how often did you find yourself surfing hours for the right images on Google, only to create yourself an event on your website mirroring the national OEM campaign and then suddenly receiving an email of the OEM compliance department, stating that your “Civic special does show the wrong trim line and pricing”, and you need to take it down to get not flagged!

Do I hear “cookie-cutter” and “plainness” remarks? Remember what I wrote a few lines prior – you are responsible for success of your department and I expect from you to be pro-active to make your website stand out. If your site is “cookie cutter” it is because you didn’t invest to make it better. One of my sites was an OEM Cobalt site but I found out I had over 1700 design variations I could choose from.

You’ll be amazed at what you can do if you just work with your vendor.

Here are some ideas which helped me early on in my career to achieve my goal in having the best website in the city:

• Discuss with your website provider’s service person your creative ideas, and what restrictions the OEM. They look at other dealer’s sites – have them give you a tour of what they think is working well.

• Decide what keywords you want to add in the SEO of your website. Think about negative SEO keywords and competitor’s make and models to implement in your content.

• Make sure that each of the photos you want to have shown on specials, About Us and Direction pages are tagged with phrases, which are named after your models, dealership name and location. This will be easier to get picked up by our friends – the search engines.

• Develop with your service person additional pages of the models you are selling. Each model page needs to be created individual with some outbound links and cross links on some particular key phrases. Example: Model XYZ come with scheduled free maintenance for….” – scheduled free maintenance should be linked to your service page (service special, schedule service online or similar).

• DO NOT JUST COPY OEM content from the OEM website and say you have created a search engine relevant page inside your website. It actually will do nothing for you in regards to SEO. Written creative needs to be at least 70% unique in its content to be considered “worthwhile” for Google. So use the content of your OEM and just spice it up with your own words and messages, and do not forget to name your location in these model pages.

• Consider the OEM and website provider ad-packages, which will give you an entire array of digital online marketing tools. Retargeting, Mobile websites, designated phone numbers will bring you more traffic in form of phone calls. No doubt – no “yeah, but” – I am sticking to my statement, because I have had seen too often dealerships failing and to generate valuable leads, only to save a few bucks. It works, and it had worked always for me.

Last but not least – Let me reflect on the purpose of using an OEM endorsed website provider.

It is all about getting more sales by being consistent with the “personality” of the brand and leveraging the shoppers they are creating for you with their advertising.

For example, the OEM wants their customers finding a constant CI (corporate identity) and consistent message – from OEM website over to the franchise website – and so do many shoppers. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have an opportunity to convince shoppers that your store is better than the same franchise down the road. What happens when you don’t do this?

Volkswagen has a blue/white/gray scheme and I witnessed the following scenario. A dealer located in the Southwest thought it would be great to integrate a desert color palette of yellow, umbra, black and gold throughout the pages for their VW franchise. Not only was it hideous but totally denied the affiliation with the franchise. I actually listened to recorded phone calls generated from the website’s 1-800 numbers, where the customers were asking if they have VW Golf’s in their inventory! True story!

Do you think a McDonalds franchisee, who paid money, time and efforts to build his own burger restaurant and the brand in her city suddenly would come up with the idea to get rid of the branded yellow/red M and instead goes for a pink/purple expression?

Stick to the corporate identity and personality your OEM is providing to display and message your brand appropriately. You’ll get more sales.