During my last trip to my homeland Germany, I discovered how far ahead we are here in the U.S. in regards to consumer behavior and the online research we conduct around our potential car buying clientele. Don’t get me wrong- websites for German automotive dealerships exist. But as far as execution, when you see how inventory is displayed (or should I say, not displayed), how inconsistent the OEM message is portrayed on the dealership website, or why a URL name is chosen and not marketed in their off-line marketing approach – I am stunned!

These numbers become even more impactful when I share with you this research data from the current TNS Digital Life study. In this study, TNS looked at the global view of buying behavior. In this example, allow me to dissect the U.S. data based on the automotive consumer. I want to share how advanced the American online consumers are at using the web to evaluate your merchandise. It will reveal their preferred and “important decision making hubs.”

The research I am reflecting on will be split into 3 articles and released one-by-one over the term of the next 3 weeks. I hope that I will create some tipping points and brain teasers for you over this 3-week period, allowing you to reflect on your current marketing mix and what you ought to try out to find the right recipe and outcome for you.

Unpacking the Path to Purchase DATA POINTS; Part 1: The question was: “How do we decide to buy?” and “How do you become aware of a product?”

Fact: There is massive opportunity for brands to be discovered online. Although some marketing myths out there suggest that consumers won’t listen to advertising and marketing messages any longer, the data clearly shows that during the Awareness Phase, a consumer will follow a brand or product (average 3.1) onto the online path (3.5) to gather more information. The brand message here is the most influential mind trigger to get consumers interested.

When prospects finally narrow down their “chosen product,” they still will research their desired car make and model online (3.0) rather than looking into off-line generated sources (1.2) What’s interesting is the fact that in the final decision “Where to buy” the Brand Voice (with an average of 2.3) still is more influential than the Consumer Voice; here with an average of 1.2.

VJ’s Question: Does that mean that aligned OEM Brand messaging and your marketing approach as a dealership should be synced?

VJ’s Answer: “You betcha.” As these numbers indicate – the more touch points your online marketing message has, the more you will be involved somehow in the consumer’s decision making process. As TNS states in their research: “Brands need to pinpoint accurately the most influential touch points on and offline to ensure that they maximize their presence and impact across different media.”

What I would love to see (and actually did, when I was still in the dealer operations) is that each seasonal or special event message of your OEM, like the “Sign Then Drive Event” or the “December to Remember Event” campaigns will be adapted on a smaller scale into your dealership.

It starts with your website message (using the original OEM images for the event) all the way to adjusting your SEO content with the “slogan” inside your content pages, up to the signage inside your brick and mortar location (yes, you heard right – offline will in this case close the circle). Also when you send your internet lead responses, integrate the OEM Event message with links back to your website event page. You can even instruct your receptionist to ask “Are you calling for our Sign Then Drive Event,” and create table toppers inside your service waiting area and the desks of your sales people stating and using the original OEM Marketing message.

Last word: “Your store needs the same impact on and off-line. Shoppers need to get the same message and impression of the brand in both the real and virtual world, to engage rather than alienate,” according to researchers of TNS Digital Life.

• Part 2 of this series will take a look at the importance of the “Consumer Voice” next week – until then, 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!  

Here we are again. The weeks are flying by and today I'll post my conclusion of the 15 Free Tools To Monitor The Social Media Sphere - Part 3. I hope that you found at least one new tool in the last 3 weeks, which was a "new one" for you, and I wish you and your endeavor "Social Media Marketing" success!

Here are my last five freebies:

Google Alerts: The God-Father of monitoring tools. A necessity to set up this alert system for your dealership or any other company. Use your Brand you are selling as keyword in combination of your town you are operating in. Further keyword being used as an alert would be Owner’s name, General Manager’s name, Sales Manager’s name and of course dealership name.

VJ’s comment: “LUKE...I AM YOUR FATHER! Come on folks when you not have heard about them, we need to change profession. Do we?!”

Board Reader: As the title uncovers, this monitoring tool is searching for mentioning in Forums and Discussion Boards.

VJ’s comment: “Just think about all the automotive fanatics who have forums and boards and sharing their wisdom. I guarantee you you will find comments how they think (and speak) about dealerships around them and which dealer they would consider (or not)!”

Spy: You can determine how many results will be shown with a pull-down menu. From 10 threads up to 100 threads on your keyword result.

  VJ’s comment: “Love the automated, down scrolling feed. Very efficient to monitor!”

Twitter Search: Sometime we don’t see the woods because of the trees in front of us…Twitter search is one of my favorites to see what is buzzing right now and from where it is coming. It can’t get more real-time than that!

VJ’s comment: “In my opinion one of the most valuable "search engines" behind the big four Google, YouTube, Yahoo and Bing. What ever search for you will find for sure a thread about it!”

Bloglines: You need to establish an account for this tool, but as I said – IT IS FREE! The dashboard can be customize similar to an iGoogle dash through drag and drop. It appears as your own chosen monitor and news feed aggregator.

VJ’s comment: “The customization feature really let you create a feed, which will fit YOUR needs!”

So, that is it and hopefully will get you going. I also wanted to mention that I did not forget about the fantastic platforms and tools of delicious, digg, metacafe or my all-time favorite for finding great pictures and post inspirations for my first BMW blog – ALLTOP. This time I decided to share some other “kids on the block”, who are doing a great job as well. Hope you'll like it. And please keep in mind, in case you come to the conclusion that there is now way you can dive into this "monitoring thing" yourself please feel free to contact me to guide you into another direction.

Happy Selling and Marketing! And please check also my new blog "DIGITAL MARKETING DISPATCH" out and befriend me on My Facebook page. Thank you!

Hello folks, it is Wednesday again and time for me to put on Part II of the series 15 Free Social Monitoring Tools. As I had stated in my first post, these tools were used by me during my "active" duty as an eCommerce Director for several dealer groups and I hope that you will find the tools #6 to #10 as useful as I did. Here we go:

Kurrently: Shows Twitter stream or the Facebook threads on keyword topic. Real-time showing. Good feature: You can control how fast or slow your stream strolling in.

VJ’s comment: “Especially useful for monitoring the "cloud" on Twitter!”

 Same Point: Providing an overview of Social mentioning’s but also real-time Twitter and Facebook. Further crawls through Blogger blogs and LinkedIn. Promises also to show negative mentioning’s but could not see really evidence of legit results. Possibly needs some more improvement on their end.

VJ’s comment: “Needs some improvement but listening also into LinkedIn is pretty cool!”

 Blog Pulse: The name says it all. Reflecting on Blog post results of the desired keyword search.

  VJ’s comment: “Focusing really on the Blogosphere and will surprise you, what actually shows up with the right keyword!”

 Twendz: Very interactive platform. Shows even the trend of searched word in real-time. Clean appearance. Allows immediate response to incoming tweet and direct linking to Twitter account. VJ’s comment: “Design is great and I love the small analytic section. Nice feature - Word Cloud!”

 Yahoo Pipes: One of the “oldtimer” in social conversation and news monitoring. Do not forget about this valuable tool. Shows even tags used in the upcoming search results with sources and which formats were used.

VJ’s comment: “Was one of the first tools I have ever used to see who and what is buzzing. Classy and nostalgic tool!”

...Please check back for next week Part III and another round of 5 Free Social Monitoring Tools!

As an e-Commerce guy, what would make my life easier when looking for specific data and news? How can I find short, to-the-point information when writing my next dealer blog post about model XYZ? And last but not least, who is actually talking about our cars, the automotive industry and/or our dealership right now?

These are the questions that inspired this post on the 15 free tools I use to monitor the social media sphere. Enjoy!

First 5 Free Tools for Using Social Media Like a Pro (Part I of III) 

OMGILI: Stands for “Oh My God I Love It” – will track a keyword throughout several social networks. This tool has the capability to share results on Facebook and Google+ as well. It also shows further comments of threads and responders.

VJ’s comment: “A very thorough research tool for an advanced user!”

WordPress Search: This tool is an enormous help for finding other blogs writing about your cars, models. It provides very good insights about who to mention in your next dealer blog post.

VJ’s comment: “What should I say? Like a great, red wine – rich bouquet, deep (color) – a classic !”

Addictomatic: This tool will share news and topics from networks and channels like Bing, YouTube, Google Blog Search, Twitter Search, Flickr, Blinkx Video Search,  Yahoo, Twingly Blog Search, Wikio and more. It’s great for writers who need more info on topics.

VJ’s comment: “One of my favorites! And careful – it’s adictive!”

SocialMention: This tool is like Google Alerts for the social sites. It crawls the social sources and displays where the information was gathered, which hashtags (#) are being used in combination for your keywords, sentiment and even the top-users using the keyword. You can even sign up for email alerts.

VJ’s comment: “Known as one of the first tools out there. Should be in everybody’s “toolbox”. Great metrics and stats!”

Ice Rocket: This tool is a so-called “buzz machine.” It allows selective keyword information of blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Images or BigBuzz. The results display in real-time through incoming feeds (like a news ticker.)

VJ’s comment: “Like it a lot! Will let your inbox buzzing.”

...Please check back for next week Part II and another round of 5 Free Social Monitoring Tools!

Losing focus during your automotive social media campaigns is so easy. As the Internet Sales Manager, you must wear many hats. Because you are seen as “the PC guy” (which actually we are not) our days are full of “Fix my font size” and “Check my wi-fi” and of course the crowd favorite “Why is my computer so slow?”

The day is just too short to keep up with all these duties, (even though Internet people are known to be more organized and scheduled than most) Still, the danger is high that we just get overwhelmed and important things like writing a blog post about the new upcoming model, sending responses to questions, entering fresh Facebook content and monitoring the reputation on  the Twittersphere, Yelp and the other online entities falls by the wayside. 

MIRACLE ALERT: WIN BACK YOUR FOCUS WITH AN EDITORIAL CALENDAR

The idea is not new and for decades, the press, writers, bloggers and Marketing/PR departments have functioned smoothly thanks to this easy tool. When I was in charge of my dealership’s digital marketing, I created this calendar from scratch.

To get started I decided…

1) …on the frequency and the regularity of the events I wanted to share somehow – somewhere. I further looked how far into “the future” I wanted to plan. Month by month, quarterly or even longer. 3-Months ahead was my choice then.

2) …open up Excel and included e.g following columns for each month

Do the same for new cars coming down the pipeline. Repost car reviewsfrom experts in the automotive writer scene, post “spy” photos so you can’t identify what model it is this time – readers love this – I guarantee!

These are really only a few examples of how you can customize your editorial calendar, and I am sure you have plenty of ideas as well. You just need to make sure that you stick to the plan. When you have scheduled a blog post for Thursday – this blog post for Thursday needs to be online ON THURSDAY. Same with all the other scheduled events.

It is about developing a habit. Just think about the U.S. citizens most “looking forward to it” day – APRIL 15^th. Also when you do not want to do it (right now) – You have to. Push yourself into the habit and follow the plan you designed. Let nothing else come in between. The calendar and organizational discipline will rule this time!

Last advice: Share it with your superior and align your work with the offline advertising schedule of your profit centers. Here and there will be a chance to “sneak” in a subliminal soft-sell message ;)

Happy Selling!

Marketing Tactics – Hot and fresh from the press

It’s the moment we’ve been waiting for. After about six weeks of anticipation (a.k.a. an eternity in today’s web 5.0 environment), Google just announced that it will roll out two new significant platform updates in the next week.

Update 1: Sharing Web Pages What it does: With the “Web Pages” update, you will see the well-known Plus1 button. At first sight, really nothing new, right? Wait! Then suddenly you see another NEW option in the pull-down menu called “Share on Google Plus” – brilliant! It will go directly into your stream of Google+, similar to your Facebook “Recommend” button.

Dealerships advantage: Using this feature, you can now add a comment on a website you’d like to share, select the circles with whom you want to share this website/webpage, and hit “share”. In other words, you will now be able to share targeted messages to your targeted groups.

This means that instead of having news from the all new VW Passat spread around shotgun style to all of your circles (which could easily include Beetle or Jetta drivers), you can now send the message only to this micro- targeted audience (Passat drivers or new Passat prospects) who you know will definitively appreciate the info. This new feature will even be more valuable when Google+ is open for all businesses – so sit tight, it will definitively become an even bigger Facebook challenger.

Update 2: Plus Snippets The second new update is called “Plus Snippets.” A Plus Snippet helps better categorize content via a descriptive image, a link, and an explanatory blurb included with your shares. Click on the Plus1 and share it with your circles – this time the Plus snippets will have a title, image and description – a huge advantage for all publishers out there.

Dealership advantage: With this feature, it appears that Google is redefining its Social SEO even more. When you are maintaining a blog for your dealership or dealer group (what I certainly hope for), you can now determine which kind of snippets (pictures and or images) will show. Additionally, you will be able to determine what tag line you want to set for the particular snippet as well as the description, which will help you to gain an advantage in your local SEO setup.

The same applies for your website model pages, which are hopefully optimized with unique, deep and rich content. So please remember, when publishing your blog post and image, make sure the description and headline will have your dealer name, make/model, current OEM ad slogan and city included. With the new Google+ updates, this is more critical than ever.

In case you are not able to wait a week for this feature, you can connect with Google directly at the Google+ Platform Preview Group.  

 Chapter V of "Diaries of an e-Commerce Director...

Hello, VJ here with another “Old-Time German” recipe for used car sales success. The simple recipe I’m about to share with you worked so well for my dealership that we indeed made it to the #1 used car selling franchise in the state, ranking as #2 for monthly CPO sales in the Nation. On average 50% of  my spotlighted cars were sold in the first 7 days my campaign, and at the end of the 14-day cycle we could report 80% used cars sold through our spotlight ad specials.

How did I do it? Let’s start with a familiar refrain we’ve all heard many times: “Just put the oldest units into the used car specials.” “Apply the Autotrader spotlight ads onto inventory older than 60 days.” Sound familiar? We’ve all heard this type of instruction for our Used Car Manager. The question is; does it work?

Allow me a prediction. Your answer is something along the lines of “nada,” “zip”, or “zilch.”

Am I right?

I am? Well then, it’s time for the @VJnator (follow me on Twitter) to share his secret recipe for looking like a hero in the eyes of your Used Car Manager and the rest of the crew.

When it comes to selling cars, the concept that “oldest units go first” is a myth. The reality is; the most-searched vehicles sell first. So the secret is to find out exactly what those most-searched vehicles are. The process varies by back-end tool, but the recipe usually looks something like this:

Login->>Reports->>Vehicle->>Detail Vehicles Page Views.

BINGO!!

Here lies the secret of your future Used Car sales success. Whatever vehicles you see displayed in the first 20 positions is telling you “Please, expose me – NOW!” Once you’ve determined which vehicles are getting the most page views, you have a surefire recipe for best-selling spotlight ads.

Now, all you have to do is go through and update your ads with these most-viewed vehicles. In my case I had at least 15 cars in my spotlight ads, updating about twice a month.

Need more Pepper?

To spice up the “VJnator’s” recipe, I also worked with my website provider to synch my third-party ad vehicle specials with my website used car specials – rotating the entire special twice a month to accommodate the most popular vehicle searches- whatever was “hot and ready” right then.

Last but not least, make sure that you have optimized content written about your used vehicles to increase search traffic, And before I forget…do not just show your franchise make and models in your spotlight ads and used car specials. Show the off-brands as well. For example, if you sell VW’s but have an Infiniti showing high numbers on the “Detail Vehicles Page Views” of the Inventory – SHOW IT in these spotlights and used car special page!

Try this recipe and please let me know how it has worked for you. I am confident you’ll see an increase in your numbers and a quick turn-around.

Happy Selling!

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.