The trickle effect in new and used car sales
June 4, 2008 by admin
The meat of this article by Arianne Walker in Online Automotive Review is iterated in the final paragraph:
Even though OEMs and dealers have been shifting their marketing budgets online, the data shows that most should probably be accelerating that transition, putting even more money where shoppers - new and used alike - are increasingly going.
These trends are consistent with the recent Cobalt-Polk-Yahoo! study on new vehicle buyer behavior in how it directly and indirectly influences used vehicle purchases.
When I think of car sales, I think of long-term retention. But immediate sales are important to. While you need to invest into new and used car advertising, a primary benefit with investing in to new vehicle advertising is that the investment not only trickles down into used car sales, but it even influences used car sales. That is what the study suggests at least.
This is a key topic today for dealers and providers. Dealers today are cautious of where and how they shift their marketing dollars. It is widely known that the Internet offers the greatest ROI, however establishing your online brand recognition is not an event, it is an establishment that requires years of vision, commitment, and dedication from dealers and their providers.
Dealers must be prepared to take risks and to embrace long-term change in order to meet auto shoppers in advance, but it can be done with the right tools and techniques.
Car buyers demand competitive pricing and dealer transparency
April 21, 2008 by admin
If you ask customers what they want from the companies from whom they buy, you probably won’t be surprised by their responses. Studies show that Customers primarily want two things:
- Competitive pricing, and
- Auto Dealers to be transparent with information in a timely and professional manner
According to a recent study by Cobalt, Yahoo!, and Polk, the advent and advancement of the internet have made it possible for customers to demand this from all of the companies with whom they do business. No businesses are more affected by this than Car Dealerships. For most people, their vehicles are more expensive than anything they’ll ever buy but not live in, and saving money and hearing the truth are especially important in the car buying process.
The study reveals that the impact of a customer’s online brand marketing experience in the car buying process cannot be overstated. In every area of their lives, customers are going online to research, to learn, and even to shop, and the purchase of an automobile is no different.
The study found that one of the most crucial aspects of the online brand marketing process is responding to customer inquiries. People are spending an incredible sum of money on their car, and they’re bound to have questions. Customers are taking the dealer responses to their questions very seriously, and for good reason.
A recent article in Dealer magazine on the study says “simply initiating a response is not enough to build customer loyalty. Rather, dealers must respond as consumers request, factoring in content, speed and method of response, in order to increase the chance of selling a vehicle.” It should be obvious, but when a customer wants an email instead of a phone call, or they would prefer to be phoned before 5 o’clock, it makes sense to take heed and communicate with them in the manner they choose.
The concept of sharing experiences with personal networks is not a new one — we’re all familiar with one person telling two friends and those friends telling two more. Existing and potential customers now have access to methods of group communication previously inconceivable to marketing departments. With the rise of internet usage, those two friends are still being told, but they’re being told publicly and there are a whole lot more than two of them.
With forums, blogs, rating sites and social media becoming the fastest growing methods of information transfer, giving customers a professional and helpful experience is more vital than ever before. Automobile dealers have the opportunity to capitalize on good customer relationships and experience growth at exponential rates.
Auto dealers embracing innovation with Web Marketing 2.0
April 14, 2008 by admin
For decades, our car-buying decisions have been based primarily on what our friends tell us, what we read in consumer reports, and the advertising in radio and in television. But the buying world is changing across the board, virtualizing and socializing, and progressive dealerships are getting in to the action. A new survey by The Kelsey Group suggests a warm welcome by car dealers when it comes to today’s Web 2.0 marketing.
According to the survey, 62 percent of those dealers who responded planned to increase their online media spending this year, and 33 percent said they would be using social media, up from 15 percent. At the same time, only 8 percent of respondents said they would be cutting their online spending, as compared to 46 percent who will be cutting their spending in more traditional media outlets.
“These findings point to a significant disruption in the auto dealer advertising space,” says Neal Polachek, chief executive officer of The Kelsey Group. This isn’t your grandfather’s marketing campaign.
Whenever technology changes — whether it’s the newest gadget or the newest form of marketing –there is always a group of individuals and businesses who are quick to get involved. These early adopters who are more willing to try new things before the rest of the industry does have a chance at new and exciting success. The last few years have been groundbreaking in online technology and social media marketing, and other dealers are catching on after seeing the unprecedented success of their peers who have been quick to adopt the new technology.
There is a growing awareness among automobile dealers that online brand marketing is a vital piece of the marketing puzzle. This includes forms of Organic Search Marketing, Blog Marketing, and online Social Network Marketing. Buyers have not only turned to the Internet with shocking speed and in amazing numbers, but also they are demanding more from their suppliers, and automobile retailers are no exception. The smart dealers are getting on board, capitalizing on this new breed of web savvy customers.
There’s no doubt about it — the world has changed beyond recognition, and it continues to change every day. Dealers across the country and the globe have come to realize that online brand marketing and social media are powerful and cost-effective means for making customers more aware of what they have to offer. It’s an exciting time to be a car dealership, and the future is looking brighter and brighter every day.
Car dealers and manufacturers compete for online ad space
April 7, 2008 by admin
The days of seeing your local car dealer ads on TV are not going away, but dealer prominence in online advertising is now reaching unprecedented heights, giving car manufactures a new (but good) challenge. A recent report indicates that car manufacturers are finding competition for their ad slots, and that the competition is coming from none other than the car dealerships themselves.
Ad spending by dealers has increased dramatically over the last two years, and the increase has resulted in bidding wars on third party sites like Edmunds.com and Cars.com. Online ad spending by car dealerships was up to $32 million in 2007, and that number has more than doubled each year since 2005.
It’s a new plan of attack for car dealers to be involved in online advertising, but it’s on the upswing. “Buying space on the Web was never part of the strategy until recently, but now it’s 50% of the conversation,” said Pat Primm, a Cleveland area auto dealer.
Online ad pricing is measured in cost per thousand impressions — or CPM — and an ad spot that came with a $4 CPM price tag two years ago now costs $34. Advertising profits for Edmunds.com went up 64 percent in 2006 and another 93 percent in 2007. CEO Jeremy Anwyl says that “dealers and dealer associations are coming in after years of spending 90% of their ad budgets on TV. They are just now realizing that’s too much.â€
While the third party websites are clearly the winners in this equation, the loser is the brand identity. With so many voices trying to tell the same story and sell the same product, the message being portrayed by the original equipment manufacturers can easily become diluted and confused. David Harris, the manager of ebusiness and CRM for Suzuki, Brea, California says,
“Our goal is to make sure we are communicating a consistent message. All of a sudden . . . you have a wide variety of messages.”
This is all the more reason for dealers to make sure they have effective online brand marketing strategies in place. Manufacturers have huge budgets to spend on researching the most effective ways to get the car’s message across. It’s vital to the dealership’s success that dealer marketing not only doesn’t conflict with that, but leverages it to their advantage.
Online advertising has become the new normal for car dealerships across the country. Twenty years ago, local TV advertising was the most effective and prominent method of marketing for automotive dealers, and the game has changed. This report is just the newest data that shows that a focused online brand marketing strategy will be the ticket to surviving and thriving in this new world of car sales.
Social media for your profit centers
January 2, 2008 by admin
In a recent article by Bobby Malatia of Kain Automotive titled, “Creating Your Internet Dealership”, Malatia identifies several things for dealers to consider when attempting to utilize the Internet for sales in all profit centers versus just car sales. One of the items he presents is the idea of using “landing pages or microsites” to promote the different products in your business. Malatia suggests that they do not have to be “branded by the dealership itself”.
Malatia is right and it brings up a good point.
Consumers are more interested in your product than they are your commodity. Your product is the unique value your company creates, e.g. your brand, by helping customers gain the most utility from your commodity. In the case of car dealers, your commodity is not just automobiles for sale but other things such as service of course and your financing programs, car parts and after market items, rentals, etc.
Within each profit center you often have more than one market audience. Because of this, you might be better off creating a variety of landing pages and microsites to reach out to each of these different consumer audiences.
This is where social media sites can come in to play. In fact, using social media for each profit center and for each consumer audience could be an extraordinary way to accomplish this form of online brand marketing.
For instance, MySpace is probably not the best place to promote high line or luxury vehicles, however it is very fertile land for after market parts and accessories of some economical performance vehicles such as Mazda and Subaru. You could create create multiple MySpace profiles to represent each of these particular market niches, this giving your dealership, or retail center, several representations of its business across numerous social media sites. The primary work entailed to accomplish this is the setup of each profile, but once you have integrated it with the sales process of each profit center then from there it is simply a matter of promoting it via content and SEO.
Imagine a future where automotive retail is not just a physical showroom with a corresponding website but a diverse array of physical and virtual representations of each unique profit center in the dealership that has an automated sales CRM process built into it custom tailored to each specific market niche. That would be applied technology.
Automotive Retail Center or Car Dealership
December 28, 2007 by admin
The Internet is changing the way people buy cars. A recent video released by Capgemeni suggests that:
- 29% referred to consumer-to-consumer sites like blogs and forums when researching information
- 78% of respondents rely on search engines.
- 1 in 5 say they are likely to buy a car online.
- 2 of 3 say personalized offers influence their desire to purchase
This is nothing new but the last bullet listed there about personalized offers brings up an important topic that relates directly to the idea of Search Engine Brand Marketing. If 66% of auto shoppers are positively influenced by such things then how should car dealers respond to that. More specifically, how can the Internet be leveraged to accommodate this?
Why, social media of course.
Think about it. If 22% of new car buyers found their way to an OEM site by way of Search 6 months prior to making a purchase, just think of how dealers can and should be tapping in to this market. They can tap in to it by presenting their business as an Automotive Retail Center versus a Car Dealership.
Car dealerships are all about “ups” and qualified leads. The CRM process is typically designed to sell on customer impulse. It’s not until after purchase that the CRM process is designed to retain the customer. Naturally, once a dealer knows that you aren’t going to purchase now then you get dropped. You get dropped because it is not worth a sales rep’s time to stay in touch for the next 5 months. Or is it?
That’s the beauty of the digital age. With email, dealers can design automated campaigns to retain customers during this pre-purchase period. And I don’t mean by way of newsletters. I mean by truly effective and well thought out automated email follow-ups that demonstrate to these potential buyers that your dealership, your retail center, is going to walk with you every step of the way towards your purchase.
Your email campaigns should reel in these shoppers to your blog, to your articles, to your newsletter, and to your social media profiles where your product specialists can build on the relationship and give the customer every reason to do business with you when the time is right.
Point is, the tools are here today and the dealers and vendors that take the time to utilize them effectively by presenting their businesses better can and will capture these emerging virtual markets.
All talk and no game
December 20, 2007 by admin
There is so much jabber in the automotive blogosphere today about how blogging and social media/netoworking/marketing are becoming relevant to automotive retail you would think it is becoming the “next big thing”. But just like PPC 3 years ago became the prominent buzz word in automotive online retail promising dealers the opportunity to become their own “regional buying service”, blog marketing and social media are likely to become the next great distraction for dealers too.
The reason why is not because blogging and social marketing are fads, phases, or unreliable forms of marketing but because of how they are represented to car dealers by marketing/technology providers.
Dealers want increased sales and increased profit margins which require more business opportunities at less cost. The Internet promises to do this because you can reach more audience with less cost and Internet marketing companies promise to help dealers accomplish these things. Research, surveys, and statistics constantly tell us that advertising dollars continue to shift from conventional off line advertising to online media. Naturally, dealers are forced to put their money into strategies and schemas they struggle to grasp but because they trust the people providing them and because of good sales and marketing presentations dealers often buy in to mediocre situations.
All this is perfectly reasonable except for the fact that dealers continue to be disappointed and confused. Part of this is their own fault for not taking the time to digest important information, but a lot of this comes down to the mere fact that in the auto industry, dealers marketing and technology providers are often one and the same.
This is not to say that it is possible for a single company to provide marketing and technology, but if you look at other industries you will find that businesses typically provide one form of service or commodity, not two completely irrelevant forms such as technology and marketing.
For instance…
- IBM, Microsoft, and Sun provide technology, not marketing
- Coca-Cola and Pepsi provide soft drinks, not marketing
- MCI, Sprint, and T-Mobile provide telecommunications, not marketing
Of course, these companies have marketing divisions within their own organizations, but more often than not they partner up with major marketing agencies to assist with THEIR marketing strategy and they certainly are not providing marketing services to other companies. Chances are, these “marketing agencies” are not providing these firms with any sort of technology either.
So why is the auto industry so special that marketing and technology tend to go hand-in-hand? Could it be that dealers get ridiculed for being “behind” on trends because they are being led by mediocrity? There is a lot of good technology out there that is completely relevant and useful for dealers. But putting these technological tools and resources to use is a whole other ball game.
Dealers need to consider this when talking to firms about things such as blog marketing, social media, and search engine brand marketing. These are going to be some of the more sophisticated forms of marketing known to dealers and expectations are certain to be let down if marketing/technology providers are misrepresentative about what can be accomplished with them.
[tags]automotive marketing, online marketing, car dealers, auto industry, search engine marketing, brand marketing, social media, IBM, Microsoft, Sun, Coke, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, MCI, Sprint, TMobile, telecommunications[/tags]
Visibility in low-volume search markets
November 7, 2007 by admin
Search engine visibility is not difficult to accomplish in today’s Automotive Search Marketing. Unless you are targeting something as universal and vague as “used cars”, most automotive search markets can be penetrated with relative ease. By “automotive” we are referring specifically to the active online auto shopper markets in this case; by “relative ease” we mean that with the right approach, time, and managed expectations, dealer sites can penetrate highly competitive markets.
While it is a challenge for dealer sites to attain search engine visibility in vehicle-specific markets such as “Ford F-150″, attaining it at the geo-targeted level is more feasible, e.g. “Ford F-150 Indiana”. Effective SEO can get most dealer websites to appear in the top results of geo-centric + brand- or vehicle-specific search markets. Brand + dealer, e.g. “Ford dealer” is of course more attainable for dealer sites than brand + style, e.g. “Ford F-150″.
There are literally thousands of geo+brand+vehicle search markets for every metropolitan area, regional area, OEM brand, and general car markets, and dealer websites can not be dominant in every single one of them. Analytics suggest that there is a finite number of people interested at any given time to visit a dealership website. What this means is that even with all the advertising and exposure in the world, only so many people will purposefully visit your site. Therefore, which search markets to penetrate and saturate must be carefully selected.
If you target just the high-volume markets then you will spend a lot of time and money to face tougher competition and appear less dominant. However, with the same budget you could target more low-volume search markets and appear dominant because there is less competition. Naturally, it is good to have short-term and long-term strategies in place that make you a player in carefully selected low- and high-volume search markets.
[tags]Automotive Marketing, Search Marketing, Car Dealer Marketing, Organic Search, Search Engine Marketing, Geo Targeting, [/tags]
Defining search market visibility
November 6, 2007 by admin
Attaining visibility in most automotive search markets is not difficult to accomplish, however, the term “visibility” must be defined and as of yet there really is no standard or authority on what search visibility actually is.
We break search visibility into 4 primary levels…
- Invisible
- Visible
- Penetrated
- Saturated
Invisible we define as not appearing in the SERPs (search engine result pages), or at least not within the first 10. Technically, if you appear even on page 100,547, you are visible to search engines. But we still classify you being as “invisible” if you do not appear within the first 10 pages.
Visible we defines as appearing between pages 3-10. This demonstrates that search engines recognize your site as relevant to the search phrase performed, however the search engine does not consider your site an authority. Standard or basic SEO service today should position you within one of the first 10 pages, however quantity and competition can technically challenge that.
Penetrated we classify as appearing on one of the first three pages of a search. This tells us you are not only visible and noticeable to the search engine but that your site also is considered an authority of some sort on that particular key phrase.
Saturated suggests that you are penetrated in more than one related key phrase. For instance, if your site appears on pages 1-3 of two related key phrases such as “used car dealer” and “dallas car dealer”, then we would consider your site as having attained some sort of saturation. Obviously there can be many degrees or levels of saturation.
These measures are important criteria to define in automotive search marketing and we will explore more in how they can be applied to your search marketing strategy throughout the next many months.
[tags]automotive marketing, automotive search marketing, car dealer marketing, search engine marketing, search marketing optimization, search market visibility[/tags]
The online-offline translation in search marketing
November 5, 2007 by admin
As with off-line advertising where you strive to make your dealership known and visible to physical markets, the same must be accomplished online in virtual search markets. You need to make sure that your dealership website is visible to people on the Internet whether or not they are looking to buy a car. Doing so helps make your brand more known to and recognized by people in your area when they are online.
When you are watching a television program and a car ad appears, you might not give the ad a second thought unless you were on the market. Same goes for when you head a dealer ad on the radio, or see one in your local newspaper. Dealers spend tens of thousands of dollars a month to appear in these ads to keep their dealerships visible in the physical geo markets. In fact, for most dealer websites, the primary keyword drives to the site are those with the dealership name in it, which indicates that most people visiting a dealer site intentionally set out to find it.
Automotive Search Marketing is typically geared towards geo markets and brand markets where the car buyers are. But while the brand markets are the most relevant content-wise, they also produce far less volume than non-brand auto markets, e.g. used cars, and geo markets, e.g. dallas car dealers. The challenge however with targeting the non-brand auto markets and geo business markets is that they are often dominated by 3rd-party automotive sites and directory sites. Dealer sites have trouble competing for visibility with such universal sites.
With RSS Marketing, dealer sites can penetrate these targeted search markets. By incorporating a specific formula, dealers can select a handful of high-volume universal search markets they wish to attain visibility and with the right effort can ultimately attain a level of virtual visibility that they have in physical markets…and with added perks.
Aside from costing at least 30% less than newspaper advertising for accomplishing a similar desired effect, dealers also benefit from residual and relative search. By focusing on non-brand auto markets in your geo market with RSS Marketing, dealer sites are naturally visible in their brand markets because search engines are smart like that. While often it is advantageous to have brand-specific efforts in place, and certainly easier to attain, dealers can use RSS Marketing to tap into the more universal auto and geo markets and experience a good return on their investment.
K.i.T
