What he explained to me was how the company Zag, which I remember coming onto the scene in 2007 around the time I had chosen to leave my post at HomeNet to start AutoConversion, was using vehicle transaction data stored inside dealership DMSes, which it was authorized to obtain, to exploit dealership costs on vehicles to list on its shopper site TrueCar.com, thus driving down the so-called market price of vehicles.

At the time I did not fully comprehend Zag’s business model, nor was I that interested in it, but the nature of the situation now and how it pertains to the exploitation of data is of interest to me, as is how this situation with TrueCar.com is affecting auto dealerships and our industry.

Last month I did a post about how dealers can use blogging to protect themselves from the TrueCar dilemma and although this post was more of a playful piece to stand up for inbound marketing, I wanted to follow up on the subject with different ideas and angles on this important matter.

The Price-only Buyer: A 12% Market Share

Back in 2007, Polk released the Dealer eBusiness Performance Study with Yahoo that drew several conclusions, one of which determined there was about a 12% market share of price-only buyers. What the study concluded was that although all auto shoppers are conscientious about the price of vehicles, only about 12% make their purchase decision based on price alone.

Ultimately the study suggested that while dealerships could base their sales and marketing strategy around vehicle price, there is more market share around other criteria such as location, brand, and probably most important, the customer experience.

About 12% make their purchase decision based on price alone. -Polk-Yahoo Study (2007)

At the time my message to dealers was that they had two choices. Choice “a” was to be a price-only dealer and choice “b” was to be about value. For dealers that want to be a price-only dealer then blogging would not be useful to their marketing strategy but for dealers that represent value then blogging would be a necessary tool.

Dealership Value Proposition

The value that an auto dealership brings to the table for auto shoppers is important and as the Polk-Yahoo study suggested, nearly 90% of car buyers want that value. What is that value?

For starters, a franchise dealership represents trust and integrity. Because it is attached to the OEM brand, the dealership has a responsibility to the marketplace, the community, and it’s employees. This perceived value is essential to the buying process because people want assurances with their purchase that franchise dealers are more able to give than independent ones.

A Simulated TrueCar Buying Experience

Building on this, let’s take a gander down purchase lane for a minute. When people enter your dealership they are typically greeted warmly, offered snacks and beverages, and taken on a personal guided tour of the showroom to look at vehicles. They get questions answered, go on test drives, and consulted about their finance options. After the purchase when the vehicle is delivered they get a crash course on how to use the vehicle and are sent off (in most cases) with confidence and joy about their purchase.

Customers understand that these amenities are rolled into the cost of their purchase, and they are ok with that. Just because they try to negotiate the price down doesn’t make them a price-only buyer. As the dealer, I don’t think you need to be shy about the enhanced value your dealership provides.

TrueCar.com shoppers however are coming in at a disadvantage. Whether they know it or not, they are basing their decision on price alone and your dealership has every right to give them what they pay for. I am not suggesting you treat TrueCar.com buyers like garbage, but I am suggesting you have a transparent process specially designed for people coming in from the TrueCar path.

Imagine the customer comes in with his TrueCar.com guaranteed purchase certificate. He shows it to upon arrival and you courteously walk him over to the cashier where people check out for parts and services, and let them attendant know that this person just purchase a vehicle from them at TrueCar.com and that he is here to pick up his new ride.

The attendant can arrange to have the vehicle brought to the delivery area while the customer signs all the necessary paperwork and when complete can drive off with is new ride. No fluff, no warm fuzzies, no ill feelings. Just his new car.

At some point the customer might have some questions or be interested in receiving some sort of assistance, at which point you can politely explain that you are sorry but TrueCar.com purchases do not come with such amenities and that they will have to direct inquiries to the OEM or back to TrueCar.com itself.

Now I realize this is a hypothetical dramatization of how this will ultimately play down, but I am hoping to make a point that there are ways for the dealership to remain in the game with TrueCar.com but play by its own rules in a way that is justified based on the TrueCar.com business model and the customer’s interests.

Of course the challenge with this is that you risk creating disgruntled customers that want their cake and eat it too. To counter this you will need to set proper expectations during the sales process which I doubt is something you can accomplish through TrueCar.com so it might require a dedicated landing page on your website that speaks to TrueCar shoppers. But again, we are speaking in hypothetical terms here.

Turn off the data

Another option you have as a dealer if you are not interested in playing the game with TrueCar.com but are interested in Zag referrals is to turn off the data that Zag/TrueCar is extracting from your DMS to obtain your transaction costs. As the rightful owner of the data in your DMS you have the right and ability to limit what information is available to each different party inside your DMS.

By shutting of the data in your DMS such as invoice price, shop costs, etc. you limit TrueCar’s ability to exploit your margins. This of course takes you out of the game somewhat, but does that really matter? Are you really concerned about the small handful of cars you might sell from TrueCar.com that cut so deep into your margins you can’t stand it?

Play by your own rules

I realize this is a difficult situation for many dealers and that TrueCar has left a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of people, but I don’t see dealers being powerless about the situation either. Your business is not going to be hurt by pulling out of the game TrueCar.com invented and there are certainly ways to go along with the game without losing your foot. You just have to be willing to try something new and different.

By doing so, you might even find that it isn’t so bad flipping cars through the cashier based on price alone like a high-volume consumer retail store. Not everyone wants this but some do and if you play your cards right then you can protect your gross by reducing the conveniences and amenities that are increasing your costs. If you have the product to offer these buyers, go for it.

While researching, I came across Brian Pasch’s article on DrivingSales.com titled, “Is Your Advertising Strategy Based on Fear, Data, or Blind Faith?” In his article, Brian builds a good case around the thinking that TrueCar is more of a symptom or product of an addictive  tendency repeatedly displayed by auto dealerships. I agree with Pasch’s point.

What Brian is getting at is something I believe is true. I built my business around it blogging for car dealers. It’s how companies like HubSpot have achieved great success. It’s the reality that Internet marketing today gives essentially all businesses, including auto dealerships, the ability to establish their own marketing pipelines to drive sales and stop relying on outside sources for all of their business.

To be clear, the argument is not against using third-party lead generators and partners to drive sales, but to build your own sales machine so that you can keep your third-party partners selective and minimal, and ultimately avoid the dilemma of feeling forced to work with businesses such as TrueCar.

Build Your Own Inbound Marketing Machine

The idea here is to build your own inbound marketing system. Inbound marketing is a term coined by HubSpot that refers to the practice of using content and advertising to educate and inform your target audiences through free and easily accessible content persistently over time to establish and build trust and ultimately sales of your product.

This, as opposed to traditional marketing practices of splattering your name and logo everywhere with the hope and expectation of it magically turning into sales, is necessary today primarily due to the role of search engines and Internet marketing. You can still advertise your business using traditional media. The problem is the cost and the ROI of it if that is your primary or only approach. When you do the math it just doesn’t add up.

Google AdWords vs. Traditional Media

Refer to Brian’s example in his article where:

• The cost per visitor for their Adwords was: $1.50
• The cost per visitor from their Traditional Media was: $18.65

Technically, Google AdWords is not inbound marketing but it is search engine marketing.  If you look at Google’s ZMOT (Zero Moment of Truth), one thing you will see from the research is that the primary stimulus points for auto shoppers IS NOT traditional media. It’s the Internet and search engines are the gateway to the Internet.

It is easy for Internet marketers to challenge why you would invest the majority of your advertising dollars into traditional media. We are bias. But traditional advertising sales reps will argue that if you want to reach the masses then you need to spend on traditional media.

I understand that dealers continue to spend on traditional media because it is what they are familiar and comfortable with. But as Pasch suggests, that is fear-based thinking and eventually it will be to your detriment if it isn’t already.

How Blogging Benefits Your Dealership Digital Strategy

I am not here to convince you that traditional media is not the best use of your advertising dollars. I am not here to tell you that TrueCar is bad for the auto business either. What I am here to share with you is why and how blogging is an important part of your marketing strategy, and how it can help dealers that feel forced into a corner about using TrueCar.

Blogging is about producing content for two primary purposes:

1. For SEO
2. For Relationships

In my early days of blogging for car dealers I would say that you are blogging for people (relationships) and for robots (SEO). Blogging still is about these two things and it’s important not only to understand this but to have a strategy for it.

A blog marketing strategy is tricky. There are numerous aspects to it.

• The strategic aspect
• The technical aspect
• The executive aspect
• The analytical aspect

All this is a lot to juggle for most auto dealerships, but not all of it needs to be managed by the dealership. Some of this process can be outsourced, and quite frankly some of it should be.

Download Free White Paper

Details can, should, and do not need to be outsourced by dealers that want to blog are outlined in my White Paper Blogging 101 for Car Dealers. In this white paper we explain the role that content marketing plays for auto dealers and we introduce 5 different types of content that auto dealerships can produce to promote their blog and website. We also dive in to why auto dealerships want to have a blog marketing strategy and which parts make sense to outsource.

The challenge dealerships face today is how to form a process around blogging that produces all this type of information in a way that is profitable for the dealership by being efficient and effective at selling cars and driving new business from current and non-existent customers. Blogging does not close deals and sell cars, but it certainly contributes to the process of driving the best traffic to your website and building trust and loyalty with potential and existing customers.

Download your free copy of our white paper by signing up for our site. If you are already a free member and have not received your copy then contact us at 1-877-873-0583.

Dataium, a “data utility company,” is poised to revolutionize automotive CRM. Dataium’s cloud intelligence data and reporting tools can significantly enhance your lead generation and conversion numbers, in ways you always dreamed were possible.

Dataium gathers data about people, anonymously and individually, to help auto dealers better understand people’s behavior and interest level before and after they visit a dealership’s website.

Unworkable leads now become workable again.

Think of all the consumers who show interest in a certain vehicle and then walk away, not yet ready to buy. Now imagine being able to learn when each consumer is online looking at cars again sometime later, and what cars they are looking at, giving you the perfect timing and information needed to place that follow-up call.

This is just one small example of how Dataium can work for auto dealerships. As Dataium says on its website:

“With each click, search, and submission, consumers leave behind valuable and insightful data and statistics about their habits, interests, and future behaviors.”

This data is like a digital footprint, containing valuable information on online purchasing behavior and activity, consumer trends, buyer intent, and the effectiveness of promotions and web design.

In other words, you now have a new way to keep up with consumer interests and demands. With the result being:

• More of the right traffic to your website
• Fewer unworkable leads
• Better ability to predict a buyer’s intent
• Higher close rates

As consumers submit lead forms, their IP address is associated with a data record, including phone numbers, email addresses, etc., and cookies that help track online activity. Dataium connects thousands of websites including OEMs, dealers, social media platforms and automotive websites that collect user information to provide authorized businesses access to a rich stream of data that will transform the way market to car buyers.

Now the question is, how will YOUR DEALERSHIP use this information? How can auto dealers benefit from Dataium?

Key Takeaways

There were two key messages I heard across the handful of sessions and breakaways I attended. One was regarding the rapid acceptance of Mobile Computing and the other was the increasingly vital role of Social Media.

Social Media

Social media is not only a new frontier in marketing for automotive, but for all industries and for consumers too. While this might be obvious to some, to see the top tiers of the auto industry preach about social media in absolutes means that it is only a matter of time before this level of acceptance can be expected at the dealership level. Auto dealers are already embracing social media. It is an obvious choice.

The goal for car dealers is shifting from generating leads to something more broad, stickier, transparent, and mutually beneficial for everyone.

The nature of a lead is evolving into something more broad and generic, elusive in a way. I heard one presenter talk about how dealers want to expand their ideas about what a lead is and how much it is worth. There is now doubt that having people in your dealership looking at vehicles is ultimate measuring stick for the effectiveness of your marketing. Everything else is just TOMA.

Mobile Computing

A second key message was that all the new platform distribution mechanisms such as Droids, iPhones, iPads, etc., are bringing new challenges to auto dealers, but also new possibilities that were unheard of fewer than five years ago. This is something that has been developing over the past couple years, and which started accelerating earlier this year. In fact, one company, Dataium, showed data suggesting this acceleration beginning in April 2011.

Of all the companies out there, Dataium, co-founded by Jason Ezell, is the one that sticks out the most for me. What Dataium does is distinguished in its name.

Dataium gathers data about people, anonymously and individually, to help auto dealers better understand people’s behavior and interest level before and after they visit the dealership’s website.

What Dataium is able to know about you is unprecedented, and ethical. I plan to get more into this in future posts and I suspect you will begin hearing more and more about this company as they dig their heels into the auto biz. In fact, DealerRefresh did a post about Dataium after the 2011 Digital Dealer conference which is actually where I first got to see what Dataium is all about.

I have every bit of confidence in the dealer-vendor community to continue coming out with products that address the ever-changing, growing, and challenging needs of auto dealers when it comes to mobile computing and social media. For those that closely follow what I do you know that we have been hot on these trails now for several years, and you know that I am committed to remaining on those tails.

(Yes I dropped the “r” in trails.)

These were my key takeaways. I was not able to attend as many sessions and breakaways that I would have liked, but I am glad to have been there to attend the ones I could.

I don’t know how much buzz this is getting but I do think it is an exciting time for the automotive marketing business. Dealer.com, or DDC, develops fine auto dealer marketing software and the new SRM tool addresses an important undeveloped territory for car dealers – Content Syndication.

What is Content Syndication?

Content syndication is not a new practice. It has been going on in print media and in radio for more than 150 yeas with the Associated Press. It is the practice of re-distributing content across numerous destinations. In terms of the new SRM software by Dealer.com, the content syndication features are meant for the web, thus blogs and social media sites.

Is Content Syndication Good for Car Dealers?

Content syndication is a tricky beast for car dealers. From 2007-2009, we implemented aggressive content syndication initiatives with our dealer blogs using a practice called RSS Marketing. This was effective for SEO purposes by promoting a dealership’s website, but it did nothing to foster community and engagement on on the blog itself.

As social media evolved, search engines began looking for conversations to serve up in the SERPs, and that form of RSS marketing grew less effective for SEO, to the point where we shifted gears towards other types of content, content that builds on the dealership-customer relationship as opposed to products and services. Doing this has made it possible for us to build long-term engagement with dealership customers by collecting permission-based email or mobile opt-in subscribers. The SEO benefits however are less impacting, but still there.

What Can Dealers do with Content Syndication?

If you want the SEO benefits of content syndication, you have some options. To name a couple there is the Automotive Advertising Network (AAN), which generates thousands of syndicated pages of commodity-based content in a way that produces an impacting SEO benefit for car dealer websites. This network can be good for generating website traffic and leads.

There also is AutoConverse.com, which permits dealers and marketers to create unlimited free SEO micro sites to promote products and services. This system is good for connecting with in-market buyers and loyal customers, engaging people and managing relationships over long periods of time while building permission subscribers…the best kind.

Dealers and merchants with these free automotive SEO micro sites, otherwise known as Merchant “Smart” Sites on AutoConverse.com can take advantage of two forms of content syndication:

a.) You can publish blogs to your merchant site which are automatically syndicated on AutoConverse.com.
b.) You an hook up your blog RSS feed to your merchant site so that recent posts can appear

Both of these options are completely free and offer good SEO juice for your blog or website.

AutoConverse.com is powered by AutoConversion, our parent company. For more information on this please feel free to get in touch.

How Do Content Syndication and Reputation Management Relate?

With the new Social Relationship Manager from Dealer.com, dealers will be able to experiment with content syndication to give their content more exposure, and have a good way to keep a radar on things using the reputation management tools it offers. I think it was smart for DDC to make this product available stand-alone but I would not be surprised if dealers struggle for a while to make it truly beneficial. There is certainly no lack of tools out there to do these things already, some of which are free as you saw a moment ago, and syndication is only useful if the content is effective.

Producing effective content is not something I see a mass of dealers catching on to, but that is ok. It makes space for guys like us, who specialize in producing engaging and interactive content that has an automotive SEO backbone. As Pasch stated towards the end of his review on ADM…

“SRM is one of those groundbreaking products that energizes the automotive community and provides the momentum to build innovative, time saving, products in the years ahead.”

Here is Dealer.com’s video for it…

Click here to view the embedded video.

But this is nor ordinary job offer. Not only does the job come with a $65k salary, but also a new BMW every 6 months and a condo for one year. Plus, the job offer is packed with incentives for things like international travel to events, trips, and promotions.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You can tell from visiting the website they designed to promote this job offer that Endras means business. The Ultimate Blogger website has been professionally designed and coupled with a Hollywood-level video to hopefully spark a viral effect for applications. The site even has a section with links to individual landing pages that were created dynamically by applicants.

With such a well-done campaign to promote this job offer, you have to wonder if they really need a blogger because by the looks of things, Endras has already figured out how to do this shit.

If you are looking for a big break and think you have what it takes and are willing to re-locate to Toronto, this could very well me the job of a lifetime like they tout.

Good luck to everyone competing. Click here to visit the Endras BMW Ultimate Blogger website.

FBML stands for Facebook Markup Language which was the required method of use for creating landing pages on your Facebook Fan Page. There was an app for FBML that had to be installed to create a landing page and hundreds of companies and solutions sprouted in recent years around the use of FBML. Many of these solutions will soon be rendered useless.

Starting March 11, 2011, businesses will no longer be able to create new FBML apps and Pages will no longer be able to add the Static FBML app.

FBML itself is not difficult, but it does pose limitations to marketers and so in its place, Facebook will now be supporting iFrames, which gives more control and flexibility to automotive marketers creating landing pages for Facebook. In the long run, this is probably a good move for everyone, but the immediate repercussions will not go unnoticed.

If you have FBML pages on your dealership’s Facebook Fan page then you will need to take action and convert those to iFrames before too long. Even though existing tab pages won’t be destroyed, you will still have to come up with a new plan for creating new ones. HubSpot did a couple of posts that get into detail about this change from FBML to iFrames and also about the recent changes to Facebook Fan Pages which you can read for specifics, but consider the fact that Facebook can and assuredly will make decisions in the future that can have immediate detrimental effects on your dealership Facebook strategy.

The bundle includes Dealer Chat, Social Connections, Dealer Ratings and Sitelink Advanced, according to the company.

It was tested throughout the third and fourth quarters of 2010 and found to be successful, thus allowing the offering to be rolled out nationwide.

You can read more about these features at AutoRemarketing.com.

The video below shows pieces of this trek in action with participants wearing as uniforms red t-shirts printed by Jay Wolfe Toyota and local sponsors. Those participating can be seen scavenging around the city of St. Louis looking for clues and reporting their findings using their Droids and iPhones, the two platforms designed for use with the SCVNGR system. In the end, the event drew in about 500 participants.

Jay Wolfe Toyota Race for the Ride from SCVNGR on Vimeo.

This type of marketing is certainly new to automotive in that Jay Wolfe Toyota was the firm’s FIRST retail dealership to sponsor such an event. SCVNGR has been doing similar events with other businesses throughout the U.S., primarily with jewelers.

Some of the key elements to this type of marketing are:

• The Build Up: Everyone is talking about participating in the event to complete for a NEW CAR.
• The Action: Players interact with the dealership’s sales and service departments in a truly fun and engaging way.
• The Result: Acquisition of new customers to the service department as well as car sales from qualifies buyers.

The investment for this is comparable to a traditional low-level advertising campaign with your local newspaper or television station for a week or two, plus the dealership must co-op with its OEM to give away a vehicle.

Some might argue that the ROI is not there, but this could be a cop-out for not being familiar with such a marketing initiative. Dealers are still dropping similar amounts of coin on traditional advertising initiatives and are unable to gage their successes in most cases, so you can’t put much stock into that concern. In no case are dealerships able to achieve the deep levels of brand recognition and engagement that a SCVNGR treasure hunt can achieve. Plus, the end result achieves far more value to everybody involved, including the local community, plus you get a nice vide that can be used in the years to come.

If you are interested in exploring SCVNGR for your dealership, call us at 877-873-0583 or fill in the form below to request a free consultation to see if this is something for you and your dealership.

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]]> NEW YORK — A trio of industry veterans is aiming to put more power to generate productive online leads into dealers’ hands.

By recently launching the Automotive Advertising Network, these executives believe member dealers can secure unlimited leads and online promotion of their inventory on national, regional and local Web sites. They contend the placement would be strategically positioned to appear on top of the most popular search engines, social networks and blogs through the use of automotive internet marketing.

Brian Benstock, general manager of Paragon Honda/Acura, recapped the online dilemma many dealers face and how the Automotive Advertising Network could provide relief.

“Many third-party lead providers sell the same leads to multiple dealers, and this hurts the closing ratio and average gross profit because many dealers are chasing the same lead,” Benstock explained.

“The network gives us exclusive leads that are not sold to other dealers so the closing ratio is a lot higher,” he added.

“The network has the national and regional search authority so our vehicles appear on top of the results in our market,” Benstock went on to highlight.

“All of our vehicles that are listed on the network link back to our dealership Web site so our Web site gets more traffic and relevance on search engines because we inherit the search authority of the network,” he continued.

Brian Pasch, Sean Wolfington and David Boice outlined their goals for the Automotive Advertising Network. Basically, it can be a path to help dealers generate more leads for less cost.

“It is very difficult for dealers to come up on top of the search engines for these phrases because there are many lead providers competing for the same 10 results on the first-page,” Wolfington pointed out.

“The network’s advertising technology gives dealers broader exposure for their new and used inventory online by helping them appear where customers start their shopping process: search engines and social-media Web sites like Facebook,” said Pasch.

The network executives further highlighted their initiative at the Digital Dealer Conference in Orlando, Fla., on Monday. They emphasized six attributes dealers can gain for a $995 membership fee:

—Unlimited leads from consumers who are actively searching for a vehicle in their market.

—Promotion of a dealership and its inventory on CarDealerSale.com, as well as regional and local Web sites in the primary markets.

—Promotion of dealership and inventory on the most popular social media sites with live inventory posted on the store’s Facebook page.

—Unlimited vehicle inventory publishing on popular blog platforms and WordPress plug-in for optimized inventory listings.

—Banner advertising on the network’s local Web sites, as well as members do not see competitor ads on their inventory listing pages. Executives contend this is the first search optimized, dealer centric advertising platform.

—Access to the networks automotive press release publishing system and unlimited press release publishing on national and regional Web sites.

Timothy Martell, Internet director of the Albrecht Group in Massachusetts, gave a brief evaluation of what the network has done for his store.

“The network helps us dominate search results for every day search phrases that are the bread and butter for organic traffic and first party leads,” Martell noted.

Management of a Toyota dealership also shared how the network helped the store overcome turmoil surrounding recalls of the certain brand vehicles.

“We have a smart strategy to optimize our own Web site to appear on top for local search, but the network helps us reach people who type in the more popular national and regional search phrases like ‘Toyota recall,’” stated Alex Snyder, an executive with Checkered Flag Toyota in Virginia Beach, Va.

“All our cars are available for consumers to see on CarDealerSale.com and the hundreds of regional and local sites that have top position on the search engines,” Snyder added.

Another dealer from the Northwest summarized what Automotive Advertising Network executives believe their system can do for dealers nationwide.

“The ad network is our best new source of leads because they have a high closing ratio and are inexpensive because we pay a flat fee no matter how many leads we receive,” explained Jon Sherrell, Internet director at the Rairdon Group of Washington.

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