BlogPro Automotive » Buzz Worthy

Jay Wolfe Toyota Race for the Ride with SCVNGR

Ryan G — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 03:37:43 +0000

On July 11, 2010, Jay Wolfe Toyota built the “Jay Wolfe Race for the Ride” trek on SCVNGR all through downtown St. Louis. The trek had people going places, doing challenges and earning points on the mobile system known as SCVNGR. The challenges asked people to solve location-based riddles, take photos and more! The top scorer at the end of the day came away with a brand new 2010 Toyota Corolla!

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.

ReachLocal goes public and raises more than $54M

tdaviero — Fri, 21 May 2010 01:04:18 +0000

ReachLocal, a leading provider in Pay-per-click advertising for auto dealer websites, went public today and came up huge, earning $54.6 million from the sale of shares that closed at just under $15 each, according to BIA Kelsey Group.

ReachLocal helps auto dealerships connect online by combining local digital media and local Internet marketing consultants with technology. The firm has been servicing the auto industry since 2007.

Wall Street skeptics doubt that similar small businesses like Yodle will follow suit with the same returns, criticizing them for their low margin, high cost business models, but IPO specialists claim that their vertical business strategy is built on margins more so than percentages, similar to Amazon, which despite low percentage profits, brings in $1 billion annually.

Automotive Advertising Network Rolls Out New Lead Generation System

dragonfly — Mon, 03 May 2010 15:49:01 +0000

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.

GOSO President’s New Book Sheds Light on Social Media in Auto Industry

dragonfly — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 20:02:05 +0000

Social Media can be a powerful tool for auto dealers. Today, more and more dealers are turning to progressive internet marketing techniques such as Facebook and Twitter to get the word out about the latest news regarding their business. These techniques, if used properly, can dramatically affect a dealer’s sales and web presence. As new information becomes available regarding automotive internet marketing, the industry continues to thrive. A previous article, Internet Marketing for Vehicle Sales, discusses some of the advantages to utilizing Social Media for marketing purposes.

In a new e-book, Social Media Best Practices for Automotive Dealers, GOSO president Adam Boalt explains why social media has shown such quickly mushrooming growth and what the implications are for auto dealers in this environment.

He delves into how social media can be beneficial, brand reputation, word-of-mouth or referral marketing, as well as best practices and the best channels to auto branding and reaching shoppers.

The book also includes a special section devoted to social tools like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blogging.

Additionally, Boalt touches on questions that dealers commonly have when it comes to social media. For example, he addresses how dealers can measure progress, keep customers and build a plan for the content they include on social-media channels.

Continuing on, Boalt is offering his insight as a panelist at the Direct Marketing Association of Detroit’s 14th Annual Automotive Integrated Marketing Symposium on April 20. He will be joined by Michelle Morris, automotive industry director at Google; Larry Bruce, vice president of managed marketing solutions for Reynolds and Reynolds; and Lonnie Miller, vice president of marketing and industry analysis at R.L. Polk & Co.

During the Symposium, Boalt is also offering the “Integrating Social Media with Marketing” session.

Boalt is also presenting at the 8th Digital Dealer Conference and Exposition in Orlando on April 21. His presentation is titled “Evolution of a Social Media Dealer.” This will feature a performance of YouTube celebrity Judson Laipply, who will share his viral video “Evolution of Dance” that has generated more than 140 million views.

View the original article here.

Another milestone for ADM community

tdaviero — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:13:49 +0000

Recently, the Automotive Digital Marketing Professional Community member total surpassed the 3,000 mark. In less than two years the ADM Professional Community has become the most visited online social network for automotive Internet sales and marketing people in the world!

Automotive industry marketing professionals build their ADM networks by uploading their contacts and sending invitations to their community, or by placing links to their ADM Profile Pages in their blogposts and emails. There is also an ADM Community Badge that members can put on their websites, blogs and in email templates. All of these activities have served to encourage the collaboration of people in the car business within an open and unmoderated or censored online environment.

What’s Coming in 2010

Several ADM Administrators are working on a major sponsorship from a highly respected automotive supplier which will provide the NON-PROFIT ADM Community with the budget to have member receptions, such as they did at Digital Dealer 6 in Las Vegas, which was sponsored by ADP
Dealer Services.

About Ralph Paglia, ADM Community Founder

Ralph Paglia is responsible for establishing ADP business partnerships and alliances with Automotive OEM’s, enterprise class National Accounts and eBusiness organizations in the automotive vertical. He specializes in business development focused on defining and providing Digital Marketing solutions to car companies and dealers that accelerate and expand success in selling vehicles, parts and services using Internet based channels, strategies and tactics.

Ralph has over 20 years of leadership in information-technology-enabled automotive strategy and tactical implementation. He is a recognized expert at development requirements, CRM and Digital Marketing value propositions along with requisite performance measurements.

For more information about Ralph or ADM, visit http://www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com/

Inventory RSS Feeds by Web2Carz.com

Adam — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 02:15:21 +0000

RSS inventory feeds from Web2Carz.com are now being implemented in two places for AutoBurst Subscribers. One of those places is on the Squidoo Lenses we do for Subscribers; another is on their blogs.

You can preview a feed on a dealer blog by visiting this Pennsylvania Toyota Dealer Blog. Look for the list of vehicles towards the right labeled, “Browse Our Vehicles”. Notice there are no vehicle images appearing in this display. We are curious to see how visitors respond to this.

To preview a W2C RSS feed on a Squidoo Lens try this Nissan Dealer near Cherry Hill (NJ) Lens. Notice there are thumbnails appearing there.

By the nature of RSS, when users click on a listing displayed in the feed they are brought to the vehicle display page of that listing on web2carz.com. The result if one inquires is a true third-party lead however by design it was the dealer’s blog or lens that ultimately produce the lead.

Web2Carz.com is one of the few auto classifieds sites broadcasting RSS feeds of inventory and they have been doing it for a couple of years now. We recently begand posting our Dealer Subscriber inventories here because there is no cost to the dealer and we see tremendous value in the RSS broadcast of inventory.

If you have any questions about this technique or wish to learn more, please contact us or visit our online discussion forum.