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.

Why is this important?

It’s important because it shows the mentality of the car dealer industry.

How often do you hear from the dealer Principal or GM state that they don’t see the point in social media because they don’t see how it sells cars? Or how often does your supervisor approach you with questions like, “how are things going for us on Facebook? Are we selling any cars from it yet?”

Study after study suggests, and marketers using social media confirm, that the point of social media is not for selling or closing deals, but rather for numerous other purposes such as to:

• Drive traffic to your website
• Build your brand and reputation online
• Add value to the customer experience
• Establish and maintain relationships
• And more…

Fortunately this is becoming a moot point that I think many dealers are getting past, but for those that aren’t, this is a good story to consider.

Now, this isn’t to say that you should not expect results from your efforts using social media, just that matching it to the number of cars you sell as a result is not the right metric to go by. That’s what lead-to-show and show-to-close ratios do. But that is a whole other topic. I just wanted to draw attention to this important example you can refer to when put under the gun at your dealership for your efforts on the social web.

What are some things you can share from your experience with people at your dealership who are not embracing social media as a viable means for branding your dealership?

Photo courtesy of LayOutSparks.com

One question I hear more often than others is, “How often should I post to my blog?” But to answer this question there are so many other related factors to consider it will take you burrowing down a deep rabbit hole of other similar topics, such as:

1. Why would a car dealer want to blog?
2. What is blogging and how is it different from micro-blogging and social media?
3. What type of content should you have on your dealership blog?
4. And of course, how often should you be posting blogs?

To address these other important considerations, I started on an e-book white paper of sorts today. It introduces these as topics from a strategic marketing point of view and how each ties in with how often you want to be publishing content and information in general.

Chances are, your dealership is using at least one or more forms of blogging, micro-blogging, and/or social media tools. One can not answer the frequency question without first knowing which blogging platform is in question, and what the strategy is behind the content being put on it.

You can answer this qualitatively though…

As an example, you certainly do not want to put vehicle specials, or service specials, on your Facebook wall every day or multiple times a day. This is a sure way to make your Facebook marketing strategy ineffective. However, you do if possible want to be on Facebook every day, as often as possible that is good for your brand, keeping in mind your ROI.

For the sake of argument, let’s define things such as Facebook and Twitter as micro-blogging tools, otherwise known as Social Media. Also for the sake of argument, let’s define “blog” as the conventional dealership blog which runs on say WordPress or Blogger and is on its own sub domain or directory of the dealership website, e.g. blog.mydealershipsite.com or mydealershipsite.com/blog.

Strategically, the marketing objectives are similar. You want to increase exposure of your dealership and drive traffic to your dealership website. You also want to add value to the customer experience through time, and both blogs and social media are effective tools for doing so.

As for the actual frequency, that depends on the type of content being produced and to which platform. This is another important element to your  content marketing strategy. You MUST be producing quality original content that people will SHARE. If you are not doing this, then you can only really be micro-blogging. This is good for building credibility and managing your reputation, but without original content on your blog it will be difficult to drive consistent traffic to your blog and website, and it will be near impossible for people to share anything because you haven’t created anything.

Creating quality original content that people will share is a great and growing challenge today for auto dealers that want to be and compete in the game with auto shoppers. This is large in part why we created the site AutoConverse.com, to give auto shoppers a way to engage with their local dealers on equal playing turf, if you as a dealer chose to service customers this way. And I see no reason why you  should not want to. It will become more important as advertising and technology evolve. The information you want from them will become increasingly more valuable, because they will have ways to protecting it better.

I will do a series of posts that explores these topics in more depth and make it available as a free download. You can sign up now for your free copy by joining our mailing list to become a free member. We will be sending everyone a copy it that is already a free or premium member, and it will be included at the time of sign up for people moving forward.

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.

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 project is a culmination of things. It is meant to offer auto shoppers a more private way of obtaining purchase information from local auto dealers and retailers. The site also offers dealers and retailers a social networking platform to promote their specials and cultivate high-quality prospects.

AC features a marketplace similar to Craigslist but rather than having dealers and merchants post ads in a market, shoppers are expected to post requests to which dealers and merchants may respond. The service is free for everyone.

AutoConverse.com supports communication in the format of a blog or forum which is visible to the public or in the form of private messaging which is only visible to the designated members. In either case, the Shopper is not forced to give up his or her phone number and email address in order to have a conversation with dealers and merchants. This is how the site provides a more private way of communicating.

This is how the site provides a more private way of communicating.

The site offers four different member types for people to distinguish one another – Shopper, Dealer, Merchant, or Agent, each containing its own unique set of links that can appear on the member’s profile. An Agent would be someone who represents multiple dealers or merchants, or a webmaster using the site to promote his own automotive sites and interests.

Members can optionally link to their Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare profiles along with links to their blog and website. Dealers have the ability to link people to dealer review sites like Carfolks.com or their dealership page on DealerRater.com.

Dealers, Merchants, and Agents can then create Merchant Sites which are WordPress-based microsites meant to promote a dealership or other brick and mortar storefront, or a website. These members can create as many merchant sites as they like and whatever content they publish to their merchant sites also appears on the AutoConverse.com activity stream.

This is an abridged version of the original press release which has further detail and quotes.

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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]]> http://blogproautomotive.com/internet-marketing/jay-wolfe-toyota-race-for-the-ride-with-scvngr/feed/ 0 http://blogproautomotive.com/events/examples-of-how-online-marketers-are-using-twitter-lists/ http://blogproautomotive.com/events/examples-of-how-online-marketers-are-using-twitter-lists/#comments Thu, 03 Jun 2010 02:52:15 +0000 Ryan G http://blogproautomotive.com/?p=1274
]]> In a recent study by Arbitron and Edison Research, which you can see in detail on the HubSpot Internet Marketing Blog in the post titled, 5 Twitter Charts For Marketers, Twitter was deemed equal to Facebook in awareness with consumer audiences but lagged far behind Facebook in terms of actual usage. While marketers can speculate on what this means, there are a couple insights you can take away from this research:

a.) Twitter users are actively discussing products and services
b.) Twitter is growing rapidly and driving consumer awareness

Because of this, B2C and B2B marketers continue to incorporate Twitter into their digital marketing strategies and as a marketing tool you want to maximize its potential. But in its simplest form Twitter, which is a lot like SMS text-messaging from your mobile phone, can be limited and time-consuming.

So what are some ways to better leverage the power of Twitter?

One option is with the use of lists. Twitter lists are a feature that enables you to create lists under your account and add other Twitter users to them. By doing this, you essentially create filtered views of messages being published to Twitter which helps you keep a watchful eye on people important to you, be it personally or professionally.

In March we explored ways to utilize the software TweetDeck to manage multiple accounts on Twitter. Our guest presenter for this session was Ryan Taft of Catalyst Marketers who is back with us this week to show us how to create and manage lists on Twitter. In this live web cast, Taft will be covering:

• What is a twitter list?
• Examples of Twitter Lists
• How to create a Twitter List
• How to use a Twitter List

To attend this webinar you must be registered with the AC List Builder series which you can do by clicking button below. By registering you will receive an email notification from GoToWebinar reminding you of each webinar within that series. If you are not able to or are not interested in attending a specific webinar within that series then there is no obligation to attend. You can disregard the notification.

Likewise if you have an interest in attending webinars from another series we run then you can register with those from the training page too. By subscribing to our website then we can notify you of our upcoming events and webinars plus we can share information like this that you can utilize on your own time.



]]> http://blogproautomotive.com/events/examples-of-how-online-marketers-are-using-twitter-lists/feed/ 1 http://blogproautomotive.com/events/how-auto-dealers-can-use-foursquare-to-drive-showroom-traffic/ http://blogproautomotive.com/events/how-auto-dealers-can-use-foursquare-to-drive-showroom-traffic/#comments Tue, 11 May 2010 20:50:19 +0000 Ryan G http://blogproautomotive.com/?p=1206
]]> With the advent of Foursquare.com this year, auto dealers have a new game to tackle in the digital age, literally.

Foursquare.com is a location-based social networking that requires the use of your mobile phone or device to check in to venues. To “check in” requires you load and log in to Foursquare from your mobile device, pull up a list of places or venues that have been added to foursquare.com by other users, and then use the Check In button. If the venue does not exist then you can add it by entering the name and address.

How does this benefit auto dealers?

Well, it may be too soon to tell however Eric Miltsch from AuctionDirect USA is doing it and he is going to share some of his experiences in this on our next AC Social webinar Thursday May 13 at 11:30am EST.

Sticking with our tradition of keeping AC Webinars simple and useful for applying at your dealership, Miltsch will be covering the following topics:

• New-school engagement using “location-based marketing” concepts
• Creating memorable, interactive experiences for guests
• Leveraging our networks w/regards to surrounding businesses for promotions & the breadth of our personal networks
• Improving brand recognition
• Driving traffic
• Creating sales opportunities

Join us on Thursday May 13 at 11:30am. We will begin with a brief orientation of the AC Webinar series and registration process before handing the controls over to Eric for his presentation which should last about 30-40 minutes.

To register for this event use the button below. If you are already registered with the AC Social webinar series then there is no need to re-register. Likewise if you have an interest in this topic but can not make this particular webinar, click here to view our schedule of events or sign up to receive email and text alerts for all upcoming webinars.



For questions or assistance with AC Webinars contact Ryan Gerardi.

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