GLASSER FLORA - Digital Dealer

Transcription

August 2011
Dino Flora
BOB
GLASSER
Internet Manager
DINO
FLORA
Support Services Manager
JM Lexus
page 20
Bob Glasser
Advertising:
QR Codes are Here to Stay
page 8
11th Digital Dealer
Conference &
Exposition:
SNEAK PREVIEW: “Your Best
Bet For Success!”
page 12
T ABLE OF CONTENTS
AUGUST 2011
PRESIDENT AND CEO
MICHAEL ROSCOE
FEATURES
Digital Dealer Cover Story
20 Bob Glasser, Internet Manager
Dino Flora, Support Services Manager
JM Lexus
Digital Dealer Vendor Profile
24 Not Just Dealer Chat: Contact At Once! Provides Instant Engagement … Everywhere Car Shoppers Browse
PUBLISHER
GREG NOONAN
607-264-3359
[email protected]
EDITOR
MAUREEN CONDON
[email protected]
CONTENT EDITOR
MARIA BURKEL
[email protected]
DIRECTOR OF INTERACTIVE MEDIA
ARNOLD TIJERINA
[email protected]
COLUMNS
Internet Sales
6 Seize the Pent-up Demand
Tom Mohr
Advertising
8 QR Codes are Here to Stay
George Nenni
11th Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition
12 SNEAK PREVIEW: “Your Best Bet For Success!”
Digital Marketing
16 Digital Marketing Independence – Can Dealers do
it all Themselves?
Steve Stauning
ART DIRECTOR
JOE BIRCH
PRODUCTION MANAGER
ELIZABETH BIRCH
PRINT PRODUCTION
NICK THOMAS
COVER DESIGN
JOE BIRCH
COVER PHOTOS
DAVID
CIRCULATION SUBSCRIPTION
RICH JARRETT
314-432-7511
[email protected]
NATIONAL ADVERTISING SALES
[email protected]
607-264-3359
Web Sites
18 Content Strategy and SEO: The ‘King’ Needs a Plan
Ryan Pryor
Business Development
28 Why and How to Expand your BDC/Internet Sales
Department’s Profitability
Glynn Rodean
DEPARTMENTS
4 Tech News
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A PUBLICATION OF
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August 2011
DigitalDealer-magazine.com
D IGITAL Dealer TECH NEWS
AudienceScience accelerates
brand advertising for
automotive industry
AudienceScience, a global online advertising technology company, announced their
unique Automotive Vertical Solution, representing one of several audience segmenting
products that deliver industry-specific, tailored approaches to drive marketing success in
definitive markets requiring specific solutions.
Recognizing the unique digital marketing and data needs of every industry, these
vertical solutions apply a strategic audience
data-driven approach to drill down into key
decision-making processes and consumer
experience. The AudienceScience Solution for
Automotive will enable auto manufacturers
and dealers to extrapolate and share industryspecific successes, sophisticated insights, best
practices and specialized reports. It is geared to
help industry marketers identify, understand
and target crucial “in-market” car shoppers.
www.audiencescience.com/
AutoUSA launches ShowPro, an incentive program
for dealers proven to turn
Internet leads into “shows”
AutoUSA announced the launch of
ShowPro, powered by HookLogic, an incentive product for auto dealers that is proven to
increase incremental sales by turning more
Internet leads into “shows.” ShowPro allows
dealers to offer a financial incentive to inmarket customers, motivating them to visit
the dealer’s showroom. ShowPro also provides
dealers with territorial exclusivity, ensuring
no competitive dealers will be offering the
same incentive products to their independent
Internet leads.
“ShowPro targets customers with the right
message at the right time, driving more store
visits and turning a greater percentage of leads
into sales,” said Phil DuPree, president of
AutoUSA. “It’s a great way for dealers to
leverage the value of the leads they’re already
receiving.”
ShowPro works like this: when a customer
is looking at specific inventory on a dealership’s web site, a form appears offering them
a selection of gift cards upon a visit to the
dealer’s showroom. The incentive will also be
offered through the 100+ auto research and
DD 4
August 2011
shopping web sites that AutoUSA is partnered
with. When a customer enters information
and submits a lead through an independent
web site, they will be e-mailed a coupon code
they can bring to the dealership and present
to a salesperson. The salesperson enters the
code into a simple web interface and a gift
card will be mailed to the customer.
www.AutoUSADealers.com
Dealer.com expands
Vermont office, projects
new hires
Dealer.com, the global leader in online
marketing solutions for the automotive industry, unveiled a 70,000-square foot addition
to its current office space, bringing the total
office size to 135,000-square feet. The expansion is located adjacent to the company’s current headquarters in Burlington.
The new building includes a host of noteworthy features for the company’s growing
workforce of about 500 employees. With a
spacious open-air environment, warehousestyle high ceilings and an open floor plan, the
office will maintain a similar look and feel as
the company’s current space. The building
opening signifies the continued growth of
Dealer.com, which saw a 60 percent revenue
increase in 2010, in spite of the recession.
“In addition to supporting the economic
development of Vermont, this major expansion will provide Dealer.com with the potential to grow our team by nearly 300 people
over the next few years, and provide our customers with even more innovative products
and quality service,” said Mark Bonfigli, CEO
of Dealer.com. “And, in true Dealer.com fashion, we’ve put our own creative touches on
the new building, which means bold, unconventional and fun.”
www.dealer.com
PSCars.com licenses tools to
enhance dealer web sites
and better showcase stores
to sell more effectively to
online buyers
PSCars.com announced that it is now
licensing three core components of its online
vehicle shopping technologies to help dealers offer more compelling features for online
shoppers on their own dealership web sites.
“When we’ve shared our technologies with
dealers, we inevitably hear the same question:
‘Can I get this for my web site?’” says Dan
Kodsi, PSCars.com CEO. “Our decision to
license these tools provides an answer to meet
this market need.”
A key component of the market need is
dealer realization that their web sites are more
informational than transactional in nature—
particularly when it comes to selling cars.
According to Mike Pitre, dealer principal at Carleton Ford, PSCars.com has taken
his site to a whole new level of interaction
and the dealership has enjoyed a substantial increase in business; “I’m so pleased that
Turbo Marketing Solutions introduced us
to PSCars.com. With our new web site and
the PSCars.com tools, shoppers are able to
research and configure any vehicle they want,
negotiate price and terms with us, all without
leaving our site; it has opened up doors that
were not previously available to us. We are a
smaller dealership, selling around 300 new
and used vehicles a year. Now, all of a sudden,
we have the presence of a giant online; the
metropolitan auto buyer views us as big as
anyone else and business is booming.”
www.pscars.com
STAR releases its 2011 XML
and DTS repository and
transport guidelines
Standards for Technology in Automotive
Retail (STAR), a global information technology (IT) standards body for retail automotive and related industries, has released a new
major version of its transport specifications.
The STAR 2011 XML and DTS repository continues to be actively modified and
developed by the membership.
Enhancements to Business Object
Documents (BOD) were made in the areas of
service, parts, warranty, and vehicle business
transactions. Additionally, two new BODs
were implemented, a Customer Information
BOD to provide customer information data
synchronization between dealers and manufacturers, and a Service Plan Information
BOD that provides all available service plans,
with prices, for a vehicle.
The most relevant modifications were
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D IGITAL Dealer INTERNET SALES
Tom Mohr
Seize the Pent-up Demand
I
t’s been a long hot summer. Especially
for Japanese-branded dealers with earthquake-driven inventory constraints that
have stunted sales opportunity during some
of the most critical months of the year. And
all dealers have weathered the effects of a
troubled economy. So what’s next?
Simple arithmetic may finally be working in
the dealer’s favor. Due to the prolonged recession, the average age of vehicles on the road
has risen to a staggering 9.9 years. Scrappage
rates have exceeded sales rates in recent periods, a trend that obviously can’t continue. And
now with four months of strangled inventory
driving up prices, consumers have just spent
another third of a year largely sitting on the
sidelines. All of this can mean only one thing:
pent up demand.
Barring some unexpected catastrophe, there
is every reason to expect that September and
October in particular should be strong sales
months. The key, of course, is for you to take
full advantage of it.
So, how do you ensure that when the feeding frenzy begins, they eat at your banquet? It
all starts with your lead management process.
Leads are the lifeblood of Internet sales. Each
lead is precious. And the arrival of a lead is
the moment of truth. The consumer behind
that lead has sent it to three to four other
dealers. You need to have in place a structure,
staffing level, technology and plan to ensure
the following:
• A multi-vehicle price quote sent back to the
customer in 10 minutes.
• That quote should include both new and
used alternatives, with full vehicle information, all updated incentives and the contact
information of the salesperson.
• The first phone call to the customer, held
within 20 minutes of lead arrival (every
time).
• If the customer is contacted, a thoughtfully
scripted call, referencing the price quote and
leading towards an appointment.
• If the customer is not immediately reached,
a 14-day follow-up process, mixing in email
and phone follow-up.
To reliably deliver this experience, lead after
lead, time after time, takes careful planning.
If you receive less than 100 leads a month,
you need everyone from the receptionist to
the GSM in on the minute-by-minute task
of achieving these outcomes. In fact, if you
have less than 100 leads a month, one of your
biggest priorities is to drive up close rate on
those leads to north of 10%, so you can afford
to buy more leads (either by improved dealer
web site SEO, SEM or third party lead buys).
Because only after you have leads in the
250+ range are you in a position to reliably
deliver on one key piece to the puzzle: the
first phone call within 20 minutes. At that
level of leads, you can probably hire one or
two appointment setters to support a twoperson Internet sales team. It gets better as you
grow. A reliable 20 minute phone call is best
achieved with a seven day a week, 10 hour a
day BDC working in support of an Internet
sales team. But, such a team only becomes
feasible when lead volume approaches 500
leads a month.
The point is this: you need to sell your way
to higher lead volume. You need the cash flow
from increased sales to pay for lead volume
growth, which in turn drives higher sales,
which in turn allows you to build out a BDC,
which can reliably reach the customer within
20 minutes of lead arrival every time. This is
the hard-won virtuous cycle: the more sales
you can drive from your leads, the more you
can pay for more leads, and the more you’re
in a position to convert those additional leads
into sales.
So, as you prepare to seize your unfair share
of the sales in September and October, start
with your lead management process. With
a powerful process, you will be in position
to win big.
Tom Mohr is CEO of ResponseLogix, and has
worked closely with auto dealers for 25 years.
Prior to ResponseLogix, Mohr was president of
Knight Ridder Digital, where he was on the
board of Cars.com. Tom can be reached at:
[email protected].
For more articles, blogs
and daily news visit
us at www.Dealermagazine.com.
DD 6
August 2011
D IGITAL Dealer Advertising
George Nenni
QR Codes are Here to Stay
I
will admit, some of
my more progressive colleagues at
Dominion recognized the importance of
QR codes far earlier than I. Nevertheless, I’ve
become an advocate of this remarkable digital
marketing tool and how it can help automotive dealers. Why do I find them so remarkable and useful for automotive marketing?
Before Quick Response or QR codes,
retailers used one-dimensional UPS codes
to track merchandising within stores. With
the introduction of QR codes, retailers,
manufacturers and especially automotive
dealers are using two-dimensional bar codes
to transmit data, execute trackable calls-toaction and digitally engage consumers.
QR codes are able to transmit data or “smart,
actionable information” that initiates a digital
call to action for the user on the smart phone.
With a simple click, QR codes can open a
calendar event, call a phone number, launch
a web browser and so much more. QR codes
can instantly add a digitally engaging element
to your direct mail or advertising piece. Lately,
I have noticed brilliant marketers using QR
codes to initiate calendar events for upcoming
dealership grand openings or web events. Best
Call George
of all, QR codes are 100% tractable calls-toaction. Now what smart marketer wouldn’t
love an easy call to action for mobile consumers
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August 2011
that is 100% tractable?
What can you do with a QR code? The
simple answer is anything. QR codes are only
both one-dimensional and two-dimensional
barcodes scans increased in late 2010. It is
becoming more apparent that the use of QR
codes is quickly moving beyond the early
adopter phase. Driving the consumer usage of
QR codes is the fact that free apps are available,
or in some cases pre-installed, on all smart
phone devices.
How can you engage your car shoppers
with QR codes? Some savvy dealers are
already maximizing their usage of QR codes
throughout their marketing strategy. For
example, apply a QR code to a window label
to provide detailed information about a used
vehicle. Add a QR code to a showroom sign
Follow Us on Twitter
limited by your marketing imagination. Like
I mentioned, they make print pieces, like print
advertisements, banners or vehicle brochures,
become interactive. With QR codes, your
dealership can connect multiple channel
touchpoints, like print + mobile + web. Keep in
mind that automotive marketers have labeled
printed pieces with web site addresses, e-mails
and phone numbers for more than 15 years.
The QR code simplifies this by eliminating the
time-consuming and error-filled task of typing
long web address into the little keyboard on a
smart phone. Instead, consumers simply click.
By customizing each QR code to a specific
call to action, dealers can utilize unique web
URLs for tracking purposes and return on
investment measurements. Typing a long
web URL is a thing of the past. Today, we
know consumers would not take the time
to type www.dominiondealersolutions.com/
junepromotion/serviceflyer, even if it was to
receive a truly exceptional promotion.
Are QR codes a fad? Compete.com reported
in the fall of 2010 that 28% of smart phone
users had previously scanned a QR code.
With one in four mobile shoppers engaging
in the use of QR codes, industry experts
predict the adoption rate to continue to
climb. Another study by ScanLife stated that
Like Us on Facebook
to encourage consumers to “like” you on
Facebook or “follow” you on Twitter. Attach
a QR code to a print ad for consumers to take
advantage of the latest coupon in your service
department. Launch a video, share customer
reviews, call to schedule a test drive – and the
list goes on and on.
Once you become aware of these codes, you
will be more aware of them in your community.
I now seem to see them everywhere. On a recent
spring break trip to Washington, DC, I saw
more QR codes than I had seen anywhere...on
mass transit, buses, subways, even a QR code
in the Smithsonian to download an app to
help with the museum tour.
continued to P-DD27
Content supplied by 360 Marketing Partners
DD 10
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Content supplied by 360 Marketing Partners
August 2011 DD 11 W
E
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P
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SNEA
“Your Best Bet For Success!”
11th Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition Features
Leading Automotive Dealers, Industry Experts, Peer
Networking, 80+ Workshops, and 90+ Exhibitors
October 5-7 in Las Vegas
Leading automotive dealers and industry experts on digital
technology for automotive dealerships will share their expertise and best practices on the latest digital tools for sales and
marketing, fixed operations, F&I, and pre-owned departments
at the 11th Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition, October
5-7, at The Mirage in Las Vegas, NV. The Conference features
over 80 workshops, over 90 exhibitors, and peer networking
roundtables.
More than 1,000 dealership owners, general managers,
Internet directors, e-commerce managers, BDC managers,
CRM managers, pre-owned managers, F&I managers and
fixed operations managers attended the 10th Digital Dealer
DD 12
August 2011
Conference in April in Orlando.
Even more automotive retail professionals from dealerships
nationwide are expected to attend this October – to learn about
the latest digital tools, technologies, processes, best practices,
applications and solutions to boost sales, improve operations
and increase dealership ROI. Learning how to sell and service
more vehicles more profitably is the reason over 1,000 dealers
and managers will descend upon Las Vegas for the 11th Digital
Dealer Conference & Exposition.
Attendees can participate in Peer Networking Roundtables
with others from similar-sized dealerships and operations to discuss best practices and help solve each others’ greatest challenges.
Leading dealers, industry thought leaders, and expert consultants and trainers will cover a compelling range of topics
in the 80-plus sessions. Here is just a sampling of the lineup:
• Listen Up Kool-Aid Drinkers! How to utilize
technology, strategy, structure, and process to increase
your ROI. Presenter: Nicki Allen, operations,
Classic Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram Mazda. She
is one of the premier new generation dealers. Her
social site, Grinding Gears with Nicki, has gained
national prominence and she is a mainstay at her Mazda and
Chrysler NADA 20 groups.
• Your Web Identity is at Risk.
Discover the 20 most important
ways to protect your dealership’s
online identity. Presenters: April
Rain is the digital development
and training supervisor at Cuneo
Advertising. She consults and trains dealerships on sales processes, time management, marketing strategies and technologies
implementation. Richard Herod III is GM at the Saint Paul
Auto Group. During his 15 years there, his roles have included:
sales consultant, general sales manager, business development
center manager, Internet director and now general manager.
• Helping Dealers Bridge the Gap between
Retail and Wholesale Sales. How to maximize
the Internet for increased profits and efficiency while
minimizing risk. Presenter: Ed Berkowitz is vice
president, Open Auction at OPENLANE. He
is responsible for driving solutions to improve
the online buying and selling experience.
• Stand-alone Service Web Sites. Why you
need one and how to build one. Presenter: Jeff
Clark, DealerOn Inc., VP of Sales & Business
Development. He oversees the sales and business
development initiatives for DealerOn.
• Creating the ‘Apple Store
Experience’ in Dealerships. A look
at how a technology-enhanced sales
process creates an engaging customer
experience that makes your dealership unforgettable. Presenters: Jim
Hughes, Strategy & Business Development/co-founder of
IntellaCar, has been a successful entrepreneur, winning awards
and delivering the “wow” for well-known brands for over 30
years. Bruce Polkes, Marketing, Technology & Operations/
co-founder of IntellaCar has a keen sense for technology and
over 25 years of world-class marketing experience.
• Match Media Spend with Audience
Consumption to Increase Returns. Dealers need
timely empirical data that shows how people actually
consume media today so they can more efficiently
allocate marketing dollars and maximize reach and
frequency to their target audiences. Presenter: Jim
Dykstra – Comcast Spotlight – Automotive Lead. As a third
generation automotive industry executive, Dykstra has hands
on strategic and tactical experience working for dealerships,
manufacturers, and digital auto companies.
• Optimize your Digital
Marketing Strategy with Call
Tracking Analytics. Track your
online marketing campaigns with
dynamically created phone numbers
and determine where to spend your
advertising budget. Presenters: Ryan Pryor is director of the
Search and Analytics Team at Dealerskins, where he is responsible for managing the SEO/SEM strategy and implementation
for Dealerskins’ clients. Joe High is a general manager with
Dealerskins, a Dominion Dealer Solutions company.
• Merchandizzle. To market your
inventory profitably, you’ve got to
add more sizzle to the steak, yo!
Presenters: Joe Webb is the founder
of DealerKnows Consulting, an
automotive Internet sales training
firm specializing in advancing dealers through both on-site and
virtual consulting. Timmy D. James is founder of Tim James
Consulting. He is a leading automotive digital marketing expert
and a well-respected industry trainer, and the former director
of sales with HomeNet Automotive.
• Social Service Marketing: The Next Frontier
for Driving Retention. Learn how digital and
social strategies can integrate with your traditional
marketing to retain service customers. Presenter:
Gary Kalk is president and CEO of Dealer-FX, a
leader in automotive retail marketing, providing
consulting services, marketing and brand effectiveness programs,
as well as integrated service retention tools to both dealers and
OEMs throughout North America.
• 288 Mind-blowing Internet Marketing Stats
and the Marketing Plan You Can’t Afford Not to
Use. Learn what inbound marketing is, how to do it,
and why it’s vital for your continued success. Presenter:
Chad Polk, CEO of AutoRevo, with over a decade
of automotive Internet marketing experience.
August 2011 DD 13 • Double your Internet
Department’s Profit in 2012.
Online strategies that are proven to
sell more cars for higher margins.
Presenters: Amir Rezvani oversees the client results team for
DealerOn. Rezvani co-founded DealerOn in 2002 with his
partners to help auto dealers increase the effectiveness of their
online marketing efforts. Jeff Kershner is the director, New
Media for the Younger Automotive Group.
• Increasing Sales through Database Mining
and Equity-based Marketing. A practical, handson session on how dealerships should mine their
customer database to drive qualified traffic and
increase customer retention, sales, and market
share. Presenter: Allen Levenson is VP Sales &
Marketing for Prospect Vision, a 1 0-year old company that
helps hundreds of dealerships mine their customer database and
drive sales and customer retention and whose clients include
AutoNation, Penske, and many others.
• What Exactly is a Lead Today? Why ‘1.0’
selling is required in a 2.0 world. Presenter: Ken
Potter is vice president, Sales, of CarsDirect.
com and oversees all automotive dealer products,
dealer sales, and dealer support for the leading
Internet car buying service.
• eBay Motors – Operational Blueprint. eBay
Motors will be releasing its new 150-page operational blueprint at Digital Dealer Conference &
Exposition. This class will teach dealers how to use
the A-Z manual. Presenter: Clayton Stanfield,
senior manager of Dealer Training at eBay
Motor for four years. He oversees all training and industry
outreach programs for eBay Motors.
• Social Media ~ Reputation Management and
Online Profile Management. Managing one’s
online reputation is complex, but essential; learn the
ins and outs of this essential aspect of social media
marketing. Presenter: Nannette Staropoli, president and CEO of MARKIT Group, a brand
marketing firm dedicated to helping companies increase revenue and brand awareness through strategic development and
execution of traditional and web based marketing.
This is just a small sampling of sessions. You can read more
about these and additional presenters and their sessions online
at www.DigitalDealerConference.com.
What attendees say:
Many dealer principals, presidents and vice presidents, and
GMs said the 10th Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition
was a real eye-opener to all the ways digital technology could
help them improve dealership operations and practices.
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August 2011
Mike Eckler, president, Richmond Car & Truck Center, in
Richmond, KY, felt that the conference was “Invaluable in
bringing us up to date with e-commerce, CRM, many of our best
practices, and meeting folks from across the country with the same
issues and desire we have.”
“The conference is a good way to keep up with the fast-paced
changes in our digital needs,” says Steve Roe, general manager
at Roe Motors, in Grants Pass, OR.
Todd Matt, dealer, Bonner Springs Ford, in Olathe, KS, stated,
“It was a little overwhelming. This was the first one I had attended
and I realized I have a lot of work to do in this area. I will be
better prepared for the next conference. There was tons of useful
information.”
Internet directors, BDC managers, and
e-commerce directors from all regions of the
country were equally enthusiastic. Here’s just a
sampling of their comments:
Tanisha Hope, Internet/BDC manager, at Massey Yardley
Dodge Chrysler Jeep, in Plantation, FL, says, “This conference
opened up to us some things we could improve and implement. We
did one small implementation when I returned with immediate
results. Average BDC sales is 35 per month – and we did 52 sales
last month! We have four other things I learned at the conference
that we plan to try.”
“The Digital Dealer Conference continues to be our dealership
group’s university for best practices, new technology and trend
tracking,” says Russell Blackstone, e-Commerce Director at
Hewlett VW, in Austin, TX. “By meeting our peers at roundtable
and networking sessions and attending presentations by the best
dealer practitioners in the industry, we can stay current and ahead
of our competition. We are also able to save a large amount of time
and money by evaluating vendors during the conference. We take
this golden opportunity twice a year to sharpen our saw and learn
from the very, very best in the business.”
From New England to California and everywhere in between,
attendees agreed that being exposed to fresh ideas was a universal
experience. “I brought back many great ideas to implement,” said
Scott Sartorio, e-commerce manager, Fenton Family Dealerships,
Swanzey, NH. Greg Coleman, director
business development, at the Oxmoor
Auto Group in Louisville, KY, agreed,
noting that the conference was, “...the best
three days any dealership can invest in for
a successful year.” “It’s great to get out and
meet new people in the industry, share ideas,
and learn new ones,” noted Chad Priest,
Internet director at Infiniti of Mission
Viejo, in Mission Viejo, CA.
E-commerce and Internet managers
enthusiastically stated that the conference
gave them not only fresh ideas and
strategies, but very practical sales and
marketing tactics to be implemented
at their dealerships. John Douglass,
e-commerce manager at McGrath Lexus
of Chicago, IL said, “It is always refreshing
to see the latest trends, technology, and ideas.
I sincerely hope to implement the new ideas
in the immediate future without too much
pushback and most certainly will attend the
next conference.”
and motivated to take my dealerships’
e-commerce and marketing efforts to the
next level.”
Robert F. Purdy III, Internet sales
director at Jim Burke Automotive Group,
in Birmingham, AL, noted: “We always
come away with something valuable to the
bottom line to implement. Every dealership
should take a long hard look at being
represented at this conference!”
To register for the
11th Digital Dealer
Conference & Exposition
at The Mirage in Las Vegas,
NV, October 5-7, visit: www.
DigitalDealerConference.com.
Chris K. Bryant, director of e-business
at Superior Auto Group, in Conway,
AR said the conference was a “great
place to ‘borrow’ ideas.” David Maroulis,
sales manager, Bob Johnson Chevy,
in Rochester, NY, agreed, citing social
networking ideas as the best take-aways
from the conference.
“We learned many fresh ideas that are
in the process of being implemented in
our dealership. It was a very invaluable
experience!” says Laura Polakiewicz,
Internet sales manager at Royal Chevrolet,
in Bridgewater, NJ.
Newcomers to the industry, like Allison
Carpio, digital commerce & marketing
specialist at Roseville VW, in Roseville,
CA, also praised the conference for the
fresh ideas and inspiration it offered: “As
a marketing professional who is fairly new
to the automotive industry, attending the
Digital Dealer Conference was one of the
most beneficial and educational experiences
so far in my current career position. Not only
was I able to exchange ideas with bright
individuals, but I took away valuable tactics
to ensure the success of my dealerships. In
fact, we’ve already executed one of these
tactics and it’s shown positive results! I
left the conference feeling more inspired
August 2011 DD 15 D IGITAL Dealer Digital Marketing
Steve Stauning
Digital Marketing Independence –
Can Dealers do it all Themselves?
T
he growth of
technology
and particularly the Internet has made it possible for
small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs),
like car dealers, to accomplish much of their
marketing and advertising without outside
assistance. For example, every dealer should
be able to edit and update their Google Places
page all by themselves. The guy who manages
the donut shop up the street can do it, why
can’t you? There should be no need to pay
someone like me, on a regular basis to manage
this very easy, intuitive and infrequent activity.
Google and Facebook (and any company
wishing to become a scintilla as successful as
these online giants), know that in order to get
broad adoption of their services by the majority
of businesses, they need to make everything
mind-numbingly simple or their market
penetration (and their revenues) will suffer.
Great examples of the do-it-yourself digital
marketing trends that actually benefit SMBs
are Facebook Ads and Google Boost. While
dealers may want help setting up these services
initially, they really don’t need anyone outside
of their organizations to manage the day-today requirements.
But, what about more complex digital
marketing tasks or actions where a dealer
is at the mercy of a third party? Specifically,
what about lead acquisition activities that
require dealers to use a third-party company’s
products? From advertising on major classified
web sites to buying sales leads, there are some
activities that (by their very nature) dealers
cannot do for themselves. Having to rely on
a third party, for some reason, makes many
dealers angry. Whether it is the cost (though
this seems strange given the more expensive
advertising that digital marketing replaces)
or just the fact that they cannot generate this
traffic on their own, some dealers flat out hate
any vendor they “must use.”
‘Dump all the third parties… except me’
Dealers love to hear that they can do this
whole Internet thing without AutoTrader.
DD 16
August 2011
com, Cars.com or independent Internet leads
(AKA: third party leads). To make matters
worse, there are popular writers and speakers
in the industry that further this passion for
self-reliance when they tell dealers that great
SEO, SEM and a strong social media strategy
is all you need – and dealers eat it up.
Unfortunately, for dealers wishing to
become 100% self-sufficient, this advice
is not only wrong, it’s irresponsible. Not
surprisingly, those who spout this babble
have something to sell to dealers. Something,
they say, that will help dealers eliminate those
pesky third parties (except, of course, the third
party selling you the one thing you need to
get rid of all the others).
I’ll write this clearly so no one
misunderstands my position: Dealers who
want to be successful with their Internet sales
efforts cannot do so without casting a very
wide net. Among other things, this means
you cannot generate enough first-party leads
to rid yourself of effective outside sources.
Some in-market consumers will never visit
AutoTrader or Cars.com, but a whole lot
more will never visit your web site, regardless
of how much you spend on social media,
SEO and SEM.
Not buying third-party leads? Your
competitors thank you.
Moreover, when a dealer refuses to work
with any specific lead source, that dealer is
giving his competitors an advantage. For
example, if a dealer refuses to advertise on
a web site that aggregates inventory from
many other dealers, that dealer is granting the
remaining dealers on the site a competitive
advantage by his absence.
Regardless of what some of the “experts”
say, dealers cannot spend enough money on
Google or write enough SEO content to attract
the traffic that flows to certain web sites. Sites
like Edmunds.com, KBB.com, Cars.com,
Autobytel.com, UsedCars.com and hundreds
of others all enjoy traffic that will never, ever
visit a dealer’s web site. Additionally, even if
all in-market consumers visited every available
automotive web site (including yours), there
is no guarantee that any one of these sites
is going to generate a sales lead from any
particular prospect. Only by forgoing your
efforts at 100% self-sufficiency and casting
the widest net possible can you expect to gain
the maximum advantage online.
But, um, you sell first-party leads,
don’t you?
Whenever I am in front of a group of
dealers and deliver a strategy that advocates
they stop the self-reliance kick, I am generally
reminded by at least one person in the
crowd that my own business is focused on
the concept of driving first-party leads for
dealers (SEO, SEM, lead-generating web
site parasites, automated specials, etc.), and
I am asked questions like “Why are you
advocating against the things you sell?” and
“Have you changed your beliefs or your
product offerings?”
The short answer is that I’ve changed
neither of these – but I do have a mirror and
three sons; and I have to look each one in
the face every day. In other words, I would
prefer to give sound advice based on what
really drives success for dealers, rather than
change my message to benefit only my
offerings. (There are too many vendors in
the automotive space doing that already.)
Make no mistake about it, dealers should
do everything they can to increase their
first-party leads. In fact, this should be a
primary goal for the lead acquisition side of
your business. But, and here’s the kicker, you
cannot stop there if you want to be truly
successful. (Regardless of what self-serving
message some search engine optimization
company is telling you.) This reminds me
of two recent examples I encountered in the
market recently.
The ‘drop third parties and use the
savings to advertise with us’ sales
pitch
continued to P-DD29
D IGITAL Dealer WEB SITES
Ryan Pryor
Content Strategy and SEO: The ‘King’
Needs a Plan
I
n the “Content is King and the Search
Engine Knows It” article in the July
2011 issue of Digital Dealer magazine,
Joe High discussed the importance of having
solid content on your web site, and the variety
of ways that it helps your dealership, your
customers, and the search engines. Content
is so much more than simply the words on
a page, or even the images. It’s about the
message you present as a whole. And as far as
customers and search engines are concerned,
the entirety of your content matters. So, let’s
build on the “content is king” concept and
consider engaging with a comprehensive
content strategy.
Did you plan on being in
the publication business?
Probably not. But now
you are.
So, what is content? Joe touched on this in
his article. Content is everything containing your
brand, offline and online, but let’s just stick
with the web site portion for now. There are
so many elements of content on your web site.
In fact, it’s all content. It’s not just the words, it’s
the buttons, the ads, the inventory, the “who
we are” sections, the community pages, the blog
pages, the links (inbound and outbound), the
meta copy (and other supporting code), the
sitemap, the graphics, the navigation, and the
part most people call “content” - the page copy.
A solid content strategy should include:
• A comprehensive list of all of your content
locations
• An assignment of responsibilities for
creating and maintaining content
• A schedule for content review and update
When it’s time to make an update to your
web site, you need to carefully consider several
DD 18
August 2011
key factors. How will the changes affect the
user’s experience? Can users easily find what they
are looking for on your site and in your new or
used inventory? Did you update your web site
coupons and specials to reflect those running on
other online sites? For example, let’s say you ran
a special only on Facebook and advertised it on
your web site. When you pulled the special off
of your Facebook page, did you remember to
also remove the link on your web site?
Forgetting to update an advertisement’s link
to your site can mean people end up on a page
full of irrelevant or out-of-date information; and
that can mean frustrated potential customers.
Those are the ones you’ll lose fast. You may
contact your web site provider when it’s time to
make updates to your web site, but you’ll need
to keep all the other online media in mind at
all times, as well. One medium should not be
modified without consideration to all the other
media. Someone in the dealership, perhaps your
Internet sales manager or e-commerce director,
needs to be responsible for the maintenance and
oversight of all of your content. This content
comprises your complete automotive digital
marketing strategy and therefore can’t be taken
seriously enough.
To keep up with the speed of the digital
world, you have to have a plan. Not just a
weekly or monthly plan, but a far stretching
and flexible one. Something agreed upon by
everyone involved with your content that
identifies where areas and types of content exist,
what they contain, who’s responsible for them,
and when they need to be updated or removed,
etc. That means you need your Internet sales
directors, general managers, dealer principal,
office personnel, marketing firms, advertising
providers, web site providers, and inventory
streams all on the same page.
You may not readily recognize that as
soon as your web site goes live, it’s a living,
breathing thing that has to be fed. But, as one
of the nation’s top content strategists, Kristina
Halvorson, put it, “The moment you launch a
web site, you’re a publisher. The moment you
begin a blog, send an e-mail, participate in social
media, build a widget, even show up in search
engine results... you’re a publisher,” (Content
Strategy for the Web, p.21).
Did you plan on being in the publication
business? Probably not. But now you are. Much
like traditional print or television media, there
are web site platforms from which to promote
your vehicles, communicate with your
community, voice your opinions and concerns,
and put your overall brand message out into the
public eye. The only differences between now
and the days of print are that it all occurs a lot
faster, and across a lot more locations.
As Joe put it, you should make sure you’re
educating, engaging, and updating your
content, to get the most out of it. Now that
you’ve got a solid content strategy in place,
you are set to serve your customers, pique
search engine interest, and present your brand
in all places.
Ryan Pryor is director of the search and
analytics team at Dealerskins where he is
responsible for managing the SEO/SEM strategy
and implementation for Dealerskins’ customers.
He has experience managing organic and paid
search and analytics for a variety of industries
including automotive web sites, home and
automobile warranties, restaurant supply and
healthcare products, as well as a number of
local and national clients and lead generation
companies. You can reach Ryan at: rpryor@
dealer-communications.com.
Participate in the Digital Dealer
Excellence Awards Competition!
®
Dealer Communications, the leading multi-media information source for the automotive retail industry, is
co-sponsoring a new award series – The Digital Dealer® Excellence Awards -- to recognize automotive
dealers, managers and their web site providers for exceptional performance of the web sites they design,
host, and support.
Recognition will be based upon independent, unbiased analytics of dealers’ web sites performed
by Dataium, Inc., co-sponsor of the awards and the leading data utility company providing business
intelligence through the aggregation and analysis of consumer activity across the Internet.
There will be awards for the best performance in each of the following 12 categories,
as well as the top award for best overall performance among all categories:
• Best Performance: Unique Visitor to Auto Shopper Conversion
• Best Performance: Leads per Auto Shopper • Best Performance: Leads per Inventory Search • Best Performance: VINS Searched per Auto Shopper • Best Performance: % of Auto Shoppers Returning (% of Be Backs)
• Best Performance: Average Time on Site per Auto Shopper
• Best Performance: Lowest User Bounce Rate
• Best Performance: Greatest Share of Leads among Web Site Visitors
• Best Performance: Leads per Page Views
• Best Performance: Lowest Time to Lead Submission
• Best Performance: Lead Volume
• Best Performance: Inventory Search Volume
Dealer Communications invites automotive dealers
nationwide to enter the competition by registering
their web sites at www.visicogn.com/dd. There is no
entry fee and registration is quick and easy.
Each dealership that enters the
competition will receive Dataium’s
VisiCogn® INSITE application (Basic version)
at NO COST for one year -- a $1,200 value.
Dataium will automatically analyze data from this
application in order to evaluate each dealer’s
web site performance. For more information about
INSITE visit www.visicogn.com. Dataium, LLC is
the largest aggregator of Internet automotive
shopping activity. The company collects, analyzes,
and indexes 10s of millions of online automotive
shopping events each week. The company
supports cutting edge data collection and
reporting technology; VisiCogn® Collection Utility,
VisiCogn® Knowledge Center, VisiCogn® INSITE, and
is also known for its ASI index. For more information,
visit www.dataium.com, email: [email protected],
or call 877-896-DATA (3282).
This competition is the first of its kind and is
completely objective based on statistics.
The first award recipients will be announced at
the 11th Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition
in October, and after that, awards will be
announced twice annually at the conference
each spring and fall.
COVER STORY
Dino Flora
Bob Glasser
BOB
GLASSER
Internet Manager
DINO
FLORA
Support Services Manager
JM Lexus
What truly distinguishes JM Lexus?
• The nine-hole putting green for customers on the rooftop
of the service center?
• The fact that JM Lexus is the largest volume Lexus
dealer in the world, and has been since 1992?
• That its parent company, JM Family Enterprises, Inc.,
ranks 16th on FORTUNE magazine’s list of the “100
Best Companies to Work For” in America?
• That JM Lexus is within the top 25 dealerships
nationwide in Internet sales, with 2,223 Internet sales
units in 2010?
•O
r, all of the above?
Bob Glasser, Internet manager, and Dino Flora, support
services manager, say that’s all good, but what really
distinguishes the dealership is the entire “JM Lexus
experience” its customers enjoy.
Bob and Dino described that unique experience and
outlined what it takes to deliver it in a recent interview
with Digital Dealer magazine.
DD 20
August 2011
First of all, Bob and Dino, how did each of you get into the car business?
Bob: I had been a leader with a 100-year-old home improvement company
that was swallowed up by another company and I wasn’t needed after a
while. My efforts to find work in that area ran into a wall. So, I responded
to newspaper ad for someone who had attributes I thought I had and the
job turned out to be a car salesman’s. It wasn’t JM Lexus; I wish it had been.
It was a Lincoln Mercury store in South Dade County. I was there until
Hurricane Andrew blew it away in 1992. Then I switched to a nearby
Mercury dealer, was there for a year, and then got a call from the original store:
They were going to rebuild. ‘Did I want to come back as a manager?’ I did.
After two years, I was recruited back to the store I had gravitated to after
the storm. From there, I retired. After a year and a half of retirement, I was
so sick of being retired, I went back to work at a competing local Lexus store,
got involved in their Internet activities and then was recruited by JM Lexus
in 2006. I’ve been here four and a half years as Internet director. We have
two Internet departments: current staffing is nine for the new car Internet
sales department and nine for the pre-owned.
Dino: I’m a computer guy. I had a web
posting and design company and managed a
boat financing web site. I did well with that,
but in 2001, with the stock market bubble,
things went south for me. I was reading
Fortune magazine in May 2003 and saw that
JM Family was one of the best places to work
in South Florida. So I jumped on Monster.
com and saw JM Family had a job opening. I
applied and was hired in June 2003 as desktop
support guy for all the computer systems and
I’ve been here ever since. In 2007, I became
the support services manager. I have a staff
of four IT people – programmers, project
managers and desktop support people.
Let’s talk about the unique JM Lexus
experience.
Bob: Our customers expect the best, so
we are dedicated to providing that across
the board, but we also like to go above and
beyond that with unexpected amenities.
For instance, we recently finished building
a nine-hole putting green on the top of the
service center. Jim Dunn, our vice president
and general manager, came up with the idea
of the putting green and our Fixed Operations
Director Brad Schafer led the effort to get it
done. Our customers who are golf enthusiasts
can now improve their game while getting
their cars serviced.
Another amenity we offer – if our customers
want to work instead of relaxing while they
are here – is the availability of PCs and iPads
in our guest lounge.
Dino: For service customers who just want
to kick back and relax, we also offer massage
chairs, sandwiches, and coffee and danish.
For customers buying a car who prefer to
be in and out of the dealership quickly, we
have a “Ready Upon Arrival Program” that
allows our customers to hone in on a car on
the web, call and talk to a sales rep, negotiate
a deal and make an appointment for delivery.
Much of the detail work is done over the
phone and via fax and we guarantee that when
they come to the dealership, they will only
need to be here 30 minutes to buy the car
and drive off with it.
(Incidentally, JM Lexus also treats its
associates to a unique workplace experience
– providing on-site medical services, a gym,
a hair salon, a massage parlor, and two
cafeterias!)
Bob: One of the things we do best to provide
a superior experience for our customers is
respond to leads quickly and effectively. We
cater to our customers; product specialists –
who fully understand all our products, who
can answer all questions knowledgably, and
who can tell the customer what is in stock in
the store – respond to all our leads.
Whether it be a walk-in customer, a web
site customer – what we call the virtual front
door customer – or a phone customer, we
want our customers to know that their needs
are our first priority.
Dino: That’s one of the reasons we’re
getting our arms wrapped around mobile
shopping for our customers – to provide the
very latest in customer convenience.
If you pull up www.jm-lexus.com on your
phone, it redirects you to our mobile friendly
web site. We’re just finishing up our iPhone,
Blackberry and Android apps. There are a lot
of companies that you can buy a canned app
from, but we wanted to make sure we were
providing an app worthy of being on our
customers’ phones, so we decided to create
our own iPhone app. It ended up being very
cost-effective.
Now, our customers and prospects can
search our inventory, look at basic information
about any of our departments – including our
lifetime warranty and tire programs – and
schedule service with us all on their phones.
Then they can call on direct numbers to
any one of our departments. It’s extremely
convenient.
magazines. I attend meetings among other
Lexus Internet people. We exchange a lot
of notes.
Dino: I also attend a ton of podcasts and
participate in many forums, some automotive
social media, and I read tons of newsletters.
How do you get your Internet sales leads?
Bob: We have a number of different web
sites, including our own, that host our preowned and new car inventory. We get 50%
of our leads from our JM Lexus web site,
another 15% from Cars.com, and another
12 % from AutoTrader.com.
The rest come from other recognized third
party lead providers: Kelley Blue Book, Vehix,
Dealix, Carsoup.com, Automotive.com,
MotorTrend.com, eBay – so there’s quite a
variety of sources. And, we get some preowned referrals from the manufacturer.
We also have Black Book online on our
web site as a courtesy to our customers, so
they can get an idea about what their car is
worth, and we get leads from that as well. We
also get phone leads and we get Live Chat off
of Cars.com.
All these leads feed into our CRM,
VinSolutions. The Internet Lead Management
(ILM) piece of our VinSolutions CRM is used
by all our Internet salespeople.
What is your biggest challenge?
Bob: Internet sales is continuously
changing. You never get there. There are
always new things to try: new sources for
leads, new spins on processes, new technology
that permits different approaches. It never
stands still and it’s never dull. It’s a continuous
learning process.
How do you handle distribution of your
sales leads?
Dino: Anybody that’s ready to take a lead
from our CRM takes it on a first come, first
serve basis. We don’t use the round-robin
approach. If we were to round-robin it off
sequentially to the next salesperson, he/she
might not be ready to take the lead. Once
a saleperson takes a lead, that triggers a
scheduled follow-up. So, we can be sure the
customer is taken care of as fast as possible.
Bob and I have developed a formalized
schedule that we think is the most effective
way to follow up with customers to make
sure they get the proper information based
on what they are looking for.
How do you keep up with that?
Bob: Both Dino and I attend the Digital
Dealer Conferences, and we read many
publications, both inside and outside the
industry, including Dealer and Digital Dealer
Bob: Many lead providers send the lead
to multiple dealers, so our approach is when
a lead comes in, we’ve entered a competition
and the clock starts ticking. We want to be
the first to respond, with the best response.
August 2011 DD 21 appropriate notes go into
the system and either an
e-mail or call occurs daily
until contact is made.
How many days do you
follow up?
Bob: We go out 120 days
because 65% of our new
car sales business is leasing.
A lot of our customers
start getting notification
anywhere from three to six
months prior to their lease
being due. When they first
get that notification, they
jump on the Internet, start
looking at cars and maybe
fill out an e-mail to get
information. Then they sit
on it, until their car lease is
actually due.
How is your CRM
working for you?
The dealership boasts a nine-hole putting green on the
Bob: VinSolutions does
top of the service center. “Our customers who are golf
a great job for us with
enthusiasts can now improve their game while getting
the Internet follow-up
their cars serviced,” says Glasser.
process and schedules. It
also allows us to do other
There are no auto responders in our
things in-house that we
process. Whoever claims the lead, sends the traditionally used to have to outsource.
appropriate response – an e-mail, saying: I’ll
call. Then, they pick up the phone and make
For instance, we’re taking pictures of our
the call.
own cars now. We used to outsource that for
both new and used cars. We also used to
Our average response time –with an e-mail outsource the lease termination process. Now,
or phone call – is under 10 minutes. With our with VinSolutions, we do that in-house too
response e-mail, the customer gets a virtual and that saves us money.
interactive brochure in the form of a link
and while they are looking at it, their phone How do you handle SEM and SEO?
Dino: Cobalt (now owned by ADP) is our
will ring and it will be one of my sales reps
Lexus-provided web site company. Cobalt
talking to them.
manages most of the SEM for us and also
Dino: Any time a lead comes in and it isn’t does some SEO.
picked up within 30 minutes, it is open to
any department. For instance, if a lead comes
We also do a lot of the SEO in-house. It’s
into the new car department and no one all about good content. If you have that, you’ll
can take it for 30 minutes, it can be taken get a lot of clicks. That’s where we do our best
by someone in the used car department and on our Lexus web site.
vice versa.
We’re also increasing our SEO by pushing
When we first contact a lead, we set up the out custom-made videos. We have a couple
next contact – whether it’s going to be one of college interns that help create “how to”
day, two days, or three days and the CRM videos. We also do the standard photowill tickle the salesperson at that point. If stitched videos with voiceover to promote
no contact is made within that time, then all our vehicles. When these videos are tagged
DD 22
August 2011
right and are of good quality, they show up in
searches. We have a YouTube.com Channel
and we are also looking at video syndication
with TubeMogul, which will provide us great
SEO value.
Bob: We also rely heavily on PR to
increase our SEO. We really benefit from the
services of two public relations professionals
– Christie Caliendo and Michael Esposito
– and their tech support team from our
parent company, JM Family. They write
many of our press releases and their hard
work increases our SEO.
In the past, we only did press releases on
traditional, hard-core news and sent those
to the business wires. Now we find softer
news – such as the dealership’s charity
work, or our achievements in making the
dealership an environmentally friendly
business operation, or our very latest
customer amenities – and we work those
into press releases, so we can get our name
out there as much as possible.
Dino: We post these press releases on a
lot of free online PR sites and we make sure
we work the key words and meta-tags into
the releases that will help us with SEO. The
Internet has allowed us to maximize the
impact of this type of soft news.
For instance, we just put up a nine-hole
putting green on what had been dead space
on the roof that covers up the service drive.
We had the grand opening in March and had
Channel 7 news here and we got a lot of great
press and that is helping with SEO.
How do you use social media and has that
affected your SEO?
Bob: We have a Facebook Fan Page where
we post information about our charity work
and the events we host every weekend at the
dealership, and that helps our SEO.
We use GOSO, a social media brand
management platform, to help us create a
strategy to manage not only Facebook, but
YouTube.com and Twitter as well, and we use
GOSO’s Buzz Monitor tool to monitor our
results. It’s all about creating a buzz online.
Dino: We are finding that having a strong
social media presence is starting to very
favorably impact SEO on Google and Bing.
Let’s say, you and I are friends on Twitter
and Facebook. If I buy a car at JM Lexus
and tweet about the car or the dealership, or
I share that information on Facebook, then
you search on Google or Bing for that type
of car or our dealership, Google and Bing
will show you that your friend just posted
this tweet about JM Lexus.
Monitor to monitor what people are saying
about us on the Internet.
And, people who “like” us on our Facebook
Fan Page and post about us are starting to
have an impact on SEO. We are trying to
get those people who “like” us to also post
about JM Lexus on their own Facebook and
Twitter pages.
Bob: Many automotive web sites, like Cars.
com, AutoTrader.com, etc., are also getting
into the reputation business, setting up tabs
on their web sites where consumers can
submit reviews as they do on DealerRater.
com. So, it’s come full circle: the site the
consumer started their search on is where
they can now come back and report on their
experience.
When a customer buys a car, do you ask
them immediately to write about their
experiences online?
Dino: We haven’t gone that far yet.
Right now we’re looking into strategies
around how to do that. For instance, we’re
looking at an iPad app that allows people
to take a survey that is formatted like a
golf scorecard. At the end of the survey,
there’s a path for them to post or tweet
about their experience at our service center.
We’re hoping that the customers using our
courtesy iPads in our guest lounge will take
the survey and then use this app to post or
tweet favorably.
Overall, how do you handle online
reputation management?
Bob: We are on DealerRater.com and
we’ve learned how to manage our presence
there. We stand pretty tall compared to
other Lexus dealers in our area. We have
139 reviews and we’re rated overall 4.9 out
of a maximum of 5 for customer service,
quality of work, friendliness, overall
experience and price.
Dino: As part of our scheduled CRM
follow-up, we send sold customers an e-mail
welcoming them to the JM Lexus family
and saying we hope that if they enjoyed
their experience that they’ll share that on
DealerRater.com. So we get a lot of people
posting to DealerRater.com.
There are so many different places that
people can post about JM Lexus that it’s
impossible to actively monitor them by going
from site to site. You have to set up some
tools to do that. So, we use Google Alerts,
SocialMention Alerts, and GOSO’s Buzz
If we find anyone who hasn’t had a great
experience here, we respond to them. If it was
a sales or service or body shop issue, we’ll go
to that manager and show them what was
written and have them write a response.
Dino: Actually, all of those reviews –
whether it’s DealerRater.com, Edmunds.
com, Yahoo, Yelp, etc., are all being pulled
into Google Places, which is also something
that does really well for us. We get a lot of
traffic out of Google Places.
How are you optimizing your exposure
with Google Places?
Dino: Most of the time when someone
goes to Google Places, it’s to get directions to
JM Lexus. I have optimized our description,
tags, photos, and videos, and that has done
wonders.
For instance, I changed one of the phone
numbers once for the pre-owned store and
the person who answers that number called
me a half hour later, asking why she was
suddenly getting “40 million phone calls.”
So, it works.
A lot of people are using Google Places on
their phones. They’ll go to the map program,
put in JM Lexus and call the number that
comes up straight from there. So it’s important
to pay attention to Google Places.
How are all these online marketing efforts
paying off in terms of the dealership’s
bottom line?
Bob: For 2010, we were in the top 25
dealerships nationwide for Internet Sales.
Our new and used Internet Sales Units
were 2,223. That’s a 527-unit increase
over 2009. Of that number -- 2,223 –
approximately 65% represents new cars
and 35% used cars.
Dino: Our Internet sales leads to sales
conversion ratio was in the low 20% for 2010.
We are typically in the high teens. JM Lexus
has been the number one volume Lexus dealer
in the world since 1992.
Bob: JM Lexus a very exciting place to
work. I commute 62 miles round trip to each
day just to work here. I’ve worked in many
car stores and there isn’t another one like this.
It’s a true family. I can’t wait to get to work
in the morning.
If someone looked at our operation, what
they would see is everyone is a team player.
Dino and I work closely together. No one
individual is responsible for our success –
everyone at the dealership contributes to
achieving the common good.
Dino: I feel the same way. My typical day
here is about squeezing 12 to 14 hours of
work into eight or nine hours. It’s hectic,
but I love to do it. It’s the culture here. I
can stand up and be really proud of being
on staff here.
Bob: We are all proud of our teamwork
at the dealership. We’re proud of the
charity work the dealership has done in our
community, and we are particularly proud
of being awarded the 2008 Broward County
Commissioners’ Emerald Award Certificate
for our environmental efforts.
In that year, the dealership recycled: 50,040
pounds of shredded paper; 303,360 pounds
of used tires; 64,623 pounds of miscellaneous
metals; 41,980 pounds of aluminum,
cardboard, glass and plastic; 2,124 pounds
of electronic waste; 60,206 gallons of used oil;
3,429 lead-acid batteries; and 6,425 pounds
of lead wheel weights.
But most of all, we are proud of giving our
customers the highest level of service.
Dino: We’ve been a Lexus Elite dealer since
1995 and that is Lexus’ highest standard for
customer service and satisfaction.
Bob and Dino: We never rest on our
laurels. We’re always looking for ways to do
it better.
[email protected]
[email protected]
August 2011 DD 23 D IGITAL Dealer VENDOR PROFILE
Not Just Dealer Chat:
Contact At Once! Provides Instant
Engagement…Everywhere Car
Shoppers Browse
When visitors to Kuni BMW’s web site began clicking on the
dealership’s chat invites in 2010, many shoppers were surprised at
what they found.
The replies weren’t from computer-generated messages with no
one behind them. Or, even from anonymous call-center employees
who knew nothing of Kuni BMW’s inventory. Rather, the replies
came—instantly—from the actual Beaverton, OR sales associates
pictured in the pop-up invitations.
“Our customers were like, ‘Oh, you’re actually there,” says Jole
McMurdie, Kuni BMW’s e-commerce director. “They were pleasantly
surprised, and I could see why. When I click on my bank’s online
chat invitations, which has some model pictured, I often don’t
get a reply. With Contact At Once!, our customers were getting
immediate interaction with real people—without exposing their
personal information.”
• It had to be really easy to set up and use, as associates didn’t want
to waste time learning new technologies.
• It had to be cost effective, as the tighter market was forcing more
due diligence on marketing costs.
DD 24
August 2011
• It had to increase lead volume and offer measurable chat-related
results.
McMurdie came across several online chat providers in her search,
but she says Contact At Once! was not only the easiest to use, and cost
substantially less than what Kuni BMW was paying for advertising, it
also was the only solution compatible with third-party sites.
That meant salespeople could engage shoppers looking at Kuni
BMW vehicles on Cars.com, CarsDirect.com, CarSoup.com,
Craigslist and Facebook. The following year, Contact At Once! became
the sole chat provider for AutoTrader.com, which attracts more than
15 million unique visitors every month.
For someone in charge of managing a dealer’s web site, McMurdie
says she also found value in Contact At Once!’s analytics tool, which
automatically tracks all chat-related metrics.
In addition, her service and parts department was interested in
Contact At Once!’s ability to help existing customers get answers to
quick questions without having to call or come in.
“Now, there are so many ways you can connect with people in
addition to phone, e-mail and text,” McMurdie says. “We just wanted
With the help of John Hanger, now CEO, Hayes developed the
Contact At Once! technology, applied for a patent for the real-time
presence feature, and reached out to auto manufacturers and online
automotive classified providers.
Then came evangelizing the benefits of chat.
With most online shoppers performing research at work, Hanger
says, dealers were missing key engagement opportunities because
these potential customers were unable to talk on the phone during
job hours. Chat, he explains, started offering dealers a more discreet
way to build rapport with these prospects without them getting turned
off by filling out intrusive forms or picking up phones.
Then, the economic downturn hit. Hanger says the more challenging
marketplace encouraged dealers to look even more seriously at chat,
as they were forced to make changes to their marketing strategies.
Making the case for Contact At Once! even stronger was its unique
third-party compatibility.
In March, Contact At Once! became the chat provider for
AutoTrader.com. When an AutoTrader user is looking at a car
being sold by a dealership connected with Contact At Once!,
a chat window pops up. Only available associates are shown,
allowing for instant engagement.
to be as accessible as we possibly could. Now, we’re discovering that
customers who are engaged with us early on the buying process are
substantially more apt to take the trip to our showroom floor.”
Bringing online chat to new levels
Even when Atlanta-based Contact At Once! was established in
2005, chat was hardly a novel technology. It had been mainstream
since at least AOL’s dominance in the mid 1990s. But what was novel
was what Contact At Once! co-founder Marc F. Hayes did with chat
for the auto industry.
Hayes, now executive vice president, who left an 18-year career at
CEO John Hanger, whose 20 years of technology leadership
IT consultancy Accenture as a CRM expert to start Contact At Once!, spans companies including Flamenco Networks, Atlas Commerce,
Mercator and SCT/Adage Systems.
saw four trends that paved the way for the industry’s first complete
auto-dealer-chat solution:
“Other chat solutions can work on dealerships’ web sites but are
• More than 90 percent of car buyers started the purchase process
with a visit to a third-party auto site, and yet they weren’t being incompatible with classified sites such as Cars.com and AutoTrader.
com, where most shoppers visit first,” Hanger says. “We’re getting
engaged.
• While online chat did exist for sales, it was mostly dedicated to dealers in front of anyone looking at their inventory, including the
most popular web sites where shoppers commonly start their searches,
prevent shopping-cart desertion.
• Very few auto dealers had chat on their web sites, and it was with just one easy-to-use chat solution.”
operated by outsourced call centers—not the dealers themselves.
“Chat helps dealers sell more cars even though few have dedicated
• Existing chat solutions did not offer the ability to determine staff to answer the chats, thanks to the presence-aware features of our
whether a particular person was actually there.
service. Some of our dealers really wanted to maximize the benefits,
August 2011 DD 25 D IGITAL Dealer VENDOR PROFILE
16.8 percent of dealers evangelized, 83.2 percent to go
Contact At Once!’s biggest challenge is getting dealers to embrace
new technologies. However, due to the company’s recent integration
with AutoTrader.com, experts see more aggressive adoption of dealer
chat in the near future.
“Given AutoTrader.com’s status as one of the most popular
automotive websites, we believe this move will likely accelerate overall
dealer chat adoption,” DealerChatMarketShare.com says. “After
all—if a dealer is using chat to handle customer inquiries from sites
like AutoTrader.com, why not begin using chat on one’s own web
site as well?”
The Contact At Once! dealer interface offers intuitive
chat analysis.
though.” Hanger says. That is why the company began offering
“rollover” functionality where fully-trained call-center employees in
Houston—not India or the Phillipines—answer inquiries during
off or busy hours.
“Most of our competition outsources all interaction,” Hanger
says. “We offer automatic connectivity with dealers and outsourced
interaction.”
But having full connectivity in the modern world mandates
mobility, Hanger says. In addition to building chat capability for
common smartphones, Contact At Once!’s iPad app, introduced in
2010, offered dealers the ability to engage prospects in real-time chat,
map their locations, see which Google search terms were used, and
view relevant Carfax histories—in the office, or on the go.
With the combination of market conditions and technological
advances, industry-wide adoption of chat increased.
DD 26
August 2011
To help make this adoption even easier, the company plans ongoing
technology upgrades, including building out its mobile offerings with
more apps on different platforms.
The company also plans on further touting the benefits of chat.
Sometimes, however, the data speaks for itself:
• Industry-wide, consumer-to-dealer chat conversions skyrocketed
to 1.9 million in 2010, according to internal data.
• Typical Contact At Once! customers interact with at least 25
percent more shoppers daily.
• Typical customers see 50 percent of chats resulting in received
contact information.
• Typical dealers experience 20 percent to 25 percent close rates
with chat, which is similar to close rates for phone leads.
Sometimes, Contact At Once! reps only have to get one concept
across to a dealer.
“One thing dealers often ask us is, ‘It only costs me $199 a month
to get my face and name to appear on every listing on all these web
sites, and all I have to do is be accessible?’ ” Hanger says. “After that,
we often don’t have to say another word.”
To learn more, visit www.autodealerchat.com or
www.contactatonce.com.
Advertising, Nenni, continued from P-DD8
The QR code is hard to beat. It takes mere
seconds to scan, yet saves an enormous amount
of time and keystrokes for the user. I now carry
a QR code of my contact information, so
fellow smart phone users can simply scan the
card and instantly have my contact information
in their phone. I’ve been amazed at the recent
proliferation of QR codes in the Sunday
circular; typically with calls to action such as
discount offers and sweepstakes. I even saw a
picture of Danica Patrick’s NASCAR racecar
with a QR code on the hood!
As I mentioned, the possibilities with QR
codes are limitless. Start test driving your
dealership’s use of QR codes today. I can’t wait
to hear your results. Feel free to contact me with
your ideas and unique applications. I promise
you’ll begin to see results immediately.
With QR codes, your
dealership can connect
multiple channel
touchpoints, like print +
mobile + web.
George Nenni is the vice president and general
manager of the website and inventory divisions
of Dominion Dealer Solutions. George began
his automotive career with Dealer Specialties,
a company of Dominion Dealer Solutions in
1993. Over the years, he held every job in that
company, from photographer to graphic designer
and sales to general manager, before moving up
to Dominion Dealer Solutions. George’s tenacity
and dedication ensured that Dealer Specialties
would evolve into a national software and services
oriented organization. Today, George's work at
Dominion Dealer Solutions includes Dealer
Specialties, Dealerskins, Cross-Sell, DataOne,
Datacube and SelectQu. He continues to integrate
and deliver powerful technologies and services for
the automotive industry. You can reach George at:
[email protected].
August 2011 DD 27 D IGITAL Dealer BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Glynn Rodean
Why and How to Expand your
BDC/Internet Sales Department’s
Profitability
O
ver the last few years, BDCs went
from absolutely “nailing it” to becoming a ghost town or shutting down.
Might I suggest several significant reasons for
re-opening and/or expanding your BDC?
First, let’s abandon the stereotype of a BDC
just being a room of people making phone
calls and leaving voicemails. Obviously, a
BDC is much more than that; it must be
efficient, prepared and progressive.
What I mean by progressive is, it must
include real live chat with a professional yet
non-confrontational business card drop down
and friendly, anonymous greeting. Required
fields are a huge turn off. Just think for a
moment of the fact that the average American
has four or more e-mail addresses. Which do
you think they give us? Statistics show that
mid to late morning and early afternoon are
the most intensive periods of live chat traffic. Why? Because they are at work! They
can look as though they are working, typing
away while we set appointments, capture all
necessary data and differentiate ourselves.
They don’t want to or can’t call or send e-mails
from work, but they can appear busy, while
completely captivated by our conversations.
When, not if, we break through the anonymity, we must make note of essential
situational needs analysis and rapport based
observations. To include, but not be limited to
the customer’s personality type, smart phone
or cell phone; etc. So we are consistent in our
common communication. The use of smart
phones is indispensible for the most successful
centralized, virtual and hybrid BDCs.
How quickly do you respond to a text vs.
an e-mail? Quickly, right? So do prospective
customers. So, with proper training, your
people can get their attention by sending a
picture of the representative or manager they
are to see. Sending them a photo will lower
their anxiety and raise your appointment to
show ratio by giving them a (smiling) face
with a name, the easiest directions and their
DD 28
August 2011
confirmation number and time. Why a confirmation number? To activate it with their
driver’s license upon arrival, meet managers
early and give the rep time to prepare for
the demo. This ensures presentations lead to
demos 87% more often.
Remember, the number one fear in our
business is pulling up to group of sales reps
ready to pounce. Having an appointment
with someone specific gives them a feeling
of importance and “protection” from the
“door birds.”
Suggestions: Train communication, influence, persuasion and selling skills, not just
scripts or rebuttals. Answer your active live
chat in five seconds or less. Respond to e-mails
sensibly in five minutes or less and call them!
I refer to this as my “Self Barometer” technique. By this I mean gauge each type of e-mail,
voicemail, text, etc., by how we would respond.
We then have an idea of how they will resonate
with our customers. If you call for information
having a preconceived notion of an industry
such as ours, how do you feel when you are
met with generic, scripted and insincere sounding responses? Do you read e-mails that are
long or “put them off until later?” How do you
feel when your questions are deflected, or even
worse, when your call is not returned?
Reliance on scripts, just marking activities
off as complete or using canned, bogus and
irrelevant e-mails is seen in a different light.
Why? Because people forget half of what we
say or do, but they never forget how we made
them feel!
• Appointment blinders: with business
development appointments that show, sell and
refer, it is all about selling the show! Sell the
show with your differentiating “Information
Day,” the sizzle and the subconscious techniques that have people commit to show. This
is done by presenting a hypothetical scenario
or question without the old school front lobe
“yes” questions. Make them think about it,
answer and watch the follow through increase
every time they do it better.
• Specific time appointments, not just:
15/45 after the hour. If someone is asking
for 4:00, try “I’m checking my manager’s
appointment schedule and he/she has a 4:10
available.” Have them write it down and then
confirm via text. They may forget to bring the
confirmation number they wrote down, but
they are most likely to have their cell phone
with them.
• A rating system and protection period:
Have a customer care “advocate” they don’t
meet in person and follow up with your
customers. We can drive “be backs,” gain
referrals, ensure service and have a preview
of your CSI. Start with the last 90 days and
go back from there.
Pay plans are different, but I urge you to
consider paying for production of shows. That
means kept appointments and not paying
business development or customer care representatives on sales; they will not cherry pick
and will shed light their strongest and weakest
points. In the end, it’s your choice.
Here are some things I strongly suggest to improve your BDC:
Glynn Rodean is president and CEO of New
Vision Sales Inc. [email protected].
• Headsets to avoid workers comp issues,
listen in (live) features and the same 100%
TO policy as on the sales floor. The worst
conversation we can have when developing
business is “Why they didn’t schedule an
appointment!” This goes for sales, service,
call backs, leads and follow up.
Digital Marketing, Stauning, continued
from P-DD16
I saw a presentation provided to a client from
a never-before-heard-of pay-per-click company
(that will remain nameless) detailing why you
should spend $6,000 per month with them
instead of AutoTrader or Cars.com. While
their desire to capture the dealers’ dollars is
understandable, and the results they claim are
admirable, their approach is maddening. Why
must everything be an “either/or” proposition?
Why must every new digital marketing source
try to poach existing digital marketing dollars?
(Especially when the new vendor has absolutely
no idea whether the older sources provide ROI
or not.)
In the study David Kain and I released in
April, we detailed how the most successful
Internet dealers cast a very wide net by
employing the maximum number of digital
marketing sources. The bottom line is that you
cannot reach the pinnacle of your Internet sales
potential by generating 100% of your sales leads
by yourself (or even with the help of this brand
new PPC company).
My advice to the client who received this
pitch and anyone sitting in front of a new
digital marketing source who tells you to
dump Cars.com, AutoTrader or other thirdparty provider in favor of their product (before
they even know if these existing sources are
providing critical branding and/or driving sales
for you) is to keep them out of your wallet and
show them the door.
The “what dealers don’t know won’t
hurt them” approach
In the second example, I was contacted by
a company providing SEO services to a singlepoint dealer for – brace yourself – $7,000 per
month. This company bragged to me that the
customer was so happy with their services that
they even took them golfing when they visited
with the dealer. Ouch! I took this to mean that
the dealer is paying more than I could ever
imagine for SEO and also paying for golf? Wow,
that must be some great SEO.
I won’t comment on the quality of the
services this company is providing, because
SEO can be quite subjective, but I will say
that there is a price for “perfect SEO,” and
for virtually every dealer out there, that price
is too high. Even if you could be on the top
for all relevant keywords, this does not mean
you will get all of the clicks. In fact, in a 2010
study from the data analytics company Chitika,
being in the top spot on Google only got you
about a third of all clicks. That’s a big number,
continued to P-DD30
August 2011 DD 29 Digital Marketing, Stauning, continued from P-DD29
Tech News, continued from P-DD4
of course, but it’s not 100%.
Using that $7,000 a little creatively – like
paying a content writer to place SEO text on
your website and using the rest for pay-perclick and Google Boost ads – could probably
drive more in-market visitors for this dealer and
deliver long-term SEO benefits. (You see, when
you control the SEO, you keep the content, and
your SEO goodwill does not go away when
you fire your SEO company or change web
site providers.)
made to the Vehicle Remarketing, Repair
Order, and Retail Delivery Reporting BODs.
Vehicle Remarketing now supports boats,
yachts, and ATVs. Repair Order now allows
manufacturers to keep dealerships updated
on the service history of vehicles serviced at
multiple dealerships, which will streamline
communications between manufacturers and
dealers. Finally, Retail Delivery Reporting will
aide communications of sales leads and campaign information for dealers while providing
data for trending and analytics purposes.
www.starstandard.org
Okay, but let’s agree that my
marketing dollars should be spent
100% online…
Along with the desire for self-sufficiency,
there is a growing belief among many dealers
that all they need is digital marketing to
make connections with consumers today.
In this regard, many of them are completely
abandoning traditional offline channels like
newspaper, television and radio in lieu of
spending more money online. I wrote a blog
post on www.dealer-magazine.com about the
fallacy of this move for dealers who operate in
areas served by community newspapers (you
can read that post at: http://bit.ly/jalr9z). Suffice
it to say that so much of your online success
is driven by the offline branding you’ve been
delivering over the years that to completely
abandon this largely un-measureable activity
will likely harm your brand in the long term.
If you still believe that all you need is online
marketing consider the case of Dave Smith
Motors, the largest Internet dealer in the world.
Dave Smith Motors of tiny Kellogg, Idaho
advertises on Sirius Satellite Radio. While radio
was once just a local medium, Dave Smith
Motors is going national with these ads. Clearly,
they understand that offline marketing is a
critical part of an overall marketing strategy
(and a strategy that you cannot execute without
Advertiser.............................. pg #
Autobase....................................27
outside help).
Additionally, local coupon giants Groupon
and LivingSocial are regular buyers of television
advertising, even though their services are 100%
Internet-based and their go-to-market strategies
are founded on social media and referrals. This
begs the question: If these online titans (who
owe their very existence to social media and viral
marketing) are buyers of television advertising,
what do they know that you don’t? It’s time to
bring in some third parties to help you sort all
of this out, and it’s time to stop trying to do
it all yourself.
And the moral of this story is...?
The idea that even aided by technology and
employing a large, intelligent and technically
proficient staff you can eliminate third parties is
ludicrous. (The industry’s largest dealer groups
use plenty of third parties to help them grow
their Internet sales, despite employing very large
e-commerce teams in some cases.)
Sure, there are plenty of digital and offline
marketing activities that you can control
internally – and many of these make perfect
sense to keep in house – but the fact remains
that the most successful dealers use an extremely
wide variety of sources. Moreover, for successful
dealers, all of these sources are valuable and
provide a great return on investment. The
secret these dealers know above all else is clear:
Control what you can control (like process and
the customer experience), measure everything
you can measure (dumping ineffective sources
quickly), and treat your third-party vendors like
the subject matter experts they are (instead of
the pariahs you or that SEO vendor have made
them out to be).
Good selling!
Steve Stauning is the founder of pladoogle, LLC,
a leading ecommerce solutions firm. Prior to
pladoogle, Steve has served in various automotive ecommerce leadership roles, including as
the Asbury Automotive Group’s (NYSE: ABG)
director of ecommerce, the director of the Web
Solutions division of the Reynolds & Reynolds
Company, and as general manager for Dealer
Web Services at Dealer Specialties. sstauning@
dealer-communications.com.
Dealer.com.................................17
DealerPeak (Widestorm)............6
Dominion Dealer Solutions......29
IMN.............................................15
DD 30
August 2011
Two industry firsts
from izmocars
izmocars, the leading business solutions provider for the automotive industry
announced that its vehicle photography division, izmostudio (www.izmostudio.com),
a leading provider of digital photography
for automotive web sites, has achieved two
industry firsts: 1) Color-correct, trim-level
interior and exterior vehicle images for all
online platforms and 2) Super-sharp, highresolution vehicle animations (including 360°
exterior and interior “spins” with touchable
“hot spots” and colorization) that work with
Apple’s iPhone and iPad. Until now, no other
provider in the auto industry has been able to
harness the unique interactive, visual power
of Apple’s mobile devices or to achieve this
level of color/trim image accuracy across all
online platforms.
Prior to this new izmostudio release, the
challenge of matching vehicle photos exactly
to consumer search specifications had been
a profound and long-standing problem in
online vehicle shopping. Consumers raise
their hand on an automaker, dealership,
or third party automotive web site to see a
specific vehicle by configuring their search
parameters down to the trim and color, but
the images shown in the search results page
generally did not match the parameters of
their request, leading to a frustrating online
shopping process that could result in brand
defection or an incomplete shopping transaction. With the new izmostudio images, the
vehicle images that come back are the colorcorrect (i.e. not a random shade of blue but
the actual automaker shade of blue for that
make/model) and trim-correct for both the
vehicle’s exterior and interior, ensuring that
search results and vehicle detail pages make
more sense and match consumer expectations.
www.izmocars.com

GLASSER FLORA - Digital Dealer

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