Digital Mileage

by Paul Nagy & Andy Largent on May 18, 2011

Digital Automotive Marketing Maxim #2: Place First in the Fingertips Race

A sexy dealer website means serving the customer the right page at the right time. To avoid, “fingertip fatigue,” minimize the number of clicks it takes for the consumer to reach their desired content. A rockstar site isn’t just about delivering the content that’s most aligned  with the customer’s desires-all your competitors are doing that. Relevance means delivering it in the least amount of time.  “ Relevance is all about making that quick  match between the customer’s goal and what your online experience delivers,” Paul Nagy, Vice President of Core Products said. “If a consumer searches for “Mazda oil change Seattle,” don’t settle for having them land on the home page and then click-through. Maximize your chance of conversion by having them land on the best-match page, the Services page, by optimizing that page for those key terms.”

Sexy Dealer Website Checklist

• Killer Keywords. Go through your site and think carefully about what kind of terms a consumer would search to get to each page. What terms can you add to help consumers land in the right place with the minimum clicks? For example, optimize your Parts page for “Seattle Chevy Shock Absorbers.” Try optimizing your Finance page for “Bad credit auto financing Culver City.” Don’t assume every customer needs to land on the homepage; reduce click fatigue by optimizing each and every page for its own key terms.
• Shining Specials. This tip relates to the Relevancy Golden Rule: one topic=one page. Create a more focused funnel by creating and optimizing individual pages for each topic your site covers-no need to cram everything into one page. This is especially important for specials and promos. “You wouldn’t have a Valentine’s Day promo next to a Veteran’s Day promo on your showroom floor, would you?” Andy Largent, Senior Product Manager at ADP Digital Marketing, asks. “The same focused selling should apply to your website.  Don’t saturate the customer, steer them toward a singular purpose: conversion.”
• Defeat “Dealer Speak.” While it is fun and convenient to use abbreviations, industry slang and inside jokes when chatting with your lot buddies, avoid the temptation to use industry terminology on your website. Keep in mind the types of phrases that consumers will be searching for, and remove any that are too technical or industry-specific to be helpful to the consumer. For example, say “Used Mazda” in your website copy rather than “Pre-Owned Mazda.”

Stay tuned for part 3 of our Sexy Dealer Website Series, coming next week!If you’re ready to try out thesexiest new dealer website platform in automotive history, go check out our new Dealer Command Centerand make your competitors bow down today!

Paul Nagy is Vice President of Core Products ADP Digital Marketing (formerly The Cobalt Group). Nagy brings over 12 years of technology management experience to the role, including senior management positions at Apple, Metreo, and Selectica. When he’s not crunching technical problems, Nagy enjoys fly-fishing in the great outdoors.

Andy Largent is a Senior Product Manager at ADP Digital Marketing, where he works on the core website platform and services.  With 10 years of automotive website expertise, Andy uses his experience to build high-performing solutions for dealer, dealer group, and OEM customers. Andy hopes to turn the hundreds of pictures of his kids into an amateur photography sideline someday. Until then, his favorite new social media/photo app is Instagram.

by Chuck Tilton on Jun 11, 2009

The following is based on an article I wrote for the March 2009 issue of Fixed Ops Magazine.

The Fixed Operations staff has many challenges not very different than today’s floor salesperson.  They have the same goals of building their business “funnel” to create a continuous revenue stream. They also face the challenge of maintaining relationships with previous and current customers to ensure repeat business and referral business.

Here we discuss three key ways for your Fixed Ops organization to survive and thrive in a tough economy: 

Optimize your website

You must be optimizing your website to drive traffic to both sales and service within your dealership. All marketing and sales efforts should be directing traffic to your website, including offline ads, online coupons, etc. Promote your site and tools like your website’s “Schedule a Service Appointment” through your display, e-mail and search marketing.  

If you have a page on your website dedicated to service and parts coupons and specials make sure you that consumers see your business when they search by optimizing your website for terms related to your specials.  Organic Search Engine optimization is one of the most cost-effective measures that you can take to generate traffic to your website and ultimately your service bays.

The next step is to make sure that your website is addressing what the customer is searching for. If you have service specials running, you must have them listed on your website’s homepage or the landing page the offer directs the prospect to. Make sure that your site has relevant, accurate, current Fixed Ops content and offerings.

Search

Implementing an integrated search engine marketing program in order to leverage your parts and service business is critical in these economic times. According to Yahoo, a full 25% of all automotive searches on Yahoo are from consumers looking to buy parts or service for their car.

And, according to Google, over 90% of service customers are influenced by their online experience. These consumers are searching for such things as ‘oil change’, ‘brake pads’, ‘transmission service’, ‘cheap alternator’, etc and having your dealership website listed when in-market prospective consumers are searching on these keywords is important for building your brand presence and driving more local traffic to your dealership service bays.

Optimizing your website for search engines means having a landing page or multiple landing pages on your website that talk about the automotive services you offer. In addition, it requires that you keep this information up-to-date with weekly specials and “why us?” value proposition for your dealership. Another great way to ensure that your dealership appears on top search engines such as Google and Yahoo is to buy paid search advertising. Identifying the right keywords and integrating ad copy with your website pages helps increase your return on your investment.

E-mail

E-mail is one of the fastest and least expensive ways to remarket to your existing customer base. It should be the responsibility of every service advisor to get a current e-mail address from every service customer. How do you get the customer to give you their e-mail address? Let the customer know “what’s in it for them”, such as quarterly e-mail specials and coupons that they will receive, as well as important notices and recalls that could affect their vehicle.

One of the biggest issues we see today with most DMS systems is the number of duplicate records and the amount of outdated information in the system. The database has to be cleansed and updated to have the most effective marketing results. With accurate consumer information, your marketing efforts can be targeted to specific customer segments. The importance of delivering the right message to the right customer at the right time cannot be overstated.

Every customer purchasing a vehicle – new or used – should receive a special email promotion for their first scheduled service within 90 days of the vehicle purchase. If you can get your customer to return for regular service, 86% of them are going to purchase another vehicle at your dealership at some point. Owner marketing programs can make this type of targeting easy to accomplish and can even help scrub your customer data to make your Fixed Ops marketing efforts more effective.

The fact is that in the current economy more consumers are holding onto their vehicles longer and that means that the need for parts and service on those vehicles is increasing. Every Fixed Ops manager needs to focus their efforts on finding and capturing as much of these dollars as possible and the best way to do that is to find consumers where they are searching for that information: online.

by Anna Zornosa on Jun 16, 2009

(This post is based on an article I wrote for Dealer Marketing Magazine’s March 2009 issue.)

In working with thousands of dealers, delivering tens of thousands of leads, and studying 1,000 calls to dealers from used car prospects, we came up with some key findings that will help dealers optimize their success with phone leads.

Our research found that nearly half - 43% – of the callers from our study actually purchased a vehicle within two weeks of making the phone call. And according to Cobalt’s 2007 Dealer e-Business Performance Study, most shoppers want to know two simple things: “Is the car still available?” and “How much is it?” Dealers who have a good follow-up process, including answering their prospect’s basic questions, will have good odds of selling the car, and doing so quickly.

 Three Key Things to Do to Optimize Your Phone Leads

<!–[if !supportLists]–>1.      <!–[endif]–>Ask for the appointment. In the calls we reviewed, 72% of the dealers who had an interested buyer on the phone did not ask for an appointment. Here’s one way to ask: “Yes, we have that car in the lot. I’m here today until closing and would love to show it to you. Does either 3 or 5 pm work for you?”

<!–[if !supportLists]–>2.      <!–[endif]–>Suggest an alternative if the vehicle is no longer available. In over one-third of the calls (35%), the dealer did not offer an alternative vehicle to the prospect if their first choice was not available. Offer them a similar vehicle and then ask for the appointment.

3.      <!–[endif]–>Keep your voicemail system up and working. With calls placed when the dealership was closed, one-fourth reached voicemail systems that could not record the call, typically due to the fact that the voicemail boxes were full. This is an easy fix: Get a bigger voicemail box and check it regularly.

 What to Look for in a Phone Lead Provider 

 Using a quality provider also plays a key role in your success. Here are some things to consider:

 <!–[if !supportLists]–>1.      <!–[endif]–>What is the time duration for a call to be “billed”? The vast majority of phone calls from serious prospects are over one minute in duration, while some shorter calls come from serious buyers who simply want directions to the dealership. If your provider charges for all calls, even those under 40 seconds, you should be wary.

 <!–[if !supportLists]–>2.      <!–[endif]–>Are calls from phone leads available as audio file for later review? Reviewing your phone calls can give you great insight into how effective your sales person’s dialogue with the prospect is, and what needs some polishing.

 <!–[if !supportLists]–>3.      <!–[endif]–>How does your provider ensure phone number quality? Unfortunately, toll-free phone numbers are often recycled, and you can get “junk” calls meant for the previous “owner” of the number. Make sure your provider doesn’t assign phone numbers until they are “ring free” for at least one month or longer.

 <!–[if !supportLists]–>4.      <!–[endif]–>Can phone leads be integrated with your LMT or CRM system for easy tracking and management? Whether they are form, email, or phone leads, you should be able to monitor all your leads in one central system. This helps with follow-up and in identifying which lead sources are high quality and which should be cut.

 <!–[if !supportLists]–>5.      <!–[endif]–>Does the vendor have lead “enrichment” capabilities? A provider that is able to append a phone lead with the caller’s address and send it to your LMT or CRM system is offering you a far superior lead than one who is not.

The combination of a rock solid phone lead handling process coupled with a top notch provider is the perfect formula to generate the highest closing rate from your phone leads.

by Jade Makana on Nov 29, 2011

A Maverick (VJ) Says, Maven (Jade) Says Edition

Maverick Says: Customer service has been around since the lemonade stand, but many business innovators are elevating the definition to all-out rockstar levels. We approve!

 From DSES Keynote Speaker Gary Vaynerchuk’s “thank you economy” to Bob Burg’s and John David Mann’s“The Go Giver,” today’s hot and  up-to-date  thought leaders are reexamining customer service and thinking “outside the ballpoint pen” on how to really  rock their customer’s world. The cool thing about this trend is that it is completely accessible to the automotive digital marketing community. Anyone can take an innovative approach to treating customers like royalty and give them a unique Red Carpet Event (and no, I am not referring to Ford and Lincoln’s Red Carpet Lease event). Let’s get you on the A-List and provide you with a peek behind the velvet rope to see how it’s done.

Cultivate Your Big Players with Bananas Customer Service

For example, Vaynerchuk shared a rockstar customer service story during his keynote speech at DSES. The customer in question was a true “VIP,” having just placed a $1000 wine order from Vaynerchuk’s business WineLibrary.com. The savvy entrepreneur realized that such an elaborate purchase deserved more than the standard old thank you note with a 15% off coupon and a branded pen. (We all know such canned displays of “gratitude” hardly make a dent into today’s relationship-driven business economy.) Instead, Vaynerchuk went above and beyond, doing his homework to find out more about what could turn this casual customer into a die-hard fan. His tool of execution: Twitter!

Vaynerchuk learned that the customer was a die-hard Chicago Bears fan, posting rave after rave about his beloved Bears and rants after rants for his so hated Packers. From these “traces of evidence” Vaynerchuk saw what made this new valued customer of his “tick.” He realized “This guy just loves his Bears, possibly more than his family.” Vee’s plan of action was clear. He sent “Mr. $1000” an autographed Bears Jersey – of his all-time favorite player Jay Cutler.

Now before you choke on your coffee at the thought of spending close to $300 on a fancy sports jersey for a single customer, keep in mind that the story doesn’t there: The perplexed and dazzled customer called Vaynerchuk up, dying to know how the wine CEO could have possibly known that the autographed Bears jersey was the perfect gift. The customer then went on to say how over the past few years he had ordered over $100,000 worth of wine from one of Vaynerchuk’s competitors and had not once received the rockstar treatment that Vaynerchuk had so generously shown. He is now (and trust me I am right on this) a customer – or let me call him “a converted Vaynerchuk Evangelist” for life.  And YES, the jersey cost around $300 – but the marketing message and impact among the clients social circle of influence is considered “priceless.” Rock on.

Maven Says: I agree with VJ that delivering rockstar experiences to your inner posse is totally hot right now, but I think it spans beyond just customers to your entire entourage. Just as rockstars have fans, journalists, and music critics to satisfy, we in the digital automotive industry have our own “posterazzi”: bloggers, journalists, thought leaders, and customers.

For example, I noticed many Digital Dealer 2011 speakers touching not just on the concept of rewarding top purchasers, but also top social influencers. The reasons why are obvious: when it comes to today’s rock stars, the Klout score has replaced the sports car, your number of Twitter followers matters more than the number of zeroes on your balance sheet, and  Radian 6 has replaced Bungalow 8 as the hip name to drop. Schmoozing takes place in retweets, not restaurants, and industry power has taken on a whole new digital gleam. Moreover, the public is catching on. I’ve heard of several forward-thinking companies (some hotel chains in particular) who are now strategically checking their customer’s Klout Scores when they check in. They then reward this customer with white glove VIP service. This practice is known as “Klout Comping” and I expect it to absolutely explode over the next year or so. Bottoms up, power users!