“In the Trenches”

Consumers are interrupted on average of 2000 times a day with outbound marketing.  That is why they use tools to block it.   Caller id, spam filtering, Tivo and satellite radio just to name a few.

Outbound marketing techniques rely on pushing a message far in wide in an attempt to reach the proverbial needle in the haystack, people in the market today, with a message to get them into action, visit the showroom.  The Internet is the ultimate inbound marketing tool in that it allows us to reach people who are looking for what we offer.  It does not interrupt them, they seek out what we have when they are ready for it.

The Auto Industry is using inbound marketing

We have numerous vendors that help dealers get their inventory in the eyes of shoppers looking for what we sell, build websites that draw in consumers looking for us and give us tools to engage once consumers connect with us.

Traditional sources of interruption marketing create inbound inquiries and have been doing it for years.  Direct mail, radio/tv commercials and newspaper ads help us find the needles in the haystack that raise their hand and ask to be sold. 

The problem is there are fewer needles in the haystack right now.  Dealers need to discover ways to reach more people who are asking to buy.  This will come at the expense of their competition, because the pie is shrinking and the ones that do it right will be taking larger slices.

The features at www.drivingsales.com will help the dealer community discover ways to get a larger share of their market, discover the best tools to accomplish their goals and network with peers that are looking to accomplish the same goals.

If you have an idea on how to best take advantage of inbound marketing submit it to our strategy board to get other industry professionals feedback and opinion.  If you are not already a member sign up today and get in the game.

Technorati Tags: car dealer online marketing, inbound marketing, permission based marketing

I have been rereading Seth Godin’s “The Dip”.  It deals with knowing when to walk away from a project or idea and when to keep on plugging along through “The Dip”.

When we start new projects results start happening pretty fast.  Anything outside of everyday business has an immediate direct impact on what we do right away it is when efforts exceedingly push us with lack of results is when we start to experience the dip.

At that point we have decisions to make.  Keep exerting effort with the end result in our grasp or to abandon those efforts and continue to seek the low hanging fruit.  It is how we respond during the dip that makes or breaks us in everything we do.

Being the best in the world is the ultimate goal in any endeavor and as soon as we lose sight of that the efforts diminish and momentum is lost.  I don’t know your goals I know mine.  I will keep plugging along as I work through the dip, will you?

Follow Seth’s blog on the dip and get a copy for yourself http://sethgodin.typepad.com/the_dip/

Technorati Tags: goal setting, the dip

I am testing out different platforms to see how well they work for SEO, a case study on Search Engine Reputation Management and online social engagement.  One of these platforms is Vox.com.

I did a post there that was more of an exercise in SEO than anything else, you SEO experts may appreciate this, to create some links to to other properties to help SEO those sites, and I recieved a comment from a consumer that visited our site here.  (full post at My Many Levels of Seperation)

What do consumers want from car dealers?

IzzyRocks Said : ……. I read the 50 days follow up, I thought as a customer, what I would enjoy receiving in emails is testimonials from other customers the salesman had dealt with, and answers on FAQs such as special features of the cars, comparisons of features, information about what kind of tires are good etc etc. For example I have the ability to turn off the anti skid brakes, when would I do that? And then it would also be fun to see various colors and models of cars that were like what I was looking for and comparisons of your car to other brands.

This kind of feedback from consumers can provide huge benefit to the industry.  Especially if it is not solicited in the form of radio button surveys and moderated focus groups where someone leads the conversation.

Technorati Tags: automotive consumer expectations, consumer engagement, consumer follow up

While working on building keyword list for an SEO campaign I ran across a few interesting tidbits of information on “best practices”. One of the ones that struck me most was where a group put together and open source document to give guidelines to organizations on best practices in social media interactions.

How we conduct ourselves online can be a huge tool in building our brand or destroying it. However nowhere have I found a a written or suggested automotive best practices for social media engagement. What is correct for one may be an aberration to another.

In a previous post here I talked about anonymity in blog commenting by a vendor. I can see the benefit that an individual may have in remaining unknown for personal privacy issues, but also see the need to establish a point of reference for basing your opinion and how not doing so can ultimately damage your message.

The report I was found was broke down into six areas to concentrate on in establishing in house “best practices”. And will cover each one in a series of post.

They are:

* Checklist 1: Disclosure of Identity
* Checklist 2: Personal/Unofficial Blogging and Outreach
* Checklist 3: Blogger Relations
* Checklist 4: Compensation and Incentives
* Checklist 5: Agency and Contractor Disclosure
* Checklist 6: Creative Flexibility

Here is what they say about disclosure of Identity:

When communicating with blogs or bloggers on behalf of my company or on topics related to the business of my company, I will:

1. Disclose who I am, who I work for, and any other relevant affiliations from the very first encounter.
2. Disclose any business/client relationship if I am communicating on behalf of a third party.
3. Provide a means of communicating with me.
4. Comply with all laws and regulations regarding disclosure of identity.
5. We will inform employees, agencies, and advocates that we have a formal relationship of these disclosure policies and take action quickly to correct problems where possible.
6. Pseudonyms:
(Option A) Never use a false or obscured identity or pseudonym.
(Option B) If aliases or role accounts are used for employee privacy, security, or other business reasons, these identities will clearly indicate the organization I represent and provide means for two-way communications with that alias.
7. “We Didn’t Know”
Clearly disclose our involvement on all blogs produced by the company or our agencies.

What is your opinion?

Borrowed from “Blog Council“

Technorati Tags: auto industry best practices, social media, social media best practices

People have been trashing the Internet for ages about it’s viability as a marketing channel, establishing virtual communities, interactive education and allowing people to work from everywhere.

The Internet as a viable tool has raised eyebrows for many years in and out of the automotive industry. Clifford Stoll from Newsweek lambasted the medium way back in 1995 as well.

The Internet has reverted us back to a time when ideas and products were introduced by “word of mouth”. The days of acceptance in the marketplace via one way communication, read interruption marketing, is falling by leaps and bounds. Customers do not care how great you claim your product is, they don’t care about the great big sale you are having, they don’t care to be interrupted in their daily lives until they are ready for what you have to offer. That is just the way it is today.

When the radio then the TV became the primary ways for companies to communicate with their customers it took us out of a time where people talked about what was available in the marketplace by letting their friends, family and business acquaintances know who had what and how you could get it yourself. Consumers still did it they were just ignored and the best way to overcome negative press was to buy more advertising. The Internet is bringing us back to marketing at it’s most basic level. Make a product and/or experience worth talking about.

Make it easy for consumers to communicate with you and to provide feedback. Don’t give them fill in the blank rating forms then buy their review with perks. Seek honest feedback with a give and take, engage your customers and offer yourself as a resource and drop the pitch until it is asked for. Once you master this then you will be heads above your competition and capture a larger piece of the ever shrinking pie.

Where do you start? I can’t answer that for you, but I know you must discover what differentiates you from any other supplier in your niche. If you can’t do that you will be stuck in the Dead Zone forever…

Technorati Tags: automotive online marketing, consumer engagement

Is process a way to manage people or do people manage processes?

With all of the technology that dealerships have at their disposal one would think that there would be a perfect process that is duplicable, transferable and easy to manage. In my experience I did not find that to be the case. The automotive vendors that I used had very rudimentary training for using their applications. Sure they were easy to use but the implementation was a nightmare.

It was mostly due to a lack of time. Perfect world there would have been cookie cutter processes in place that could be adapted and managed to maximize ROI. I would cringe when I would get the call from the ILM vendor to know why I did not have the work flows set up beyond a certain time period. They were worried about losing the account, but did not make it easy for people to get started with their product. (No I am not going to name them)

Granted I was in a situation where there was no established processes in place. Had I had some benchmarks to work from it would have been better. While at the same time it would of been impossible to work under an unchangeable process for me.

When I first started in the business in 1990 the process was mandated to the point of being authoritarian and inflexible with no deviation. In today’s world where I feel that is an outdated management style, as that encourages the high turnover the industry has. However I see where consultants still preach this management style. Does this still work?

Back to the main question though.

Do you use process as an inflexible management tool or are people allowed to take ownership of a process to manage it and adapt it to help acheive the goal of moving more product?

Technorati Tags: Add new tag, automotive dealership management, automotive management styles, online automotive process

Search Engine Strategies event located in San Jose, California from August 18-22 is the premier search engine networking and learning event of the year. I was surprised today when I spoke with one of the executives from TK Carsites when he told me they had a team attending and they have not been able to connect with others in the Automobile Industry in attendance, they can’t find any other vendors that serve dealers there.

While the event is drawing to a close in two days I was asked to reach out to the community here to see if anyone had representatives there so the TK team could hook up with them. It would be a great opportunity for SEO and SEM professionals to network.

Right now they are covering the event and blogging about the workshops they have attended. Maybe when the next conference is announced we can have a staff to cover the event as well. If you do not have an individual or team there you can see what you are missing at TopDealerSEO.com where our industry peers are sharing the knowledge they have acquired at SES San Jose.

If you do have people there and would like to hook up with the guys from TK give me a call at 912-266-1629 and I can get you connected with them.

Technorati Tags: automotive networking, Automotive SEM, Automotive SEO, Search Engine Stratgies, SES San Jose

As a blogger myself I read a lot blogs.  They help form opinions and research topics.  Many people mistake blogs as authoritative content.  When someone is an authority in a specific niche and they blog about topics they are familiar with they are using their knowledge to influence their readers to come around to their way of thinking or to establish their competency on the subject matter, if the blog is of a “commercial” nature.

Not everyone will agree and thats is why blogs have comments so people can give other points of view and build the conversation between the blogger and their readers.  Personally I only try to sell ideas from my blogs not services, that may change soon, and provide a call to action of sorts; however the dialog is slow to start online many times.  Why is this?

Could it be because people in our niche are unwilling to share ideas and expertise or are they just so busy in what they are doing the conversation does not matter to them?  Are car guys still playing their cards so close to their chest and afraid that if they give away what works for them that their competition will use this information against them?  Those questions are from my opinion and not fact.  Of course style matters a lot and post that are published need to be to be geared to start the conversation and many times they are not in this niche.

Hopefully with my contributions to the community here will change those lines of thinking and we can start engaging each other more to provide our experiences, knowledge and opinions to build the best automotive social network ever.

Please give your insights to help start building the conversation.

Technorati Tags: blog conversation, blog marketing, engage the community

According to SearchCRM.com, - On the Internet, viral marketing is any marketing technique that induces Web sites or users to pass on a marketing message to other sites or users, creating a potentially exponential growth in the message’s visibility and effect. One example of successful viral marketing is Hotmail, a company, now owned by Microsoft, that promotes its service and its own advertisers’ messages in every user’s e-mail notes.

Ok now that we know what viral promotion is how do we use it in our industry? I can think of some very ingenuous ways to apply it to selling cars and to getting people involved online. The biggest issue is execution. Bringing the idea to reality is the toughest part in this type of marketing campaign.

Birgdogs are a form of viral promotion. If you can get your customers talking about you then you have leveraged it. No doubt there are many people who work their book of business and referrals only in the business. You will notice they are usually the ones that sell the most cars and have the less stress in hitting their numbers, regardless of what techniques they use to facilitate their contact with these individuals.

At the last store I worked at there was a salesperson who consistently sold 15 cars + per month using that form of generating his own business. You could hear him singing Happy Birthday in the showroom almost daily. He was a great self marketer and you can be rest assured his customers talked about it to their friends and family. Maybe it was a snicker, maybe the said how surprised they were who knows, but 4 out of 10 customers walking through the front door were asking for him. There is a lot to be said about that.

So to answer my on question yes viral promotion is possible and executed all the time in a traditional sense, now how do we apply it to marketing ourselves online?

Technorati Tags: automotive viral promotion, birddogs, online marketing, viral promotion

Online networking allows you to interact with people that you would not normally meet in traditional settings. People that you would normally consider unreachable in real life become open and accessible.

We all have strengths that we can share with others in addition to be able to seek advice from others when we have questions that can not be answered by our traditional circle of influence, using online networking.

One of the most critical keys in networking is to be a giver to your peers before you try to leverage the power of your online contacts when you need them.

“Those who ignore the party/conversation/network when they are content and decide to drop in when they need the network may not succeed. It’s pretty easy to spot those that are just joining the network purely to take –not to give. Therefore, be part of the party/conversation/network before you need anything from anyone. Start now, and continue to build relationships by giving now: share knowledge, help others, and become a trusted node and connector, not just an outlying ‘dot’ of a comet that swings in every 4 years or so.” - Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang

You can participate in the community here at Driving Sales on many levels and build your network. You do not have to be an authority to contribute and leverage the power of online networking. You can invite your peers, rate strategies, rate vendors and connect with others in the industry. Get your name out there, you will be surprised how much your network will support you when you really need it. I am living proof of that.

Technorati Tags: build your network, Networking, rate automotive vendors, site features