Does Your Website Pass Or Fail?
► Test Your Website's Merit Today
► The Right Way To Do Product Reviews
► Purchase Justification Is Key
► Make Your Dealership's Website Stand Out
Use this week's Think Tank Tuesday video as a guide. Learn for yourself whether or not your website would pass or fail by the Potratz standard.
With the internet in everyone’s pocket, the old mantra of the manufacturer promoting the vehicles while the dealer promotes the deal is dead. It's up to you to promote your inventory to the right customer and make yourself the dealership to visit.
You already have the passion, drive, and excitement. Learn what you're missing to become a great salesman. Follow these four steps to success. That's this week on Think Tank Tuesday.
SCHENECTADY, NY- This month, DealersEdge featured a webinar on the “Tricks of the Trade” for search engine marketing. Nan Mossey, Director of Digital Marketing at Potratz, led the event which featured advanced insights on implementing and optimizing paid search campaigns. Many were in attendance as she covered detailed strategies on effectively using Google Adwords, Bing/Yahoo! and other search engine marketing services.
Mossey has over 20 years of experience in automotive marketing and is fully certified in all aspects of SEM including Google AdWords Certifications for Search, Display, and Analytics. She has administered several apprenticeship programs as head of Potratz’s digital marketing and has thus attributed to the certification of over 18 individual members of the Potratz team.
During the webinar, participants were supplied with proven tactics for improving campaigns and statistical data referencing industry trends in the world of digital advertising. Mossey presented attendees with the tools necessary for establishing campaigns and best practices for optimizing performance. Attendees gained exclusive insights on the ins-and-outs of display advertising and retargeting, keyword optimization, and bidding strategies along with many other vital areas in campaign implementation and management.
“I really enjoyed getting a little bit more in-depth about aspects of search engine marketing that people had heard about, but had little exposure to," said Mossey regarding the webinar.
The live webinar was one of several held by DealersEdge that featured the Schenectady advertising agency, which specializes in everything from digital and traditional advertising to website platforms.
If there is one thing that you could do to increase your opportunities and profits, what would it be? What if this one thing was free and already available to you? That's this week on Think Tank Tuesday .
The only way to become better is to practice. It never hurts to practice the most obvious and the things we know until they become perfected. Dennis explains which words to use and how to use them to increase sales from your website. Check out this week's Hard Facts about selling with text.
Do your sales people know how to fish? They should. I ask you, when was the last time that you wished there was something you could "personally" do to increase your selling opportunities? Have you every thought "just if we could spend more money on radio or TV advertising to increase walk in customers?" Watch this week's Think Tank Tuesday to see where you should be fishing to get more sales than you could ever handle!
There are two basic types of advertising: branding and traffic now. Each has its own objectives and potential pitfalls. How can you avoid common mistakes made in each form?
In a world where everyone is in search of the magic bullet that will increase both sales and website traffic, what if I told you that all you had to do to start immediately performing at a higher level is to differentiate yourself from your competition?
To paraphrase Seth Godin, there are a lot of brown cows out there – but nobody notices brown cows. If you want to get noticed, you have to be a purple cow. A purple cow in a field full of brown cows is sure to get noticed.
Want to be a purple cow? Read on to learn how to stand out from your website’s competitors:
Know Yourself
The best brands in the world know themselves. They know their strengths, their weaknesses, their successes, their failures – and they know not only where they are now, but also where they’re going in the future. A successful brand is one with one foot planted firmly in the present that also knows where to place the other foot in the future. You only get to this point by taking a true audit of everything you do – right and wrong.
Know Your Competitors
What do they do right? Is there anything they’re offering that you aren’t? When thinking in terms of consumer experience, what can your competitors offer that you can’t?
Once you understand the reason behind why people aren’t choosing your company, it’s much easier to fix any holes in your website or product offerings that are holding you back.
Create a Differentiator or a USP
Great websites and great brands do things differently than others. They offer what’s called a “unique selling proposition” or USP. Finding your USP requires serious introspection and keying on that one item or trait that separates you from your competition. If you don’t have one, create it.
Specialize
There is a time and place to be a jack-of-all trades, but the web isn’t one of them. In a place where consumers can find just about anything from the companies that specialize in these items, they aren’t going to want to purchase one item that you really excel and several others that are of a mediocre quality. Find what you’re good at it – additional offerings are just noise.
KISS
Keep it simple, stupid. There are two basic principles to the KISS method when it comes to online business…
The first is making your product or service easily understandable at a glance. If the average consumer needs to watch a three-minute video to understand what it is you do, you’re losing customers.
The second KISS method revolves around user experience. GoDaddy might make a ton of money selling domains and upgrades, but their checkout process – with all of its upgrades and add-on options – is maddening. KISS!
Invest in Your Brand
Too often, online business owners make good money, but fail to put enough of it back into their brands in order to grow. There are always things you can make better, whether it’s enhancing your product design, user experience or additional product offerings.
Identify Consumer Pain Points
The best products and services are those that make somebody’s life easier. No matter what niche you’re in, there are pain points that you must document in order to create the products or service offerings that will make your customer’s life easier. Solve the problem; cash the check.
Hire the Best People
At some point, your web-based business is going to need additional help. And when it comes to hiring, you need to ask yourself whether your candidates truly have the potential to bring needed value to your position. If not, they aren’t for you – the world doesn’t need more mediocre employees.
Retain Them
Keeping your employees happy has been shown to increase workplace productivity, as well as decrease stress and turnover. Once you find good employees, it’s always cheaper to retain them than to go through the process of finding others, training them, and hoping they stick around.
Make Bold Guarantees
“First page of Google in 90 Days!!!”
“100,000 Facebook Fans in 6 Months!!!”
These are the kinds of guarantees that get people’s attention. While you shouldn’t offer empty promises or guarantees you can’t meet, bold statements like these are undoubtedly powerful. Remember, though, if you can’t deliver, don’t say it.
Over Deliver
Following the above examples, what if, instead of just getting a single web page to the Top 10 results in Google, you got the client a second result in just 55 days? How about 150,000 Facebook fans in just five months? People never complain about someone who over-delivers on a promise. In fact, they may just share how happy they are with others.
Track Success and Failures
It’s easy to document the things you did well. What’s much harder – but much more important – is the ability to document your failures. Having a list of things you did wrong makes you more likely to learn from the mistake, rather than repeating it. In fact, mistakes are often the best thing that could happen to a business. Success doesn’t teach the way failure does.
Be Transparent
The days of private operation of a business are all but over. Let your customers take a peek behind the screen, and show them that you’re willing to share how you do things. Customers feel safer and more loyal to brands that they feel aren’t hiding anything.
Be Innovative
Go ahead; re-invent the wheel. This goes back to the purple cow idea. If you do something differently, you’re bound to get noticed. Apple revolutionized the way in which we listen to music. What’d it get them? A bump in revenue so large that they became one of the most successful companies on the planet.
Test, Test, Test
Great companies are always testing new ideas. Even if you’re just rolling out a specific feature to a certain segment in order to gather feedback, you should always be testing. You can’t be innovative if you’re afraid to fail, and you’ll never know if a feature will be a success unless you put it out in front of your market.
Don’t Skimp
It’s easy to grab a freelancer from Elance, Guru, or oDesk to do your SEO, content and social media. Does that make it the right way? Probably not. One small flub can seriously tarnish a business’s reputation. A few shortcuts in the SEO process could lead to huge penalties from Google or being de-indexed from the SERPs entirely.
The key here is accountability. Find people that have something to lose if they make huge blunders and they’re far less likely to make them. Cheaper isn’t always better.
Get the Referral
This is “Sales 101” stuff, but online business owners often forget it. Get the referral. It’s easier than ever to get a referral online. The sale doesn’t stop with the current customer. Ask for a Tweet or a Facebook status update in exchange for a freebie or discount. It’s that easy.
The web opens up new doors that we’ve never seen before. These doors have the potential to lead to huge successes or monumental losses. Those that are making the money are those that are willing to be different from their competitors in order to deliver a better product or service than those around them. Listen to your customers, respect them, and find ways to differentiate yourself from everyone else. Follow these rules and you’ll be counting your cash in no time.
Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/17-ways-stand-websites-competitors/67977/
There is a big debate about SEO, or "Search Engine Optimization." Is it worth the time and financial investment? The recent Google Hummingbird update has confused the debate even further. Watch this week's video and then tell me what you think.
More than anything, you want traffic in your showroom. Most shoppers will view five dealer websites before ever making the effort to visit just one of them. How do you make sure your inventory entices them to take the extra step and choose your lot above all others? Find out in this weeks Hard Facts.
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On this week's Think Tank Tuesday learn how to keep your cool and avoid panic marketing. Without a plan and without a process you could find yourself left in a panic. These three tips will ensure that you have a plan in place to start strong so you always end strong and profitable.
I'm joined on this week's Think Tank Tuesday by auto industry thought leader, Cory Mosley, to discuss how to keep your customers engaged in your dealership with all five senses. It's time to hear, feel, smell, touch and taste why you need to know about sensory marketing. Tweet along with hashtag #alonetimewithcory and tell us how your dealership enhances the experience!
Let me tell you about 7 key things you are likely doing that is costing you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. These are the real budget killers, the ones that keep you up at night. I assure you that this is an episode of Think Tank Tuesday you cannot afford to miss!
Want to learn how to benchmark your throughput time? Dennis will show you how in this week's HARD FACTS.
What does over 50% of the US population and 70% of Canada do every day? To find out, watch this week's Think Tank Tuesday!
Make sure you keep an eye out for a special offer on how you can learn more about increasing leads and sales. See Paul speak at DD15 October 15-17.
You don’t want to miss this as Dennis Galbraith shares the hard facts about our industry on September 20, at 1:37 PM. Subscribe to the Hard Facts here!
http://www.internetsales20group.com
Gaining the Competitive Edge As A Member Of A 20 Group
Before I go into the “why”, let’s discuss the “what”. Specifically, what is a 20 group? A “20 Group” is a group of dealers in noncompeting markets that get together in exotic locations nationally and internationally, on a quarterly basis, to “synergize”. Although once required that a group consist of approximately 20 dealers (hence the name “20 Group”), this does not always hold true today. Some “20 groups” consist of 30 dealers while others may only consist of 15. Ultimately, the number of dealers in the group is not as relevant as the criteria by which the group itself is structured.
Today 20 Groups are structured a little differently, but it’s important to understand their origin in order to appreciate their evolution. Originally, the 20 group audience was composed of Dealer Principals, General Managers and/or senior executives of the dealership. It also originally focused on franchise dealerships. For example, in a “Toyota” 20 Group, you would find 20 different Toyota dealerships from 20 different markets, usually from all over the country. But even though the franchise was exactly the same, diversity still existed within the “Toyota” 20 group itself. For example, you could have dealerships that were small, large, part of a dealer group, part of a corporation, in a rural area, in the city, single point or part of a multi franchise point; all with different strengths, weaknesses, passions and fears. These dealers were intentionally diverse. This was imperative to the success of the 20 group to ensure impartial feedback.
Some of the most common areas of comparison, coverage and discussion in a traditional 20 group were:
How was the data collected? Each dealer within the 20 Group would be responsible for filling out their “input sheets”, which would become part of the overall 20 group composite. The input sheets worked as the core for analyzing all of the details, metrics and financials mentioned above. The sheer act of an individual dealership filling out an input sheet and tracking the proper metrics was worth the price of membership. Always remember, what isn’t being tracked, can’t be measured and what can’t be measured, cannot be improved upon. Surprisingly, a lot of dealerships today still simply “wing it”. The 20 group input sheets forces the dealers to hold themselves accountable because they have no choice but to fill them out. Lack of doing so could lead to the dealer being fined or worse yet, kicked out of the 20 group completely. After all, in order for the composite to hold its validity, the numbers must be true. Garbage in equates to garbage out. Now with those completed input sheets, the 20 group, led by the 20 Group “Moderator”, was able to take the dealers individual metrics and consolidate all 20 dealerships’ input sheets into the group’s composite. Upon consolidation of the metrics, the moderator and each dealer within the 20 group, is able to see the entire 20 Group in one view and see which dealers are excelling and which individual category they are excelling in. On the opposite spectrum, the group could see which dealers are struggling, where and why. From this data, the group could create “standards” or “benchmarks”. The group could see who is above, below or on track for 20 Group standards. But, this is only the beginning. Now that all of this “field intelligence” has been exposed, the real “SYNERGY” begins! Within each individual 20 Group session, dealers spend time discussing what is successful, what vendors are good and what strategies are successful. Also, what vendors are bad and what to do when bad things happen. In essence, the composite acts as a conversational starter. The true value is being part of a specific group of like minded people, at your level (or better) and the group works together for one sole goal…to evolve the entire group synergistically.
The core principals described above still remain constant and relevant for today’s 20 groups. People need cars today like they needed cars back then. That hasn’t changed. But what has changed, is the medium by which people are buying cars. With 97% of consumers going online prior to stepping foot into a dealership, the Internet Sales Department was created. As mentioned, 20 Groups originally were for franchised dealers and broken down by franchise. Soon after, Independent Dealership 20 Groups started popping up, followed by:
20 Groups are essential for success in today’s market. Shakespeare said “Show me your friends and I will tell you who you are”. If you are a Dealer Principal, GM, Internet Sales or BDC Director or any other senior executive within a dealership or dealer group, I suggest that you find a 20 Group that fits your dealership’s focus and needs.
Remember to find the RIGHT 20 Group for your unique needs and situation. You do not want to join a CFO 20 Group if you are looking for BDC information and clarity. Just like you wouldn’t hire a Service Writer Trainer to train your Internet Sales Department, you do not want to join a “traditional” 20 Group if you need information, strategy and clarity for Internet Sales. I also suggest that you are careful with 20 Groups that claim to do “everything”. Dr Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, says “Put First Things First”. Meaning, you want to identify which area of the dealership you want to perfect first and concentrate solely on that department. Once you solidify the success of that specific department, you can move on to the next focus. For example, if you want to compare and synergize with other Porsche Dealerships, then join a Porsche 20 Group. But if you are looking for clarity on your Internet Sales Department, BDC or Digital Marketing initiative, then find a 20 group that specializes in that area.
Dealerships need good reviews to sell cars, or do they? Are you confused about the discussions surrounding the importance of reviews? When you read reviews are you reading about the product or about where you are buying the product? Be Honest (I won't tell).
This week on Think Tank Tuesday, learn the truth behind all the effort you've given to working on your dealership's reviews.
Watch the video below and find out the truth behind dealership reviews.
