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Make Money Mondays with Sean V. Bradley - "Millionaire Mindset" - Car Sales
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Start putting a plan together to market your upcoming sales events and begin executing it today.
Is your dealership planning ahead for upcoming sales events? There are not that many days left until Thanksgiving or Christmas, and the end of the year will be here before you know it. Don’t get caught up in the last minute panic of planning a sales event.
On this week’s Hard Facts, Samantha covers how you can start putting a plan together to market your upcoming sales events and begin executing it today.
http://www.BradleyOnDemand.com 856-546-2440
Dealer Principal Of 2 Car Dealerships Shares Some Secrets Of Success
Establishing long-term relationships with you customers is becoming more challenging than ever before. You can't rely on any single channel to get in front of them and truly reach them with your messages if you're only hitting them from one or two fronts. You need to be in front of them regularly in the places that they're checking.
I originally published this article over at AutomotiveSocial.com but thought it would fit in nicely at ADM:
Customer loyalty is a tough cookie to crack nowadays. It's not like before when things were more predictable, when you could make assumptions about timing and situations. Today, you never know when the situation will change to where someone is in the market to buy a car immediately. The standard buying cycle has been replaced by a chaotic weaving of changes to job, relationships, and circumstance.
Another thing has changed. People are not inherently loyal to any particular dealership. Sure, there are regular customers who will only buy a car from one dealership, but the number of people who self-maintain loyalty is going down. Today, every customer is a free agent waiting to happen and the only way you can keep them from jumping ship is to be in front of them regularly.
The bad news is that there are so many ways for people to communicate today that it's hard to focus on one way or another. There were dealerships that lived off of mailers, for example, and built the company around being in their customers' mailboxes regularly. For others, email has been a golden ticket, but even that ticket has waned in the wake of advanced spam filters that often exclude messages simply because they have the wrong wording. Today, it's important to get in front of your customers with the right message through multiple channels.
Loyalty is a funny thing. Earlier, I noted that people are less likely to be loyal today than before, but that's not just a function of society's shift towards a digital world that gives them more choices than they can handle. It's also a function of dealerships getting complacent with their messaging and either not sending them out enough or doing so with inferior techniques in an effort to simply "check the box" on having a database marketing plan. If it's not a good plan, you're often better off not trying at all. With spam filters the way they are today, it's possible to do damage to your database by using amateur techniques while trying to reach people.
One of the reasons that I joined Visible Customer in the first place was because they had the right plan. Dealers can apply this plan to multiple portions of their marketing beyond loyalty and conquest. They can take advantage of the concepts of analytics and intelligence marketing, proper dealership management, and building loyalty through referrals and sharing of their positive experiences to better position the rest of their marketing efforts. Whether it's social media, website presence, television ads, or just about anything else they're doing with their marketing, knowing how to engage your customers (past, present, and future) can be the difference between succeeding and failing.
With everything that you're doing, don't assume that any one channel is enough to make it work. You can get great results from this, that, or the other, but when you start combining the different channels to put the messages out there in front of the right people. you can dramatically improve the way that the messages are getting through. You can send messages to people or you can reach people. There's a difference. It's all about strategy.
The market is thriving. Some dealerships are taking advantage of these times. Others are simply reaping some of the benefits without aggressively moving forward.
In the latest addition of Google’s human search rater guidebook, the company introduced a new page rating concept used to manually rate the quality of a website and its pages. The practice of using human search raters is a crucial part of the way Google updates its search algorithm. Because as with any experiment, you want to test your theory.
The new concept Google introduced is called “E-A-T,” which stands for “Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness.” In reality, this idea isn’t too different from what Google, search professionals, and digital marketing companies have been saying about quality content for years. But with an official abbreviation and plan laid out within the human rater guidebook, we now understand exactly how Google is thinking about these topics.
Getting to Know E-A-T
More and more, Google is placing emphasis on the quality of a website’s content. What this means is, the company understands how to rank pages better based purely on its content, rather than relying on inbound links, keywords, and other indicators that can easily be manipulated.
Expertise
As a user, when you search Google for information on a topic, especially one that may affect your life, such as financial, medical, or legal advice, you want to hear from an expert. Google understands this, which is why they’ve told human raters to consider the author of the content as a ranking factor.
How Google builds internal profiles for individual writers and tracks them across the web without fail is still questionable, but the basic takeaway here is that you want the information on your site to be backed up by facts.
But before you rush out to hire experts in your industry to produce your content, you have to understand that Google also tells its raters to keep an open mind as to what “expertise” entails.
Someone with no formal education could still, from personal experience, be able to provide sound financial advice to someone looking to get out of debt. Radio personality Dave Ramsey is a good example of someone Google would likely consider an expert in personal finance, despite the fact that Ramsey is not formally educated in any topic related to personal finances. His advice, however, is trusted by many, which we’ll delve more into later.
Authoritativeness
Authority has always played a large role in the way Google ranks websites and pages. But this new way of thinking about content weighs authority in a much different way than how many links are pointing to a page and where they came from.
Instead, Google wants its human raters to determine authority based on a website’s overall content quality, relevancy, and reputation. Keeping with the Dave Ramsey example, you’re likely to find a lot of useful, quality information that relates to personal finance on his website. The way that’s often packaged may be diverse, such as articles on budget-friendly family activities or how to properly sell your home, but they’re written around Ramsey’s financial principles.
Of course, Ramsey’s advice is often criticized, which could actually hurt his site’s ability to rank as an authority in Google’s eyes. Meanwhile, sites like CNN Money, BankRate, and DailyFinance are much more likely to rank higher because they’re less likely to post controversial advice or opinions.
Trustworthiness
From the information Google provided in its latest human rater guidebook, trust has a lot to do with your site’s reputation. If you’re a business, your site’s rating may be dependent on your business’s reputation.
Google tells its human raters to look for “reviews, references, and recommendations” to help them understand what experts and users or customers think about your business or your site’s content.
Awards are referenced as a way for raters to distinguish higher quality publications from others when thinking about news websites specifically. For example, if a publication won the Pulitzer Prize, it’s a strong indicator that the site’s quality standards are high and that those looking for quality news should visit that site over a less-reliable source. How Google values other awards that may be found on the web is not clear at this time.
What Does This Mean for the Future of SEO?
In the end, Google is looking for more and more diverse ways to distinguish good content from bad content, to make manipulating search rankings more difficult. To stay ahead of the curve and ensure future rankings, you have to work on establishing your site as a credible source of information.
Whether that information is related to your business or your site covers a specific topic like personal finance, the more work you put into your content, the more Google will reward you. It’s very basic advice, but that’s the direction in which Google is headed.
Originally posted on Wikimotive's company blog under the title "What You Need to Know About Google’s E-A-T Evaluation System."
This Internet Sales 20 Group in Boston was such a huge success! We would like to highlight the dealerships that participated in the Composite, especially those who were awarded for their performance. All the winners performed extraordinarily well in their areas and we are so proud of all of the dealers.
The awards were as follows: The SEO Award was given to Toyota of Braintree for having a well implemented SEO strategy that allowed them to consistently show up on the first page of search engines. Route 44 Toyota was awarded the Social Media trophy for having the most fans, engagement and page impressions across multiple social networking sites.
The award for Credit Miner was a tie between two dealerships, Bernardi Toyota and Toyota of Braintree. Both dealerships had credit applications that were easy to use and responded to applicants in a timely manner. The award for best Mystery Shop went to Westboro Toyota for providing an exceptional call experience with the proper phone scripts, etiquette and overall process.The award for best Online Reputation was received by Berlin City Toyota for the best ratings, most reviews and most interaction based on popular review sites.
The Response Audit award was given to Toyota of Watertown based on this dealership’s ability to provide confirmation of availability, in addition to information on vehicle information in a timely manner. The award for Website scope was given to Irwin Toyota for having a solid website which included important factors such as an outstanding landing page that provided easy navigation and was filled with customer reviews. The winner of the overall, best of the best, Pinnacle Award was Toyota of Braintree who excelled in all of the categories analyzed in the composite.
Multiple companies, including Dealer Synergy and many of the Internet Sales 20 Group sponsors, spent over 6 weeks performing complimentary consultations and research in order to collect the data compiled in the composite.28 dealerships were involved in this event’s composite. They were graded and ranked based on 7 Key Performance Indicators, (KPI) - SEO, Social Media, Credit Applications, Mystery Shop Calls, Online Reputation, Response Audit, and Website Scope. Additionally, a lead estimate was conducted, courtesy of Autobytel. They analyzed the lead opportunities in the local areas surrounding each dealership in the composite. Their search radius spanned from 5 to 25 miles. Learning how many opportunities were available to their store was extremely eye opening and proved to be very valuable to participating dealerships.All the work, donated time and resources for this enormous assessment and evaluation has been estimated at a $3,000 value per dealership!
Congratulations to all of the winners!
Below we have outlined the criteria for all seven of the KPI’s and specified exactly what was analyzed:
SEO –This category assessed the dealership’s main website for accessibility on mobile devices and desktops, made sure links worked properly and included proper alt tags, headers and more. The overall test was how well their sites ranked on search engines based on content and key words.
Social Media- With social media being crucial for exposure, this category looked at total fans, followers and subscribers on the most popular social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
Mystery Shop- Every dealership received two monitored calls and were graded in the following areas: initial experience, greeting and phone etiquette. Having a basic phone process and a script makes it easy to guarantee you hit all the key points and end the conversation with an appointment.
Online Reputation- Dealerships were graded on their ratings on online review sites such as Google Reviews, Yahoo Local, Yelp!, Dealer Rater, Edmunds, Cars.com, and more. The dealerships were assessed based on the number of reviews, the ratings and their engagement with reviewers.
Response Audit – This category was graded based on the dealership’s ability to provide confirmation of vehicle availability, offer test drives and their overall professionalism while providing details about vehicle inventory.
Website Scope- When assessing websites, the most important aspects are the ease of use for the customer. We looked for an easy search button for inventory, explanatory videos, such as a used vehicle walk around, and testimonials. Other aspects included a clear call to action, contact information and a site that was up-to-date and relevant.
Credit Miner Credit Applications – This category looked specifically at credit applications on each dealership’s site. Two key factors were the ease of use and response time after submission. It is important to ensure that dealerships are serving their clientele in the most professional and prompt manner possible.
A Breakdown of the Winners and how you can emulate their success:
SEO: Toyota of Braintree
Why They Won: Toyota of Braintree’s SEO strategy included great keywords, alt tags and meta data. Their content was fresh, relevant and updated consistently so they showed up at the top of results in multiple organic searches.
How You Can Emulate Their Success: Take time to make sure your content is consistent with what words you want to appear in search engines. The words you choose affect the visibility of your website in search engines and need to be decided based on your target audience. Meta tags play a major role in this process so it’s important to focus your SEO Strategy around these keywords.
SOCIAL MEDIA: Route 44 Toyota
Why They Won: Route 44 Toyota’s Social Media had the most engagement, subscribers, fans and interactions with these fans as well as followers. Their content was unique, engaging and professional.
How You Can Emulate Their Success: Do not just make your dealership’s site about just YOUR dealership. Be sure to post relevant stores, industry news, and local activities and events in your community. It’s important to see Social Media as a tool to interact with your customers and potential customers - not just an advertisement platform.
MYSTERY SHOP: Westboro Toyota
Why They Won: This dealership was awarded best Mystery Shop Calls based on good phone etiquette displayed by the coordinators, including greeting and closing and overall, exceeding the needs of the caller.
How You Can Emulate Their Success: It’s important to start with a set guide for how to take and make phone calls. Having a process in place and training your team accordingly ensures that all the right information is gathered, that the customer is heard, and that ultimately, their expectations are met. Starting this way makes it easier to sell the appointment and ultimately, the vehicle.
ONLINE REPUTATION: Berlin City Toyota
Why They Won: Berlin City Toyota had an incredible amount of reviews, was rating highly on all the most popular review sites, and had an appropriate level of engagement with customers who left reviews.
How You Can Emulate Their Success: With everyone able to quickly search for customer reviews, you need to make an effort to have positive reviews online at their fingertips. Be sure to thank anyone that leaves a review and make sure to always be conscious when representing your dealership online, so when engaging negative reviews, but be respectful and courteous.
RESPONSE AUDIT: Toyota of Watertown
Why They Won: The Response Audit award was received based on having the right content with the fastest responses about vehicle availability, test drive and more. They went above and beyond to not only provide information but great customer service.
How to Emulate Their Success: Always remain educated about information at your dealership. At any given time you should be able to provide information about vehicles in stock or that you can access. Having a plan in place for handling responses is important, so training is imperative to guarantee great customer satisfaction.
WEBSITE SCOPE: Irwin Toyota
Why They Won: Irwin Toyota received the Website Scope Award because they had a fantastic overall site. Their landing page had a solid call to action, testimonials from previous customers and easily linked to their inventory, specials and financing pages. Their pages were filled with relevant content, they had no broken links or error pages and the organization of the site made it easy to navigate and get in touch with a sales associate.
How You Can Emulate Their Success: When creating your website make sure you have a clear vision. Make sure all the information displayed about inventory, incentives and calls to action are all clear. Try to think of your site from a customer perspective and keep your content fresh and engaging. Try adding a blog, photos, videos and other multi-media aspects to liven up the site.
CREDIT MINER APPLICATION: Bernardi Toyota and Toyota of Braintree
Why They Won: These two dealerships tied for Credit Miner Application because both dealerships had great credit applications that were easy to fill out and both had a quick response time.
How You Can Emulate Their Success: It is important to make credit applications easy and simple. Ask enough information but not too much that you turn them off. And make sure they know how important they are to you by responding quickly.
THE PINNACLE AWARD: Toyota of Braintree
Why They Won: Toyota of Braintree scored highly in all of the 7 KPIs with makes them our Pinnacle Award Winner! They combined superior customer service skills with a high online reputation, a great SEO strategy, ease of navigation on their site and were overall very successful in all areas assessed.
How You Can Emulate Their Success: Make sure your dealership has an exceptional website, appears well in search engines, has a call to action and above all make sure you always provide excellent customer service. It seems overwhelming now, but start by improving one area at a time and you’ll start exceeding not only your customers’ expectations, but your own.
We want to congratulate all of the dealers that were highlighted. It was such an honor to acknowledge dealerships in the industry who are succeeding. It’s important to realize this could be you; you could be any of these dealerships! This is your time, learn and excel today! We hope to see you at the next IS20G 7 in New York. Don’t forget: the first 20 dealerships to register for the event in New York will be included in the next Composite. Don’t miss your chance to be part of something amazing!
Visit www.internetsales20group.com for more information about the upcoming event.
http://www.InternetSales20Group.com 856-546-2440
Internet Sales 20 Group VIP Party Music Video "I'm On A Boat" Parody - IS20G
The Music Video "I'm On A Boat" for the Internet Sales 20 Group 6 #Boston VIP Party on a Yacht Spirit of Boston) is OFF THE HOOK! Let us know what you think and please share with everyone! Thank you to all of the attendees of #IS20G 6 and the Dealer Synergy Video Production Team. Special Thank you to Subi Fernando Ghosh and JD Rucker! Subi was the brainchild behind this Music Video!! Great Job Team!!
You may think you're reaching all of your possible demographics, but that's not the case. Google has uncovered thousands of different niches that you're missing in your marketing strategies.
On this week's Think Tank Tuesday, don't miss this exclusive look into Google analytics with special guest Matthew Goodwin. Learn how you can start building more tailored marketing strategies.
There's nothing wrong with shopping at the local supercenter. The convenience of getting toilet paper, bananas, a video camera, and a package of socks for the kids all in the same place saves time and often saves money as well. However, there are lines that shouldn't be crossed. If you're looking for something as important as a suit, you probably want to go to a place that specializes in them.
That's why it concerns me when I hear from dealers who are marketing to their customer database or even to conquest lists through their one-stop-shop providers like CRM companies. I'm not trying to start a way with any of these companies, but it simply doesn't make sense to perform one of the most important and detail-driven marketing practices through systems that simply aren't designed to handle them.
Yes, many other companies throw in loyalty or conquest marketing into their tool set because they can, but that does not mean that it will be effective. There is an art and a science to appending and cleansing a database that should be handled by specialists just as there is a quality factor inherent to the art and science of tailoring a good suit. Loyalty marketing takes strategy. Conquest marketing requires a strong plan. Neither can be done appropriately through website or CRM automation tools. Doing so is checking off the box rather than taking advantage of the full potential.
Your database can be turned into gold for both sales and service. However, trying to do it with add-on tools is just as bad as trying to fill your business wardrobe from the same place that you buy cereal. Can you get a suit at Walmart? Sure you can. Of course, a suit is supposed to make you look great and stand out. If your wardrobe came from a blue light special, chances are you'll stand out in it for all the wrong reasons.
Marketing to a database must be handled with care and through the level of expertise that can only be achieved through specialists. Don't mark it off as "done" just because you have some drip marketing emails hitting a bunch of spam filters in your database. Make it work by putting real effort into grabbing the low hanging fruit that your database can be.
For nearly two decades, most dealers have been divided in the way that they advertise. There is normally a budget for "traditional" advertising and a separate budget for "digital" advertising. While more dealers are consolidating their budgets, it's more than that. Should we be looking at it all as one holistic form of messaging?
The short answer is, "Yes". That doesn't mean mentioning your website URL in your television commercials. It's more than that. It's about finding the right message that fits your dealership and communicating in a consolidated manner across multiple channels.
It's easy for me to say these things as a CEO of a digital marketing firm because we do not do anything when it comes to traditional advertising. We do not make TV commercials, print ads, mailers, or anything that falls into that category. From our perspective, it's just a matter of marketing across a diverse range of mediums and our focus is on search and social, but it would make our jobs and the effectiveness of the efforts much easier to achieve if everything was consolidated to say the same basic things.
Take, for example, promotion of a tent sale. What we've seen happening for most dealers is that they have a television commercial produced, then they upload it to YouTube. It takes more than that. It should be a banner on the website. It should be a landing page. It means a planned out social media press for the event, including uploading and promoting it on Facebook directly rather than just sharing the YouTube video. It might even mean changing the title tag on the homepage temporarily, mentioning a shortened URL to the landing page on the television or radio commercials, or putting shortened links on mailers that are easy for the recipients to type in.
We're currently exploring the efforts of several vendors and agencies trying to do this. One in particular has an active participant here on ADM. The strategies that Alexander Lau and his team at WorldDealer employ are strong and their message of "One Voice" resonates with what we would love to see achieved with our dealers.
Are there any others that we should consider? What strategies have you employed to make this happen at your dealership? Should we still be separating the budgets and strategies out or are our reasons for wanting them separated valid?
Chime in here, please.
http://www.BradleyOnDemand.com 856-546-2440
Make Money Mondays with Sean V. Bradley - "Hours of Operation" - Car Sales
If there's one thing that I've seen in the last 17 years while working on the vendor side of the business, it's that there are often products and services presented to dealers that simply do not deliver what they promise. It's one of the reasons that I partnered with JD Rucker to form our own company. We wanted control to deliver results no matter what, something that we couldn't always promise when working for larger companies.
It's not that the various sales representatives or marketing departments at automotive vendors hope to rip off their customers. We all want our products to be amazing, but sometimes it's hard, particular for the larger companies trying to offer scalable solutions that can somehow serve their individual dealer clients. Then, there are the smaller companies who often bite off more than they can chew. In the competitive automotive industry, finding great products can be challenging.
Here are some of the things that I've learned that dealers can apply to help determine whether or not a vendor will be delivering what they promise.
Skip the Trophy Client Recommendations
Every vendor has a set of clients that they can count on for good references and good results. There's no need to talk to them. Find the ones that the vendor does not offer up. You can do this by checking the website for testimonials or case studies and then asking the sales representative for references.
Finding the other clients can be easy with larger companies but harder for smaller companies. Either way, compile your list of dealerships that the vendor is highlighting on their website and during their presentation. Ask for examples. THEN, ask for more examples. They should be able to do this on the spot. If they can't there's a potential problem (unless they're really, really small, in which case you might have to press harder).
It's okay to tell them what you're doing AFTER you've received their list of people they want you to talk to. Letting them know is important because it immediately lets them know that you're going to be aggressive in your monitoring of the results. Believe it or not, this makes a difference in how your account is treated. As sad as it is, the concept of the squeaky wheel getting the oil applies for most vendors, big and small. It's okay to be a little squeaky.
Request Month-to-Month Contracts and No Setup Fees
There are many dealers who have been doing this for some time. Some vendors simply won't do it. Despite the concept that a company that believes in itself won't need contracts or setup fees, there are still too many risks for some products such as CRM and DMS. However, most products that can be delivered on a monthly basis have few upfront costs other than a setup that normally falls within the cost collected for the first month.
With that said, it's not worth passing on a great product for the sake of contracts or setup fees. There are those who simply do not offer month-to-month contracts or that cannot waive setup fees. That does not mean that their products are inferior, necessarily, but making the request and putting out a little fuss is a good way to find out exactly what is entailed with the initial setup.
Ask Why Dealers Leave
This is a tough one and not every sales representative is prepared to answer this question. You might even want someone who isn't able to answer the question well so that you can ask to have the name of a couple of dealers who have cancelled recently.
Be careful. If you're looking for a perfect vendor you'll have to keep looking regardless of the segment. Nobody is perfect. Everyone messes up. Sometimes, the expectations are too high. Sometimes, there are things that happen that make a product or service ineffective. Sometimes, it's simply a matter of a new GM or ISM who came in and made a bunch of changes.
Speak to the Doers
The sales representative is trained to answer sales questions. Ask the same questions of the people doing the actual work. If you're strongly considering a company, ask for the customer service or operations people to be on the second call. They're more inclined to under-promise.
Put the Guru on Notice
Most companies have a guru or a "micro-celebrity" who represents the company at conferences or in the blogs. Get them on the phone and ask them to personally take interest in your cause. They do not want to get a bad personal rap against them in most cases and will help you to perform better.
Doing this goes beyond asking. This is where the power of reviews and public testimonials can come into play. Be willing to speak out whether they do a great job or a poor job and make certain they know about it.
Have a Panel Interview
When you're narrowed down to a handful of candidates, bring them all in together. Let them know that they'll be going head to head with other vendors. Get multiple people on your side to ask questions of everyone. The way they present their products will be different when they know a competitor or two is on the phone with them.
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There are plenty of things you can do to get the real picture, but the best thing you can do is to do a ton of research. That's not to say that you need to work slowly. Believe it or not, there are times when a dealership can do more damage than good by establishing up front that they'll be "high maintenance" clients. Keep it fair. Stay polite. Make great decisions.
Accuracy.
There, I said it. Within that one word lies the keys to unlocking the true potential of the customer data you have available to you. If you have the most accurate data, you'll be able to craft marketing, conquest, and retention campaigns that will boost your business faster than anything else available to your dealership.
Of course, it's not easy to achieve the level of accuracy necessary for the top levels of success. It requires that you cleanse your data rigorously to separate the wheat from the chaff. It also requires that you append the data to include the most recent information about individuals. Some of you are doing this to some extent today. Others are relying on their vendors and hoping that it's happening. Most have fallen for a shotgun approach either because they are doing it themselves and aren't sure that the chore of cleansing and appending is worth the effort or they let their vendors take the dangerous and costly shortcut of going straight for the data, any data, without a plan and with no sense of accuracy.
There's a fourth category - those who are not using their database for marketing at all. It's better to be in this category than to be using a shotgun. Bad data can damage the good data.
There's a reason that the laws regarding email spam, junkmail, and call lists are getting stricter across the board and have been for some time now. People don't like to be solicited without consent.
On the other side of the fence are those who provide the communications, whether it's email providers, ISPs, mailing services, or BDCs. These entities do not like spinning their wheels. In every case, there is a price to pay for bad data.
Combine these two aspects and you have the ability to damage the good data with bad data. In email, for example, if you're sending out too many that are bouncing, getting counted as spam due to recycled email addresses, or go unread because there's nobody there to read them, it can hurt your chances of your emails making it into the inboxes of people associated with the good data.
Even if you're running an internal BDC, bad data can waste their time and hurt moral. It only takes one bad follow up call to spin someone's head and hurt their chances for the rest of the day. A database that does not get cleansed regularly can yield wrong information about the person they're trying to contact. A database that does not get appended can result in old information being used by the BDC. People get married and divorced, after all. These types of life changes are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the needs for data appending.
Whether you're doing it yourself or you're having someone else do it for you, focus on the accuracy of the data that you're using. It's cheaper to use bad data, but at what point is saving money going to cost your more than you saved?
Social media emerged as the ultimate place to reach people when it first started taking off in the automotive industry back in 2009. Unfortunately, by the time that many dealerships and marketers started figuring out how to take advantage of it the right way, the rules changed to a pay-to-play model.
This is the best thing that happened for automotive social media. The spam once kept great posts from being seen has all but vanished. Now, those who invest a little money into exposing their message are rewarded with views. The only casualty - good engagement for high-quality organic posts. Everything comes at a cost.
All of this is fine, but the real value that dealers can get from their social media presence is actually something that very, very few are doing. In fact, we're finding that very few even know it exists. The power of unpublished posts on Facebook that utilize buyer data (as well as other forms of targeting) is where the true ROI of social media can be maximized.
By putting the right ads in front of the right people at the right time, you'll be able to drive real buyers to your website. It's the ultimate way to sell cars on social media and so few are taking advantage of it. Here's an example:
The fact that we're taking potential used vehicle buyers within driving distance of the dealership and sending them to the search results page of the dealer's website should be enough to convince you that this is the way to go. These are people who have indicated that they intend to buy a used vehicle in the near future.
Think of it as highly-targeted pay-per-click, except much cheaper than anything you can get from Google, Bing, or Yahoo. In this case, 173 used car buyers in the local area were driven to the website at $0.51 a pop. It's a no-brainer. Unfortunately, most are still focused on getting more likes to their Facebook page.
Of course, perhaps that's not unfortunate at all. Maybe it's a great thing that so few are doing it. I know that we're ecstatic that there's pretty much no competition out there for this type of action.
http://www.BradleyOnDemand.com 856-546-2440
The Secret to Making Big Money Selling Cars with Sean V. Bradley - Dealer Playbook Podcast
The more people that are shopping for a car that you can get in front of your inventory, the more cars you're going to sell. Some would say it's a bold statement. Others would say that it's pretty obvious. Depending on which side of the coin you're on, you'll either need to be convinced or you're already doing it.
Let's start with the disclaimer. Everything our company does is geared around driving more VDP views. Search, social, and even our partner products like LotLinx are all "inventory drivers" for our clients. We don't believe in coaxing people to these pages. We're going after intent.
With that out of the way, let's get into the hard facts. People have so many choices when it comes to finding their next vehicle purchase. There are more third-party sites vying for their attention than dealers in any given market. These sites try different things in order to generate revenue. Some sell subscriptions and placement like AutoTrader and Cars.com. Others sell listings themselves like Craigslist and eBay. Others sell leads. They all know that the automotive industry is lucrative and they want to make money. There's nothing wrong with that.
A recent trend has been for many dealers to focus specifically on generating their own leads. They don't want to be part of these other listing sites. They don't want to buy leads. They are finding that the highest quality comes from people who are visiting their own site and they would be correct. However, there's an important fact to note before cancelling all of your third-party subscriptions.
The reason that the leads from a dealer's website usually convert so much better than other leads is because they are often a captive audience. Most of your search traffic is coming from searches for your dealership by name, which means that they want to consider doing business with you. There are fewer barriers to overcome to sell them a car when they are already inclined to like you, so the lead quality will always be higher here.
This is why we recommend to dealers to still participate in other sites while focusing on their own. It's why we partnered with LotLinx. It's why we push SEO so heavily and it's why we position our social media product to be specifically geared towards driving people intending to buy a car to your website.
The reason that driving shoppers to your VDPs will increase sales is the same reason that putting people behind the wheel will sell more cars. It's excitement. When they're shopping, they're in the early stages of excitement, but it's still present. They can picture themselves driving it. They like to look at pictures. They want to read the specs. They want to scrutinize the history report, compare the prices, check out the features, and imagine what Toreador Red would look like in their driveway.
As dealers move forward with their evolving strategies, it's important to look at the numbers. There are no tricks to this, really. Regardless of where they are on the internet, there's a chance that you can get them in front of your inventory. The advertising possibilities are endless. Don't get caught up in complicated strategies. Get more people in front of your cars and you will sell more of them.
There was a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish, it was so fragile.
Okay, so that’s not really original. Any opportunity to plug in a line from Gladiator, I’ll take it. Despite the overly serious tone of the quote, it plays well with the dream that was social media. The idea of having a set of free venues through which businesses could interact with consumers and the consumers could interact back presented itself as a grand concept to be desired and cherished. Unfortunately, the dream is dead. Success on modern social media requires one of two things: serious fame or cash invested.
Unless you’re Justin Bieber, your brand needs money in order to be relevant on sites like Facebook. There’s no other way to look at it. Even Twitter gets exponentially more useful when a little money is applied to it. LinkedIn, YouTube, and possibly Pinterest and Instagram are all heading down the road of pay-to-play if you really want to find success.
It’s not the evil plan of social media sites come through to their end game. In fact, most of the social sites outside of YouTube went in with the hopes of not having to apply advertising as a primary source of revenue, at least not in the formats they’re presenting themselves in today. “Advertising” was a dirty word in social media startup circles just four or five years ago. Today, they’ve accepted that their dreams of making money through networking and data are simply no long realistic. As their dreams died, so did ours.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that the cost of playing the game right is, for now, extremely low when compared to the potential results. For a fraction of the cost of Google Adwords or display advertising, campaigns can be set up through social media that bring in similar results. In some cases, depending on the goals and campaigns, the results can actually be better despite the lower spend. Let’s take a look at the recent past, the way it works today, and the near future:
It All Blew Up
For better or for worse, the people muscled out the businesses. On Facebook, for example, the feedback from users was that they simply weren’t interested in seeing as many posts from pages as from profiles. They might like the show Game of Thrones and they might not mind occasionally seeing updates posted on their news feed, but for the most part they go to Facebook to see videos of little nephew Timmy sliding into 3rd base. Facebook obliged recently (and really, for a long time they’ve been creeping in this direction) and made it less likely that posts from pages were visible in news feeds.
There’s a silver lining to this, though. While users were not as accepting of posts in their news feeds from pages that showed up organically, they’ve demonstrated a tolerance for sponsored posts. In essence, they know instinctively that they have these services for free and that Facebook is a business. As long as they have some sense of control over what they’re presented, they don’t mind ads on Facebook any more than they mind television commercials. They tolerate them. At least on Facebook, they have the ability to let Facebook know which posts they don’t want to see on their news feeds.
Social media blew up. It got too big for brands, at least from an organic perspective. On Facebook and Twitter in particular, the feeds are too cluttered with personal posts to allow the business posts to come through naturally. That’s okay. We should be paying. If anything, this makes it to where the aggressive businesses can take advantage of the exceptionally low cost of entry without being muscled out by popular pages with their organic reach.
Today
Now that we know that organic reach is dead, we can move forward with the benefits of this. Facebook has done a terrible job at educating businesses about their advertising powers and Twitter has done even worse. Google+ – don’t get me started there. This is bad for them. It’s great for us. It’s great for companies that are starting to take advantage of it.
There are caveats, most notably that the ad types used to bring people to the table and try advertising are the worst ones. On Facebook, the “Boost” and “Promote Your Page” buttons are the easiest to get you started and the worst at achieving results.
Data. That’s the power of social media. Unfortunately, both of the basic types of advertising have trouble thinking about scratching the surface of the data components. This isn’t the place to go into details about how the data works, but suffice to say that it’s extremely powerful when used appropriately.
That’s today. Get involved and use the data that you have as well as the data that Facebook has. With that understood, what will the future look like?
Shifting Towards Mobile First
Everything is shifting to mobile.
Everything is shifting to mobile.
Everything is shifting to mobile.
It cannot be overstated and it doesn’t matter where you put the emphasis. Mobile will eclipse desktop soon for nearly all forms of internet browsing. It already does with social media. This is why, no matter what you think about social media, you must make sure that your digital marketing strategy focuses on mobile first and allows the desktop experience to happen as a secondary course. That’s not to say that desktops are dying or that they don’t need to be considered. They simply need to reside in a mobile world as if they’re big mobile devices without the touchscreen. Heck, there are plenty of desktops and laptops that already do have touchscreens.
As social media continues to evolve and mobile grows in eyeball share, so too do the advertising strategies need to match appropriately.
Social media is no longer organic, at least not for businesses. To move ahead, you have to either use social media from a defensive posture or go full force with the advertising component. The in-between strategies will do nothing more than waste time and energy.
Does your dealership want to do something for a good cause, but you're not sure how? Marketing a cause is very similar to how you market your own brand. By incorporating some of the strategies you already have proficiency in, you can create great campaigns for the cause you care about.
Samantha explains how you can use the strategies you already have to benefit a good cause on this episode of Hard Facts.
http://www.ezreferralnetwork.com
Dealer Principal, Paul Sansone Jr. Just Back from Sean V Bradley's Internet Sales 20 Group in Boston
Conquest sales can be exhilarating. Let's face it, there's something medieval, even carnal about the concept of taking sales from your competitors. Even the action itself has an incredible name. "Conquest" - it sounds epic and it's something that we all want to do.
It's more than that, though. It's a double-dip. Every conquest sale is a good thing for our numbers and a bad thing for a competitor's numbers. Many of us have gone that extra mile when we found out that we're not only selling a car but also preventing a dastardly competitor from getting a sale as well.
Let's put the romantic aspect of it aside. Conquest sales are, in reality, hard. They are not the low hanging fruit that dealers should focus on first. They are a luxury that dealers should be doing when they know for certain that they have their own customers contacted regularly and coming in to continue buying cars from the dealership.
Keep in mind, I own a company that actually sells a conquest solution! It's in my best interests to promote the idea that you should be getting as many conquest sales as possible. With that said, I strongly encourage dealers to go after the low hanging fruit first. Retaining customers and converting them to do business with you in other departments is the lowest hanging fruit available to dealers and it's something that we feel must be done before any thoughts of taking someone else's business. Here's why:
Your Customers are Already Your Customers
On the surface, it sounds like a silly statement, but let's dig a little deeper. In our industry, we are often misguided to believe that we'll sell someone a vehicle and they're probably done with us for a couple of years unless they choose to service their cars at the dealership as well. Even then, they're probably just coming in for the cheap services, right?
Wrong.
The data that we've seen indicates that you can dramatically increase your service profits simply by marketing appropriately to those who have already bought a car from you. They're already doing business with you. Why wouldn't you want to have a strategic plan to keep them coming in for more. Conversely, your service customers are often the easiest to convert into sales opportunities. We all know that, but it's surprising how many dealers are not taking advantage of this fact.
While You're Conquesting Them, They're Conquesting You
When dealers are busy stealing each others' customers, the net result is often a wash. So many dealers are finding success in conquest marketing thanks to the lack of loyalty amongst most car buyers today that they feel like they're getting somewhere with it. In many cases, they're trading rather than increasing the number of people buying cars.
The beauty of marketing to your own dealership's customer database is that you're not only getting more business as a result, but you're also preventing your competitors from conquesting you. Take advantage of your relationship with them by staying in front of them. Every gap in communication is an opportunity for your customer to look at others. Stay in front of them. Don't give your competitors an open opportunity.
There's Money on the Table
It all comes down to the original concept here. People in your current customer database are the lowest hanging fruit available. Just because they bought a car from you last month doesn't mean that nobody else in the household is in the market this month.
Dealers are competitive by nature and taking advantage of the resources available to them is the easiest way to get that low hanging fruit. Stop leaving money on the table. Stay in front of your customers and turn them from being one-timers to life-long champions. We all want to be conquistadors. Sometimes, that means taking better care of your own kingdom first.
