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Facebook Questions and Google +1 – A Boon to Your Dealership or Just Noise
- Automotive News, Press Releases, and Events
- 11 Replies
In the past week titans Google and Facebook have come up with additional ways for users to add their personal opinions into the mix of search. Facebook has introduced a new Questions tool that enables individuals and brands to ask questions of their network. Google is introducing a +1 feature to their adwords platform that will enable Google profile owners to add a +1 to the business ads and pages they endorse. Think of it as a Facebook “like” button, but for Google. How can these changes impact your business?
Google Plus 1
- On the PR and marketing side, we’ll see more businesses soliciting plus ones, much in the way we currently see a solicitation of “likes” on Facebook. An example would be a business tweeting or posting something along the lines of “plus one us and get a discount on services…”
- Google believes the plus one feature will be a benefit to companies using Adwords because they suspect +1 has the potential to boost adwords campaigns.
- A +1 to a company search listing will also show up on that company’s ad campaign, providing double duty for those brands looking for +1’s across marketing channels.
- Downfall of +1 – Individuals must have a Google profile to add their +1 ranking and at this time Google’s profile user base is far behind those of networks the likes of Facebook. It will be interesting to see if Google changes this tactic as more businesses warm to the +1 game.
Facebook Questions:
- Facebook Questions provides users a streamlined way to ask questions of their friends and get a direct feed of answers.
- Think of the word-of-mouth potential if a user asks where to find the best deal on a car and your business is the most suggested? It’s a marketing goldmine.
- Here’s the beauty for business – Facebook Questions also enables businesses to ask questions of their followers. In this way Facebook Questions can help a company do everything from test a new campaign or get instant feedback on a product to instant polling for internal use.
- Facebook Questions downfall – While the question feed can spread word of mouth goodness about your brand, it can also help perpetuate a negative image if a person who answers has had a bad experience.
For a better explanation of both new tools, check out Susan Etlingers post about Facebook Questions and Jolie O’Dell of Mashable for Google +1.
Do you think search tools like Google +1 or Facebook Questions will help or hurt your dealership?
Update: Found this quick presentation on slideshare. Thought it would be a nice addition.
Google+1 Button
Japanese Disaster Impacting Automotive Demand
- By bpulseadmin
Shopper Activity For Japanese Brands Starting Immediately After Quake And Continuing Downward Momentum Since
Nashville, TN —03/29/2011— Dataium, LLC, today released additional data on online automotive shopper behavior of the American consumer that illustrates a downward shift, particularly for Japanese brands. The company utilized its ASI index which aggregates and weighs nearly a dozen different behaviors to determine consumer intensity, motivation, and engagement in the automotive market. The ASI index had made positive gains through February, however after the quake, illustrated a dramatic reversal in consumer behavior. It should be noted that all automotive makes are being impacted; however Japanese manufacturers have felt the brunt of the declines in consumer behavior.
World Events - A Timeline for Auto Market Decline
Declines in the ASI index began almost immediately after the Libyan crisis erupted and average gas prices broke $3.45 per gallon. Domestic brands as a group saw the greatest declines at 7%, with Dodge and GMC having the most significant declines - each with nearly a 17% decline in online auto shopper intensity. Japanese imports posted gains of around 9%; with Honda posting a 25% increase for the same time period, likely due to the higher fleet MPG for these makes. All imports were up by 1%.
These trends shifted dramatically after the Japanese quake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster occurred. Immediately following these events, Japanese imports posted a 16% decline - reversing the earlier gains, while domestic brands saw a 13% increase in their group's index. However, it did not take long for the gravity of the disaster in Japan, continued unrest in the Middle East, and rising gas prices to erode the gains first posted by domestic brands.
Adding to the already staggering reversal in consumer behavior, Japanese imports have seen their ASI index decline an additional 13% in the weeks following the quake; this comes after posting a 1% gain in the 10 days prior to the quake that rocked Japan on March 11. Unrest has not been solely on the Japanese brands, the U.S. domestic auto brands have lost 1% following the quake, compared to a 4% decline for the 10 days prior. The ASI index for both imports and luxury brands have declined nearly 7%, and the overall automotive market index is down nearly 5% since the quake, versus 2%, 1%, and 2% declines prior to the quake.
Impact of Quake on Automotive Brands
"The data we have collected from online auto shopping behavior across the Internet clearly indicates that the automotive market was beginning to soften in response to world events and continued gas price increases prior to the catastrophic events in Japan", stated Eric Brown, CEO of Dataium. He added, "The Japanese nameplates were actually out-performing the domestic brands until the quake. After the quake, these trends inverted and the Japanese imports began a significant decline." He continued, "it should be noted however, that all automotive brands are being impacted by events around the world."
Nashville, TN —03/29/2011— Dataium, LLC, today released additional data on online automotive shopper behavior of the American consumer that illustrates a downward shift, particularly for Japanese brands. The company utilized its ASI index which aggregates and weighs nearly a dozen different behaviors to determine consumer intensity, motivation, and engagement in the automotive market. The ASI index had made positive gains through February, however after the quake, illustrated a dramatic reversal in consumer behavior. It should be noted that all automotive makes are being impacted; however Japanese manufacturers have felt the brunt of the declines in consumer behavior.
World Events - A Timeline for Auto Market Decline
Declines in the ASI index began almost immediately after the Libyan crisis erupted and average gas prices broke $3.45 per gallon. Domestic brands as a group saw the greatest declines at 7%, with Dodge and GMC having the most significant declines - each with nearly a 17% decline in online auto shopper intensity. Japanese imports posted gains of around 9%; with Honda posting a 25% increase for the same time period, likely due to the higher fleet MPG for these makes. All imports were up by 1%.
These trends shifted dramatically after the Japanese quake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster occurred. Immediately following these events, Japanese imports posted a 16% decline - reversing the earlier gains, while domestic brands saw a 13% increase in their group's index. However, it did not take long for the gravity of the disaster in Japan, continued unrest in the Middle East, and rising gas prices to erode the gains first posted by domestic brands.
Adding to the already staggering reversal in consumer behavior, Japanese imports have seen their ASI index decline an additional 13% in the weeks following the quake; this comes after posting a 1% gain in the 10 days prior to the quake that rocked Japan on March 11. Unrest has not been solely on the Japanese brands, the U.S. domestic auto brands have lost 1% following the quake, compared to a 4% decline for the 10 days prior. The ASI index for both imports and luxury brands have declined nearly 7%, and the overall automotive market index is down nearly 5% since the quake, versus 2%, 1%, and 2% declines prior to the quake.
Impact of Quake on Automotive Brands
"The data we have collected from online auto shopping behavior across the Internet clearly indicates that the automotive market was beginning to soften in response to world events and continued gas price increases prior to the catastrophic events in Japan", stated Eric Brown, CEO of Dataium. He added, "The Japanese nameplates were actually out-performing the domestic brands until the quake. After the quake, these trends inverted and the Japanese imports began a significant decline." He continued, "it should be noted however, that all automotive brands are being impacted by events around the world."
Call Tracking - 8 Questions You Need to Ask
- Off Topic & Everything Else
- 1 Replies
Are you thinking about using tracking phone numbers for your website and ad campaigns?
Dealers are drawn to the idea of call tracking because of the prospect of eliminating wasteful spending on ads that aren’t working. They can measure the number of responses an ad generates to gauge which types of media (or which providers) are producing the highest rates of return.
Recent breakthroughs now even allow the dealership to tie an incoming website call back to the search engine keyword and referring source that delivered the caller. All this sounds too good to be true, right? There’s got to be some fine print. Here’s the deal, ask your prospective call tracking vendor these eight questions, and you can bank on having a positive call tracking user experience.
1. Who owns your dealers phone numbers?
Some providers maintain ownership of the telephone numbers that are being tracked. Advertisers become hostages to the call tracking company that is leasing the numbers because they can't switch to another provider without forfeiting all of the calls that their number generates. Make sure that when you acquire a call tracking number, you become the owner of that line. If your call tracking vendor isn’t doing a good job, you should be able to port the number to another vendor without any interruption in service.
2. Who owns the data?
Since you are paying for the ad that generates the leads, you should be the only party that can use the collected data. Make sure your provider isn't planning on selling your customers' names, phone numbers and addresses. It's also a good idea to make sure you'll have total control of the information that gets collected (i.e., Can the data be easily exported? Are there any limitations to how I can use the data?, etc.)
3. Can my minutes be pooled?
If a provider offers a package that includes 200 minutes per month, find out if you're allowed to aggregate the minutes of multiple numbers. Example: If you're paying for 10 numbers, make sure your monthly minute total is a combined 2,000 minutes that can be distributed across all numbers (you may have a few numbers that generate a majority of the traffic).
4. What steps are involved to ensure clean numbers?
When you're trying to track all the calls that respond to your advertisements, it's frustrating to deal with "wrong number" callers. Often times a telephone number is recycled from a previous advertiser, so people who are using last year's phone book or looking at an old ad will call the number and disrupt the statistics of the campaign you are try to track. Ask your provider how long numbers are decompressed before they get redistributed - most vendors require at least 12 months.
5. What's the contingency plan for misprinted numbers?
No matter how careful a publisher might be, there will inevitably be situations where an ad gets messed up. Phone book publishers, at times, accidentally print the same telephone number for multiple different companies. What you can do is insert an automated greeting that asks callers to select which company they wished to connect with...it isn’t perfect, but it minimizes the damage.
6. What's the turnaround time for new numbers?
If a customer needs numbers in a market that's within a call tracking vendor’s existing inventory, the provisioning process takes about 3 minutes. If the vendor doesn’t have the market covered, the process is to order lines from multiple vendors in the requested market. In the past, it's taken about 5 to 7 business days for those numbers to be delivered - that seems to be the industry standard. However, recent advancements in the coordination among carriers has taken that wait time down to about 12 hours. I imagine this will quickly become the new standard for everyone.
7. Can the call reports be fully customized?
Every provider claims that its reports are customizable. Make sure this means that you can control what data is included and how the information is formatted; often times "customizable" just means your logo gets slapped onto the top of the page.
8. What type of fees are reasonable?
Call tracking service fees should be fully inclusive. If a proposal contains things like gateway fees, private labeling fees, programming fees, API usage fees, etc., ask for allowances in the service rates. Some add-on costs are acceptable because they're simply pass-through costs of third party vendors. Examples would be reverse lookups (name & address of caller) and porting charges for existing numbers. Every call tracking provider incurs costs for carrying a number each month (whether local or toll-free) - this is a cost that comes from the telephone companies that provide the lines. If a provider claims to have no charges associated with carrying a number, check the fine print for minimum requirements elsewhere in the contract.
Efficient competitors in the market appreciate it when a savvy prospect solicits bids from multiple providers and makes everyone compete. This is a great way to force the providers to be upfront and clear with their offers - if you're requiring an apples-to- apples comparison, everything gets simplified and you greatly decrease the risk of getting trapped in a misleading contract.
