Strangely enough, the Blitz guys were the only employees from Autotrader that I'd seen in 2 years who had a clue about their product and had some kind of personality.

As far as the Blitz tarnishing AT's image... I felt much better about that than I do about the company's latest tactic of simply cutting your contracts short and demanding new, group-wide contracts at a higher expense. Oh, and it seems every time they turn over administrative personnel in Atlanta, there's magically another unpaid bill for dealers to pay. At my last dealership, there were three occasions where I was told we owed on past invoices from years back... each time this went down, it was a different administrative rep making the call.

Autotrader's done. Their execs have one foot out the door, no doubt about it.

The "wonderful" autotrader blitz team was through my area just a few months ago and I had a blast with them. These guys were not easy on the eyes what so ever.

Here is what went down. The automotive group that I worked for was handled by a larger account guy out of the Chicago area to my knowledge. These boys came in unannounced and started just doing there pitch with me. I let them have there fun and I had my fun later on. After wasting my time with pitches and "BS" pricing I made them come back to me two or three times a day while they were in town and at near closing time of the store. So long story short I had these guys back and forth and never left with a contract signed. Finally got better pricing through our large account rep than the wonderful blitz team was offering.

If you are not happy with the whole blitz team thing have some fun with them. I did and it was great.

Brian, that's easy money...count me in for the over!

'Tis the season...Philly reps are currently working the Hampton Roads, VA area, Hampton Roads reps are working the Richmond area, etc. They do it a few times a year because by getting fresh faces in front of the dealers and offering reduced rate trial periods they have pretty good success w/ the blitzes. Besides that, I've found the blitz atmosphere is less than professional. Reps tend to have the "I'm on vacation" and "I'll never see this dealer again" mentality, which isn't what I would want representing my company if I were Autotrader.com. Even when I worked inside sales and there were blitzes, we'd be trying to set appointments for the blitz team and it transformed the business environment into a carnival. What dealers want to hear a bunch of hooting and hollering in the background when talking to a rep about an appointment? It's all about the blitzes at Autotrader.com, which is why they pull some salespeople out of a sales role for two weeks and turn them into appointment setters, forcing them to take a big hit on their own commissions for $30/appt set.

Sure, blitzes generate some business, usually dealers that had previously cancelled, but you have to wonder if it tarnishes their image in some way.

the over and under on this thread is 100 posts.....any takers?

Frank - so funny...

The ATC blitz just happened in our NY market.

They sent in the classic M/F team; he was sharp, did all the talking and was very fast about everything. Nice guy, knew his stuff - just not anything about our account.

His side-kick was very nice, very knowledgeable and very pleasing on the eyes.

I'm not sure if they even spoke with our local rep about our account, our business model and our activity. Their pitch started out showing products we already use...

Two plus months ago I cancelled Autotrader and was blitzed by two other reps, one was the rep we used to have then they brought is the big gun, nice looking female from OKC, they went as far as cross checking my solds for 6 months to what they had, They were not to successful in convincing me I made a bad decision. I have to say I miss Autotrader and the telephone calls they generated, but I have to stick to my decision and I will tell you why, first I believe they are way over priced, I mean my god 2,300. They were the highest paid in my budget, I went back a year and found the ROI was not there for our department. Now what really bothers me about Autotrader and Cars.com for that matter. Pull up a vehicle on Autotrader, now count how many links there are taking consumers away from your ad, up to 14 links. All Paid for by other companys to advertise on the page I paid for to advertise my vehicle.
Sorry had to explain why I didnt sign back up. But yes they have tried over and over, The rep from OKC has been here three times. When they drop the price or pay us to advertise our vehicles so others can advertise on our pages I will reconsider signing back up. Maybe since we pay Autotrader more than any other advertiser etc they will just advertise our vehicles and take all of those links down?

With that kia com. We ial with Obama. Now I know I will NEVER SHOP THERE!! Keep
On
TRUMPIN

excellent job of advertising-almost as good as the Credit pimp in philiadelphia

lol -- wow.. I hadn't seen this one before! Thanks for sharing!

Once again KIA is leading the way to success. We must give credit where it is do.

Eh, actually the ad itself doesn't strike me as out-of-the-box or over-the-top at all... I've seen the same exact thing done before, using the current President at the time. The dealer lucked out big time here, getting this much exposure for something only mildly creative.

And of course, the Ad Agency was even luckier, because now they can run around touting their "Viral Marketing" capabilities. I'm sure there are a handful of dealers calling them up right now... "I want you to gimme something like that Obama thing - you know, something that will get Daily Show exposure."

Funny...lol

Simonizing - "Free at last, free at last!" - there goes my gross!! Lol, that was a great way to start the week... Kevin Frye/eCommerce Director/Jeff Wyler Automotive Family/ http://wyler.com

First time checking out this blog, but I got to say I'll probably be here more often

Great topic....PS Jeff Kershner can you add a search function to your blog? or am I just totally overlooking it?

Regarding PPC advertising. Most dealers are quick to spend a certain budget on PPC advertising but do not get involved in getting better results. You can bid on a general keyword like "Chevy" as long as you create the right text ad (remember this is advertising so you set the message) to go along with it, so you weed out people that are not looking for what you have to offer. Same goes for the landing page for that specific keyword, you need to create content that fits that keyword and your actual ad. This will obviously lowers the amount of clicks, but the great thing is you still get branding for your site with the right message and you only pay for traffic that is relevant.

Tell me how many of you guys create different campaigns for different keywords with different messages in the ads and different landing pages? I doubt more than 10% does this. Partly because we are too lazy to do this, partly because we have a third company doing it and they have just as little knowledge as us or they are too lazy, and/or our website provider does not give us the means to create a different landing page per keyword or campaign.

I am guilty of the same, because I simply do not have the time (although by the number of posts on this site, I should question myself on this ?) so I chose to use a third party provider.

Regarding the use of SEM vs SEO. SEM is not only for new websites until their website starts ranking. There is research out there that shows that a certain percentage of search engine traffic clicks on sponsored ads, so you should have your company's website in both sponsored and organic results.

Now one thing that I think you should avoid is the following. Yahoo allows sponsored listings in organic results. Yep, scary thought huh. So if you are already on top of SE listings, you have to make sure that your SEM campaigns do not list in the organic results, because it will replace your organic listings and you are paying for clicks that you would get for free.

This creates an extra load of work, because now you have to create different campaigns for different marketing messages and have to worry about whether you rank high for the keywords in the campaign organically. If you are not, have Yahoo place you in the organics, if you are, then leave that campaign out of the organics.

On top of this, you need to think whether all this is worth the hassle having to worry about. Our site is not getting enough traffic to worry about it, but some larger dealer groups should definately look at this.

Again this points to the problem I have with the inflexibility of most (probably all - just do not want to make a claim that is not true) dealer website providers.

I am just ramping up the 1st PPC campaign for this store. I cannot believe all the idiot dealers out here.

I am in NY and just 2 hours into the keyword research and I am seeing dealers from Montana, Colorado, TX, N. Carolina... good God, these idiots are everywhere.

Word to Mark Bonfigli or Dean Evans.
Is your PPC management tool a stand alone platform? If so, these PPC newbies really need your help. What better way to validate value than documenting "self managed waste".

CONCEPT:
Create "PPC Crisis" call list using GOOG's new "Ads Preview Tool". Try it for yourself. Goto: Adwords> Campaign Management> Tools> Ads Preview Tool

Toss in a quality short tail keyword, then look into each State or regional Market to find the "lost children".

EXAMPLE:
state: ALABAMA
keyword: chevrolet avalanche
www.BillCrispin.com Maine
www.CourtesyChev.net Arizona

state: ALASKA
keyword: Chevrolet SSR (gulp!)
www.RosenthalChevrolet.com Virginia (none in stock!)

state: ALASKA
keyword: Chevrolet equinox
www.arizona-chevy.com (I can't believe Chapman would make this error!!)
www.BillCrispin.com Maine (oh oh, someone’s in trouble and doesn’t know it yet)

Gents, You get the idea.
Have your team feed this GOOG interface a list of quality short tail keywords then harvest the PPC URLS that are out of their geo area. Chances are that these fellas are making PPC 101 mistakes so they're in Alaska and don't know it.

WIFM?
What's In it For Me?
I'd bet there is are 50 to 100 dealers RIGHT NOW committing PPC hari kari. I am upto my armpits in a zillion PPC variables. I'd really like a free year of your TotalControl DOMINATOR to put this PPC effort on auto-pilot. I'll sweeten the offer with a tasty testimonial to boot!

Joe
p.s. Please disregard this bird-dog request if your PPC mngt. platform requires your site, I have a totally new site in the cooker.

Some people believe it makes more sense to run SEM on your own vs. hiring a company. By my research there seems to be companies out there that have computer programs that generate the best key words or phrases. Also, it would be tough to set up and to continue to monitor an ad words campaign from a time standpoint.
What do you all think about this and what have you experienced?

@alex Of Checkered Flag: I guess you missed the sarcasm.

Good Article,
My 2 or 3 cents:
I can see how if you decide to build a search campaign and let auto pilot take over this can lead to a wasted internet budget and a burned dealer. I personally would prefer to pay a marketing agency with a set monthly fee to build a custom automotive search campaign, monitor it and can offer accountable results when ever I so desire to see them. I would definitely stay away from any company offering multiple sales rep BS stories on how they can do anything without a fee.

The upside to using a automotive focused marketing agney allows the people or person in the dealership to assist with providing the correct information about what the dealership wants to place in text ads and allow them to do what they do best. Sell cars, in case you're wondering, instead of looking at numbers and keywords.

As for Search Marketing being the savior of your dealership well it definitely won't do this or kill the third party providers but one thing that is certain is search marketing is here to stay. I also must add that dealerships must realize people are like water and will always look for the fastest route to find what it is they are looking for whether it's a car or a quick trip to the grocery store if you don't provide the consumer a quick avenue to find their next vehicle, compare prices, or allow them to do research during the buying process I can guarantee your competitor across the street is, and if you're spending 10k a month on full page newspaper ads why not shrink the news ad to a half or 3/4 page and use the remaining portion on search marketing to provide this quick link and offer the searching consumer the details needed to make an educated buying decision. Just a thought...

B-Man...where are the clicks?

Good comments Joe!

Setting up a quality SEM campaign can been done without hiring a vendor. It takes about 6-10 hours total if you do it right. I haven't touched mine in 6 months and regularily get $.68 / click. My only limit is what my owner is willing to pay.

And I agree with Mitch, SEO & SEM are very 2000ish. We need to look beyond. But like Joe says, the basics are so important.

On a side note, I was looking at Suzuki of Wichita and got to say I'm highly impressed with everything they do. Their owner's passion bleeds through the pages. I'm envious.

@alex From Proctor: Reach Local does not buy clicks in bulk and sell them back to you. They put a ~20% surcharge on the click before they report it back to you in their reporting system so you never SEE the fees. It is absolutely impossible to buy clicks from Google in bulk and resell them. There are too many variables at any given time to even know what a click costs. Time of day, competition, quality score all impact the cost of a click.

Jamie,
Thanks for calling me personally.
Great information and it all makes much more sense now.
I will be in touch.