Paul,
1st things 1st... Lets talk about YOU.

From one Experienced Internet Marketer to another, Here's my $0.02.
Remember that 'ol Billy Joel Song, The Piano Man? The customer says "...man what are you doing here?". Take a step back and look at your game plan. It's brilliant! I know it's brilliant because it's what I do for a living! hahahaha!

Really... You're bringing dom perion Champagne to a trailer park and hoping they'll all apreciate what you've brought. IMO, either you find a Dealer Group (repeat: Dealer Group) that "gets it", or, you make a go of it on your own! Case in point. I have a huge amount of respect for the fine mind of Alex Snyder. He's got his A game goin' on. BUT... the last thing Alex would want is a "player" like you in his territory. This is a compliment to you and to Alex.

Oh, and there's more!

Paul,
Allow me to take you 2-3-4 years down the road. I've just spent 3.5years building the finest most SEO friendly Chevrolet dealer site anywhere (my back hurts from me patting it so much . I dominated Natural SERPs for every city for chevrolet,model,city within a 200 mile radius. A summary of the sites accomplishments is here: http://www.dealerclearanceservices.com/breseechevrolet_com_3_0.htm .

Any how... sales got tight and the principal switched to cobalt 15 days ago and released me from my post. He didn't fully understand how deeply rooted our site was. Inside sourses tell me that call counts are down over 50% in the last 2weeks. All I am trying to say is that you're bringing an Internet Game Plan to a Dealer Principal that lives in a spreadsheet, tied to a 30 day window.

You need to think about this.
There is a lot of effort to build all this link love. Should you find a better opportunity, or, should the Dealer Principal want to have his nephew take over your position, your efforts will be passed on and your back on the street. We both know it'll take 6-12 months of heavy lifting to get momemtum going.

Idea:
If you're going to stay with this store, why not build everything to point to you? SuperSalesGuyPaul.com

Summary:
PROTECT YOURSELF.

Joe

re: AT vs. Cars.com

WHERE ARE YOUR COMPETITORS?
#1). Look at your Inventory, get a profile.
......Does Mngt. have "favorite" used units?
............(i.e. 30% of units in 3 models)
......Who are your major Competitors? (list top 5)
......Are they on AT?
......Are they on Cars.com?
............(can you spot any leverage by being on one or the other?)

HOW WILL YOU GET YOUR UNITS SEEN?
#2). Are you the 800lb. gorilla, or the sniper?
......Gorilla = >500 used units
......Snipers have small #units and gain leverage by under cutting the Gorilla's by a few $hundred to "pop out" of classified searchs. If you're a Sniper, will mngt allow you to "snipe" as needed?

G'Luck,
Joe
p.s. Jeff, is there a way to turn on HTML for our replies?

Simply an awesome post. While much of the information is something I do not agree with (north vs. south, cutting our service, cross-pollination of shoppers), I am excited to see all the comments and dialogue involving Cars.com.

In speaking with Paul, we are looking forward to taking the "Pepsi challenge" over the next few weeks. Paul will be monitoring his leads carefully and using his extensive knowledge of internet marketing to see who delivers better value, service and most importantly results!

Thanks to everyone for contributing to this. And thanks to all of our current customers for using our product.

Dave Rudey
p. 312-601-5614

Great postings! I come from managing the web sites of a billion dollar competitor of Nike for 9 years and am 9 months new to the auto industry. So I have been here long enough to understand a lot of the frustrations and questions listed here. What I am missing, however, although one of the postings mentioned it, is giving your web site a LOT of attention. Leads are good and will remain our bread and butter, but a dealership web site that has specials listed (costs little to do and is the number one visited page on any dealership site), has a warm human touch to it, and good lead-handling processes in place will win out every time.

If you spend days trying to invite someone to your home, and then they finally come, but you ignore them once they are there, they will leave never to come back again. So looking outward to gain leads is very important, but today the web community is looking for relationship and help. Be that to them.

If I am looking for a computer online today, the first in line are usually those portals which offer up pricing from many different sources (think AT and cars.com). But once their work is done, and I jet off to the next site to see if the price is really that low, the first thing I see is that dealer's site. Immediately my mind assesses how much time they took, or did no take, to make it easy for me to navigate, to communicate with them, to feel comfortable with them in giving them my business.

Most of the people who use the web nowdays have been to "internet" school. They have learned that "cheap" is not always the same as "good". But professional is almost always good. Go to any one of the highest converting sites on the web today (a flower store, and it's NOT 1-800-Flowers!), and you will find very clear, easy navigation, pictures of people (yes it's true, people like seeing people and the stats prove it) and most of all clear pricing and directions that walk people down the purchase path.

So my advice is to live a well balanced life in the Internet Manager position you find yourself in. Don't just spend all your time going after leads, but make sure your house is inviting and gives visitors the respect and attention they deserve once they are there.

That is also an area where a good hosting and design firm can help those one-man operations. They can check your site for you on a weekly basis making sure there are no empty pages (a specials page with no specials tells a visitor you don't care and, worse, you are mocking them - you invite them into an empty room). They can help with updating those specials and other issues that are real time eaters, again, for those one-man/woman internet depts.

Where I work, we are moving hopefully soon away from one of the big two providers (and it's not Cobalt), and will be working with a smaller, more responsive web hosting/design house, motorwebs.com on the west coast. There are others as well, we just like their track record.

Take your time to find a GOOD partner in this respect, as it really pays off and expands and leverages your capabilities as an internet manager. They can also help you to read and use your metrics and stats to prove a point to those who write the checks.

Honestly, I would quit the dealership right now! The chances of you convincing an old school dealer who doesn't see the value in the internet is very unlikely. Dealerships NEED ISMs and Internet Managers now more then ever. You would be better off finding a dealership that is receptive to internet marketing/new ideas and willing to spend money in order to make money.

Thats just my 2 cents knowing this industry as well as i do.

xBMANx

I measure our ROI with AutoTrader and Cars.com each month. Each vendor brings us almost identical results in terms of phone calls, internet leads, page views, etc, however we get a much better return with Cars.com as they are about a third of the cost of AutoTrader. Kevin Frye/eCommerce Director/Jeff Wyler Automotive Family (Cincinnati region - maybe since we straddle the Mason Dixon line the results are about dead even, lol)

Hi Paul, I've experienced and heard this debate many times in many different areas of the country.

Your foundation should be to maximize the dealership website first, and Reynolds will work with you to do that. I found their website support in the past to be easy to contact and knowledgeable. Aside from your PPC campaigns, these should be your leads with best ROI. And if you admin the site, lets just say you have the power of directing many to you first.

Autotrader or Cars.com? Two different shoppers: AT shoppers seem to be a little more tech savvy, Cars.com is more newspaper oriented connected with the newspaper converted shopper.

Dealerships drop $500 to $1000 for a ONE DAY ad in the paper. What is the return on that? Most do not know. Autotrader and Cars.com together per month are usually a fraction of traditonal advertising costs and with quality ILM/CRM tools the ROI can be tracked almost to the dollar, excluding the non-direct ROI that showroom reps dont report.

Consider this also; Cox Enterprises, a large 'old school' newspaper conglomerate owns Autotrader, and it's home office is in GA. AT also seems to advertise at a much larger scale in professional sport venues and produce more commercial advertising overall.

Autotrader.com reps are very pro-active before and after signing the contract. Monthly visits with reports, educating and coaching internet personel, and always demonstrating the latest cutting edge technology to capture the internet car shopper.

Did I mention... Autotrader.com is the 7th largest internet marketing company that is also industry specific? So there's Google, Yahoo, MSN... and AT at number 7?!

Here are some things I am working on or considering now.

-------Doing Now----------------
- PPC Campaigns to specific vehicle listings on our website - (I am very knowledgeable in PPC Traffic Arbitrage)
- working on a custom template script to create landing pages for individual cars in inventory to test with PPC. Template vs Company Website to see which converts better.
- Working on a blog network - For Link Love to Main Sites and SERP domination for specific keywords. (Very Knowledgeable)
- Hired a company to take pictures and provide data feeds for inventory.
- Craigslist ads - Targeting Low cost specialties like BMW, Mercedes etc.
- Using Web 2.0 sites like digg.com and Reddit.com to drive traffic to blogs and increase their link love.
-------------------------------------------------------------

----------------Considering --------------------------------
- Going to pull the plug on cars.com. Leads generated via cars.com are way out of my market area, probably for reasons given by Alex
May pull the plug on Autotrader.com and use the money spent on these services for PPC advertising. PPC campaigns and natural traffic provide higher quality leads bar none.

I don't like the leaks on either site. The affiliate offers displayed on inventory listings distract the surfer. They provide benefit to AT and Cars.com and provide no benefit to me the advertiser. In affiliate marketing I would never promote an affiliate offer with a single leak much less the tons of leaks in these sites, does not make sense to advertise somewhere where I pay to promote my inventory and there are many options for the surfer other than to call me or fill in a LCP, when the ROI is higher on PPC and SEO.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Granted I do not have a lot of stats to work from, but my cost per lead is lower from PPC and Natural Traffic with a MUCH HIGHER closing ratio. Thoughts and opinions please?

Alex hit the nail on the head. Each site has different levels of effectiveness in different regions. I get asked all the time by clients "which site is better", and the answer really depends on where the client is. The Philly market for example, is a big Cars.com area, probably due in large part to the Philadelphia Inquirer. Sure customers use both sites, but as a former sales rep selling Autotrader.com into the Philly area, I would have to say Cars.com has a stronger presence, and I'd bet their site traffic specific to that region reflects that as well.

You're in GA Paul, so I would have to assume Autotrader.com is the local market leader in your area. I don't know this for sure, but you're saying most of your leads come from them, plus they're based out of ATL and I know they do heavy marketing in the area (e.g. Atlanta Braves). If you're deciding strictly on allocating the Cars.com money into Autotrader.com, I would think it's worth it for your area. I'm not sure which packages you're on and price you're paying, but another option might be to spread the money around a little more instead of sinking everything into Autotrader.com.

Another interesting tidbit they used to teach us at Autotrader.com: According to JD Power, something like 20% of Autotrader.com shoppers also use Cars.com while 80% of Cars.com shoppers also use Autotrader.com. My numbers may be off, plus that's on a national level, but you get the point. Basically a lot of the Cars.com shoppers are going to Autotrader.com anyway, but not as many are going the other way. Take that for what it's worth.

Also look to see if there is any local offerings. I hate to say it, but some areas the local newspaper has a solid online offering or if you are in a high cable penetrated market - check Vehix.com.

It stinks to work for an owner, manager, or GM that is unwilling to give the internet department their own budget and or does not embrace online vehicle marketing. If you show ROI your arguments might be validated. Whatever you do, track your results!

I'm not sure it really depends on North and South but market by market to see what online listing providers work for your area. There is always Craig list if they are in your market.

I wish you the best.

Welcome back Paul - it is a much different business than when you left. I think it has become more respectable and honest, but I'll leave you to your own observations/conclusions there.

I have a crazy theory when it comes to what motivates buyers on the East Coast. I believe the Mason-Dixon line still exists when it comes to product popularity. Things change when you travel either North or South of the DC area. Northerners seem to appreciate Saab's, Saturns, and Subaru's more than the people on the Southern East Coast. This isn't limited solely to those three brands - they're just examples.

I think the Mason-Dixon line exists for online ventures as well. A few months ago, I was in the market for a 95-97 Landcruiser, and was searching from Alabama to New York. The places private sellers listed their cars changed depending on whether they were in the South or the North (sorry to use the Civil War terminology). Southerners used Autotrader.com while Northerners used Cars.com. Of course, both sites were used in both regions; however, many of the Northerners I called (from Autotrader.com listings) told me to check out their Cars.com listings as it was a better listing. In searching through Cars.com, for Northern states, I did find quite a few more cars that I never would have seen on Autotrader.com. In my area (Virginia Beach) and further South everything was on Autotrader.com with the occasional Cars.com listing...the complete opposite.

Typically, product trends start in California and take 2 to 4 years to be fully embraced on the East Coast, starting in the Northern states. If this holds true, I think Cars.com will be a bigger player down the road for you Paul.

Good Service is GoodSEO

A Contrarian’s Perspective on SEO for Car Dealers.
Most blogs about the auto industry fall into one of two categories: those about cars and those about SEO. Search Engine Optimization is one of the fastest growing areas of marketing, and with good re...

All good info.
All I can say at this point is that, as a newcomer to the Auto Industry, I am not overly impressed with the efforts I have seen (or not seen) made by dealership staff to really reach out to the customer with absolute top-notch customer care. But remember, now I am one of you and know I must take these things to heart as well as speak them.

In my almost 12 years now of managing web sites and internet marketing, I have yet to see any tool, method, philosophy, tricks, camoflauge, or anything else come even close to the power and clarity of good customer service - this includes honesty, respect, being forthright (that means aggressively transparent), caring and interested.

It does not matter what you sell, but to sell well and sell consistantly (which translates into longevity, or business "Building"), you must at all costs build a relationship with that other human being who is looking into trusting you with their time, their money and maybe even their future (will they be able to make the payments, will they turn into long time customers, etc.).

So many things are at stake above and beyond what someone says about us on a blog. When you reduce the effect that a blog statement made by one person, who probably is not going to become a customer anyway, has on our business, as compared with giving your full attention to those who are already customers, or who just walked in the door, then you'll start seeing things in perspective. And I know for a fact that your sales will go up.

Crap happens and there is nothing you can do about it! Oh wait, maybe there is... maybe going the extra mile, sending that extra email, making that extra call, showing real concern and warmth and putting the customer's concern above my sales numbers might even prevent that "flog" from happening in the first place!

I don't want to appear cynical here, so forgive me if I do. I simply want to make the point that if we give too much attention to the negative, it WILL hinder the positive.

Most of the online businesses who started posting customers comments, both good and bad, have seen sales INCREASE. Honesty is ALWAYS rewarded on the internet, because it's the one place people expect you to be real. If you are not, you are misusing their trust and they will have nothing to do with you, or any fake.

Another Great FYI: RSS in Plain English

Login to view embedded media View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU&mode=related&search=


While I was working with the http://www.homenetinc.com/ Inventory system, I tried to get them to see the value in making their platform RSS ready.

See the video and see how nice it would be to establish a RSS channel to a shopper.

Nice!
Joe

Joe, you're right, but sometimes dealers need a shield of controlled blogs, reviews, websites, etc. Even outranked results can get noticed if they are somewhere on the front page. Unless you have a nice, inexpensive fleet of sites pushing it down (and sending you leads and traffic, of course) then it's still possible to lose customers through flogging.

Nice video. Love the way it was formatted.

Social bookmarking is one of the services that we offer as part of our different packages. It can really work if done properly to help get websites ranked well.

Angry Buyer floggs retailer... and gets no where.
-or-
The best defense maybe a strong(er) offense.

An angry consumer Flogging you is not a problem until a NEW shopper looks for your name in a Search Engine and sees the moaning and groaning. But! Not all Flogging will make it to the front page.

You can battle flogging BEFORE it becomes a problem with SMART SEO. If you have a great Search Engine Guru in your camp, you're site is raked very well with search engines AND if your site is filled with lots of good information, you can defend yourself by "out ranking" the irate flogger... there by burying them into the lost (rarely viewed) pages of google.

G'Luck,
Joe

Great FYI:
A must see Social Bookmarking Video:

Login to view embedded media View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x66lV7GOcNU&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fmakemoneywithkassper%2Eblogspot%2Ecom%2F2007%2F08%2Fsocial%2Dbookmarking%2Din%2Dplain%2Denglish%5F13%2Ehtml


Joe

Replying in reverse order...

Andrew:
Edmunds is doing something like that. It is moderated and requires approval. I sent a couple of tests -- one legit, one semi-legit but spammy (as if written by the dealer), and one that was clearly a bashing that was poorly written.

The legit one went through fine. The spammy one was edited to remove a link that I tried to sneak in. The bashing was heavily edited, but the ratings (zero across the board) stuck.

Overall, I was extremely impressed. It would be a massive undertaking that would fall under many catch-22s. First, to generate income, it would have to accept advertising without accepting dealers. That would be a problem, considering the IT and moderating manpower required. Edmunds is making nothing, perhaps losing money on the venture, but they don't mind because it's just a value-add to them for traffic. They are already considered "neutral" so they can do whatever they need to do to draw traffic.

********

Laura:
Great link. Nancy Miller (Wired Mag Editor) is someone whose opinion I respect.

********

Jeff:
I like your choices. I just hope you have the time or a budget. To make it work (which it definitely can and should) will require some planning, hard work, and babying for a while. Consider professionals (unless you are a pro-blogger, of course) or plan on at least a couple of hours a day, 5 days a week, just to do the bare minimum to get it built.

*********

Ryan:
You know I'm a supporter of your work. Keep it up!

Online reputation management is an important issue for all businesses and auto dealers in particular. Buying a new or used car is still considered to be one of the worst retail experiences for many consumers.

70 percent of car buyers get price and product information from the Internet before they contact a dealer. Increasingly consumers are also Googling “Dealer Name” + complaint to find and eliminate dealers with “consumer issues”. This will dig up even old postings. Consumers are more likely to use a dealer with no complaints than one that has even a few complaints.

Of course the real problem with user generated content is that often you don’t know the motivation of the individual poster. Is the poster a dissatisfied prospect, a disgruntled employee or competitor? But even fake comments are likely to influence consumers more than anything that you tell them.

Another challenge to managing your reputation is that not all posts and comments are publicly visible. The content of paid sites like angieslist will not show up in searches. So unless you subscribe to such sites and visit them often you will not know if your being “flogged”.

Clearly, managing your online reputation is a difficult task that will only get worse. What I think is needed is a service that enables dealers to create a credible online rating similar to ebay’s merchant ratings. A site that can’t be gamed and only allows feedback from actual customers. A credible and robust rating would go a long way to counter “flogging” and most likely would attract high value customers.

this was a topic of discussion on npr-talk of the nation a few months back...

Thanks all for some great ways to overcome such a scenario.

What about this?

Now I haven't mapped this all out yet and would like others input, but I would like to do one or more of the following:

1. An open car shoppers blog marketed to the dealership's selling area, to allow your and your competitor's customers to post their shopping experience; good or bad. Great way to learn and adjust processes accordingly.

2. Create, manage, and promote a blog pertaining to only your dealership for all of the dealership customers to: hopefully praise the great sales or service experience, or vent on any known/unknown dissatisfaction of the visit to allow the dealership to rectify issue before becoming out of control.

Or this next option which Im in the process of doing...

3. Create a personal blog specifically for your internet customers to reference. I imagine the front page with some sold customer photos and testimonials and since I already take 5-10 photos to send to buyer's friends on day of delivery and on anniversary thereafter on day of purchase. Then other pages on satisfaction of shopping experience, satisfaction of vehicle, and the list can go on and on. Can't speak for other IM's, but for long distance customers we're trying to build the trust with, I think would be a great reference.

All of these options would at least give the customer a way to 'vent' on what they consider to be a poor experience before creating their own blog which would be alot more for us or the dealership to overcome once posted.

All comments welcome please.

Excellent point, J.D. Situations like this are an opportune time for dealers to recruit more business. The challenge, of course will be in catching it before too long. One of the most famous "flog" stories of all time is of Kryptonite Evolution 2000 U- Lock hacked by a Bic pen where the lock company did not respond quickly enough to the negative press on Engadget.com which resulted in detrimental damages to its business.

In the case for car dealers and with today's better awareness of things like this, situations like this can be handled more effectively. If the dealership does not have a blog and something like this occurs then the best means of attack/defense is to start taking an active (day-to-day) role with the plaintiff blog site to do some damage control, as some of the people here have commented.

Simultaneously, the dealership needs to launch a counter-campaign on the subject through his own site (or blog). You do not need a blog dedicated to the issue because that would be a poor use of resources, but for a few hundred dollars a month dealers could add a "content channel" to their blog focused on its service level commitment. For more about content channels please visit our site.

While flogging is different from a public display of dissatisfaction from a customer off-line, the means of countering can have an equal impact. With a little effort and dedication, dealers should be able to get their counter-campaign at least as visible as the smear campaign.

Great topic,
-Ryan Gerardi

To me, the best case scenario is to do as Jeff recommended -- turn the negative into a positive. Instead of the top blog headline being "John Doe Ford Ripped Me Off", it gets bumped down on the blog or deleted altogether, replaced by "John Doe Ford Really Cares About Their Customers". That sort of sentiment in a high listing on the SERPs is awesome.

Dealers need to enter "Internet 2007". I would venture a guess that no other market that relies so heavily on the Internet has a lower percentage of stores with blogs. It is great for marketing, SEO, and can act as a "Flog Shield".

If a customer is searching for your dealer name, they are looking for you. They will click on you right up top where they expect to find you. Flogs (I love the coined term, by the way) will then only have a negative effect on customers who notice them before they are able to click on the dealer.

A high quality dealer blog will greatly reduce the chances of the flog getting noticed. While I respect Umer's suggestion of posting a spam blog as one way of handling it, I think there is a better approach.

If you put your name on it, why would you want it to be low quality? Some people will click on it. Those who do will want to gain something from it.

There are companies out there, many of whom post on this blog, who have services for dealers who don't want to spend the time doing it on their own.

Many customer issues escalate not because there is no resolution, but because there appears to be no one listening. As consumers we tend to become frustrated when we are disempowered and blogs put a small amount of power back in our hands.

Negative feedback, "Floging" is what businesses are most afraid of. Your customers can say it to you, or about you. However by addressing these issues you show you care and you learn something in the process.

There's an art to addressing negative feedback you can say "good point, thank you!" and then write a post praising the customer and showing what you are doing to improve. This will make the customer happy, maybe. You can also take a poll to see if, indeed, others are experiencing the same issue. It makes you look more heroic and a heck of a lot more accessible.

Once a company has dealt with negative feedback it gets easier to go from the "fear" of what customers might say to the "freedom" to improve products, services and relationships. Basic and simple stuff, stuff you learn in college that our parent paid good money for.

Negative feedback is really a gift from our clients letting us know what is going on, how do we know that some lot jockey is not switching tires unless there is a client telling you. You just need to know how to package it and act on it.

Feedback can often contain profound seeds of truth. Companies pay consultants big money to unearth problems; blog feedback can offer them this information free of charge. The best approach, as you've said, is to respond to them kindly and humbly. That usually defuses the flog's negative respondents. It keeps the tone of the conversation civil and acknowledges everyone has been heard, and their comments are appreciated, no matter if they are negative.

Companies like LLBean do this as a part of the way they do business and have done this since they opened. LL Bean has operated this way for over 100 years. Offer quality products and service at affordable prices with total concern for customer satisfaction.

Some dealerships have been abusing customers for so long they have no other way to do business. This opens doors for "Boutique Dealers" who will go into a community and steal away the business by servicing the clients like they should be serviced.

There are many examples of these quality companies through out the business world and it is "Standard Stuff"

Embrace the "Flogger" and hold them close. Thank them and let them know when they come into your store they are valued as a preferred client, like all your clients are.