This is only the beginning for companies who focus on Interactive Marketing. In essence, what you have is the continuation of 'convergence' that has been touted over the past 10 to 15 years in multiple verticals like TV and web. Soon, I'm sure you'll find 15 second ads on the phones as well and something ala the annoying ads on the top of AIM. The time-frame?

Just wait for 3g to be ubiquitous nationwide and remember that not ALL of your potential customers will have these cool new gadgets - but they WILL be shopping online.

I dont Know Jeff,

I was using Cobalt's Web Platform this year in March and they offered a re-badged version of CallBright's Platform.

It seemed as if they had some wholesale deal here to utilize the technology. Just like what Cobalt does with their Email System!

Jake Wirth

This is really interesting information share over here. its provide better guideline regarding to online business directories. i am enjoying this fantastic post.

And thank you Jeff for the link!

And of course there are also directories specific to car dealers which offer a free listing.

Jeff,

Finally, a clear definition of SEO and SEM! Thank you for help clearing this up.

I find the acronym dilemma, certainly wide-spread and very confusing for many. Our company; Auto Dealer Traffic, Inc., provide SEO & SEM service for dealers, but we assume that everyone knows what we are talking about because we are living it every day.

Thanks for your great blog!

Mark Boyd
Chairman
Auto Dealer Traffic, Inc.
www.autodealertraffic.com
www.markboyd.com
mark@markboyd.com

614-340-5779 o
541-990-9090 c

Jeff,

Congrats on the new layout of your blog! It's very "Web 2.0". As you know DealerOn's blog was recently released as well. I just posted a video that I think you and your blog readers will really get a kick out of.

"Funny Auto Dealer Ad - What Car Commercials Want To Say But Can't!"

WARNING: Has some profanity. If easily offended, do not view.

To view the video go to http://www.dealerrevenue.com

Keep up the great work with your blog. We all appreciate it.

Ali Amirrezvani
President & CEO
DealerOn.com

The new look is absolutely fantastic - a big plus. Think you can hook me up with a fancy logo on the cheap?

Jeff,

Keep up the good work!! Love the New Look!!

I have been following the site since I started my internet department and have gained and LOT of FREE Insight from Dealer Refresh!! Thanks Jeff and Everyone that contributes to the site!!

Dealer Refresh is Second to NO OTHER Online Resource for Internet Directors/Sales Managers!!

Thanks Again Jeff,

Jake Wirth
Internet Sales Manager
internetmanager@suzukiofelkhart.com

"...Now if they could only build a CRM system that actually works well."

Music to my ears!
You can tell that the R&R CRM platform was assembled by a team of people that had to cram in every feature imaginable (not a bad thing), then slapped it together without any LEADERSHIP from it's end users (a very bad thing). They need a complete makeover with site navigation optimization gurus and a dealer focus group to beta with.

FOCUS GROUP 101.
Speaking of focus group, if R&R wanted proof of it's platform's usefulness (not that R&R really want's this info), it would be easy to construct a SIMPLE test for the various levels of users and ask them to complete daily tasks... create an email, find a customer that sent an email with specific keywords sent several weeks ago, build a report, ask the sls mngr to pull all the ups on a stock# from the last 20days, create a mail campaign to all past buyers who are NOT did not lease... etc.

They'd discover 3 things.
#1). I'd bet that the avg. Dealer uses

I currently produce 30% of all of our sales at the 2 small stores I oversee, and it boils down to one thing process. Implement a good process, track it, and you won't need a BZ. I like the idea of video emails, but lets realize who we are dealing with, dealers are just now realizing that the Internet is not going away.

Jeff - Great work on this site, please keep it up.

To state that BZ does not do great PR work would be a lie. They are good at what they do, I cant say I agree with the tatics but it works.

I think the key to any CRM is people and process. If you work it right and have the right people I think most technology will work for you.

Getting to what JP was saying, Infomercials work. Plus with the Addition of VOD (Video on Demand) to most cable providers I think we will see a ton of local dealers jumping on it. If not, they might be missing the boat. I cant honeslty say if they were to do a long form spot on VOD that it would create leads but it will help with branding and it could help with dealer trust. The real question is: Do what Chopper does and just shoot off low prices, Have your owner talk about family and traddition, or have a top sales person or an actor do a walk around? What is going to work? How will we be able to track it? Who is going to try it first?

Check your local Cable provider to see if they offer On Deman - price it out and try it out. Who knows you could do better then the Chopper!

Greg K
Automotive Advertising Specialist
Comcast Spotlight Seattle

Ever since I 1st saw BZ handouts at the 04 dealer convention in Vegas, I felt the info-mercials are a stroke of marketing genius.

The BZ marketing plan brings comforting words to a reluctant management whose customers are forcing them into an online marketplace that they distrust.

Simply put, Dealer mngt. can justify a bold move (& put little effort into understanding it) by copying someone else's sucess. Kudo's to the pied pipers at BZ.

JP
Internet Director
BreseeChevrolet.com
p.s. Dealers who dare to ask good questions (& can't find the truth) will find great value in DealerRefresh.com. Keep up the good work Jeff!

Your first point:

1. Which other local or competitive dealers are using the same vendor?

Is the most important starting point. Big box dealer platforms that are offering SEO services to multiple dealers with the same brand in the same state just does not make sense.

Make sure your SEO consultant will not take on another like brand in your State.

Jeff this is a fantastic post - and you are spot on about the advertising. You should send this post into Crain's, or even other non-automotive magazines.

This post is sort of hilarious to me because it's basically our sales pitch! I'd only add a couple more points:

9) Discuss the agency fee. Flat rate, % of spend, sliding scale, performance oriented? We've been running with a 15% fee, and have been thinking about rolling that down to 10% after certain thresholds. I'm honestly not sure this is the ideal structure, but it is simple and easily auditable.

This is really important, not just so you get a good deal, but that the company you're working with is going to be making enough money on your account that they can actually spend some time with it. When you ask for your reports, it's a good time to discuss your current monthly specials, or problems, ideas, and get them rolling on updating your campaign for the next month.

Which leads to...

#10) Watch out for long term contracts. Unless it's part of some this-for-that negotiating, we don't want them from our clients. Pay us up front for the month, and if you hate us after 5 days and kick us out we'll only keep what we spent and our 15% on that.

This work is really front-loaded, and yeah, we'd lose out on a client that canceled after just a month or two, but we gotta keep ourselves honest - if it's just not working for you, that money needs to fix whatever's broken. Now hopefully we can help with that, but if not, fine. Fix it, and come back to us in 3 months so we can relaunch your campaign bigger and better, and ultimately we both make more money.

Maybe just one more thing... be a little willing to experiment once in a while. One of our clients gives us some impressive freedom to try new approaches out, and it's been a good thing. Several months back, we cut, across the board all the max CPC's by 30%. It resulted in a drop in position, but a 50% increase in clicks, and conversion ratio actually went UP. It was a gamble, and only because we had already seen a pretty solid trend of falling CPC and rising CTR, which we assume was due to good ad copy. Granted, it could have easily gone the other way, and we've had experiments flop on us before, but if you totally buy into the herd mentality you lose out on one of the biggest SEM advantages, which is super-flexibility.

Is there a SEO reporting service for our industry?

I am about to build one (because I can't find one). It's rather simple, enter your zip code, ck off the brands you carry and submit.

report returns a table with page and position in the top 3 engines. Assign a numberical value to page and position (ultra high reward for page 1 postion one, dramatically falling after position 5, then really bad off page one).

You'll track your before SEO and after SEO efforts, or, before Blog and after Blog results.

My site (I built) has nearly top rank for 100 miles around for searches like (year, make, Model, location).

example: chevrolet equinox dealer niagara falls, ny

Hmm... Blog is really a "long tail" device. Blog measurement is best left for another tool, but, what 'cha think?

Joe

Excellent post! Conversion is the key thing that matters. Personally I'm of opinion it should be part your job as Internet Manager to manage the Pay Per Click SEM campaigns. It really does not take that long as you will still need to analyze the PPC reports and that is the most time consuming part.

I agree with Jeff. You should be testing out a handful of lead providers at a time, until you find the right mix for your specific business model. There are going to be good lead providers and bad ones for you. Dealix may be the greatest thing since sliced bread to the dealers who were polled by JD Power, but might be the worst thing ever to those who were not polled.

That brings up another question - who is JD Power polling? I've been polled once for CarsDirect, but I figured that was only because CarsDirect was providing them names. I often wonder how skewed these "awards" are. When I was with CarsDirect, we were also included in those "Top Dealer" lists all over the place - as soon as I pulled the plug we have not been featured on any of those lists.

I just now emailed my local Dealix rep (Georgia) and asked for a list of sites they use to get leads. She said she cannot give this to me, because there are over 200 sites and they are going to announce some "Big" thing soon regarding the quality of there leads. She said that this announcement would involve even better quality of leads. She also quoted JD Power and Assoc. as saying they are the best. I sensed a bit of standoffishness and "you should know we are the best because JD Power says so" attitude. I have used Dealix selling Nissan and later Chevrolet. It was fairly good with Nissan leads and below average with Chevrolet leads.

I am disappointed that my ex-rep from Dealix feels the way she does about helping me to make a better decision about where I get leads from.

There again, I feel this is a money issue. Companies seem to be of better service when you spend alot of money with them. And when I say alot I mean $20,000 per month verses $1,400 per month. You can bet the guy spending $20k would get that list of sites.

as the ISM for an import dealer in a very rapidly growing area, I have used dealix for the past 8 months, and have had great success with them. As your answer states, i am sure it has to do with clientele, type of vehicle, etc...but the bottom line is still follow up, follow up, follow up, along with rapid first response, and having done that, we are closing a phenomenol 23% of our dealix leads!

Regarding Dealix and the example you showed. I have recently experienced a larger rate of those comparison Leads, of which many customers have expressed annoyance of why I would be calling since they didn't request info on my vehicle.( dealix finds no problem with the comparision box being checked because the customer if wanted can uncheck the vehicle and proceed, but you can also just proceed) How can I overcome this, because volume of leads increases but quality of lead has gone in the garbage. Please give me a couple idea's I have a meeting with them regarding this Thursday to discuss. Any Help would be appreciated.

Why do we buy so many 3rd party leads? Nothing burns me more than calling a 3rd party lead, getting a hold of the customer that lives 3 miles from the store, drives by it eveyday and comes to me from another source than our website. Heres the way to make it stop..advertise your url, and if its long, find one that rolls off the lips, put banner ads on local hotspots, licence plate tags, and have your url on all car windows along the top. If you do this long enough you will start getting your own leads and start cutting the 3rd party apron strings.

If selling from the sales floor, I would ask the customer how they found the dealership and the particular vehicle of interest so I knew how to sell to them.

Why should selling to internet shoppers be any different with the technology available?

Which providers buy a bunch of outside leads? Or maybe the easier question is, which providers buy the least amount of outside leads?

CarsDirect, Cars.com, AutoTrader, and AutoUSA (depending on where you specify you want your leads to come from) are a few who don't buy too many outside leads.

Another interesting component is to look at your current leads to figure out how many were duplicates from more than one site. As a dealer who carries various competitive brands (Honda vs. Toyota vs. VW, etc.) we end up with quite a few duplicates. Last month roughly 70% of the leads we received were duplicates. I only purchase leads from three different sources, but a huge amount of them end up submitting another lead through an OEM site or our own site. It brings up the age old question: "Would I have gotten this customer anyway?" I'm afraid there is no perfect answer to the question I posed....and answered

Back to the original question, yes, it would certainly be useful to know where a 3rd Party Site's leads originate from. However, I don't think these people know. They may be the second or third place to purchase the lead themselves. My policy is to not support anything but the primary lead source.

I mentioned in an earlier post about this particular subject. I want to know the sites or other avenues they get leads from so I can say, "Hey, I do not want any more leads from that site", or "give me more from this site". I don't know for sure how honest the rep (from a source other than Dealix as they told me they cannot tell me), but he told me the sites they use and said that all leads I get will only come from those sites, unless of course I buy another lead providers lead from them, in which case they can't tell where exactly it came from. I think that I will go with the guy that can tell me I will only get leads from the sites he mentioned.

I think lead providers do not really want us to know them all because a dealer can go to some sites and advertise for their own leads. For instance, KBB has been calling me to sign up for the lead generator tool for trade appraisals, and in conversation he told me about a product (that he himself does not sell) that would allow me to have banner ads on KBB in key spots.

Correct me if I am wrong, but if I do enough of that I will get my own leads right?