What actionable data are you getting from your Website Provider?

Dealers have come a long way in terms of expanding their online presence over the past few years. As customers started moving their research efforts online, dealers have adapted by shifting a portion of their dealership marketing efforts toward the Internet.

In addition to third party lead providers like Cars.com and AutoTrader, dealers should be investing a fraction of their advertising dollars on driving visitors to their dealership website. The easiest and most effective way to do this is through pay-per-click (PPC) advertising on search engines like Google and Bing.

But how can these campaigns be tracked efficiently?

Is there enough information available to have a complete understanding of ROI for online advertising? And most importantly, are you getting the right information to make informed decisions from your website provider?

The answer is not so clear cut.

There will always be customers that see an advertisement, visit the website, and eventually buy a car without ever having “converted” by filling out a lead capture form online. The purpose of this article though, is to show you exactly how much information is available for users that choose to convert on your site – assuming you already have Google Analytics installed.

We recently had our dealership website completely redeveloped. This created a wealth of increased opportunities for transparency and control. We utilize a jQuery plugin called UTM Monster that pulls visitor information (source, medium, keyword, campaign) from the cookie that Google Analytics places for every visitor. We then use some additional jQuery to add this information to hidden fields on all of our contact forms. This means each and every form that is submitted has the full information about the prospect, how they found our website, and whether or not we paid for them to get there.

Furthermore, we set up ADP CRM to label each of our Internet leads based upon source (Google, Bing) and medium (organic, cost-per-click) so we can instantly tell whether or not we paid for a particular lead that came from our website. At the end of the month, we filter our leads to show only sold customers and have an instant measure of ROI for the month.

Additionally, we use a service called Mongoose Metrics that provides keyword level call tracking. When a visitor comes to our website from a search engine, they automatically get served a unique phone number on every page of our site. If they call that number, Mongoose Metrics places a virtual pageview to a hidden page on our site that captures all of the visitor information from Google Analytics. We need only view our Google Analytics reports to find out which PPC campaigns are working to generate phone calls and how our SEO efforts are contributing to driving phone conversions.

Is this a perfect system? Not quite.

Like I said before, not all visitors choose to convert but that’s fine. Everyone shops differently these days and many people don’t see a reason to fill out a contact form unless there is some sort of discount offered.

I can say though, if you’re running PPC campaigns and you don’t have this information, how are you making judgments about your online advertising spend?

The information to make educated decisions is readily available; it’s time for the website providers in the automotive industry to take action and give dealers the opportunity to make smart, educated decisions with their online advertising.

Questions about our setup? Need help understanding how all of these pieces tie together?

Leave a comment below and I’ll be glad to answer any questions.

The two things that make a Dealership a Gen Y Hiring Magnet are responsibility and expertise.

What’s that?

You were expecting something a little sexier?

Hear me out. Read on to find out why these two workplace qualities absolutely rock, and why this is great news for your dealership.

Let’s begin at the beginning. As a first-time Digital Dealer Conference attendee, I was thrilled to be able to attend the Zappos panel entitled “Building a Customer-Focused Culture.” Even though the focus of the panel was around customer service, the takeaways for me were really around Zappos’s legendary employee culture. Here are the two biggest things Zappos offers that makes them such a Gen Y magnet.

Responsibility.

Many people (including many commenters on my past posts) think Gen Y’ers prefer to shirk responsibility in favor of drinking Slurpies and spinning around in their office chairs. The Slurpies and spinning part is completely true-the shirking responsibility part couldn’t be further from the mark. Gen Y’ers crave responsibility, and the youth-magnet Zappos delivers it in spades. In fact, if I had to name a single solitary reason why Zappos is such a desirable workplace for Gen Y’ers, I would say it’s because they give their employees an unprecedented and even shocking amount of autonomy over their own business decisions.

When Zappos says that every employee in the company is a shareholder in its success, it’s not just lip service. Each and every employee is a real power-wielding business decision-maker. In fact, Zappos employees are encouraged to do whatever it takes to deliver extraordinary customer service, including regularly breaking typical business behavior taboos.

These empowered employees may use their own professional discretion to take an eight hour customer call, to send a wriggling new puppy to a customer whose dog just died, to send a thousand pairs of sparkly Converse sneakers to the victims of a recent tornado. Zappos employees-largely Gen Y’ers-are empowered to do all of the above on a daily basis-no approval chain, no red tape, no permission needed. Each and every employee at the company is a bona fide business decision-maker, and that’s what makes this employee culture so irresistible to Gen Y.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; Gen Y’ers adore responsibility. More importantly, the more responsibility we are given, the more we rise to the occasion. Treat us with the respect and empowerment we crave and we will jump through every hoop imaginable to deliver breathtaking results for you.

Education.

We Gen Y’ers have this crazy little quirk about us; we like to know what we’re talking about. More importantly, we absolutely dread getting caught in a moment where we don’t know what we’re talking about. My generation is an earnest and idealistic one, we value transparency, knowledge and expertise above all else. The thought of tap dancing around a topic or “Hey, look over there!” manipulation tactics to get out of answering a question we don’t know the answer to may be par for the course for past generations, but for Gen Y’ers, the thought alone makes us want to take about a thousand showers. Call us crazy, but we really just prefer to look like non-dumbasses whenever possible.

Additionally, we are savvy enough to directly correlate the amount of education we’re given with how much our employer is willing to invest in us. The more education we’re given, the more we bask and blossom in the knowledge that our employers think we’re worth something. It’s no surprise then that Zappos also has employee expertise down to a science, thanks to its revolutionary four week Customer

Training period, including a weeklong bootcamp in Kentucky, where employees are educated on every aspect of the business. Believe it or not, a weeklong bootcamp in Kentucky is music to my Gen Y ears. Again, Gen Y’ers have this bad rap as these learning-averse A.D.D. creatures who can’t sit through an hour lecture without checking Facebook fifty times. Again, the Facebook thing is true, the education thing isn’t.

Gen Y’ers are voracious learners for all the reasons I named earlier, plus more. We are the most educated generation in history because we crave new knowledge, especially the kind that empowers us to do our job in a fully sincere, thorough and correct way. We are much more comfortable with formal education that on-the-spot learning, so if you offer a training course, Gen Y’ers will be the first to sign up.

So there you have it. Give a Gen Y’er responsibility and education at the dealership, and you’ll see them poring over ROI results and cramming over training manuals in no time. We will do whatever it takes to get these two things. We will come in on Saturdays. We will work for low pay and lousy benefits. We will sell shoes online and live in Nevada. Without these things, you’ll just get the Slurpies and the Facebooking. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

What can you do to incorporate more responsibility and education into your dealership right this minute?

DealerRater® Enhances DealerRater Push™ to Further Help Certified Dealers Boost Positive Review Counts on Google

Waltham, Mass. – December 1, 2011 – DealerRater®, the nation's premier car dealer review web site, announced today an important update to its DealerRater Push™ product, a key feature of the DealerRater Certification Program. With this new enhancement, Certified Dealer members will be able to further build positive online reviews and associated star ratings from customers on Google.  For every consumer that now posts a positive review of a Certified Dealer on DealerRater, DealerRater Push will prompt the reviewer to copy and paste the review and star rating to Google Places.   DealerRater Push was formerly limited to reviewers maintaining Google/gMail accounts.

“Our Certified Dealer partners are successful in soliciting happy sales and service customers to write online reviews on DealerRater,” said Chip Grueter, president at DealerRater.  “With our DealerRater Push solution, Certified Dealers can expect to also increase positive review counts on Google as they work to build reviews from satisfied customers on DealerRater.”

Through DealerRater Push, DealerRater reviews populate to Google Places immediately, rather than having to wait the four to six weeks it has traditionally taken for Google to index the DealerRater review content into dealer Google Places pages.

DealerRater Push is included within the framework of DealerRater’s comprehensive Certified Dealer Program, a proven online reputation tool for car dealers.  Embraced by more than 4,200 car dealers across the U.S. and Canada, the Certified Dealer Program is designed to help car dealerships grow their online presence and achieve higher SEO rankings across the Web.  Certified Dealers are able to connect with DealerRater’s five million web site visitors while demonstrating an utmost commitment to quality customer service.

About DealerRater

DealerRater was founded in 2002 as the first car dealer review website worldwide.  DealerRater is the world’s #1 online resource for anyone seeking third-party information on automobile dealerships.   DealerRater features more than 41,000 U.S. and Canadian car dealers, 500,000 user reviews and over 1,000,000 cars for sale.  DealerRater attracts more than 5 million consumers every year who visit the site to search for car dealerships, read current reviews, write their own descriptive reviews, and find car deals – all for free.  Car dealers are rated on the criteria of customer service, quality of work, friendliness, price and overall experience.  In addition, DealerRater offers qualified car dealers a Certified Dealer Program as a reputation management tool to help them grow their online presence and achieve higher SEO rankings across the Web.  Today, more than 4,200 dealers are members of DealerRater’s Certification Program.  For more information, visit www.DealerRater.com or call 800-266-9455.

DrivingSales Acquires Revenue Guru; Dennis Galbraith to Head Research and Data for DrivingSales

SALT LAKE CITY, Dec. 1, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- DrivingSales announced today that it has acquired consulting, training and research company Revenue Guru.  As part of the acquisition, Revenue Guru founder and veteran automotive digital marketing expert Dennis Galbraith will join DrivingSales to lead and develop its research and data division.

"Without question, Dennis Galbraith is one of the leading marketing thinkers and analysts in our industry and, along with Revenue Guru, brings further depth and breadth to our training and business intelligence initiatives," said DrivingSales CEO and Founder Jared Hamilton.  "No one understands marketing data research better, has a clearer view of trends (before they unfold), or knows how to drive traffic better than Dennis. That, coupled with his uncompromising integrity and commitment to dealers, will ensure that our research and data initiatives lead the industry in delivering unbiased actionable business intelligence for Tier 3 retailers."

Hamilton noted that the acquisition of Revenue Guru is part of DrivingSales' ongoing mission to expedite and improve information flow to car dealers in a digital universe that moves at the speed of light.

Founded in 2009, Revenue Guru provides consulting, research and interactive training programs for dealer groups, manufacturers, and vendors and is guided by Galbraith's over 11 years of experience at the center of automotive digital marketing, including tenures running the automotive internet division at J.D. Power and Associates and as Vice President of Advertising Products and Training at Cars.com.

"I am proud to join a company driven by a passion for helping dealers, by a belief in the power of data and research to drive informed and profitable decisions and, importantly, a company that doesn't wait for the market to move but seeks to move the market," said Galbraith. "Marketing at the Tier 3 level has long needed a research organization dedicated to it -- one that can go beyond opinions and deliver the hard facts and actionable solutions from an unbiased platform. The time has come, and DrivingSales is that organization -- I cannot wait to start delivering on its promise!"

In addition to his tenure at J.D. Power and Associates and Cars.com, Galbraith has taught marketing for NADA Academy and is widely known for his dynamic speeches and videos as well as his informative writing. Galbraith served the auto industry through the 1990s as the owner of Dennis Galbraith Marketing Services and taught marketing at the graduate and undergraduate level for Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

About DrivingSales.com
DrivingSales is the auto industry's fastest-growing, most influential trade media property focused on delivering actionable profit-building information and business intelligence to auto retailers and industry professionals. Approximately, one in every four dealerships in the United States has a registered member in the DrivingSales community.

DrivingSales' information network includes flagship property DrivingSales.com , the world's largest car dealer social network; DrivingSalesTV (www.drivingsalestv.com), an interactive web channel which helps car dealers and auto professionals keep tabs on their industry and emerging technologies 24/7; DrivingSales University, an on-demand training platform where dealerships learn the latest web strategies from top e-commerce experts; DrivingSales Executive Summit (DSES) the industry's leading conference where progressive dealers collaborate and learn from world renowned experts, and DrivingSales Dealership Innovation Guide, a quarterly free publication featuring case studies of the industry's most innovative dealerships, solutions and best practices.

DrivingSales encourages innovation and excellence in the industry with its annual Dealer Satisfaction and Innovation Cup Awards, whose winners are determined solely by the dealer community. Founded by Jared Hamilton, a third generation car dealer, DrivingSales won a "Top 25 Under Five" award from the Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum (UVEF), was named a 2011 Fast 50 "Emerging Eight" company by Utah Business magazine, and received an Interactive Media Award (IMA) in 2011 for Outstanding Achievement in the 'Automobile' website category. Additionally, DrivingSales was named one of ten social media gambits for 2009 by Automotive News and one of the Top 10 Companies to Watch in 2010 by Auto Success Magazine.