As was pointed out in last week's JD Power event and throughout publications over the last year, a blog is only one of the critical aspects of a dealer's presence online. Just as (or even more) important is reputation management and representation in forums, especially for dealers active in the accessory market.

Anything that drives an engaged, educated consumer to your virtual or actual dealership is a win for your store today. Many website providers used 'blogs' which were just long advertisements over the past couple years to just add content on buried pages for SEO purposes. This is one way that dealers were confused as to what a blog is and how it should be maintained.

If you're a high-line dealership, it should be an active part of your branding. Have a staff member that is web-savvy and can maintain the content? Try that for a while (make sure the content is triple-checked though) and see what happens.

At the end of the day, it is a hard sell convincing dealership management (or principals) that a blog or any other aspect of social or viral marketing can actually get them noticed. Explaining UGC and blogs usually gathers a timid response at best. If you start it, maintain it. Don't do it for two weeks, say it 'doesnt' work' and leave it to die on the information superhighway. That rule is followed so infrequently in the auto world.

I am struggling with the decisions over what to include in my blog. I am an ISM for a large Honda dealership and want to be out there with the technology that is relevant right now. I do not have the luxury that some of my colleagues who aren't in the Internet department do, of a long list of customers and referrals because I am relatively new to the business. I want to be able to use my blog to connect and be relevant to my customers and their friends and family in a way that wouldn't otherwise be possible. Thoughts?

Thanks Joe

Kudos to Alex and his team!

October 29, 2007
Checkered Blog Captures Int'l Web Honors

"...Other winners include Sony Electronics and Wells Fargo & Co. The competition received more than 900 entries in its various categories from across the United States and six other countries..."

I don't know how others feel about this but one of the lamest things I've seen w/rising frequency is online ad vendors or third party inventory company blogs that they start to generate interest in their respective companies, etc. and nobody responds to any of the posts over a period of time and then they still leave the blog up and active one and a half or two years down the line and it still has zero responses to any if not all posts. It comes across as pathetic to me because it shows absolutely no interest in what they have to say. Maybe it's me but it seems tantamount to spending time to build a large public address system that nobody listens to.

Thanks for the plug on the Checkered Blog Jeff. We started it, like you said, to build transparency. We wanted customers to know we pay attention to the community, in fact, we're one of its biggest givers! We also wanted to do these things in such a way that it did not come off as bragging. I judge its penetration on how many comments are being added to posts, and it is just starting to get off the ground. It has taken us about 6 months of daily article posting to get it to a point where we get 1 to 5 comments per day. I could not have done it without outside help though. Goldman & Associates Public Relations deserve most of the credit.

It does take some work to blog. It doesn't have to be about the dealership. Actually, I think having a blog totally about the dealership is boring. You can position things to be SEO and transparent. I've noticed the smart Car category ranks number 1 in a whole bunch of varied Google searches! Most of the traffic to our Hyundai site comes off the blog's SEO clicks. If you had asked me who was going to benefit the most of our brands from this blog, when we first started it, the last thing I would have said was "Hyundai"!

It has been a very rewarding piece of our eCommerce equation...BUT, not rewarding in the $$$-sense...rewarding in customer appreciation. It is a PR piece, and you can't put a price on it.

I started blogging with the Phil Long Group a couple years ago before it was in vogue. It's a great tool for a dealer to use to get out all kinds of information out to their customer base without slapping them in the face with a commercial. I highly recommend it.

John,
You are so right, the skills and time needed to populate a blog are not found among sales staff. It's a lot of WORK. But, blogging for dealerships has SEO benefits worth looking into.

I am working on a new test marketing blog built specifically for Search Engine Harvesting. Give it a look: The Used Car Queen you may get some ideas.

Although it's just a few weeks old, it's already exceeded my expectations.
Over 200 unique visitors (in a rather small market)
5 pages per visit!
8 minutes on avg. per visitor
40% Bounce Rate.

All traffic comes from Search Engines only AND there less than a dozen cars up there. Once we expand the selection the search traffic will follow too.

At this hour this is a SEO harvesting experiment so I haven't worked on any call to action items to work on conversion side. I expect there'll be a lot of easy ways to reach out an touch the visitor.

G'Luck,
Joe

The idea of dealer blogs is a non-starter. After being an Internet Sales Manager for 7 years, I can tell you than no one at the dealership is going to blog - at least not in enough numbers (even in the hundreds), for it to be a viable business for a third party.

As for Full-Service Blogging - there isn't enough news at a dealership to support this. It will be cost ineffective for the dealer and the provider.

There are enough 3rd party Online Service Providers already to help us drive traffic. I agree with the posting that says there isn't the market for this.

Managing blogs can be a very time consuming job, however the net rewards can be huge in terms of SEO for your main site and linking strategies.

Blogs can be used to drive incremental traffic to your website, improve SERP's, decreasing advertising budgets and the list goes on.

A blog network can work wonders for your online marketing efforts.

Alex,

That is a good philosophy. Getting PR and marketing behind it is important. I classify dealer blogging as a tool for CRM which means it could be used for promoting specials and incentives, and engaging with your customer base. This of course isn't their only use, but a useful one.

Something to consider is that you can't just throw anyone into your blogging efforts. Just like you need qualified people to work your specific functions of your business, you need people who understand blogging, the industry, and people, and enjoy writing, researching, and learning.

In my opinion, a dealer blog requires a somewhat unique situation for success. I think a single-point store that does not engage in what their market might consider exciting is going to have a tough time attracting readership. If you're a Porsche store with heavy sponsorship in Porsche Club events, and invite a popular Porsche Club member to co-author, you will have a better chance for attracting a reader-base.

The dealer groups have a better chance for pulling things off, but they're going to have a tougher time managing things. Dealer groups with exciting brands - brands that have a following (Porsche, BMW, Mini, some Honda models, etc.) can also invite co-authors.

We are going to set up a blog, but it is a combination venture with our public relations firm and marketing agency. We are the kind of dealer group that throws the full investment behind an "experiment" to know whether it will definitely work. I know most dealerships do not make these types of investments. Hopefully this one will work because I love the idea!

I'm glad to see some discussion on this topic. I am a long time proponent of the web 2.0 technologies. fyi - here is another dealer blog - phillong.squarespace.com - from the phil long group.

With so few blogs out there, i think it still remains to be seen where dealers will find value in them. and dealers should not be discourage from thinking of creative ways to use them.

The most important thing, is that the blog provides value to the reader of some sort. this could be a fresh list of coupons (like the fry's ad), articles that provide some kind of expertise (like articles from a senior technician, how-to's and other tips), articles from an individual voice, brand news and information, community news/events/info ... any other ideas?

Also, what i have not seen mentioned yet is blogs used as an internal tool. Other industries have taken to using them internally for any process that requires journal logging of some sort. any ideas here?

That Ward's article was good. One of the site's referenced, Earl Stewart on Cars, had a great vibe to it. I am an advocate of dealer blogs like that, because they capture the essence of blogging. The Fiesta Ford blog was set up more as a conventional website but with fresh content. That is not a bad way to go either, but a lot of work.

Truly dealer-centric blogs are pre-mature right now and are difficult to justify. However, consumer niche-centric blogs make sense right now. I suspect that come NADA 2008 in San Francisco, blogging will be a timely buzz and the gate will be opened for dealer blog products.

Do you know that we both posted on this same topic, same article even, and on the same day?

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Our dealership uses iMagiclab and I do like their feature of checking for duplicate leads although it is far from perfect. The problem I have with any tool that automatically checks duplicates is that it is not accurate.

For example, what if you have a walk in customer leave your dealership on Monday morning and then submits a lead on your website that same evening? Do you count that lead as a duplicate? If so, ileadcontrol does not work for you. What if someone types their name with and without a typo so are these two different leads or one? What if you have a lead come in today and the guy buys a different brand instead. Now 2 months from now he submits another lead. Is that a duplicate? Some people shop for months while other buy within a day. Maybe this guy is interested in a second car or maybe he is still interested in the same, because he really did not buy yet. These are just 3 examples.

What you really need is to manually input your scrubbed data in to a tool that shows it to you. Yes this means manual data entry, but it sure is a whole lot more accurate. Good things do not come cheap!

How do you guys check your closing percentages per vendor? Do you simply use the reports that your CRM/ILM provides? If so, your numbers are wrong no matter what tool you use. Of course on the other side, you also have the problem of data integrity when you manually enter your data, because in most cases the person creating the report is the one that gets paid based on the results.

I have develloped an Exell spreadsheet that graphs and tabulates things like:

-Cost per vehicle sold by vendor
-Cost per vehicle lead by vendor
-Average gross by sales person
-Average gross by vendor
-Closing ratio by vendor
-Closing ratio by sales person
-Vehicle Model Mix MTD or YTD
etc...

This really helps us determine which vendor to keep or to renegotiate with. Which sales person needs more help or the axe...

Anyways, sorry to get sidetracked on this post. LoL

How many lead providers charge on a per lead basis vs a flat monthly fee regardless of the number of leads?

Allan,

Two things. First, you're right about the bad leads and this is something we're addressing, and secondly, the $399 is not a monthly charge. That's the one time set up fee. For successive months our business model is performance based where we only charge you a portion of what we save you.

Problem with I-Lead Control is it only does dupe checking. What about leads that have bad contact info that you shouldn't be paying for? I-Lead Control can't account for those so it is a partial solution.

For $399 a month you can get a complete ILM software package that just includes this fundamental feature.

MotoSnap ILM from VinStickers also does very thorough bad lad reporting and can even reprint vendor invoices like I-Lead Control.

Keith has a great point, however, I have found that crm/ilm tools that return the lead automatically either don't always get credited because the process still requires human intervention on the lead providers side (you should really trust they will do the right thing- LOL), and this does not always happen, or the controller/accounts payable at the dealership level don't know to look for the discount/credit they should be getting on the lead providers invoice. By using this product you know you get the credit because the controller/accounts payable are trained to print the report when they get the invoice from the lead provider and pay the right amount at that time. - We tested i-LeadControl against a crm/ilm tool that sent the dupes back to the provider (we will not mention which tool, but a prevalent one) at a medium sized import store - - - i-LeadControl saved over $400 more than the crm/ilm tool in the same 30 days time frame... YOU OWE IT TO YOURSELF AND YOUR DEALERSHIP TO SCHEDULE A DEMO AND CHECK IT OUT! www.ileadcontrol.com

this is a great concept which we built into our tools 3 years ago. All of our systems dup check the leads and automatically return the bad leads for credit. Nice part about it being integrated into your CRM/ILM is that your statistical averages and close ratios are pure.

For those that don't use iMagicLab, sounds like this product may be a time saver.

For video on your web site and your used car walk around check out www.unityworksmedia.com They have a great solution. The videos go into a library and you can attach them in e-mail responses and in e-mail campaigns. The videos are encoded and will play to 90% of the users.

Thanks to all for your input, especially to Ralph Paglia of Courtesy Chevrolet who emailed over several examples to me to look at. We are looking at a way to better personalize our emails with a short clip of our sales rep in an email response (using a link - sorry - my use of the expression "embedded videos" was not correct). As with everything we do, we always measure our emails' vulnerability to being spam filtered, which is also a big concern. Thanks for posting this Jeff! Kevin Frye/eCommerce Director/Jeff Wyler Automotive Family

Hi Kevin, we do video email campaigns for dealers here at CIMAsystems -- from filming the video itself to emailing it out to the customers in your DMS. We do not embed the video but host it on a server and link to it in the email message, for the reasons already mentioned.

As for content for the videos, ours are usually tied in to targeted email campaigns. For example, we've created parts accessories campaigns showing the various ways to accessorize your ride, that are sent to recent car buyers. Some other ideas - product demonstrations, how to's, tv commercials from the manufacturer. There was an article posted recently on the subject here (you may have to register/log in).

You can search google and youtube for terms dealer, inventory, cars... and see some samples. Like Jeff said you actually don't send the video by email... the video will never play... as it requires external programs... and most email programs by default block it... what you do have is first frame of video and the play controls... when you click play it opens a window...