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Digital Dealer 12 - #DD12 - What did you think?

I only went to 4 sessions. The first was hosted Todd Smith and as always Todd delivered cutting edge material. Todd is a pioneer when it comes to Internet and showcasing trends and products. If you have never seen Todd speak, seek him out in the future.

The second session was hosted by Kevin Frye and Kevin was well prepared with a good presentation that delivered good content and many laughs.

The third session I attended was the one where I delivered Mystery Shop Challenge II in the main arena. I was quite surprised by the quality of the phone shops this year. Two of the people we shopped were clients or previous clients. We did get a couple of duds that delivered a less than desirable phone experience. Jessie Hawkins from Jud Koon Chevrolet walked away with the iPad3 prize.

The last session I attended was on the last day which is always a tough day to speak since most people are hungover or have gone home. This session was hosted by Elise Kephart and I was quite surprised to see that she packed the room as a first time speaker. Elise delivered a great presentation on creating videos and making the most of YouTube.

Attendance was light overall, but we did have some great traffic stop by the Phone Ninjas booth and I am confident my investment in Digital Dealer will be repaid ten fold.
 
It would be hard for me to pick just one favorite session. I tried to attend as many sessions that included dealer panels this year. I wanted to hear from the top notch dealership employees that were on the panels and get their insights. Joe Webb, Shaun Raines, and David Metter all moderated great panel discussions.

The top two sessions that I attended that were not dealer panels were the ones given by Kevin Frye and Jim Flint. Kevin's presentation was full of great advice and was entertaining as well. Jim's presentation focused on the mix of traditional advertising versus digital ad budgets for the dealer group that he works with, the John Eagle Group in Texas. Jim's presentation gives me the ammo that I need to get our other stores more involved in digital marketing. Some of our stores still lean way too heavy on tradtional advertising and are lacking in any form of digital.

Biggest lesson learned: Retargeting/remarketing. This is an area that we have not been involved in yet but need to be.

Most powerful statement that I heard was from Andrew DiFeo from St Augustine Hyundai. The panel was discussing ZMOT/stimulus and how that relates to a dealers decision on ad budget. Andrew feels that Hyundai spends enough money on stimulus advertising that he does not need to spend anything in traditional media and is 100% budgeted towards digital. That was a real eye opener and it makes perfect sense if you have a hot product like Hyundai is right now.
 
I would have to agree with


There are some new ideas and things that dealers are succeeding with in the industry but it looks like unless a vendor pays to exhibit or sponsor, you will not hear about it at DigitalDealer.


I think it should be renamed "Tier 10 Digital Dealer"


Sorry Ralph but the self promotion in the seminars and lack of showing dealers what is really out there in the industry was a total disservice to the industry.


I have a call with Joel this week to discuss.


I talked to many other vendors and they planned not to return and focus more on the Driving Sales event.
 
I had heard there were four cases of self promotion taking place in seminars. I do know that the folks from Digital Dealer will take action on those who violated the policy.

Some people just don't understand that self promotion is the worst way to land a client at seminars or here on DR. You're better off giving free material and people will seek you out when ready.
 
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I had heard there were four cases of self promotion taking place in seminars. I do know that the folks from Digital Dealer will take action on those who violated the policy.

Some people just don't understand that self promotion is the worst way to land a client at seminars or here on DR. You're better off giving free material and people will seek you out when ready.

Jerry- I know you were a vendor there but I was told by some vendors that they were "encouraged" to self promote. I'm wondering if this was for specific vendors.

I think we are going to see how we fair at DrivingSales this fall with a booth.
 
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Jerry- I know you were a vendor there but I was told by some vendors that they were "encouraged" to self promote. I'm wondering if this was for specific vendors.

I know for a fact that this is highly frowned upon and a good way to not get invited back as a speaker. I would be very surprised if the information shared with you was in fact true. Have that person come on here and publicly state so and let's see what happens.
 
I'm still collecting information. Some I may not be able to share.

Bottom line. If you got something out of it great. Some presentations were very good. Others, I just shook my head at what was being presented. It was either a pay-to-play or just incompetence at the seminar selection level.

I have attended various industry seminars as a dealer, a vendor and have been involved in putting on conferences for NVLA so I do speak from personal experience.
 
This was the first time that I attended digital dealer. For me, it was an excellent experience. I didn't have other conferences to compare it to, so attendance wasn't a point of emphasis to me. As a Business Development Manager, I went to the conference knowing that there were certain things I was looking for. Having the ability to speak in person with every vendor offering a solution to what I was trying to do was invaluable to me. We are moving forward with at least three vendors that I spoke to at the conference, and once those are up and running we might consider a few others. I certainly wouldn't have spent the time looking at the vendors I did if they weren't at the conference. I considered the vendors there to be the best and most capable, and the most deserving of my time. This probably isn't fair to smaller companies with smaller budgets for such advertising, but there's not a tremendous amount of resources for dealer to discover vendors offering solutions to their specific needs. Let me at least say this. I am absolutely looking for a new website provider. There are countless companies offering website solutions. I felt like the ones attending the conference were the best and most suited for auto dealers and am making a decision on one of four companies on Friday. I never considered dealer.com because I was impressed with the vendors I talked to at the conference and felt like I had spoken to all the real players in the game. Upon realizing I didn't meet with dealer.com at the conference (because they did not attend) I felt like I was already too far into the process to consider another vendor and just ruled them out. I use this example because going into the conference, they were among the vendors I wanted to talk to. I went to the digital dealer conference because I felt like that was the best place meet with all the best vendors in the industry. If other attendees are going to get drunk and get out of town for a week, chances are they aren't going to buy anything when they return anyway. I would venture to say that if attendance was down, it was the attendants that didn't need anything at this time and didn't see the value in spending thousands of dollars for a night or two on the town. I think it would be much easier for the whole community to have this event once a year, however I wouldn't equate diminished attendance to poor visibility at the vendor level because the eyes that were on your products were probable the eyes of people genuinely interested in your products and not those that had scored a free trip to Vegas.
 
As Kevin Frye mentioned in his write-up a lot of people complained about a lack of sizzle or punch in this Spring's DD. Personally, I didn't see a lot of exciting stuff but I'm sure that if it was your first time at DD or if you weren't in Vegas for DD11, there was a ton to walk away with. Any time there is that much excellence and experience in one place, it's up to you to make it happen.

Bill Simmons was spot on about the Active Engage/Hook Logic party... nice job!