Did you know that your local competitor just got smarter?

You thought that they were behind the ball with digital marketing, social media, and leveraging the Internet but that was yesterday’s news.

Your local competitor did wake up. They realized that they were behind and took action. Good entrepreneurs are not perfect but when they realize that they are losing market share and wake up they can be a fierce competitor once again.

If I were you, I would be looking over my shoulder because your competitor is using his recent knowledge to mount an attack.

Your competitor attended a 20-group meeting, a social media conference, or a digital marketing workshop, and the lights went on. You were too busy to notice this change so I thought I would send a warning shot over the bow.

You Once Had An Edge

You got started with social media and digital marketing a few years ago and had an edge in your local market. You exploited that edge and basked in the sun of your success. Congratulations.

You were rewarded with greater sales, website traffic, and market share. Over the past few years you have been busy implementing the things that you learned by engaging in the educational opportunities offered by this industry.

In fact, I’ve noticed that you have been so intent on implementing what you learned you have been too busy to attend any new workshops in the past year. Is it still true that you got so many ideas in 2009 and 2010 that you have decided to skip attending conference year?

Why pile on more ideas when you haven’t had a chance to implement those from 2009 right?



Your Competitor is Smiling

To paraphrase a famous business book, while you have been busy implementing last years’ digital marketing strategies “the Cheese has moved again”.

Do you need an example? Today being on Google Page One is not as important as being on Google Page with strong positive review stars. If you are one Page One with bad reviews, your advertising budget is helping to direct more business to your competitors.

If you haven’t focused on a strong IRM process, much of your SEO work may be actually hurting more than helping your online sales.



No Time To Get Complacent

Is this scenario describing your dealership?

Are you the incumbent that has decided to attend conference every other year?

• Are you the dealership that recently woke-up and engaged?
  
• Are you the dealer who wants to engage but needs assistance creating a competitive digital marketing strategy?

The dealers who want to remain relevant cannot afford to skip a year of education. The industry is moving faster that most can comprehend yet I hear so many excuses why dealers think they can take a break from learning.

“I’ve been to that event last year”
“I can’t take time out of the office.”
“The speakers and topics are always the same”
“I’m the only person in my market that gets it.”

The reality is that the best conferences have not only new topics but also important revisions to existing strategies that you are using.

Two years ago little data on consumer behavior on dealer mobile websites was being shared, today we have a wealth of data to discuss.

Two years ago the conversation on reputation management was just starting and today the case studies on the impact of online reviews is chilling.

Google has recently changed their standards for organic search rankings and many dealers were penalized for poor link building processes.


Invest in Education in 2011

Since your competitors are heading to conferences, workshops, and online learning opportunities based on the most relevant topics for 2011 I thought you would want to reconsider your lack of action.

You have the power to remain ahead of your competition and find where the cheese has been moved. What will you do?

Recently I was in a plumbing supply store.  I needed a small, custom part for my kitchen faucet.  This is what greeted me:



That's right.  A bunch of white guys in dress shirts and ties, answering phones at desks with paper catalogues, and wood panels on the walls.

Seriously.  I had to check my phone to make sure it wasn't 1980.

Wait.  It gets better.  After being gruffly greeted at the counter, my helper spent 20 minutes asking 3 different guys before finding the reference to the part I needed.  Then he went in the back of the building to their warehouse only to return and declare that the part wasn't in stock, had been discontinued, and couldn't be acquired any longer.

Now that's extreme, but it got me thinking:  Surely we've done a better job in the car business keeping up? In my days back in the late 90's I remembered the end of the parts microfiche days.  Don't know what that is?  Go on a quest to find out.  I always find the exploration of the technological or cultural references backwards to be insightful.

Think your dealership is up to date?  Would your customers say so?  Consider:

How far online:  Have you recently bought anything else other than real estate or a vehicle online? Pause and picture the process you encountered in your mind.  Did your shopping process involve the vendor showing you a colorized photo of the vehicle, generic data (i.e. VIN decode), list price, and asking you to submit your information so they could get back to you with a real price, leaving credit, financing, incentives and after-market sales for when you visited their physical facility?  Carmax just announced the pilot roll out of direct online shopping.  Are you using microfiche and web lead forms when the competition has ecommerce that allows consumers to shop and buy online - cars and parts?

Would you be your "friend" online? I'm on Facebook, Twitter, Plaxo, LinkedIn, MySpace, Flickr, De.lic.i.ous, and countless blogs and forums.  I know how to use these technologies, but I've been around long enough that I'm skeptical of next-ware that is going to change everything.  Twitter and Facebook brought about regime change in Egypt and hopefully Libya.  Does that somehow make them effective advertising tools for car dealers?  My question is (and I don't know the answer): who has sold what with this stuff and for what effort put in?  It's a blog.  Post your experiences.

Other uses of social media?  We live in a lottery society, so I'm sure there must be some benefit in the contest invitations I receive from car dealers or I'm sure the deluge of them would stop (please).

Sales Presentation Materials. I helped my Canadian brother in law buy a new Subaru (an Impreza WRX Limited) a few months ago from Richmond Hill Subaru.  The customer quoting sheets were awesome.  The best I've ever seen.  Selling price, rebates, payment and lease options all clearly laid out.  Very professional and able to be updated as we moved through the process (i.e. added his trade in).  I know enough about the selling process and how to calculate a car deal to be dangerous, so other than surprising the finance manager by reverse-calculating the back end of the deal, everything went very smoothly.

I contrasted that with the paperwork from buying my 2003 Audi A4 Cab.  I loved that car, but now it's a write off.  It flooded with water this spring during rain due to the improper installation of the convertible top, so I had the paperwork out.  The paperwork was dated November 2002 and the car had just come out.  I used part of my Reynolds severance check to buy it.  It was a hand-written bill of sale, with the options hand-written.  I'm quite sure as an industry we still span that spectrum of sales presentation materials from awesome, clear, and honest to hand-written.  What do your dealership's sales presentation materials look like?

What other examples can you think of in your dealership?




And then as a footnote I was thinking the other day of services and technologies (like the microfiche) that have gone away that I don't miss. Here's my list.  Add yours in your comments.

Video rental stores. Thank you video on demand over the Internet!  The idiocy of driving to a store, finding the titles alphabetically or by genre, renting a disk, worrying about availability and the ever looming return date.  Click.  Gone.

Cell phones as phones. I have a wife and two boys.  We all have iPhones.  The phone part of the bill is less than 1/3 of the total and collectively we have 1,000 minutes per month and only use 2-300 of them.  But 15-20,000 texts and several GB of data per month, no problem.  A phone with call display and numbers 0-9 would seem like an antique.  I saw one of the old house phones with a cord and the rotary dial the other day.  My 13 year old asked me what it was.

Desktops and Laptops are going quickly too. iPads, netbooks, and smart phones.  Don't believe me?  Look at what people under 30 use.

Typewriters. I am old enough that I had to take typing in high school.  I thought it was a completely useless course at the time. Couldn't have been more wrong.  Sorry for the things I said Mom.  Probably the most useful thing I could have taken.  Use it all day every day.  No wonder they call it keyboarding now.

I could go on.  I have many more.  That's not the point.  This is a blog.  Please add your input.  I'll leave you this final thought:

The world around us is changing.  Technology is enabling everything we do and radically reshaping how we do a lot of things. In this context, how do consumers view your business?  Do you look and operate like the car dealers they've stereotyped or are your image, brand, technology, and processes setting a different and more up to date image?

As Darwin said (I'll paraphrase), "It is not the tallest, strongest, fastest, smartest, or any other -est that survives evolution:  It is just the species which is most adaptable to change."

What have you seen?  What do you think?  What's going on out there?

How well does your dealership adapt and embrace technological and process change?

There is nothing better than having another event for dealers to here about convertshun metrics we should all easily b attaining.  Im sayin 70% and up convershen!  Thats HUGE!

Join me - Larry Bruce - for the 1st evar Bruce Event.

It will be April 1st, 2012 at the Bismark Super 8 and I'm the speeker!

Dont worry, there wont be any wine tastings or beer drinking - it will pure busyness.  Thats why we're going to the freshly paved Super 8 in North Dakota.  You wont have to worry about those clowns Jeff Kershner and Alex Snyder being thier or even that Pasch guy because theyre banned from attending.  No distractshions from anything but your Random Access dealerhsip Website.

Its just about convurtsion for your dealersip websete.  Wen I say 70% comversion Im not kidding.  Technicly it isnt your websit because well be talking about the microsite and how strong it convurts for yur busyness because microsites are the king of everything and because thier is nothing more impotant than your very important microsite strategy because micorsite make convertson happen but it is grater than just microsite coversion because we are also going to talk about reputateshun management.  Ive been watching over 5 billion dealsips engage on sites like facebook and friend finder to learn the secrits of getting customers to engage on those sites - especially friend finder.

And now the most impotent part, get to know your speaker and host:  Larry Bruce!  Im gonna let the video speek for myself, Larry Bruce.

Win.

This is obviously a parody on April Fools day.  No, there isn't a "Bruce Event" happening and no, Larry Bruce did not write this.

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