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Dec 1, 2009

So let all click fraud! Yahoo! (not the search engine) Alex lead the charge! Spike the nubers! Post to the other blog sites? Ralph, David, Brian, Jarad?

I cost'um .49-$1.25 Made me feel good Alex!

Click, click, click
lets hit Edmund's
with a big stick!

D-Day (Ralph P): War's over, man. Wormer dropped the big one.
Bluto: (Alex)Over? Did you say "over"? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!
Otter (Jeff K): [whispering] Germans?
Boon (Brian P): Forget it, he's rolling.
Bluto: And it ain't over now. 'Cause when the goin' gets tough... [thinks hard] the tough get goin'! Who's with me? Let's go! [runs out, alone; then returns] What the **** happened to the Delta I used to know? Where's the spirit? Where's the guts, huh? "Ooh, we're afraid to go with you Bluto, we might get in trouble." Well just kiss my *** from now on! Not me! I'm not gonna take this. Wormer (Edmunds), he's a dead man! Marmalard (Edmunds), dead! Niedermeyer -
Otter: Dead! Bluto's right. Psychotic, but absolutely right. We gotta take these bastards. Now we could do it with conventional weapons that could take years and cost millions of lives. No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part.
Bluto: We're just the guys to do it.
D-Day: Let's do it.
Bluto: LET'S DO IT!!

Dec 1, 2009

wow holy shyte Alex... all I can say is that is bloody shady of them. Good luck in getting that resolved.

Dec 1, 2009

Dang... that's incredible. We're not having our name taken, yet. But now that it's out in the open I'm sure something will be taken care of soon!

Jeff Raab · Dec 1, 2009

At first I thought...let me give them the benefit of the doubt. If I click on their ad with your dealership name as the title, it MUST go to a page on Edmunds.com featuring Checkered Flag MINI, right?

Nope.

Targeting business names with ppc keywords is nothing new, but to be so blatant about it...I agree, it's wrong.

Dec 1, 2009

Thanks for the heads up on this Alex. I was thinking about using this company in the future but this certainly needs to be addressed before I move forward with them or any of their affiliates. I wonder how long this has been happening?

Dec 1, 2009

Alex, all I can say is wow. Over 13 years in this business and that's probably the most blatant example I've seen.

We all knew that we were competing against the KBBs and Edmunds for SERP ranking but actually using your name....wow.

I assume your counsel is on it.

Joe Turner

Alex Snyder · Dec 1, 2009

Edmunds.com, they're stealing from me!

We spend a lot of money with Edmunds. We buy leads off their site (through a third-party) and participate in their PDP program for premium placement. We have been a very good customer of theirs for YEARS! And they've been good to us....until now.

Before I get into what is going on, I want to say that I have sent emails and made phone calls to my rep who aids us in all things Edmunds. He has pushed things up the chain, along with my request for "at least a phone call" before 5:00 PM EST today to work things out. Well, the phone call didn't come. So, I feel that I have given Edmunds time to respond. They could have simply said "5:00 PM isn't enough time" and I would have been fine with that. So here we go:

I was checking on new search results for our dealership names on Google and came across a PPC ad on the search term "Checkered Flag MINI":

Screen-shot-2009-12-01-at-10.30.25-AM.png

Do you see what's wrong with this?

Here is a company we pay lots of money to buying AND USING our name to get people to submit a price quote request on their site to either sell back to us OR to sell to one of our competitors. Ladies and Gentlemen, that is THEFT!!!

Here's the full screen shot:

We own the rights to our name within our marketplace. We did not give Edmunds permission to parade as us on Google (another big nasty issue for a later DealerRefresh article). And I also don't like the fact that there is a company we pay good money to who is competing with us for SEM placement on our own friggin' name (and another big nasty issue for another DR article).

Just to show that Checkered Flag is not the only dealership being effected, here are our friends at Proctor Acura:

I want to believe that Edmunds made a mistake. I want to believe that they just forgot to filter something out of their gigantic SEM campaign. I want to believe that they wouldn't outright steal from a long-term partner.

So, what do you have to say Edmunds?

Dealers - you better start Googling your name!

UPDATE: 12/5/2009

Edmunds has publicly responded in the comments section of this posting that they have stopped this PPC practice. However, many other points have been brought to light because of this. Also in the comment string below are points on Edmunds SEO practices and use of dealership names. Read the comments to formulate your own opinions.

As best we can tell, Edmunds has not apologized for any of this as of yet.

bpulseadmin · Nov 28, 2009

DealerRefresh Welcomes a new sponsor – ClickMotive

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Their FUSION™ website plateform combines the power of the Web, Search, and Video - together in one product - and exclusively for the automotive industry. At all levels, -- dealer, group, regional, and national -- FUSION™ lets you control content, incentives, video, marketing, specials, SEO, SEM, inventory, and more.

To read more about ClickMotive and their services, click here.

Please Note: Our sponsors are important to us, and we hope to advertise products and services that we feel would be relevant to the community, however sponsors are not "endorsements" of dealerrefresh. As with any purchase, always do your research and comparisons. Find out if Advertising on DealerRefresh.com works for your company.

Nov 29, 2009

@Chip

We receive data from every DMS and inventory company and we send data to hundreds of online classifieds.... You could argue that the standard should be STAR and almost no one uses it. But since everyone already has it all setup and it works, no one wants to change it either.

STAR – Standards for Technology in Automotive Retail

www.starstandard.org

Chip Grueter · Nov 29, 2009

What I like about the web service is that it would have a request and a response, email of course lacks the response which I think is a big deficit. Maybe neither is a perfect solution, but the number of leads by email that don't make it into a CRM from our system is unknown at this point as we have no way to track it once it's emailed off to the provider. If we don't know, that means the dealer doesn't know, and the lead is never known to exist.

I will say I'm very happy that most providers accept the ADF spec. More standardization now means a much better future in terms of technology growth. Now if we could just standardize inventory feeds!

Nov 29, 2009

@Chip Email isn't perfect but neither is using web services. The good thing about email is it has built in mechanisms for failure, queuing, and resending. A simple web service doesn't have those mechanisms. So it would have to be more robust, which most OEMs have created for their lead delivery systems across web services.

The biggest problem with web services would be standardization. There are somewhere around 30-40 CRM providers and hundreds of companies that send leads to those CRMs.

Special finance leads should be required to send over web services. A lot of special finance lead providers send SSNs in emails in the ADF XML leads.... which is really bad. They should definitely be sent via secure web service.

Nov 29, 2009

Good stuff, having your leads go into a duplicate database sometimes can get confusing, however it is probably the only way to monitor lost leads. But remember email leads are increasing at a slow pace nationwide, so concentrate on your phone leads. Develop a system that allows easy entry on a consistent basis of all incoming phone calls. Get those into your CRM/ILM and follow up. Use tracking numbers and double check if all calls are being handled correctly, capitalize on missed opportunities and if they are entered into your database.

Chip Grueter · Nov 28, 2009

Along these lines, and with the inconsistency of email - I've always wondered by CRM providers don't provide an API to load in leads directly from lead providers. Most have adopted the ADF spec, but none that we've come across offer a way to send leads server side.

Great tip for the controllable email address to forward to the lead provider. As we deal with this weekly, it would be great for more dealers to adopt this best practice.

Chip-

Nov 28, 2009

This is a great tip. Dealers should be able to funnel all of their leads this way except for manufacturer leads since those are not usually sent via email.

The only concern is making sure the email forward doesn't slow down getting the leads to your CRM. You don't want to adversely impact your response times.

I have seen instances before with email delivery issues between the dealer and their CRM related to email delays from SPAM prevention. So you may want to ask your CRM provider to white list the IP addresses of your email servers if you are having any delays in the delivery of the email leads.

Gerald · Nov 28, 2009

Great reminder of best-practices. I have done the same thing with each store I have taken over. The challenge, is knowing which companies you are SUPPOSED to be getting leads from. A disjointed store/process allows for a number of holes to appear where lead providers can slip if you're not paying attention.

Alex Snyder · Nov 28, 2009

Many of the conversations we get on the DealerRefresh forums are about dealership CRM choices and practices. With all the different conversations cycling around this topic, I have to assume that many dealers are changing or signing up with a new CRM company. I'm very glad to see the industry taking this extremely important technology more seriously, but I wonder if we might overlook some things during a change.

When changing CRM or ILM companies, you have to change your Internet lead address. It is a seriously major pain in the ass if you have a lot of lead providers (OEM's, third-party, freebies, classified sites, your own site, etc.). If you've made a change, did you forget a lead provider? Did you remember to inform CarFax, Vast, Google Base, or one of those other sites that you don't pay directly for leads?

I have a suggestion that will make this change only take 5 minutes and open up many more opportunities for your leads:

Make 1 email address that is [email protected] and have all your lead providers send to that address.

Do the same for your other profit centers: [email protected], [email protected], etc. Then you control where things forward to off those addresses. If you ever make another CRM or ILM change, then you're just changing the forwarding address instead of having to contact all your lead providers.

Some other benefits of controlling your lead delivery address:

1. You can have backup systems in place
I have all of our leads sent to each member of our BDC, the ILM tool available in our website's backend, and to our CRM. If the CRM is lagging on showing the lead, the BDC knows about it immediately. If something crashes with our CRM, we can still respond to leads through the ILM in our website's backend. And I can quickly check to see that all leads are always coming into the CRM. After being on numerous different CRM & ILM products, I've learned that lead forwarding for backup purposes is absolutely crucial.

2. Lead Analytics
If you ever hire a company to grade or build reports around your leads, you can just add that company to your email distribution rules without having to have your CRM or ILM company set it all up. This is more of a convenience.

3. Reporting Systems
If you're like me, you can't always trust the CRM reports because your staff is working in the CRM; tainting the data. Let's face it, you're never going to get an entire staff of sales people to understand why they should enter data and update data appropriately in the CRM. Because there is a human "taint" to the data, I have to use an outside system to get accurate reporting on certain things. Again, this is just another way to quickly and easily control where your leads are going. Your reporting system can also work as your backup communication product. In our case, we use an ILM.

4. Never losing Leads again!
If you always use the same email address for where your leads are going, you never have to worry about whether you're missing leads (unless the lead provider just isn't sending - that's a separate issue). This is especially good when you do a lot of free trials or submit your company for various endeavors.

Each CRM/ILM is a little different and none are perfect. When you control your lead routing, then you have the peace of mind to know you can catch issues quickly and not miss any business. Just remember to use your new lead routing address forever, and get it to ALL your lead sources.

<< Example of Checkered Flag's Lead-routing setup

I know of quite a few dealerships who already practice this, but if you don't feel free to ask any questions and I'll do my best to answer them.

How is your dealership setup for Lead Routing?

Nov 28, 2009

Hope you had a great thanksgiving buddy. turkey looks amazing.

Brian Tucker · Nov 27, 2009

I am still trying to figure out why he has flowers in his food? I never knew a Daisy could be a dish - must be a Maryland thing

Nov 27, 2009

You nailed it Joe! The real reason why Jeff started this article - he wanted to show-off his turkey dinner.

Nov 27, 2009

Has anyone ever been to Jeff's FB and noticed how many times he takes pics of his meal? He gets so happy when it's served he just has to take a pic of it!

Apr 27, 2010

Printing this out and handing it out! To everyone. A very good article. The leadership for our dealership especially need a message like this as a reminder!

rapidchevrolet.com · Dec 3, 2009

That is a very good article. (I loved the "about the author")

We are slowly changing management styles from this type of leader.

The authoritative leader: seldom lets others make decisions, feels he/she is the most qualified and experienced, considers his/her views to be most valid, lacks confidence in others abilities, critical of differing opinions, rarely gives recognition, is easily offended, uses others for his/her benefit, action oriented, highly comtetitive

The biggest weakness of this style is the failure to recognize the skills and abilities within other people. They are often denied opportunities to use or exhibit their skills in decision-making venues.

Yet, the greatest strength of this style is to produce action when it is needed.

To this style of Leadership:

The participative leader: team member ideas or equal with the leader, everyone’s input is considered, leader is team facilitator, leader is coach/player, frequently accepts teams ideas over own, focus is on stimulating creativity, creates culture of innovation.

We all work under some sort of the first style of leadership. But we can run our departments the second way and show everyone the strenght of this system.

Nov 28, 2009

Great observation! The opening to the funnel is no longer at the front door, it's in the buyers home or office.

We recently took the plunge from dedicated 4 salesperson, 3 coordinator Internet Dept. to a 6 coordinator response and follow up system.

This has spread the "Internet Department" Culture to the desk managers that up until then didn't understand a lot about our web presence.

The desk managers are now the point of contact through confirming appointments and greeting the appointments at the door with the ability to have an intelligent conversation about what the customer wants and needs. It hasn't been easy, but we are making progress every day.

I love having total control over the incoming phone calls and the ability to t.o. a call before it hits the wall.

Nov 23, 2009

good article, the tools are definitley there but it can be difficult to get the online managers use the tools efficiently. if you have an internet department, you need internet savy team that are excite about new tools, and not overwhelmed with every new tool that is introduced to them.

Nov 23, 2009

Good info Stan. We are looking to shift our staffing towards the evenings for phone calls and live chats, and the morning folks for handling the email leads when they come in. We have lots of folks that want to talk/email/chat in the evenings (8-11 pm) after they have finished work, had dinner, put the kids to bed, etc...

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