The time has come to promote the Internet Director into a much larger role


It was announced yesterday that America went into a recession in December of 2007. We have now reached a full year in a down market. By now, all of us in the automotive industry are feeling it on some level. I've heard some people saying they just want to break even and hope things will get back to at least 50% of what it was before 2010. A lot of businesses are trying to save their way into a profit. I've taken Econ 101 and even some 200 level classes, but I'm not an economics expert. I do think the notion of saving your way into a profit is silly. If you down-size, you down-size everything. So the real question is, where should investments be made in this recession? Where can a dealership get the most bang for the buck?

To everyone on Dealer Refresh, there's a very simple answer when it comes to marketing: the Internet.

However, let's take "the Internet" in a different direction. We all know online advertising has further reach than traditional media and costs much less than traditional media as well. However, traditional media is still a very viable marketing tool. Television, radio, and even the newspaper still have a place in the marketing mix. The mix has just shifted.

There are a few hang-ups in dealerships right now when it comes to truly utilizing the new marketing mix:

1. People who do not know how to use a computer are still pulling the major strings - the "HIPPO"
   
2. Internet marketing is too cheap to be taken seriously
   
3. People spend so much time online that it is taken for granted as an advertising source - customers don't mention it like they would a newspaper ad or radio spot
   
4. Online measurements are different than traditional media and so precise that some people cannot comprehend them
   
5. Online marketing changes too often
   
6. Online dealer marketing is also internal - it is a CRM system and it can be IT driven

Some of these points are obvious. Let's look at number 6 for a minute, "Online marketing is also internal - it is a CRM system and it can be IT driven."

Yes, your internal software usage is part of your marketing mix. Before I expand on that, I should say that if you're not using your CRM to direct your sales staff's work days, you're wasting your money on that fancy CRM. Did you ever think you could use your CRM to direct the message your sales staff is delivering? You can, and you should. If you're doing that, sending email blasts, automatic emails, scheduling follow-up calls, printing letters, or doing some sophisticated data mining through your CRM, then it is a marketing tool. What about products like vAuto, Auto Exchange, Manheim, ePencil, HomeNet, or any of the other tools you've probably invested in? Guess what, they're part of your marketing mix too. If one of those systems is a chore to use because your IT department has strangled bandwidth for security or blocked useful websites with Websense then your people are probably not using those products. Guess what, that makes IT part of the marketing mix too.

If you're a large dealership or dealer group, then you probably have a hard time getting all of these elements working together:

Traditional media message + Online advertising displays + Internal software usage to drive the message

Are all of these areas spouting the same message? Are they pushing your clearance sale this month? Are they helping to let the public know you're giving away a free Garmin with every car purchase this Christmas?





If not, here's why...

I'm making a major assumption here, but I assume your dealership has someone (or someones) who decides what the marketing message is going to be this quarter/month/week/day. Then that message is passed to the creative people (ad agency perhaps) who will turn it into a PDF for the newspaper, a recording for the radio, and video for the TV...and maybe even a banner for a website. After the creative is done and scheduled for this weekend it is shown to the sales staff in the Saturday morning meeting...where it is forgotten 5 minutes later in lieu of a Starbucks run and the toughest question of the day: "what's for lunch?"

Maybe you've got someone proactive in the Internet department who decides to turn this message into an email blast. Maybe you've got someone proactive with the CRM who sets up calls for the sales agents to make informing recent customers of the new specials. Maybe...maybe...maybe...

Why wait till Saturday morning to do all of this?

Wouldn't it make more sense to have a central person who understands how all of this stuff works? Someone who can put an internal software campaign together with a television ad? Someone empowered to get through all the red tape with the vendors, General Managers, and IT departments to get that marketing message out. I believe the time has come to promote the Internet Director into a much larger role. And it will need to be the Internet Director because the most crucial part of the whole mix is the technology/online side. This Chief of Marketing needs to know how all these systems work. We need some glue.

Guest Posting by Karry Moore

Video online is the newest way to increase dealer exposure on the Internet.

What is online video and how can it benefit your dealership and help you sell more cars? Using video on the Internet is a great way to promote your dealership, your cars, as well as your own customer testimonials.   The Internet and more specifically Videos about your dealership and your own website has become your new showroom.  88% of all car buyers go online FIRST to research a vehicle and a dealer before they ever step on to a lot.  What does that mean to you?  You need have as many

opportunities to be in front of that customer, from the very top of the funnel down, as you can.  Not only that, you are advertising your dealership using the richest medium ever VIDEO, which incorporates Sight, Sound, and Motion.  Traditional web advertising only delivers Sight (static website).

Will uploading your videos on YouTube increase your exposure?

Absolutely!!!  YouTube has just surpassed Yahoo as the 2nd largest "search engine" behind its parent Google.  That's right, I said search engine.  People are going to YouTube to research and watch videos about products and services in droves.  13 hours of video content is uploaded every minute to YouTube, 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube each month and growing.  Your dealership needs to be on YouTube.  But is YouTube the only video site that people search?  No, there are multiple video search sites already like; Carspace.com, AOL Video, Truveo, Jumpcut, MSN Video, Yahoo Video, and Metacafe with more popping up every day.  Why is this important?

In May of 2007 Google unveiled Universal Search, which put succinctly is the aggregation of all of the information that Google indexes; Web, Images, News, Maps, and VIDEO and returns a more media rich result.  This means that when consumers are searching for a particular vehicle, they may see a map of the closest dealership, or an image associated with the car, or even a video that extols the benefits of a particular vehicle or a customer testimonial about your dealership and the great experience they had buying from you.  What is the value of being on the first page of Google? What is the value of having multiple listings on the first page of the search engines?  With the launch of Universal Search it has become very important for your videos to be not only on YouTube but on as many of the other video search sites that now populate the web.  The bottom line is as follows:

• Uploading to YouTube alone only marginally increase your visibility. You need a combination of proper video optimization and wide scale controlled distribution and management of you video content to maximize your results within Universal Search

• The more places you are on the Internet the more Google indexes your videos and thus the more relevance Google gives to your video when a search is initiated by a user.

Utilizing this method will give you the opportunity to capture valuable territory on the organic listings of the first page of Google and other traditional search engines, and dominate your DMA.

Now that we have a clear understanding of Video online how do we use video to convert traffic into sales and calculate an ROI.  We all know that buying 3rd party leads can be expensive and can be difficult to close.  On average only 8% of 3rd party leads ever close with 16% closing when a lead is submitted to a dealer's website directly.  By taking advantage of Universal Search you are putting your dealership in the position all of the lead aggregators are vying for, except now you have your dealership to have that lead come directly to you.
How can you track your success with VSEO?

Techniques a dealer can use to track the success of a campaign.

1. Watermark a campaign specific URL throughout your video that will have users going to a specific page.  For example:  www.mydealership.com/specials or www.mydealershipvideos.com
   
2. Watermark a unique 800# on the video and track the phone logs.
   
3. Build a page on your website dedicated to customer testimonials.  You can make the videos clickable (if you are hosting your own website) and drive traffic directly to a lead form.

Remember, television and radio advertisements, you can never be 100% accurate on who is actually hearing your message, or how you track that customer who heard that message back to your dealership and to a specific sale. But with Video SEO you have an active audience that has said they want information about your product and now you have the opportunity to deliver your message through video.  This is an example of Demand Driven Advertising in which a customer is actually looking for you, whereas Radio, TV, Print, and Billboard are passive advertising.

The biggest reason for doing any type of SEO or Video SEO is for the exposure you get for your dealership, BRANDING.  The Internet has become the proverbial Haystack and your website is the proverbial needle.  The true ROI associated with online video advertising is comparable to TV advertisements as videos in the search engines are still not clickable to a website.  We know that people watch TV and we know that videos online are being watched.  How that traffic arrives at the website or to the showroom is directly related to the amount of exposure a dealer has within their DMA.  The real ROI will be recouped by the dealers that take advantage of the technology and are there to ride the upswing when the market comes back. Dealers have to find ways to out think their competitors, do things different, take advantage of technology, and separate themselves if they are going to survive in a down market.
About the Author: Karry Moore is the President
for Car Buyers Engine