Your "Digital Marketing Expert's" Last Job Was at McDonalds

[Daniel J. Mondello]

I enjoy this industry, I really do! I love how fast paced it is. I love the everyday unexpected challenges that are synonymous with the business. What really gets my negative juices raging is the number of "Automotive Retail and Digital Marketing Experts" operating in this space that have little to no expertise in Automotive or Web Marketing.

Don't get me wrong, I think there are plenty of excellent web-minded marketing genius' in this industry and many of them likely have less than stellar web skills. But these REAL Automotive Marketing Experts seem to be few and far between in my honest opinion. So I ask you all this question, Should we really be taking Automotive Website Marketing and Digital Marketing Advice from people and companies that would struggle to build even the simplest HTML Table?

How are so many of these agencies and companies getting away with preaching to us, our peers, and even our competitors Automotive Marketing wisdom when they have no Web or even Automotive retail knowledge? Why are we letting them get away with this?!

Today, I'm in a good mood so I've decided to hold off in calling any one particular company or agency out. But I did want to bring this topic to light and have an open discussion on the refresh board. I may be wrong about this and I'm completely willing to accept it but I want to see the business and this industry improve and become even more competitive. And I firmly believe that will not happen (at least not at the rate it should) with so many non-experts claiming to have the golden Automotive Marketing Ticket.

What do all of you think? </rant>

 

[PaulS]

Dan,
These "experts" should be giving you concrete, prioritized, actionable, measurable recommendations. With any type of consulting, you will always get the chancers who regurgitate some high-level advice which they maybe read about once on a blog, and you as their customer need to be responsible for holding them to account and also detecting any BS as early as possible. How to do this?
- Define the success criteria for their engagement with you so all parties are clear what is expected.
- Opt for results-related payments if possible.
- Good old-fashioned due diligence: check references from the expert's previous customers before starting the engagement.


Regarding your bolded question, I understand your frustrations regarding lack of tech skills. My background is in web development and I guess I would consider myself a HTML/CSS/JavaScript expert. However, I don't think it's necessarily fair to judge all digital marketer's effectiveness due to lack of HTML skills. There are so many tools available today which abstract away technical details from non-technical business folks (including marketers), and they can still be extremely effective in their job.
Was there a particular area your "expert" was advising you on where you think they should be more technically knowledgeable?

 

[JoeyNeal]

Yes there are many "Fakes" out there trying to get on the "Band Wagon" and the bad thing about it all is that is gives Us the Honest Guys a bad rep that we have to overcome when we call on Dealers that have been burned in this manner. Best practice is to always do your homework and check references and be specific in your questioning when doing so.

Auto Dealers need vendors they can trust and depend on that are always going to be proactive and Honest no matter what, so they can do what they do best and sale cars!

 

[cmjerry4531]

Should we really be taking Automotive Website Marketing and Digital Marketing Advice from people and companies that would struggle to build even the simplest HTML Table?

Should we really just trust people because they are able to build a website? I do SEO in all kinds of industries, and let me tell you, just because people can build a website doesn't mean they know conversion optimization, branding and search engine optimization.

I like the idea of asking for references, but then you should really get references for your references. You are basically asking someones opinion on a product when you don't know their level of understanding on it.

Instead, I would suggest for most people to strive to develop a great understanding of a product, and then ask for references to confirm that the company delivers would they claim to do. For people looking at SEO I would absolutely suggest picking up the book "The Art of SEO." It will give you all the details that you don't normally see from the main stream blogs. You can pick up a used copy on Amazon for around $25.

 

[dvMail]

Interesting series of questions. I never thought of a digital marketing expert as someone who knows how to code.

I always thought of them as someone who knows the digital environment and how to manipulate in the most effective way. They might be able to code, but that isn't why I hired them.

Personally, I wouldn't put coding as mandatory for a digital marketing expert. After being a "professional" coder for a few years on the now defunct Microsoft Silverlight initiative , I quickly learned that a lot of programming is pretty monotonous. Not something I want to do everyday as a marketing guy. So if coding is a basic requirement, count me out!

With that said, I don't pretend to be up-to-date on SEO or HTML/CSS but I do know enough to get into trouble. I think that is the fair level of knowledge and involvement in the coding side of selling cars. Someone that can get into your website and make a few changes without needing a ysiwyg/wordpress style layout. Not necessarily someone who is going to ground up write you a new inventory script. Is this the wrong avenue of thought?

 

[Daniel J. Mondello]

All valid points. My opinion on this topic comes from two different experiences or series of experiences I've had since being in the industry. I see a lot of Agencies operating in the digital automotive marketing space who have some serious headliners guiding their strategies. But the implementation of these strategies and the facilitation their success is often tasked out to their employees many of which are fresh from college. I don't mean to sound arrogant but I'm not about to be take lessons on Automotive Marketing from someone who just graduated and are just getting their feet wet.

While I would never pretend that coding knowledge is a necessity in order to be truly successful in this space, I would argue that people who don't know how to build websites will never fully understand, realize, or recognize the true potential of Digital Marketing. SEO is one thing. Knowing how to combine strong SEO fundamentals with websites that are not constrained by WYSIWYG coding and the limitations of off-the-shelf dealership website platforms - will have and maintain a huge advantage.

I'm not saying coding is a necessity for the business. But for me, it is. Once you know how to write clean code that allows for accelerated load times, custom forms and calls to action while also maintain a strong organic can you truly (at least in my mind) be a true Digital Marketing Expert. I will take this even one step further. In my opinion you can't be a true Automotive Digital Marketing expert unless the aforementioned describes you and you've built your skill set in an automotive retail environment. Everything else is minor league.

HOLD YOUR MARKETING CONSULTANTS AND DIGITAL PARTNERS TO HIGHER STANDARDS!

 

[JimmyKnMT]

Daniel,
I like what you are getting @ in your post but I think there is a disconnect. I say this because some of the best sales/customer service reps for digital marketing companies my not write code or how to do the nuts and bolts of SEO etc. They do not claim to be the messiah when it comes to digital marketing but when I need help these Reps help me get my issues resolved because if they are visiting me in store, they are not the ones coding, etc. This is because if they are in store they are my reps and there job is to help me and to ensure I am happy. A great service writer may not know how to fix a car, a great salesman may not know how to fix one either. I understand that you may have had a bad experience with some claiming to be messiahs but I have some great reps and I would hate to see them go cause they cannot code.

Thoughts??

 

[Aaron Wirtz]

Great subject line--I absolutely agree. I love it when these "experts" tell me what does or doesn't work when I know the real story based on first hand observation. Thankfully, I think most dealerships have wised up to this game and are much more skeptical now than they were even a year ago, as they should be.

I like Paul's suggestion to try to opt for a results-based payment structure--could anyone name any agencies who actually do this?

 

[dvMail]

I guess my question would be...what is a "results-based payment structure"?

Sales? Web traffic?

It seems to me, there are too many variables outside of my control with a results-based payment structure that is dependent on sales.

Few reasons off the top of my head.

1) If you don't have a huge inventory, you might not have the car they want, in-stock. So no matter how good your offer is, after a glance at your online inventory, they will have moved on to cars/autotrader or a competitors inventory page to find the exact model they were looking for.

2) I'd have to trust a sales person to not blow a deal because they were having a bad day, were too pushy etc.

3) I do work for 43 Subaru dealers around the US. One of my regional reps told me that the average Subaru buyer can take as many as 120 days before they will pull the trigger and buy a car. So its going to be hard to pinpoint what marketing initiative directed them to the dealer, especially when the offers that got them on the cycle long since expired.

4) Polk said in 2011 that 7 out of 10 people surveyed won't pick up the phone or submit a lead online before showing up at the dealers door. Beyond the post-sale survey, its gonna be pretty hard to point out where that lead came from.

If we are talking "results-based payment" on just web traffic, I could be a scumbag and go to fiverr.com, spend 100 bucks and drive more geo-targted based traffic and fake leads to a dealership then they have ever had on record. Looking like a hero to the uninformed or inexperienced analytics user.

If we are talking sales results based on Display/Search marketing. Sure I could see some sort of CPA strategy, but I think it would be too expensive per acquisition and there is still the whole 7 out of 10 walk ins issue.

Now this could be my narrow POV of the market I deal with, your experiences may vary.

It seems to me, performance based pay is a difficult path to go down right now for a digital marketer. There just isn't enough track-ability that transitions between the digital and real world. (just my 2¢).

 

[Daniel J. Mondello]

For me what it all has come down to is this "if you want something done right, do it yourself."