News

American Express and Twitter announced a new pilot program starting in March for 10,000 Amex small business owners.  Car dealers looking for new tools in their Automotive Advertising strategy, should take note of this limited trial.

The Amex program will allow business owners to fund sponsored Tweets, similar to how Pay-Per-Click advertising works. It is performance based so the dealer would only be charged if a consumer decided to  ”Follow” your Twitter account or click through to your linked page.

Could this be a new powerful way to drive traffic to your website? This may be another tactic in a powerful Automotive Advertising strategy.

I will be testing this new program and I think that this is very worthwhile to test and measure the best ways to create Sponsored Tweets that attract qualified traffic and local car buyers.

Sign-up For Twitter Pilot With American Express

To sign-up for the pilot, you need to visit this registration page:  https://ads.twitter.com/amex.  After you login with your Twitter Account, you need to verify that you are an American Express cardholder or merchant.

You are asked a few basic questions, like shown below:

And when you are done, you will get a confirmation message that your account has been submitted to the pilot, as shown below:

If you sign-up for the program, let me know what your strategy and success is with the new program.  I will follow-up with another post once I have some data to share.

Brian

Brian Pasch, CEO
PCG Digital Marketing
Text PCGedu to 75674 get information on our upcoming conferences
Brian Pasch

The 23,000 NADA Convention attendees in Las Vegas had over 1,000 booths to visit in the exhibitor hall.  The 2012 Convention broke all attendance records according to Stephen Wade, NADA Chairman.  The automotive industry is healthy and the diversity of exhibitors and products on display this year has never been greater.

At the NADA Convention I take time to visit the leaders in our industry as well as new comers to see what dealers will be offered in the coming year by their vendor partners.   There were five products that made my Top Pick list, and I will be writing about each product separately.

This year there was one clear winner for my annual BEST OF SHOW Award.  This product will be a major game changer for automotive advertising because it brings the power of display advertising and remarketing to the masses.  Formerly, the level of sophistication and labor needed to create a powerful display advertising campaign was out of the hands of a dealer.

Dealer.com hit the ball out of the park with their Display Advertising Platform which will revolutionize paid search marketing for car dealers.   The product will be officially released on March 1, 2012.

Any existing Dealer.com customer should be advised to request a demonstration of this powerful automotive advertising platform.  In fact, I would uniformly state that ALL Dealer.com dealers should increase their paid search budget and turn on display advertising immediately.

What Is Display Advertising

Display advertising, also known as banner advertising, has two aspects: Acquisition and Retargeting.  In the example above, you can see that there are “grey” boxes that represent where ads can show on a website.  You can also see how this Toyota display banner advertisement would look on a live website page.  Millions of websites are in the Google Display Network that offer banner advertising.

For acquisition, Dealer.com has preloaded ad campaigns that can be activated with a click of a button.  For example, if you wanted to target luxury car buyers, Dealer.com has already selected the thousands of websites in the Google Network that would match that criteria and that offer banner ad space.  Just drop in your ad, and your banners will appear on those websites.

How easy is it to create a Banner Ad?

This feature is what made this product an award winner.  In seconds, dealers can create customized banners using thousands of images preloaded by Dealer.com.  They have also included all appropriate OEM artwork for all brands, so creating CONSISTENT ads that match national advertising can be accomplished without a graphic artist’s.

If you work with an advertising agency, custom banners can easily be uploaded and used with the existing ad formats.   In fact, this product is an advertising agencies dream product!

Want animated banners? No problem, they are included.  Want to create banners of various sizes? No problem, all Google ad sizes are supported.   Need to run banners for a limited amount of time?  No problem, each banner has a start and stop date.

Increasing The ROI Of Existing Web Visitors

Once a customer visits your website, re-targeting will allow you to follow them around the Internet with your banners.  Re-targeting gives dealers MULTIPLE opportunities to get visitors back to their website as well as creating considerable brand awareness.

For example, if your dealership website gets 5,000 visitors a month, by activating re-targeting you can have over 60,000 local car buyers seeing your banner ads by the end of the year.

What is revolutionary for dealers, is that the Dealer.com Display Advertising product has very granular re-targeting groups.  If a customer visits your 2012 Toyota Camry vehicle detail page, you can follow them after they leave with Toyota Camry banners without ANY manual setup.

One question you may be asking, what about Fixed Ops? Imagine with a click of a button, following local consumers who visited ANY service related page with banners that offer them service specials or reminders about seasonal maintenace.  The consumers will think that you are spending LOTS of money on advertyising when in fact, you are only charged if they CLICK on the banner and come back to your website.

Slick User Interface

The Display Advertising dashboard is well designed and graphically shows the current inventory and activity for all campaigns using display advertising.  This is a super powerful advertising strategy for car dealers that has just been made affordable.

When you really understand this product and the potential for your dealership’s digital advertising strategy, you will thank Eric Mayhew and his team at Dealer.com for their innovation.  This product is a game changer and if you need any help understanding the power of this tool, just give me a call.

Brian

Brian Pasch, CEO

PCG Digital Marketing

Text PCGedu to 75674 get information on our upcoming conferences

Brian Pasch

Representatives from The Automotive Advertising Network (AAN) will be available for demonstrations at booth # 3657 at the 2012 NADA Convention.  The Automotive Advertising Network is the industry’s first content syndication and search engine optimized network designed to promote car dealers’ inventories on national, regional, local and specialty sites. The AAN is also a heavy ZMOT influencer.

The Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) is what Google refers to the point in time where consumers explore and examine products and providers online— leveraging search and social media channels — to identify what’s most interesting to them before they ever go to the store.   The theory is a follow-up to Proctor & Gamble’s popular First Moment of Truth (FMOT), when a consumer looks at a shelf of products in the store and decides which brand to buy, and the Second Moment of Truth (SMOT), when that consumer actually uses the brand at home and decides if they like it or not.

With over 80% of consumers searching for cars online, a dealership’s digital ZMOT could determine whether or not a consumer ever walks into their dealership.  Automotive industry experts agree; ZMOT can negatively or positively affect a dealership’s perception within seconds.

To be a top ZMOT influencer, dealerships must be successful in two critical online factors: obtaining consumer reviews and owning more assets that rank on Google Page 1.

The Automotive Advertising Network is a powerful tool for dealers that want to dominate ZMOT.  AAN can influence ZMOT and a consumer’s purchasing decision by boosting a dealership’s visibility online with syndicated content and syndicated reviews.  The AAN syndication tool allows dealers to publish search friendly content on multiple regional and local websites with the click of just one button. The AAN can also syndicate the same content to a dealer’s personal blog sites like those created on WordPress, Blogger, Typepad and Ning.

AAN to Reveal Dealership In-Store Review Platform at 2012 NADA Convention

Earlier this week, Ananth Godavari, CEO of the AAN, announced plans to unveil a groundbreaking in-store review platform at the upcoming 2012 NADA Convention.  This new technology will allow dealers to syndicate customer reviews that are written online to their websites and dealership blog sites.

The AAN helps dealers dominate ZMOT by owning multiple AAN created web assets and syndicating consumer reviews so that no matter where the consumer looks, an AAN client is always top of mind and top of results pages.

2012 NADA attendees can see demonstration of the AAN and its new review syndication tool by visiting booth # 3657 at the convention.  CEO Ananth Godavari will be at the booth to talk about the latest technology advancements in content and review syndication and how dealers can use this technology to become more profitable in 2012.

About the Automotive Advertising Network

The AAN is the industry’s first optimized, dealer-centric network with no third-party ads, designed to promote car dealers’ inventories on national, regional, local and specialty sites.

Developed by industry experts Brian Pasch, Sean Wolfington, David Boice and Ananth Godavari, the AAN is a comprehensive digital marketing and branding platform that utilizes proven practices in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), inventory advertising, social media and content publishing to advertise and sell dealer inventory.

Using these proven SEO strategies, the AAN helps dealers establish high quality, exclusive leads for less money, translating into higher closing ratios and lower costs for the dealers.  Plus, unlike traditional third party lead collectors, the dealer’s own inventory-listing pages are free of competing ads.

The AAN has changed the playing field for dealers who have typically had to compete with national third- party lead providers who have long had an advantage on the search engines because of their national footprint and corresponding search authority.

I have written about the influence of Jim Lecinski’s book “Winning The Zero Moment of Truth” and the data that confirms that consumers are actively researching online during the Zero Moment of Truth prior to contacting a local car dealer.

This first contact, called the First Moment of Truth (FMOT), can be elusive for car dealers.  Whether a consumer makes initial contact by phone, a website lead form, or a chat session getting the consumer to come in for a test drive does not happen without considerable effort.

Internet BDC employees know the truth better than most.  A lead submitted can take numerous calls or emails to make contact. Lead to show ratios are unpredictable and can vary based on the BDC agent.   I won’t even start to go into the other challenges that include fake phone numbers and names!

New Strategies Increase Lead To Show Ratios

So I have some great news.  What if you could increase those lead to show ratios?  What would that be worth to your pay plan or monthly profits?

I’m not talking about introducing BDC phone scripts, training, recording and inspection of lead/phone processes.  That should be standard operating procedure at your store and if it not the case, get help!

Consider that the contacts that come through your website are based on previously committed marketing costs. Anything that improves lead to show ratios should stand on its own merits.  What is it worth to get someone from behind their computer into your store?  Is it worth $25 to you?

Our consulting team has been exploring this question and have been very pleased with the data and results from a new product strategy from HookLogic.  Behind this great product is the passion and BDC/Internet experience of Jeff Kershner who many know through his DealerRefresh.com community website.

Jeff helped develop this product over the past three years while working at the Younger Automotive Group and the end product is just fantastic.  The product uses targeted incentives to get consumers to show up for a test drive.  Research has shown that the test-drive is an important “step” in a car purchase so the dealer who gets the test drive is most likely to win the sale.

Gift Cards Work When Done Right!

So, by using gift card incentives, Hooklogic technology increases Lead to Show ratios significantly.  One way this is done is  by IMPROVING your lead forms with the option to receive a gift card, normally $25 in value, to stores like Starbucks, Home Depot, or even an Amex gift card.

When you visit their website, you will see that they practice what they preach.  The image on the right is an enhanced lead form using the HookLogic technology.  This product is called “Web to Show”.

The second part of the strategy is to filter and score UNSOLD LEADS, which we all have, and offer these leads a reason to come in for a test drive if they score properly. This product is called “Lead to Show”. Considering that many dealers buy third party leads, this scoring and activation can “data mine” great prospects without the tedium of calling everyone.

Reports show an average increase of 5-7% closing ratio on 3rd party leads alone. The case studies, which Jeff can share with you, are impressive.

Contact Jeff For A Demo

If you have not tried a seamless incentive program for your dealership, you are missing another opportunity to distinguish yourself during the Automotive Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT).  If you are heading out to DMSC or NADA, you should schedule a demo with Jeff and his team.

You can reach Jeff via email at: jeff.kershner@hooklogic.com and it would be a mistake not to get a webinar demo if you are not attending NADA.  Snooze you lose!   You can read more at http://www.leadtoshow.com 

I’ve known Jeff for a number of years and last year I was pleased to present him with the Lighthouse Award for his passion and contributions to the Automotive Industry via DealerRefresh.

Disclaimer

I am not a partner or equity stakeholder in HookLogic nor  have I accepted commissions for referrals for this product.  I am sharing this product because the PCG Consulting team has found this to be a great product to recommend to dealers.

Brian

Brian Pasch, CEO
PCG Digital Marketing
Text PCGedu to 75674 get information on our upcoming conferences
Brian Pasch

Representatives from New Jersey’s top automotive Internet marketing firms, PCG Digital Marketing, PCG Consulting and the Automotive Advertising Network, will be conducting short, 10-minute express training sessions at their NADA booths every 30 minutes. NADA attendees can jump in on any training session to learn more about the latest techniques and proven practices in automotive digital marketing.

It can be hard to take advantage of everything that NADA has to offer, that’s why representatives of these three automotive Internet marketing firms will be offering the express training session for dealers. Each booth will be going over the most pressing digital marketing updates–what every dealer needs to know to stay competitive online in 2012. With short 10-minute presentations, dealers will still have plenty of free time to explore the rest of the exhibition floor.

Automotive SEO Workshops

Topics to be covered include:

• SEO checklist tips
• Inventory syndication
• BDC tips
• Content syndication
• Reputation management tips
• Review syndication
• What is the Zero Moment Of Truth?

Presenters will be automotive industry veterans Brian Pasch (CEO, PCG Digital Marketing), Glenn Pasch (COO, PCG Digital Marketing) Ananth Godavari (CEO, Automotive Advertising Network), Marc McGurren (Partner, PCG Consulting) and Matt O’Such (SEO Strategist, PCG Digital Marketing).

The express training sessions will take place twice a day between 9:00 am and 3:30 pm all three days of the NADA Convention. Training schedules will be available at the booths:

• PCG Digital Marketing/ PCG Consulting: Booth #3659
• Automotive Advertising Network: Booth #3657

Brian Pasch, CEO of PCG Digital Marketing is quoted, “This is an absolute must for dealers looking to absorb the most important information in the least amount of time. Dealers will be pressed for time at the convention; stopping by a 10-minute training session gives them the opportunity to learn about what’s hot in digital marketing without taking too much time away from the rest of their day.”