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The Best Time To Make The Hard Changes

Welcome to 2021 Version 2.0: 2022. More constraints, more shortage, more jockeying for position on Wall Street. Cut to the chase: it’s going to be quite a while before anything of ‘volume’ takes place in the industry aside from wagers. No crystal ball exists, however most of the OEM talking points and releases over the last year plus have proven dead wrong. And for fun, while that has been going on, our client guidance since October 2020 (vehicle acquisition marketing since October 2020, vehicle and part shortages and associated marketing since April 2021 as two examples) has been dead on.

So, what to do with record profits per customer, and ultimately, lower overhead? Make the Hard Changes! You’ve been considering flipping DMS or CRM providers, however you’ll wait until things actually get busier again? No McFly!!! It’s time to get real and how and when (OK, and why) to make those changes.

DMS is one of the most difficult changes to go through, so why not make that vendor swap in 2022? And remember, investigate ALL vendors because it’s such an important choice. There are offerings that are dealer-centric (rather than vendor-centric) that have years of experience and there are those that are new to the space without a proven track record. Do research, do research, do research. Not 20 Group chats, real research and investigate who the big operators in the entire industry use. You might be surprised and find partners you’ve never heard of! Yes, it’s a pain in the ass to change DMS providers, especially if you have a 10+ store group. It’s a bigger pain in the ass to have integrations that don’t work and reporting that isn’t what you want or technology and equipment that came out before the first car phone did.

Got the CRM switch itch? Make it happen! Again, do REAL research and realize the change and onboarding to comfort zone takes months, maybe upwards of a year. And there has NEVER been a better time to make the change! Concerned about “paying a lot” for software? Remember what you’ve been telling your customers for years: “You get what you pay for”, so stop screaming about saving $1,000 or $3,000 a month when you make that on one car’s back end profit alone today and get real about what MOVES your organization.

One thing that’s common across the majority of store and groups we speak with every week: those who have made the changes over the past year (or are doing them now) are happy with the moves, less those who made changes on recommendations and buzz…not reality.

It’s the best time in the history of the automotive industry to make meaningful change. Yes, it’s hard. Yes, it’s time consuming. Yes, it requires the best of your human capital. Yes, it’s time to stop talking about it and start doing it.

 

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

Stop, Drop and Do Nothing! (Or You Can Simply Roll With It)

You’re on fire! What do you do? For those of us who grew up as Baby Boomers and Gen X, you were taught in school how to stop, drop and roll. Right? Now, the battle cry is seemingly stand there and wait to see if you get burned. Profits are high enough (again)  to allow dealers to freeze, just as we did around 2005-2010 with the impending digital explosion.

What’s taken place in 2021, for the most part, is a conundrum of monumental proportion. And we thought 2020 had taken the cake! Record profits, record PVR, record low availability, record high wholesale values and more records breaking records. Pretty soon w’ll be staring at near-zero inventory on many lots and everyone screaming about incentives when new inventory finally makes it to dealerships.

Sure, do cut TV and radio along with paid search for models you won’r have and don’t have and skip some of the direct mail, unless it’s screaming “We Want Your Car!” (like everyone else is, by the way). Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Then wait longer and “save on expenses”, then scream when your website value/position/SEO drops along with your traffic, when stock does arrive you’ll expect everything to “be back to normal”.

How many times has it been said that when things are challenging, that’s when you double down? That’s truth. It doesn’t mean that we’re advising you spend incorrectly, however for dealerships not to take advantage of this time to improve variable and fixed operations (notice: operations, not expenses per se). Want to improve your service operations while inventory is tight and you’ve been making record profit per unit? Do that now, not in 3-6 months. Need to properly coaching and train your staff? Do it now, not when the phones are ringing off the hook.

Dealers do this to themselves over and over, not looking at history. Invest now in your digital operations (that means analytics, SEO, improvements in local citations and reputation management, overhaul your social media and more). Look at how to have more when the inventory does arrive and you start selling units for loses again because the consumer makes you (yeah, that’s another lie).

Or be one of the smart ones and stop, drop and roll yourself to a better business and stop looking for shiny objects and silver bullets. After thirteen plus years doing this, we’ve seen thousands of dealers get it wrong.  And a ew get it right…

 

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

Don’t Blink. Don’t Think. Yet Don’t Wait…

Lessons come frequently, if you pay attention. Lessons are disguised as many different things. Were you paying attention? And to what? What you have control of or what someone else told you? Last year taught us plenty, and it taught us nothing at all. Your point of view will determine which side you’re on (if not both).

Many things in automotive could be easily categorized from what took place in the year that just (slowly) passed by, like ‘data’, however it is essential – if not mandatory – to take a deep look at what resulted in your year.  And, how your business got there…. Quite frankly, it was not one thing that had an effect on whether or not your business made it through well.

Let’s deal with the elephants in the room (yes, they’re still there): digital retailing, marketing co-op funds, operations (fixed and variable),and  inventory. There are some other, smaller elephants playing patty-cake in your facilities however those are the main ones.

Not on the list, the biggest factor in making lemonade out of 2020 was whether your business was able to pivot in a leaner and, dare we say, meaner environment. More than anything, your ability to pivot and have the entire dealership culture thrive was bigger than anything else driving results last year, as well as the foreseeable future. Staff counts got leaner, and so thinking had to change for the smartest operators.

Many had the dreaded inventory/availability item however seemed to make it through (relatively) unscathed depending on how you secured inventory in unconventional ways. Dealers that could open in what resembled mostly ‘typical’ operating hours over the bulk of the year had per-unit profits that resembled years gone by.

The buzz word (read: buzz kill) of the year, especially OEM-mandated programs, was digital retailing. In our experience, same-store sales completed by digital retailing , based on opportunities grew incrementally (at best) and provided some daylight as well as perspective into what is possible going forward. Listening to industry-wide data along with CRM-based results, showed that there was a ‘lift’ from these tools, however not the godsend promised by any stretch of the imagination. That said, the dominant driver of tool utilization shows that what consumers want to do is know how much to expect to pay per month for a truck, sport utility, crossover or car. As OEM bolt tools on their websites (and charge franchises for customer/transactions that predominantly end up as showroom visits), we are now looking at the data play IM@CS has been telling dealers about for nearly a decade.

Many operators experienced lift in used car operations and fixed/service operations, while some even had banner years for their parts operations. No matter what, the theme seems to be making it known that you offer full-service and customer service and customers showed up, called and wanted it shipped or you picked up and dropped off their cars for sales and/or service. Hold on for a moment….2012 called and wants their flexible business ideas back…guess we’ll have to take those “idea trophies” back.

2021 is going to present huge challenges and opportunities, you can determine your own path to success as long as you have dogged determination to not resort back to the 1975-2015 mindset. It’s easy to do when profits remain high and some semblance of inventory remains.

Are you genuinely vested in your marketing (focusing on equity mining in 2021 as a new strategy doesn’t qualify as ‘your marketing’), messaging and operations? Market driven factors aside, do you already see your February and March plans in place and starting to shape your reality?

Be ready for more shifts in local marketing, specifically search engine optimization and citations, paid search and measured conquest opportunities. Other than those, don’t think or blink too much. Because if you don’t drive your business, as in 2020, you’re simply focusing on keeping your hands and feet inside the ride at all times… Don’t wait!

 

Best Practices, Professional Insight, Powerful Results

One Thing That Separates Us: Consulting 101

Most of the time, due to how we partner with businesses, we hear how different people experience us in the course of our work. One of the biggest differences is that consulting is not reselling or representing. Consulting, quite simply, is the truest form of advising a business for growth.

 

Most of our competition lives on reselling and representing products and services, many times up to 70% of their revenue exists from ensuring businesses sign up. IM@CS takes no reseller, representation or commission-based fees. You can count how many companies in the automotive space that consider themselves consultants work consulting agencies that shy away from the practice of taking such fees on your hands and feet. The other hundreds of so-called consultants in the space do.

 

The other side of consulting’s true definition is error mitigation. Nearly anyone can regurgitate Google, Bing, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and a host of well-regarded SEO, SEM and social media entities. Very few can actually look at measurement, validate and fix errors. Most of the time this simply is due to the fact that most consulting companies are not immersed in analytics and unbiased measurement.

 

How can you validate this yourself? When is the last time that you and your agency, consultant, vendor and/or BDC/sales trainers had a meeting with data that was not proprietory? The meeting actually took place in your Google Analytics, Google Search Console/Webmaster Tools, Google Trends, MOZ, SEMRush, SpyFu, Rank Ranger, GMB Insights, Facebook Insights and the like? Step 1: if you are not using those tools and relying on proprietary reporting, the first thing you can nearly guarantee is some level of data manipulation. Step 2: can anyone else besides said vendor validate the data? If you cannot validate nearly 100% of the data, start asking questions before you cancel so you don’t make the mistake again.

 

Consulting is not easy, reselling products is. Building businesses with buy-in, accountability (including vendors) and measurement is heavy lifting, coming in for a 3:00 to 4 hour meeting and throwing a report at people telling them that they are not doing the job they need to do is easy.

 

When you want to get serious about your business, start asking serious questions and making serious commitments. Until then, keep feeding the middle men and resellers of the automotive industry.

 

Admittedly, an easy buck is an easy buck. So if you find making a buck is easier in 2020 than it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago, don’t change a thing.

 

Otherwise, contact us or another reputable, proven consultant/consulting company (there’s just a few of us) and start making change happen in your business.

This Year Like Last Year: OEMs, Agencies, Middle Men, Invisible Measurement and the Almighty Dollar

As we boldly run headlong into 2020 with digital more and more prevalent, whether wanted or not, there are some aspects of our business that seem to be getting less clear and one factor driving decisions more than ever. Digital marketing still is without a legal guardian. The babysitter has been receiving the calls and all of the “supervision” hour are spent face-first in mobile devices, kind of like most salespeople at any given moment when customer less.

While the babysitter shouldn’t truly receive all of the blame, those handsomely-rewarded middle-people, even as some of the companies and faces change (with rumors of sone OEMs switching hands of the ill-prepared caretakers of digital marketing programs), are happily rewarding themselves through the data-play environment as the dealers they claim to serve lose control of their customers, websites, tools and CRM data. Yet, when decisions come down to dollars, they claim “my hands are tied”, “we’ve been forced to go with approved vendors” and “my colleagues say their program is working well (cough)” along with a half-dozen similar-sounding reasons (excuses) for not taking ownership of their digital eco-system.

This week we were invited in to an import dealer accountability call with both their (mostly silent on the call) OEM and the marketing company responsible for a large-deployment campaign. The results they are claiming for over 400 dealers in the program simply didn’t happen at this one store. One. Yes, one. “All of the dealers had success with the heavy-up campaign” and “you’re the only dealer out of over 400 asking the performance questions” rang over and over on the hour-plus call. A simple check of only Google Trends both in the dealer’s AOR/DMA (as well as nationally) show that the search lift was (interestingly) roughly the same for organic search that the marketing company is claiming that the campaign delivered (OK, a good percentage of it when pressed harder). Nearly the same year over year lift as shows organically that they’re claiming from paid video campaigns!

Now this article isn’t about the one specific example this week of performance overhype and, since the largest traffic segment wasn’t properly tracked by the marketing company (or on the “large” social media platform that the videos were campaigned through – yes you read that properly: no tracking) so all claims can be called into serious question, the near-intentional lack of transparency No, this is about the industry’s saturation of vendors doing the same exact thing(s) to thousands of dealers each month with the OEMs and/or the dealer body buying in. It’s about hundreds of agencies that claim to be digital (even better, digital-first) and mostly reselling products for commissions that may also be handcuffed on real reporting and accountability.

This week we also experienced a website company “not knowing” why (or how) Direct traffic hits from two AWS servers (from OR and VA) representing 5% of monthly users/3-4% of sessions were happening to two different websites both hosted by them (the dealerships do not pay for any third-party data companies or “targeting/conquest solutions”) with vastly different performance issues represented by the two cross-country AWS locations (the VA location providing 0:00 T.O.S, 1 page/visit. and 100% bounce rate visits while the OR location provided 6:00+ T.O.S., 6+ pages/visit (up to near 20 pages) and sub-30% bounce rate however still non-human behavior). The dealerships are in the Midwest.

Add to the above, the even-present chant of “co-op program, co-op program” and “I’ll lose spiff money if we choose a non-approved vendor”. In 2018, we participated in assisting a domestic dealer pocket ~$450,000 with quite a bit of “non-approved vendor” expense (~20% of it in reduction in duplicative or unnecessary expenses). The dealer committed to it, counted on us and a very few other partners for measurement, and attacked all of their marketing, website performance, changed up their sales meetings (sales people had to take over the largest part of each morning’s sales meeting with a new idea or concept related to selling or use of the CRM), pushed a higher level of accountability and drove results, even changing how and what they bought for their used cars and the way they marketed and sold those cars (nearly doubled turns). Not once did the dealer or GSM complain about how their OEM co-op funds may not be available to them for part or even all of their marketing expense. As a matter of fact, they bragged with other dealers to the opposite.

Because it penciled!!!!! Results, especially with time, eclipse programs if you know what you’re doing and are committed to it. Agencies seemingly never want to cut their fee or commissions, even when the dealer’s results diminish over time. Why? Nobody can explain that to us (or anyone else). Aren’t you representing the dealer? Apparently not. Reselling and commissions (including Google Ads fees) have become too lucrative to focus on the dealer more than the agency bottom line. Once-a-month calls on your website and paid search efforts? Why didn’t you notice on the 15th of the month that your Google campaign on a model that you didn’t have in stock was spending 30% of your budget? No eyeballs, no accountability and no results. Keep sending the checks silly…

By and large nothing is going to change in 2020. The buzz at NADA suggested something definitely different, however the past two weeks alone have showed us that it may only be for a few adventurous dealers that have had enough of the “more of the same for me” digital programs. There may be a little more at hand, though. Especially if we face unprecedented, new threats to business (we’ll take “Worldwide Illnesses” for $1,000 Alex!) that may cover everything from supply chain to new car availability and sales to finance, funding and floor plans, to used car availability and pricing. Those who truly have their eyes on the real measurements of their business, all aspects, will weather impending storms.

And to do so, you have to invest time, effort, resources and money, yes some or all of the money that your OEM won’t repay you, however the dividends from doing business right will ALWAYS pay you back more. The R.O.I. from calling bullshit on improper marketing investments is huge. The R.O.I. from a cancelled investment and re-appropriation of those funds to well-run digital marketing that is fully-tracked and generates new sales is huge. Did you cut $15,000+ per month from your budget and sell MORE cars (including a record December) for four plus months? We know two import stores that did n the Midwest and the West Coast.

If you can’t measure it, stop spending it. If you don’t have more prospects, contacts and sales (or at least tracking to sales) from it, stop spending it. Best practices are called that for a reason. And no bad investment has ever been called a best practice. So keep going co-op and digital program. Until someone else completely owns your customers because those babysitters, middlemen and resellers have your data and monthly dates with your OEMs and/or your competitors. We don’t and never will.

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

Welcome To 2018…Here’s Your 2002 Co-Op Program

It comes as no surprise to those of us who’ve been around the automotive digital space for a long time that the OEMs want dealer data and the pervasive third parties that run large-scale digital programs aren’t around for the dealers’ sake nor benefit. There’s a deeper level, though… how fraught these digital programs are themselves, even when you consider how fraudulent the mark-ups and hiding of unbiased metrics are.

What’s wrong is the reaping of the dealerships, rather simply saying “you have three website companies to choose from rather than anyone you choose”. And the crazy thing, again, is that the OEMs are none the smarter or have general wherewithal on the programs, data, analytics, organic, tier 3 paid search, leads (and hand-raisers, jeez) or social media. With regard to the last one, have you seen how many dealers’ social streams are basically hijacked, duplicate content with disgusting returns?

For those who don’t recall (or prefer to remember), automotive online started en-masse in 2005 with a few OEM-mandated programs happening in the early following years. How is it, then, that dealers are still waking up to the idea of digital investments? In 2009 we had a difficult time educating one of the largest import-brand dealers in the Southwestern US  that a $2,000+/month investment in their website was more than acceptable, compared to their $699/month required website. It’s 2018, we won’t even have that discussion today and stopped asking many program-heavy dealers what their investments are since nearly all are under-vested in their most important asset: their websites (yeah, that thing that gets more traffic than any other part of your business).

There are more properly-built and updated website providers out there, however it doesn’t mean that you have to choose one of them because of co-op dollars. No dealer (or general manager) can make an effective argument about $10,000-20,000 given up per month in co-op when they can end of selling 20-50 more cars per month with a better platform. Even the factory wakes up after hard-balling a dealer who’s “not playing in the approved digital sandbox” because they can’t ignore numbers (newsflash: OEMs care more about units than which website platform you’re on -or your dealership-…really!).

Alas, it seems that more and more dealers (we’ve seen this before…about 10 years ago) are willing to give up digital results to make the factory happy and/or more willing to give up any possible advantage they can have over data sharing (which the 3rd party consulting first have consistently used to level the paying field).

It all comes down to this: If we remember correctly, wasn’t it Ronald Reagan who once said, “The most terrifying words in the English language are: We’re from your OEM’s digital department and we’ve here to help”…

 

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

NADA Prep: What Is Your Breaking Point?

It’s the annual ritual that continues to educate, perplex/confuse (many) and intoxicate, especially with this year’s New Orleans destination. The National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) convention starts next Thursday so let the flash and sizzle begin, and maybe (just maybe) a reception or two to get the monthly receivables up…

We are in the twenty-second year of the Automotive Internet. Yeah, don’t blink! And with some of the major moves around the industry, you’d wonder if it weren’t the first. So do you book up on appointments with your current static providers or do you go outside? Do you take some mindshare and brave some proven-yet-unused platform/technology?At IM@CS, we have been wowed by little over the past year and lulled to sleep by most…

While you might fall for the loud person calling this the “Year Of The (fill with ostentatious call name)”, here are some hard and fast rules dominating what will likely guide you (and your vendors) to the breaking point in 2017:

  • Google AMP Project (Accelerated Mobile ages)
  • SEM/Paid Search one-to-one relevancy/Google ad updates
  • Move from last-click attribution (Google Analytics) to multi-touch “varied attribution”
  • Search Engine Optimization/marketing SPAM (next generation black-hat SEO)
  • Embracing of equity mining/process/CRM/showroom integration
  • Live video use for marketing, prospect and lifecycle engagement

Any more and your head will swim, if it’s not already. There will be few leaders, especially the largest companies, in the spaces mentioned above, signaling dealers to branch out and do more. More investigation. More education. More questions. And more time understanding that the homogenization of retailers is real.

Some of our picks for NADA visits are AutoAlert, Calldrip, DealerInspire, DealerSocket, Dealer Teamwork, eAutoAppraise, Nextup, Sensible Driver and Time Highway. We will be sitting with vendor companies and seeing the latest updates to bring them to our clients as well as the general dealer body.

We hope that everyone has a great convention this year, see you on the show floor!

2017 New Trends: What You Are Missing Is Sales

Let’s face it. The more you hear about new trends, the more you are likely to invest. The more new trends, the more investment. At what point does a new trend matter as much or more to your business than what works consistently? One constant in Automotive over the past nine plus years of IM@CS’ existence is that trends have never given a bigger yield over strong fundamentals. As a matter of fact, we have never guided a client to any significant investment with new trends, however we have with defined trends.

Do you hop on the new trends?

Trend. Merriam-Webster defines a trend as either to “extend in a general direction” (which we call a define trend) or “to veer in a new direction” (which we call a new trend).

It is a significant new trend, and worth while, to leverage text massaging for sales and service. It won’t, however, replace email in the immediate future. We have heard speakers, trainers and consultants recommending dealerships drop email in favor of text and other messaging forms. Does text/messaging tend to receive higher open rates? Yes. Have we seen the same for sales responses? Some lift, in general, yet nowhere close to pervasive. Have we seen those eclipse results from responding to emails and communicating properly, measured in dealership CRM systems? Not yet.

It was a hot new trend to jump into Display Advertising a few years ago, which we have never recommended or had a client spend more than 5% of their budget on. Results? Negligible, at best. Dealership return on investment, reviewed by those NOT taking a commission or fee, was poor at best. Lots of explanations erupted, including the “branding” argument, however the new trend diminished and many dealerships got sensible on their spends, relying more on effective search advertising, better CRM follow up on unsold customers and educating themselves on Google Analytics and other tools.

New, hot trends have shown, year after year, that too much or misappropriated attention causes lapses in core business values, efficiencies and results. We do discuss all types of trends with our clients, and at the same time keep them focused on what drives more efficient spend, while recommending small investments in new tools and technology.

Dealerships need to focus on better digital operation, more efficient showrooms, streamlined and engaging delivery, consumer feedback and top-down management with consistent measurement and accountability.

Hottest new trend for 2017: More dealerships getting real on human capital, education, accountability and customer engagement. We hope…

 

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

No Surprise: Pied Piper PSI® Internet Lead Effectiveness Report

Yet another wake up call to OEMs and dealers was quietly released today, showing no improvement in regard to Internet lead responses. While there were a few that made steps and improved their overall performance (Porsche, BMW and Mini), the industry average dropped a point to 56 (21 of 36 brands dropped). The report sites lack of transparency to senior management on the handling and performance of online sales leads.

According to Fran O’Hagan, Pied Piper CEO, the Prospect Satisfaction Index® Report showed that 50% of leads were responded to within 30 minutes, while 1 out of 11 were not responded to at all. Matched with a still-under-ten-percent closing rate for all leads in the automotive industry and those who understand the impact this creates look at how the OEMs and dealers deploy lead management tactics. In short, the OEM-mandated programs are not assisting dealers to better performance; they lead to standardization, lack of true engagement with and sales to consumers considering vehicle purchases, aggregation of data manufacturers don’t find useful, increases to paid marketing campaigns (mostly via retargeting and display with very poor results) and more revenue for unqualified consulting companies.

Not to mention that, while the industry sold more units in 2015, most dealers in the country didn’t increase market share last year (most of our clients did, though). That stems mostly from the inability of dealers to close more leads and execute on more effective SEO and SEM strategies for their markets. However, most dealers hear their vendors scream “we did a great job got for you last month” every month. Bullshit.

OEMs must wake up and realize that many companies selling consulting, lead management and other online services to them and the dealer body have no interest in anything besides adding top line revenue to their balance sheets, showing misleading reports of how “effective” their conversion rates are as well as how websites “convert” as more vendors count SRPs, VDPs and basic requests as sales leads. Data manipulation by many vendors in the industry hurts dealers and decision-making around and for dealerships.

While more speakers at conferences yell about “this one template kills it” and companies produce studies and white papers created to sell more duplicated templates and follow up processes, lead response effectiveness will continue to drop. And more importantly, the three areas that are the only ones that matter: lead-to-contact, contact0-to-appointment and appointment-to-show rates. And don’t even get us started on outsourcing lead management completely as some vendors pitch and a few have built their entire businesses off of, unless you have a death wish.

So with record unit sales, more dealers spending in traditional marketing again, very few dealers investing in digital education and true sales coaching especially around Internet leads and the homogenization of dealerships, don’t be surprised by the next Pied Piper report showing a further decline in results.

 

Want to discover how your leads are being handled without bothersome mystery shops? Contact IM@CS and improve your results with our lead scoring!

 

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

 

Transparency, Marketing and Dashboards (But, But, But It Sells Cars!!!!)

There has been more attention to accountability of dealership marketing recently, which is a good thing, however it’s always been important and something we here at IM@CS have been doing for eight years. Simply put, you need all of your digital reporting to come down to your own review, independent of vendors and their dashboards.

History proves (and vendors demonstrate) that anything will be said to a dealer or general manager in order to sell a service, especially first-in-market, fear or competitive factors. Most dealers are unwilling to be  leaders, choosing rather to follow especially when it comes to technology. And the largest factor is lack of time and commitment. If you are paying for something, you must be able to measure it yourself. Yes, YOU must be able to do that, not simply trust a report.

Google Analytics is the best way to measure everything that touches your website, alongside ancillary technologies including heat maps, third party SEO and SEM software, as well as independent measuring tools. We use a fair amount of software monthly to ensure the work we do is correct, viable and effective.

We continue to see (the majority of) dealers that are having the wool pulled over their eyes because of not drilling down a little in reporting, rather relying on a smattering of PDF reports and sales rep visits with alligator smiles talking about how great their performance is all the way to 20 Group comparisons with mediocre benchmarking.

As a senior-level executive (not your Internet or marketing director), if you can’t open Google Analytics and have a basic conversation about performance, you are losing awareness and accountability on a monthly basis. There is no other place, including the sales board in your dealership, where more relevant data comes in, not even CRM (especially considering how underutilized that software is!).

So whether you take some company’s challenge, education course, class, or simply task yourself to learn directly within Google’s own treasure trove of resources, commit to a few hours a month and get serious about all of your marketing.

Recently we’ve seen:

  • Significant drops in effectiveness of Display Advertising, with mobile being a factor as well as incredibly poor content/call-to-action in the advertising (incorrectly bucketed spends = lower R.O.I., fewer sales)
  • More rogue/bot  traffic coming from target cities that have server farms, including Ashburn, VA, Dallas and Austin, TX, and Rome and New York, NY as well as Boston, MA. (click traffic from areas that don’t make sense = non-human clicks)
  • Seeing poorly managed paid Social Media ads/dark posts and resulting traffic/leads due to a complete lack of understanding how to deploy the ads/content (running ads on Facebook and not generating leads = wrong vendor)
  • Huge increases in incorrectly managed/sourced paid advertising campaigns, lacking all of the proper data, including conversions, tied to meaningless text/ads. Part of the is an increase in dealers finally spending on SEM and the greater problem is more companies (including many OEM-approved vendors) managing ad spends that don’t understand what they’re doing. This does not counting vendors that don’t marge AdWords accounts to dealers’ Analytics accounts

All of this staring dealers in the face with no challenge to the vendors selling the services and marketing. When you receive that monthly PDF in your inbox, don’t file it. Instead, print it out, call the vendor(s) to review and have someone in your office that can independently verify that data until you understand it yourself.

Stop buying from vendors, even reliable ones, who sell you a service off of how many more cars will be sold. You don’t need that! Most dealers can sell 20-50 more cars a month out of their own CRM. Your marketing can’t be segmented or in silos anymore so quit buying that way!

 

Do this before any factors present market issues or downward pressure on sales. With more dealers spending money, there are incremental increases in sales with a lot of companies are simply getting fat and happy, laughing all the way to the bank with you money. Call us to find out quickly and easily what you’re paying for and not receiving.

 

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results