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Peeling Back The Social Onion: Are You Just A Puppet?

2013 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for automotive retail (again). Results are in for March and the first quarter showing that, with exception to some brands, you're making money. However are you making enough money to make bad mistakes for your business? Look at your social media, chances are you're doing just that.

There's just no excuse for not participating in one of the essential areas for grown, increase in traffic, creation of leads and retention of clients. And by participate, what's meant is not completely being hands-off. Outsourcing your content (SEO, SEM, social, etc.) is critical for the majority of dealers but you must stay involved: review, analyze, modify, challenge and hold accountable. Never, ever let your vendors run wild on your content. Thousands of dealerships are, regardless if they pay for services.

Dealers will write checks to vendors from $300 to $4,000+ a month for social media content services for six months, not realizing that their pages look identical to hundreds of other dealers. Remember the following tips related to all of your content:

    1. The majority of Facebook pages are not crawled by Google, Bing, or other search engines. The fact that your Lexus dealership has the same posts and a hundred other ones won't bother Google, just the people you're trying to engage. And if you have most social vendors and a large "Like" count, you've likely bought fans or acquired them through giveaways. On average, less than 2% engage on dealership Facebook pages because they're not authentic, don't represent their neighborhood/area or extend their brand. It's useless if it doesn't look, sound and feel like you. "Caption This" didn't work, doesn't work and won't work.

    2. Add to the above a little annoying Facebook detail that dealers (and many businesses) continue to ignore: if you have a profile ("friend") page, you are not only in violation of Facebook Terms of Use (TOU) rules and can lose your page, you can't get all of the analytics, advertising and other functionality that come with a business page.

    3. Google doesn't like duplicate content. You've heard it at least 10-20 times but you don't know what it means. Simply put, if you have the 78th blog to post a redundant article on the Chevy Volt from the auto show you're not an authoritative site and Google won't drive traffic to your blog from searches. That is unless you can get a lot (A LOT) of people to your post, to talk about and share your post as well as re-post. Good luck.

    4. Twitter is an amazing tool, that most dealers' vendors simply automate posts from Facebook, YouTube and their blog. It's a shame. With Twitter you can actually listen. Yes, listen. Google doesn't show you real-time results for posts and discussions about your brand or franchise. Twitter does. And you can reply to them, unlike on Facebook. It's amazing what will happen in Twitter, over time, if you simply use it, ask questions and engage.

    5. Google Plus is being underutilized by you right now. Google what? Yeah, Google Plus, which should now be integrated (merged) with your Google Local page (reviews). And oh boy, are there a lot of "experts" giving out the completely wrong information on using Google/Google Plus/YouTube and their other tools (as well as all things social) and your vendors are just responding with "thank you" or "we'll get back with you" on your positive and negative reviews. One thing that happens with G+ consistently? Content indexing quicker than any other platform. Well, Google owns it…and you're not posting on it.

Typically a quick (10-15 minute) review of all your social network assets will reveal nearly no advantage by paying your vendors for 80%+ of dealerships. Better yet, look at your Google Analytics and see if you have actual links to your website(s) from your social media networks. Even if you're not paying for your content services, why even do it if you're not doing it right? And if your social vendor happens to also provide you with "SEO" services, look twice as hard.

Puppets are cute, for puppet shows. Not for business. Stop being a social media puppet or just another case study for your vendor to get an OEM endorsement. It's not a silo. It's not "we have a social presence" or "we do social". Everything that carries your name must be known and understood by you. Quit turning over your business to others because you don't want to invest or because "it doesn't sell cars".

This post likely won't change much but so much improper marketing for data purposes or to perpetuate automation is being done in the digital realm today. Maybe we can change it. Don't be another puppet…

 

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

April 2, 2013 by Gary May 0
Tipping The Scales. Against An 800 Pound Gorilla…

Have you ever tried skiing? Uphill? Are you one for SCUBA diving? In a wading pool? Do you get your kicks running marathons? On a treadmill? How does this grab you: are you a fan of water skiing? On a dry lake bed? It seems that the more you try to distinguish your dealership today, there's someone from the factory telling you that all of the franchises in your brand should be the same. Nice. There's nothing better than showing up to a gunfight with a knife, right?

Know that we understand completely the advantage for the OEM. The level of standards, compliance and requirements shows more (not necessarily better) knowledge and what's happening with endorsed vendors shows that there may be a desire for (less than acceptable) results. "But they're the factory and I don't want problems". Well, Dear John, that train already left the station and you're the one who gets to sell the customers…right? Don't look now but the factory guys, umm, they don't know how to sell cars and neither do their bosses. Shhh, it's a big industry secret!

So how do you win at the "I want to get ahead and they want me to be behind some imaginary digital line that they don't understand" scenario? With more effort, time, cost and resources you can get 'er done! Welp, that's the short, hard to swallow answer. Can it get done? Yes, the same way you eat an elephant.

Look, they're the 800-pound gorilla (or, if you've been to counseling, the "white elephant in the room") and it's usually ugly if you don't take the extra cars they're shoving down your throat. How can the conversation about why the website vendor is failing them or the fact that the social media/reputation management company actually doesn't do what they say they do with any competency go better? It can't…not until there are real conversations at the headquarters. And folks, they've not even started yet. And the people in the digital posts at your OEMs facilities? Yes, they were selling factory replacement parts to you, at best, six months ago. No, everyone with a smartphone, a Facebook account and knows that CMS is content management system doesn't understand digital. Newsflash: SEO is alphabet soup to them.

Our 800-pound gorillas (read: all of them, not just the "big 6") need a major intervention from you right now. If you're reading this, you're in the top 5-10% of progressive dealers in the country. And don't think for a second that by having them out for a heart-to-heart or flying coach back to the OEM HQ for a fireside chat is going to take the covers off your website, CRM and marketing secrets because we still don't have over 17,000 dealers on mobile-optimized websites yet. However it's a step in the right direction and then 90% of your brand brothers won't have to scream that they don't know what their digitalmarketingleadmanagementpaidsearchretargetingonlinereputationconsultinggurus actually do (yes, please hashtag that!).

Did you hear the feedback from NADA? Yuuuuuuuuup! We're sure you did. Are the OEMs the bad guys? Not in the least. However the combination comes from vendors constantly selling (and them buying, BTW), relationships winning over logic and thousands of dealers fighting the "digital machine" for way to long. When a franchise gets over 50% of their traffic from sources they've not looked at in over a year, someone has to get involved. So they're not public enemy #1, they're just one massive speed bump that wrote a blank check to the wrong address.

Tip the scales in your direction, one pound at a time. (No gorillas were harmed in the creation of this post, but some will be offended – and so will many endorsed vendors)

 

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

 

February 24, 2013 by Gary May 1
Manipulation: Not the greatest form of flattery (Stop It!)

Nobody looking from the left, not a soul peering in from
the right; so it’s done. Manipulation. The to do, the call, the email, the
touch…you know, the BS-logged activity. The stuff that’s done just to get the
heat off, clean up the CRM and get back to going the same pace of “lead
management” and selling (the same amount you always do).

So why do we do it? Why is it allowed? Are we that far
removed, today still, from accountability in the Internet departments of the
automotive world? Sure. Nobody really
knows how to monitor, let alone want to, so the scheming goes on. And the
units? They go somewhere else…

To quote Scott Straten: Stop It! Stop It! Stop It! Get real
about managing your leads and quit killing your dealership. Not only are you
not flattering your management and owner, you’re making the investment in the
software to assist in the process and closing your sales heavily irrelevant.
Want to make your ratios? Then do the work! Too many leads, stop begging for
more!!

Manipulating your tasks or your leads has an impact on your
dealership akin to giving your child an empty box for their birthday. Nothing
good can come out of it and they’ll eventually look somewhere else…

Not to mention, manipulating your CRM simply makes you look
bad. Period. Create processes and systems to ensure that the leads are touched,
every day, with rare exception. It’s a lose-lose that is unacceptable.

Management, take the time to completely understand your CRM.
In addition you must audit regularly, conduct one-one-ones and manage your
store’s Internet hand-raisers no differently than your walk-ins, referrals and
service customers.  Just because you
can’t “see” your customers doesn’t mean you treat them any differently.

What does all this mean? Manipulation in sales tracking just costs too much. So get
real, change/add processes, counsel with management, spend money on an
assistant…do anything other than fudge it.

 

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

November 16, 2012 by Gary May 0
IM@CS Gary May Interviewed By Automotive Digest At #DSES

Chuck Parker and the Automotive Digest team were at DrivingSales Executive Summit and J.D. Power & Associates Automotive Marketing Roundtable October 21-25 interviewing top executives and industry leaders. This is part of my interview, focusing on how mobile is affecting change in the automotive indsutry.

Luke Wroblewski spoke to the DSES crowd about the impact of mobile, however the industry is still lagging behind consumer trends and usage plus analytics and mobile-ready content. This is a huge opportunity for dealerships…


 

 

November 10, 2012 by Gary May 0
Digital Signals: Hate The Player Or Hate The Game?

No matter how much it’s discussed, there are still massive
amounts of misinformation in addition to retail kick back in regard to social
media in general and what it does specifically for car dealerships. However the
simple question still remains the same: why?

It’s almost 2013 and some social signals are already making
a significant impact on local search queries and a couple networks are
absolutely affecting search engine optimization. Almost nobody at the OEM
level, not one of the existing enterprise social media providers and most
vendors have demonstrated proper use, understanding or leverage of social to
benefit you. It’s sad, however most dealers aid in this continuing and continue
to buy “services” from them…

If you’ve simply hired a social media company to “manage”
your social network content, you’ve likely made zero or near-zero impact on
local search as well as branding, defending SERP positions and a list of other
benefits. We see this continually via mediocre dealership Facebook pages,
auto-feed only Twitter accounts, automated blog posts copied onto hundreds, yes
hundreds, of other dealership blogs and copied Pinterest photos; the result? Complete
disconnect from people on their networks.

“But it’s not selling cars!” or “I don’t care about that
social garbage, that’s not what we do”, or “When it shows results, we’ll jump
on it properly” responses demonstrate that what’s happening in digital simply
hasn’t sunk in. Yes, there’s lots of talk, just very little good action, let
alone great. So are you going to hate the player or hate the game?

Most simply want to hate the game, not who’s doing it at the
dealership or outsourced to (aka the player). 
Some hate the player recognizing that the game is not to blame. However,
it’s neither. Our focus continues to go, inexplicitly, to BS “traditional”
marketing especially when there’s a sunny financial or industry volume
report.  There’s a near blanket of
ignorance put toward the largest, yes largest, shift in media consumption. And
we all do it. Well, over 90% of us.

How can you book an airline ticket online after checking
Kayak or Travelocity, or buy a pair of boots you’ve never tried on before with
glowing reviews, or even do a stock trade on your phone, tablet or computer
followed by sharing your gain on Facebook and then turn around and ignore
what’s happening with the socialization of media and search?

Digital signals are unavoidable. More importantly,
everything we do affects how others consume products and media, let alone
search.

So hate the player if you want, or hate the game if you’ve
got a louder voice or bigger fist, but when you finally decide to pay
attention, make investments, educate staff properly and turn the tides in your
favor, don’t complain if it’s too late or that someone else is eating your
lunch. It’s already happening.

 

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

November 4, 2012 by Gary May 0
Go Ahead, Keep Rebuilding The Mousetrap. Tip: You’re Trying To Catch A Cheetah

Stop what you're doing. Right now! Look back, quickly. Look back for a while. No, not over your shoulder silly. If you've been at least somewhat involved in the digital realm over the past 3-6 years, take a hard look back. What have you done? Where did your advice come from? How much time have you lost? How much momentum have you gained? How many wins have you had? And how many losses?

Everything changes, we know that. We also know that one man's garbage is another man's treasure. So in your looking back, what have you really learned? This is a little beacon asking you to close the door (or if you're in a cube or BDC or somewhere without a door, pretend to) and think about who, what and to where you were following. This is not a call to go back to basics, which is garbage, however it's a call to think. For yourself.

Too often we go with those that have been penned as the thought leaders, gurus, experts, published authorities, subject matter experts, pros, top of their gamers and the like. So that begs a question: what has been constant in your digital presence for the last three years? Four? Five?

Chances are, not much.

Fact is a lot of people, namely business owners and executive management, are scratching their heads over the past months asking themselves "why did we go down the (fill in initiative here) road?". Is SEO alive or dead? Does social media work or not? Did the new close work or deter customers? Was mobile marketing right or wrong? Great questions. Think about it this way: did your last tent event sell lots of cars? But….that's not digital, right? A tent event or massive offsite lot sale is not, true. Neither should your thinking.

All those things promote traffic, sales, new customers, conquest, retention and more. Of course they do…you can ALWAYS sell. Digital strategies are no different than picking up a good book. They're cause to make you think. Not copy! Short term gains never win over long term thinking. And to think you need to know or be on the path to knowing better.

Sometimes it's funny how operators operate. There's a lot to be said about how dealers are afraid. They're afraid to spend or try new things or go off into unchartered territory. Not to defend them, the truth is they're bombarded. And by everyone that has something to sell from $.02 pens to $20M facilities. And the shiny new thingamabob fits squarely somewhere in between.

So in your reflection, look as specifically as possible at what was done over your foray into the digital world, and what was not done. You see a lot of people are selling new mousetraps and reworking the old ones. Yes, for the most part they work better. You can only be a judge, just like with a book or white paper or study at a conference, after the fact. And quite a few have benefitted over the past years due to their desire and ability to win in the digital realm and congrats to those who have.

Just a heads up that you're trying to catch a cheetah, not a mouse. A cheetah can still run at over 60 miles per hour with a mousetrap clipped onto its paw. That is until it gets smashed to smithereens and the cheetah goes on as if nothing ever happened. There are so few mice in the digital realm today and most have mousetrap detectors.

There are some big things coming. Here is a heads up that the next big thing is not in hardware, software, advertising, marketing, mobile apps, CRM, retargeting or templates. You'll have to think about it. For those that do get it the remainder of 2012 and 2013, as well as going forward, will be easier.

If this was a hard one to understand, keep reading and coming back. And thank you.

If you got this, see you at the DrivingSales Executive Summit October 21-23 at Bellagio in Las Vegas…and please keep reading. We'd love to hear from you, you're our kind of business.

 

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

 

October 9, 2012 by Gary May 0
DrivingSales Executive Summit: Learning Over Listening

One of the things we're most passionate about is education. Above anything else, education moves businesses forward. You can sell them all day long, and most vendors would given the chance, but until education (and support) is part of the equation there is no momentum.

The DrivingSales Executive Summit has set itself apart from other conferences since its inception in 2009 and continues to do so today. This year's lineup of keynotes is incredibly impressive and the team at DrivingSales has set the bar higher once again. However the magic is in the breakouts, along with the innovation sessions, where dealership staff in attendance get to break out their notebooks, tablets and other note-taking technology and build executable strategies.

Last year's DSES delivered some of the most creative and independent means for dealers to lead their markets with digital marketing strategies. One of those sessions was Gary Sanders of Stevinson Lexus of Lakewood (Denver, CO) talking about what he and his dealership did to better set the stage for customers looking at their inventory online and to direct how conversations and conversions would take place.

Simply put, businesses innovating trumps those who simply copy and in today's market it is essential to win. It all starts with the ideas and strategies. As simple as this sounds, most sessions I've attended at the breath of events around the industry center around "you need to be doing this" rather than "this is how you do this".

Come to the DrivingSales Executive Summit in three weeks with an open mind, it will change your business. Yes, you'll be able to learn more than simply listening…

 

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

You can participate (read: actually participate) in the DSES session that Joe Webb and I share on Tuesday, October 23 at 3:55-4:40p Click here for the DSES agenda 
Remember to use code IMACS12 when regsitering for DSES

September 30, 2012 by Gary May 0
The cost of information versus execution

We hem. We haw. We decide. We buy. We go. Then what? First,
let’s go back to the start. What is the education budget of your dealership?
There is likely a marketing budget, a maintenance budget and even a coffee budget
(especially if you’re a high-line store). Where is your education budget? How
much is spent on outside support and consulting away from a vendor rep or “consulting”
reseller that simply pushes products and trains on them specifically?

Sure, it is important to take care of your image, your
facility and your customers. However today, more than ever, the investment made
in dealership staff is more important than the payroll investment and on par
with any other expense or cost center. The number one thing that can move a
business forward is typically forgotten, let alone budgeted for.

So the dealer, general manager, marketing or Internet
manager make it to a conference. Once everyone is happily back in the nest, 30-95%
of what is learned is lost or not executed on (delayed loss). $2,000-3,000 is
spent to have one to two people there; however sustainment investment typically
runs about 5-10 times what the event does. Where’s the investment to ensure the
information, implementation and platform for success? $10,000 will usually be
spent in a flash to simply appease the manufacturer’s rep with some local newspaper
advertising to push the new model,
where’s the $10,000 over six months to keep the dealership staff on the leading edge?

Information is great, fantastic, liberating and exciting.
However the actual implementation and sustainment is more so and the other
benefit is you actually get to see the results rather than simply reminiscing “remember
back at that conference when the guy (or gal) talked about doing that new thing”
and then getting back to doing things the way you…always have.

The cost of the information is practically zero. Yes, some companies
and publishers in the industry charge you for webinars with expert speakers but
where’s the follow up and how do you actually do what they’re talking about.
The cost of implementation is significantly higher but it’s the only way to get
the results.

Don’t go to the conferences if you won’t back it up with the
real investment. Don’t send your staff to get information that, with about five
minutes of searching on Google, is otherwise available within the confines of
your dealership. And don’t send your Internet director for the “amazing networking
events”. Get the rubber to meet the road by attending, considering, spending,
measuring*, reviewing and reinvesting.
 *measuring that involves using a proprietary
dashboard rather than an unbiased third party is typically a short-sighted
move.

The greatest reward any dealer will receive from their
digital marketing is no different than any other investment, like a facility
upgrade or a redo of the fixed operations department. It causes people to work
and think in fresh ways, generating better results.

Invest in the best assets you have and make those efforts
ongoing. Replace "I liked that conference a lot and will likely go again, especially if I can fit in a couple rounds" with "I can't believe the growth we've had from doing what the speakers taught us about and am already booked for next year".

See you at the conferences!

 

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

September 26, 2012 by Gary May 0
The Difference Is One Letter…And What It Gets You Is Much More

Many times people ask me why IM@CS is not a training company, even though plenty of people call what we do by the "T" word. The response every single person receives, for the last five years – and emphatically – is that people despise being trained. People, more successful ones for sure, love learning. In short, we've never had a staff member at a client that ever deserved such a low pat of the attention span.

Education, however, is what people and businesses that want to succeed tune into. There are plenty of trainers to choke 17,000 new car franchises to death, and then some. There are so very few educators, especially in the digital space. That aren't beholden to vendors they recommend (read: if you take a fee from a client and a commission from a vendor, that's called a conflict of interest). That don't work at a store 40 hours a week (read: that's an employee, not a consultant). That learn from outside the industry (read: recirculating existing data, quotes, white papers and results from others is simply an affront).

Education, for the few that want it, is the only thing that moves our industry forward. "Getting back to the basics" and "blocking and tackling", while called for and part of daily operation especially when things drop through the cracks, is needed. However, you can't increase results from eCommerce, increase your SEO footprint, establish social media signals, improve your email lead response rate or conquest a new market or brand by "doing what has always worked".

This week brought a great opportunity to share what might be considered as more "digitally savvy" dealerships and vendors in a conversation with an industry colleague. He happens to be someone that I respect, having OEM, portal and agency experience including outside automotive. He asked, among other items, what we're most proud of that we were able to do with a now, more-successful client. My response was that he should ask them, not me…

You see, training is something you do everywhere for everybody that "needs it". Education is something that you provide with varying degrees of success, seeing the results later through your clients and only for those that absolutely want or will kill for it.

One thing I've always been passionate about in providing services to different business over the past twenty plus years is watching their growth. By providing turnkey services or an enterprise-wide platform, as needed as those services are, the baseline is so muted. That doesn't get me or the team of people I get to work with up in the morning. What does is making a difference through education and then supporting the education. Anyone call sell or buy a widget. And many will tell you their widget is better or drives better results. Bulls**t. The people using the widget to their best capability win. Remember who people buy cars from? The least educated one, right?

So what's the difference between training and education? Education is one letter longer. And likely the only thing keeping your dealership back from excellence…

 

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

 

August 31, 2012 by Gary May 0
If You’re Going To Do It, Do It Right…

The special time of the year is nearly upon us, again. From September through February: conferences, expos and 20 Groups with the veritable sales crunch of "you have to get this or you'll be left in the dust!" pitches. You can feel dealers' and general managers' certain body parts tightening up now (not that they aren't pitched every day of every week of every month or every year already).

With very little assistance, which is by choice, direction or information, vendors are chosen and deals are signed. Does that mean dealerships make decisions without "data"? Not necessarily. However decisions made with vendors' own calculators (remember when lead estimating in your market at certain NADA website booths was the fix of the day?????), skewed analytics/search results and by recommendations (you know, what works for a dealer with half the competition and market size one of their 20 Group buddies has should work the same for someone else in a major metro with twice the stores and massive gross degradation?).

What generates results are a combination of relevant data, unbiased information, support, updates and consistency. However what we still see dominating today are dealers using:

Websites:

  • Without any SEO (and sometimes even basic optimization), micro-sites/landing pages and SEM with no/poor call-to-action, heavily redundant non-inventory based content (which Google LOVES! right?!) and the like…

CRM:

  • The "take it as it came out of the box" processes and templates that can't get a call back from a desperate buyer, no management notifications set up, and people with access sending out marketing messages to dealerships' database that are not proper, timely or accurate…

Social media:

  • Left up to companies setting up personal profiles on Facebook, Google Plus, Foursquare, etc. for businesses and/or…
  • Duplicating content on hundreds of dealership social networks and/or…
  • Solely following industry people's accounts and them fanning/following back and/or…
  • Simply buying audiences gaining thousands of eyeballs while most of the paid followers are in different countries (or simply spam accounts)…

…and the list just goes on and on and on. 

If you want to sell cars, you have to do it right. Meet and greet, the walk, the drive, the pencil, the close (yes, the road to the sale to many) that can't exist without process, checklists, audits and accountability. Yet most dealerships' entire digital presence has none of those!!

What we need to do is do things right. Businesses are responsible for everything they do. It's 2012. If you don't understand websites and SEO, get someone that does in your store. Don't think social media is right for your point? Ask your customers where they want you to be and then get someone that does it in your store. And get advice before you hire your person/people or bring on the vendor! You must own every part of your marketing today and not turn a blind eye. And no, it's not too much to do or to get someone in the store or close to you to provide reporting that is not from a vendor's proprietary dashboard (read: manipulation) that can't be validated by another unbiased source.

There are no excuses for businesses today to not know how to do things right and expect results. Sending texts from employees phones without permission based marketing and legal/opt-out included? Having a website for a 150+ unit store that has 800 inbound links and no +1's? Promoting a blog that has the same content as every other (fill in your brand) store within a 1,000 mile radius? It's NOT fine. It's NOT ok. Get real.

Act as if you're a customer to your own business! What are the chances you'd return to your own website if the home page never changed? Would you buy concert tickets from a site that never featured your favorite artists? Would you Like United Airlines on Facebook if every other post from them was two sea lions fighting or two mimes fighting with an intro of "caption this"? would you follow Morton's Steakhouse on Twitter if EVERY post was simply a push from their Facebook account and no interaction with diners? Would you continue to read Marriott's blog if all it contained was posts about awards they were winning from magazines rather than updates on their resort locations that you wanted to travel to? Look it's really simple, it's just not easy.

Own your marketing. The pisser is you've been hearing this for over five years now from a number of sources in the industry including this one. Quit cutting corners and believing everything that the large enterprise-level providers are feeding you. How can one provider claim to be the #1 vendor in an industry and charge half of what everyone else does? It doesn't work that way! You know that…

Look at it this way. McDonald's (as good as some of you may think they are) is not number one in hamburgers. They are number one in volume! Do they serve the best burger? No! Their burger is not the best…and neither is your website/CRM/Social Media if you don't know better.

If you're going to do it, do it right!

 

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

August 23, 2012 by Gary May 1