Dealerfire Blog

Is 2008 a Leap Year?

Not the kind of leap year that adds more days but the kind of where dealers leap over their 2 year lag in technology. Does Internet marketing in all is forms finally get some R-E-S-P-E-C-T from dealers in 2008?  Will they finally let Internet marketing have a seat at the table with TV/Print/Radio and not a small chair that makes it seem shorter than everyone but a real "big boy" chair. "Model Year Close-out" and "Summer Sales Drive" should be more than a small image that the dealer requests be added to their website two days before the event is over. Lets hope that this is the year they catch up, because you now what's just around the corner? Mobile, that's what...

Updates

It has been quite some time since the last post, sorry about that...We have been extremely busy with some new stuff that has kept us very busy. One of my New Year's resolutions will be to get back on track with regular post to this blog.

Some of the things we've been working on:

• SEO updates for our sites, this includes dynamic and customizable text, title tags, Meta's(for MSN) and alt text tags based on page content.For example: Model X now has Model X specific text and tags which are generated on the fly and can be edited for customization. This allows for SEO optimization down to the vehicles details pages and some very, very good keyword density.
• We added Social Marketing via Facebook.com's new Socialads platform, you can find out more on this service here --> Dealerfire Social Marketing . MySpace is launching a similar service early next year and as soon as it launches we are going to add it as well.

We are almost finished with the our Google Base integration software. The final version should be ready literally any day now but you know how things tend to ssslllloooowwww down around the holiday's. This will automate the feed from dealers inventory to Google Base with XML.  When the backend to this is finished it will open up a whole new area of possibilities, the main one being the ability to put dealer inventory directly on the customer's PC desktop.

Thats a few of the things we've been working here, the rest is still top secret....Happy Holidays.

You Spend How Much on Newspaper ads?

Consider this.....80% of automotive consumers start their search for a new vehicle on the internet. Now check out this graph from a 2007 NADA data sheet, specifically the percentages for newspaper & Internet.

Talk about things that make you go hmmm....27.3% on newspaper and 11.5% on internet. Do 80% of new car buyers search for vehicle info and local dealers through which medium? Now consider this fact published by Media Life Magazine concerning research data from Jupiter Research...

    "It found that on average online users are now spending about 14 hours a week surfing the internet, which is equal to the amount of time that they spend watching TV.

By comparison, on average each week they spend one hour reading magazines, two hours perusing newspapers and five hours tuning into the radio. In fact, they spend more time online than they do with all those other media combined." (you can read the full article here)

The time has come for dealerships seriously reconsider their overall marketing budget is allocated, especially when it comes to newspapers. The ability of online media and advertising outlets to target users by location is outstanding. It's to the point that if a dealership has the vision and guts, Yahoo can put your ads on the front page of Yahoo!. That is your dealership or auto groups ad, right here, targeted to people from your area. I know this because I've spoken with Yahoo and seen some sample dealership ad programs. Now it's not cheap but then again neither is newspaper advertising....Stayed tuned to this blog for more info....

Pure Innovation...

More Google Trends

I returned to Google Labs Search Trends to run another auto dealer related set of terms. The terms were "used car" and "pre owned", I tried different versions of preowned with the same results. The idea to compare these two terms came from the Search Engine Marketing performance of these two terms. The results of the comparison on Google Trends show a disconnect between what dealers are selling and what consumers are searching for on the internet. This reflects the same kind of perform ace we see for impressions on these two terms in SEM. Consumers are still buying, no doubt, but what kind of boost to sales and customer satisfaction could be gained by getting everyone on the same page? Perhaps an ad campaign geared toward consumer education is in order.

GMinsidernews.com and Textual Advertising

Sometimes it seems like there are few auto manufacturer's that GM isn't part owner. It is curious though that at GMinsidernews.com the in-text ads by Vibrant Media advertise Hyundai's and Mitsubishi's. This is the forum after all where poster's use profile signatures like, "There is no word in Japanese for pickup truck" and "Proud Member of: The never bought a foreign car made in America club"....

In case you haven't heard: 600 HP Cadillac in '09

We know this information is a little old, the issue of Motortrend containing the article came a week ago, but we can't help ourselves. Flying in the face of green, GM will build a 600hp Caddy CTS-V in 2009. Given the trend to smaller cars and I4/Hybrid engines, this announcement reminds me of a line from "Mad Max".

   

"She's the last of the big block V8's!"

Internet Radio Advertising

Any dealers using internet radio advertising? One of guys in the office here listens to Radioio.com and by proxy I listen to it. So today I thought about the possibility of auto dealers using internet radio advertising and started checking it out. When it comes to internet advertising we get so caught up in the search engine frenzy but what about dealers using other forms of internet advertising? I checked Radioio.com and Live365.com's website for information to gather some details. Radioio's advertising page consisted of a contact form, I filled it out and hope to get some details soon. Live365's website had considerably more information. Scion actually has they're own "station" listed on the site, but a quick search did not turn up any other manufacturer stains. Live365 does offer geo-targeting for its advertisers, so a dealership could target listeners in its area. There is also genre targeting as in "regular" radio advertising. I filled out sales contact form and as soon as we at Dealerfire here from various sales teams we'll post some more information. Meanwhile leave us a comment with your thoughts on this....

New Link in Useful Websites TypeList

Added a link in Useful Websites TypeList to the Energy Star for Automotive Dealers program run by the U.S. governments EnergyStar Program. NADA members can participate in the Energy Stewardship Initiative (pdf) and NADA has also put together a guidebook here.

Best practices for marketing vehicles online

I was speaking with a dealer today, and they are completely new to the arena of online marketing. They were asking a lot of questions about best practices, and one of the tools I provided for their education was a presentation developed by Autotrader.com. If you're new to selling/promoting vehicles online, or even if you'd just like a brief refresher course, this tutorial should be well worth your while. It discusses everything from the importance of writing good descriptions to taking appropriate photos.