How does Cars.com really stack up against the competition after 10 years of business?

What makes Cars.com different?

How are dealers measuring the effectiveness of their advertising sources? (Is it still emotional, or are they allowing the numbers to speak?)

Does lead scoring have a place in the showroom, or is it a better fit for the larger entities?

Will consumer comments and reputation management for dealers move the needle AND will Cars.com jump into this arena?

When and will online video advertising find a home in the dealer universe?

Is it time that your dealer employs an in-house SEO expert/manager?

These were just SOME of the questions we discussed at this year’s Cars.com Online Automotive Leadership Summit.

I wasn’t sure how to format this post. Do I keep the topic and conversation all about Cars.com, or do I write about the actual discussions that took place? The truth is, talking about Cars.com would make up for a short post since there was little discussion about them and more about the car business.

Why would Cars.com spend the time and money to hear a bunch of Dealer Internet Consultants talk about the car business?

Because they’re crazy or crazy smart? Having 11 well-known Dealer Internet Consultants in one room for 2 days brings to the surface a lot of great information.

So who was there?

David Kain from Kain Automotive, Cory Mosley from Mosley Automotive, Thomas O’Connor from Precision Training, Todd Smith from activEngage, Jennifer Suzuki from eDealer Solutions, Paul Webb from Street Smart Training, Michael Tyman from Professional Success, Les Abrams from NADA, John Shumaker from The Cure Consulting Services, Bill Philips from Automotive Internet Management, Shaun Raines from Dealer Advisor AND myself; representing DealerRefresh and the Internet Manager for MileOne.

The day started out with Mitch Golub, president of Cars.com, briefing us on where Cars.com has been and where they are going. He talked about the principles and the driving culture behind Cars.com.

• Principle 1: The consumer is KING

• Principle 2: Advertisers are our Partners

Nothing seems more important to Mitch than having great people working with him, having a dedication to fun and enjoying what you do at your job. It doesn’t take but a few moments of meeting and hearing Mitch speak to know that he is a leader, a leader of his tribe. I sincerely mean that.

Alright, enough of the sappy shit. What did we get to see from Cars.com? What tricks are they pulling out of their hat in the near future?

• A New Home Page

• Mobile Websites product for dealers

• The allowance of dealer ratings by the consumer

• New Chat program for dealers to engage with consumers

Some Stats:

• Cars.com has grown 55% since 2006
• Leads to dealers are up 44%
• Average leads to dealers are up 14%
• Saturdays are the busiest day for Cars.com’s mobile website
• Did you know: Cars.com has an average of 20,000 dealers while their closest competition estimates at being at an average of 21,000?

Something that I have always found interesting about Cars.com is the fact that they realize their actual Cars.com website cannot be everything to everyone. They have completely immersed themselves into the social side by owning and managing sites like pickuptrucks.com, motherproof.com and several other online car enthusiasts’ forums. Getting to understand the consumer through these mediums, I think, gives Cars.com a nice advantage.

Enough about Cars.com, the exciting part of this trip was the fact that you had 11 well-known dealer consultants (not including myself) in one room with open discussions on several topics. Twelve pavement pounders that are in and out of dealers getting to work the front line while helping dealers become better with their Internet marketing efforts and sales processes.

One discussion that hit home with most was how dealers are measuring (or need to measure) the effectiveness of their ad sources. It’s still amazing how so many dealers are not tracking, not measuring or even keeping records and statistics on what is working. They continue to make a judgment call to cancel an advertising source based on “gut instinct” (could these be some of the same dealers that are closing their doors next few months).

What dealers should be tracking to determine the effectiveness of their ad source:

1. Closing Ratio
2. Cost Per Sale
3. ROI

Yes, there are others but they all eventually play into these 3 measurements.

Of course, online merchandising 101 is always a discussion. The same stuff that most readers of DealerRefresh have heard and have talked about a million times over; how do you properly merchandise your inventory online? Many times we take what we do on a daily basis for granted (especially when you’re in a major metropolitan area where you have more dealers dialed in than not) but the truth is, most dealers are still severely missing the mark on properly merchandising their inventory online.

If you merchandise your inventory like every vehicle is the only one of its kind, you’ll produce more leads. But how good are these leads? Is this customer ready to buy, and what are the chances that he/she will buy this vehicle? The topic of Lead Scoring seems to surface everywhere I go now. The opinions I find are split right down the middle. You’re either on board with it or against it. I think if you’re against it, it’s because you don’t understand it and you’re not looking at the large picture. I made the statement, “Chances are no one will be saying the words ‘lead scoring’ with-in the next 2 years.” The new term used will be “microtargeting” but of course will encompass lead scoring.

Dealer Videos and more Video

Where is video going and will it change the online landscape for car dealers? We already see Google giving video greater relevancy in the search results, but great video content is where the problem lays for dealers. How can dealers afford and obtain the resources for quality engaging online video? Yes, you have the sales people walking around a used car talking about the feature benefits but what comes after that? And will amateur footage always be cool? The truth is, many dealers are still not aware of this medium or are struggling with it. I don’t think we spent enough time on this subject. That might had been the same time Cory went on some tangent about something on something else. LOL. Sorry, Cory.

Dealer Rating websites and consumer ratings – another hot topic!

Consumers have been rating hotels and restaurants online for years now. Trip Advisor anyone? But all of a sudden we are seeing more and more consumers jumping online and sharing their experiences they are having at your dealer.

Will Cars.com step into this arena? The discussions were leading to an answer of YES. We were all a little taken back by this, knowing that this would not be an easy task and could cause a few dealers to bail out. I think it’s a HUGE move and one that could ultimately benefit Cars.com in a profound way IF handled correctly. I suggested starting with an Opt In for dealers that wanted to participate. Back to Principle 1: The consumer is KING.

Another question that was raised by Dan Perry (SEO manager for Cars.com): Is it time that your dealer employs an in-house SEO expert/manager? I don’t want to get too deep into this because Dan has since written an article for DealerRefresh to discuss this.

I’ll leave you with a few stats that most of us are or should be aware of:

• In 2008 $749M was spent in search alone in the automotive sector.
• By 2012 search spend is projected to be at $1.9B.
• Search is estimated to account for 56% of auto online ad spending by 2012.
• 23% of dealers are planning to adopt paid search in the next 12 months.
• 14% of dealers plan to adopt banner ads.
• 35% of dealers plan to adopt online video ads.

There were many other topics that we discussed but these are a few that stuck out and wanted write about. Plus this post/review is getting way too long.

Cars.com took great care of me during my stay in Chicago. The Hotel was top notch, the dinner at here and here were fantastic (the conversations at the dinner were even better). As usual, the hospitality from the whole Cars.com crew was the best. I don’t know where they find such nice people.

A HUGE THANKS for everyone at Cars.com for putting on this small and interment workshop. A special thanks to Ralph Ebersole for inviting me to be a part of this event.

Guest Posting by Karry Moore

Video online is the newest way to increase dealer exposure on the Internet.

What is online video and how can it benefit your dealership and help you sell more cars? Using video on the Internet is a great way to promote your dealership, your cars, as well as your own customer testimonials.   The Internet and more specifically Videos about your dealership and your own website has become your new showroom.  88% of all car buyers go online FIRST to research a vehicle and a dealer before they ever step on to a lot.  What does that mean to you?  You need have as many

opportunities to be in front of that customer, from the very top of the funnel down, as you can.  Not only that, you are advertising your dealership using the richest medium ever VIDEO, which incorporates Sight, Sound, and Motion.  Traditional web advertising only delivers Sight (static website).

Will uploading your videos on YouTube increase your exposure?

Absolutely!!!  YouTube has just surpassed Yahoo as the 2nd largest “search engine” behind its parent Google.  That’s right, I said search engine.  People are going to YouTube to research and watch videos about products and services in droves.  13 hours of video content is uploaded every minute to YouTube, 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube each month and growing.  Your dealership needs to be on YouTube.  But is YouTube the only video site that people search?  No, there are multiple video search sites already like; Carspace.com, AOL Video, Truveo, Jumpcut, MSN Video, Yahoo Video, and Metacafe with more popping up every day.  Why is this important?

In May of 2007 Google unveiled Universal Search, which put succinctly is the aggregation of all of the information that Google indexes; Web, Images, News, Maps, and VIDEO and returns a more media rich result.  This means that when consumers are searching for a particular vehicle, they may see a map of the closest dealership, or an image associated with the car, or even a video that extols the benefits of a particular vehicle or a customer testimonial about your dealership and the great experience they had buying from you.  What is the value of being on the first page of Google? What is the value of having multiple listings on the first page of the search engines?  With the launch of Universal Search it has become very important for your videos to be not only on YouTube but on as many of the other video search sites that now populate the web.  The bottom line is as follows:

• Uploading to YouTube alone only marginally increase your visibility. You need a combination of proper video optimization and wide scale controlled distribution and management of you video content to maximize your results within Universal Search

• The more places you are on the Internet the more Google indexes your videos and thus the more relevance Google gives to your video when a search is initiated by a user.

Utilizing this method will give you the opportunity to capture valuable territory on the organic listings of the first page of Google and other traditional search engines, and dominate your DMA.

Now that we have a clear understanding of Video online how do we use video to convert traffic into sales and calculate an ROI.  We all know that buying 3rd party leads can be expensive and can be difficult to close.  On average only 8% of 3rd party leads ever close with 16% closing when a lead is submitted to a dealer’s website directly.  By taking advantage of Universal Search you are putting your dealership in the position all of the lead aggregators are vying for, except now you have your dealership to have that lead come directly to you.
How can you track your success with VSEO?

Techniques a dealer can use to track the success of a campaign.

1. Watermark a campaign specific URL throughout your video that will have users going to a specific page.  For example:  www.mydealership.com/specials or www.mydealershipvideos.com
2. Watermark a unique 800# on the video and track the phone logs.
3. Build a page on your website dedicated to customer testimonials.  You can make the videos clickable (if you are hosting your own website) and drive traffic directly to a lead form.

Remember, television and radio advertisements, you can never be 100% accurate on who is actually hearing your message, or how you track that customer who heard that message back to your dealership and to a specific sale. But with Video SEO you have an active audience that has said they want information about your product and now you have the opportunity to deliver your message through video.  This is an example of Demand Driven Advertising in which a customer is actually looking for you, whereas Radio, TV, Print, and Billboard are passive advertising.

The biggest reason for doing any type of SEO or Video SEO is for the exposure you get for your dealership, BRANDING.  The Internet has become the proverbial Haystack and your website is the proverbial needle.  The true ROI associated with online video advertising is comparable to TV advertisements as videos in the search engines are still not clickable to a website.  We know that people watch TV and we know that videos online are being watched.  How that traffic arrives at the website or to the showroom is directly related to the amount of exposure a dealer has within their DMA.  The real ROI will be recouped by the dealers that take advantage of the technology and are there to ride the upswing when the market comes back. Dealers have to find ways to out think their competitors, do things different, take advantage of technology, and separate themselves if they are going to survive in a down market.

About the Author: Karry Moore is the President
for Car Buyers Engine

Sunday Sunday Sunday!! I Gotta get back into the Weekly Refresh posting groove.

Industry Related

• Cars.com study reveals that One-third of dealership visitors who used an independent website did not call or send an email before they came to the store. The study explored the connection between online research activity and offline shopping behavior

• AutoTrader.com Puts New Model Information All in One Place.

• An eMarketeer Article – Pitching Cars Online in Tough Times reports the auto industry had the steepest year-over-year drop in ad spending compared to vertical markets.

• The NHSTA FINALLY adds FREE vehicle recall alerts via e-mail, RSS and text. – It’s about time! Hummm how could you use this as a service for your customers?

• The Nielsen Company published an Online Automotive Insight – Total North American auto sales are down 32% from October 2007 to October 2008 with November’s sales forecast not showing much improvement.

Technology and Marketing

• Are Young Adults Really Brand-Resistant? Word of mouth is still the top channel amongst college students.

• Have a Flash intensive dealer website and want to use Google Analytics? Now you can!!

• YouTube is quietly testing out HD (high quality) video and in stereo. Something they deperalty need to support. Another reason that support my decision to buy the new Flip HD! (like I need a reason to purchase a gadget..yea right!)

• Keep your eyes open on Google as they slowly roll out their OpenSocial platform.

• Emarketer was on a roll this week. Read their latest report on Blogs and the Purchasing Decision.

Other Stuff

• Seth Godin’s take on what to do about Detriot

• Did everyone see the video of Sarah Palin at a Turkey farm as a Turkey was being slaughtering?

New car shoppers and car enthusiasts looking for the most up-to-date information on new models could … subscribe to every auto magazine, blog and enthusiast publication; attend every auto show; stalk the new-car manager at every dealership in town; and sign up for email alerts at each manufacturer site … Or, he or she could just visit AutoTrader.com’s New Model Showcase. ATLANTA, Nov. 21 /PRNewswire/

AutoTrader.com’s New Model Showcase will be a comprehensive, one-stop shop for car buyers and enthusiasts. From detailed information about new models just released to first looks at new models coming down the pike, buyers and enthusiasts now have one place to see pictures, get specifications and pricing, see inventory for sale and more.

“For car buyers and enthusiasts who are bombarded with thousands of marketing messages every day, we wanted to create the definitive resource for learning about and keeping track of the dozens of new models or major model redesigns that come out every year,” said AutoTrader.com President and CEO Chip Perry. “By harnessing the power and functionality of the web and the market insight of AutoTrader.com, the No. 1 on-line source connecting car buyers and sellers, we’ve created a tool that can really help simplify the process of learning about, finding, comparing and finally purchasing that perfect new car.”

Autos highlighted on the New Model Showcase are split into two categories, “Coming Soon” and “Now Available.” Each model in the “Now Available” showcase is represented by a photo thumbnail and the new model’s name and manufacturer. By clicking on the model name, visitors are brought to a detail page with additional photos, specifications, examples of available inventory and other information about the model.

In the “Coming Soon” section of the New Model Showcase, all new cars will be represented in text by model name, manufacturer and estimated release date. When more information or details are available, there will be a link to a vehicle detail where that information will be available. Vehicles will be represented by a thumbnail, in addition to model name and manufacturer, if they are sponsored by the manufacturer. Depending on information available, various details about the car will be listed.

Visitors to the showcase detail page can request additional information from the manufacturer, send an email about the model to a friend or family member, read reviews about the vehicle, view inventory of the model if it’s available or, for models not yet available, set an email alert to remind them when the model does hit showroom floors.

The New Model Showcase is updated regularly as manufacturers release new information and data about the vehicles.

The New Model Showcase will be located in AutoTrader.com’s “Research & Compare” area, which is one of the fastest growing parts of the site as auto buyers continue to flock to the internet to research both new and used cars.

“We’re excited to offer auto shoppers and enthusiasts this free resource for keeping up with all the exciting new models the auto industry offers up every year,” said Perry. “The internet has become the most important marketing avenue for people to research, compare and finally decide on which car they will buy. By bringing information about every new model and major model redesign into this New Model Showcase, we’ve literally put this information at people’s fingertips in a one-stop destination.”

About AutoTrader.com
AutoTrader.com, created in 1997 and headquartered in Atlanta, Ga., is the Internet’s leading auto classifieds marketplace and consumer information website. AutoTrader.com aggregates in a single location about 4 million new, used and certified pre-owned vehicle listings from 40,000 dealers and 250,000 private owners and the site attracts about 14 million unique monthly visitors. Through innovative merchandising functionality such as multiple photos, videos, detailed descriptions and comprehensive research and compare tools, AutoTrader.com unites new and used car buyers and sellers online to improving the way people research, locate and advertise vehicles. AutoTrader.com is a majority-owned subsidiary of Cox Enterprises. The venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is also an investor. For more information, please visit www.autotrader.com.

Gerald Hand has written this past waaayyyyy back right after the last Digital Dealer Conference. I was in the middle of transitioning over to the new site and his post fell through the cracks. Gerald, I know we have spoken a many times since then but thank you for your patience. I told you would would get it up for you!

This is Mr. Gerald Hand‘s review of the 5th Digital Dealer Conference.

-Jeff

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Well, it’s over. Another successful Digital Dealer Conference, the 5th one, which was held at the beautiful Gaylor Texan in Grapevine, Texas. Attendance was good, and the agenda, as usual, was chock full of talent. If I have one complaint, it is there were too many sessions going on at any given time because it was hard to choose which ones to attend at the risk of missing something critical in another presentation. Oh well, c’est la vie!

I attended sessions within the Internet Sales Track, choosing topics on UGC/SMS and newer technologies as well as some on the fundamentals of the business- how we got to where we are today. Here are some of my observations on what I saw and heard:

The keynote address with Cory Mosely was short and sweet, but alas, the people needing to hear it weren’t there! How so? You know, the people who still think Internet is overrated? It is more of a pain the in the you know what than a valid source of business. I know, I know, some people will never get it, but they would if they pull their heads out of the sand, oh, I digresss.

At any rate, Cory popped them right in the nose, lamenting how they have ignored a key segment of business by addressing the old school style and philosophies. He lauded the early adopters of technology, using the iPhone owners in the audience as an example. Take away message: “Don’t be afraid to be first! Get out there, do it, make it happen!”

Absolutely!

#206 Make your SEO, SEM, Web 2.0 VSEO and All online marketing efforts matter! Tim James

Tim did a good job of covering the different venues and how they play together (or not) depending on the situation. Topical, I was again looking for a little more substance, but based on the number of questions asked, the audience definitely received it well and go a lot out of it. Tim’s core was around the Reach, Frequency and Emotion as the 3 keys to an Inet customer.

Reach- getting your presence in front of more customers, getting you more exposure and more leads. The website is a media source, enrich it with video, content, etc. By putting the information there for the customer, you start building trust early on. Ensure OEM info is on your website for continuity and continued growth of trust. Provide virtual test drives, build a car, actual inventory, etc. And BRAND your website- get it out there in front of as many people as you can.

Frequency- get your vehicles up as quickly as possible. How many people search for a specific vehicle in your area? 100/day? 1000/day? It varies by auto, but if your car is not up for 3 days, well, do the math with how many potential customers you just lost on the ONE car!

Emotion- Make them WANT the car. Most people aren’t doing a description which makes customer HAVE to have YOUR car. And make it specific to the buyer. A van buyer is probably not terribly concerned about handling and horsepower any more than a Corvette buyer is concerned about cargo or seating capacity. Nearly everyone has 6-9 standard photos. Go a step further. Take 3, 6, 12, 15 more. Show what is unique about your car, even if it is damaged! Don’t hide anything. Build that trust.

When displaying your vehicles on inventory, make sure there are options (others like it) on the page as well. Notification when one comes in that fits my criteria- email me!

#213 Social Networking and Blogging, Ralph Paglia