Wow, what a year!! No doubt a roller coaster ride for our industry. We hear about “the dealer down the road” closing their door just about every other day. While the strong dealers are surviving, too many dealers are just now figuring out that internet marketing needs to be the dominating percentage of their marketing mix.

What will your dealers Marketing Mix be for 2009?? (humm, sounds like a post to me)

Thanks to everyone that has help contribute this year to DealerRefresh. From guest posters, to commenter’s to our paid sponsors. The traffic and readership doubles each year, making this another record year for DR. While there have been several other industry related blogs and social networks come out of 2008, we keep doing what we do; finding the right balance of engaging articles while hopefully writing and commenting about what matters most to a dealers internet marketing and sales efforts.

2008 was exciting here for me as we said good bye to the old DealerRefresh design and hello an all new DealerRefresh 3.0.

So as I do every year, digging back into the archives, here are some of the top/engaging posts of 2008.

• To Micro-site or not to Micro-site? – Do Micro-sites really make sense!

• Five Rock-Star Ways to Brand Your Dealer’s Internet Sales Department – One of my personal favorites..somehow it became a little viral

• Here only the strong survive! - I’m still not sure who actually wrote that but that to Todd Smith for sharing it with DealerRefresh.

• Online Dealer Reviews – Are They Ready For Prime Time? – A guest posting by Amit Aggarwal about Online Consumer-generated Dealer Reviews

• How do I grow and evolve my Internet Sales Department? – A post in the Ask/Answer category

• The death of the Internet Director – Has the time come to promote the Internet Director into a much larger role?

• Car Dealers Embrace Online Video – Automotive Online Video Marketing Trends – Does Online Video Marketing Drive Sales?

• Hiring a Full-Time SEO and Internet Marketing Manager for your Dealership – Is it time for dealer to hire a full time inhouse SEO / Internet marketing manager?

• What Car Dealers Can Learn from Obama’s Campaign - 5 strategies dealers (any business) can lean from Obama’s presidential campaign.

• Web 2.0 Essential for Dealers to Survive Economic Crisis - These days, the most believable voices come from individuals, not what your dealers says about itself.

• Search Engine Marketing has reached Stage 3 – Search Engine Marketing has been around since the early 2000s and has quickly become a billion dollar advertising system for eCommerce…

• Don’t fall for this junk! – BZ Results gets exposed.

Alright..I’m going to draw the line here. Every year I do this I usually find myself spending hours reviewing some of the older articles and this post takes me way longer than anticipated.

It’s always exciting to go back and review all the posts from the previous year.  Some of the conversations are timeless and engaging.

I’m not one for predictions because I think anything can happen and shit changes too fast. However I believe 2009 will be a huge year for our industry. Hopefully the economic status will start to favor on the positive side.

Social sites and social networking will of course continue to grow and dealers will eventually have to find their spot within this growing segment. Marketing of the future will be PR. Video will be web “3.0″ and dealers will struggle to really grasp this medium.

Twitter will go mainstream; some will figure out how to use this medium to help build transparency.

Speaking of transparency (a word that has been beaten to death on 2008), dealers will be forced more than ever to become transparent. Dealer rating sites like DealerRater and Insiderpages will continue to be even more influential on consumer buying decisions. As this happens dealer reputation management will NEED TO BE at top of mind awareness for car dealers.

I’d like to say 2009 will be the year dealers really take hold and understand the importance of SEO but I’m not holding my breath.

THANKS TO EVERYONE for reading DealerRefresh and for your support and participation in 2008. We have a great community here and some of the best talent in the industry participating, reading and commenting. 2009 is going to be a fun ride! See you next year.

-Jeff

If there is anything 2008 taught me, it is that America’s memory has shortened even further than it was before.  It is amazing how fast people switched their car-buying habits based on gas prices going up and coming back down.  I can’t get over the speed at which truck sales died and came back.  Do people really believe we’ll never see an increase in gas prices again?  Did the environment take a back seat in our Hummers once again?

The housing market died and interest rates are at their lowest, but even with housing still in the toilet people flocked to new purchases enough to have every mortgage broker and Real Estate agent I know working through Christmas.  All indications show the housing market is going to continue to drop, so why invest now?

Never try to catch a falling knife.

Wall Street is a bloody mess, but I hear more and more people are throwing money at it thinking a big return is going to happen next week.

Wait for the knife to hit the floor first.

Don’t get me wrong, I am super happy to hear people are spending money – we need it to happen more!  I’m ecstatic some faith is being restored to the system.  I’m just intrigued by the month-to-month mentality we seem to have in this country now.  One of my degrees is in History and maybe it is that dorky academic side of me that finds this whole mess fascinating.

One thing these consumer trends are showing me is that we can either get away with more experimental advertising or have to get more long-term with our campaigns.  It is obvious people are not going to remember when you made a mistake.  Sure, a few folks will, but the masses won’t.  At the same time, maybe it means we need to start thinking about spreading our messages farther and longer.  Maybe it means we have to beat people over the head until they say stop.  Maybe we have to get extremely targeted…more-so than before.  Maybe we should concentrate on branding more than ever.  Maybe we should do more guerrilla marketing.

Whatever the marketing tactic is for 2009 it is going to be an interesting year to say the least.  No matter what, it will be tougher and require better strategizing than ever before.  I think it will be a good year for online and anything that is free to consumers (non-subscription based medias).

As most of you know, I am part of the third generation of Snyder’s at the Checkered Flag Automotive Group. My grandfather founded the company in 1964 after he himself was part of another third generation of Snyder’s at a department store we used to own in Downtown Norfolk since the late 1800′s (closed in 1969).  He is the wisest man I know. He was born before the Great Depression and only has the kind of memories one can have of that time when you’re not even a teenager. He has lived through a few recessions and has had to make some tough business decisions in all of them. He has been the top operator, in both businesses, most of his life. Many of our recent conversations have revolved around the current economic issues and just how unpredictable things are.

Checkered Flag has made some serious moves toward the lean side in efforts of survivability. My grandfather says it is too hard to envision what the next month may bring. The turmoil in the market, changing gas prices, mass lay-offs and consumer fears have turned any future strategizing on its heels.  He said he has never witnessed anything like this before.  This is a frightening statement from a man who is so grounded and experienced.

I know Virginia is only a small microcosm of what is happening across the United States. The VADA (Virginia Automobile Dealers Association) recently met with Southern Virginia dealers to discuss what they should do should a manufacturer declare bankruptcy. It was the first non-pep-rally meeting from the VADA. I heard it sent the Chrysler dealers out with a lot more gray hair.

I bring these examples up to let you know that we are also in the same boat a lot of you are in.

I just don’t know, and I don’t think anyone does.

I speak to a lot of people around the nation on a daily basis. Lately I’ve been receiving at least 2 emails a day from various Internet Managers, or vendors, asking how to get a dealer principle to not cut such and such product.  I have been asking that same question myself. So, I want to put it out in the open: Where do we draw the line on what to cut and what not to cut? Bring your comments!

If you’re worth your salt at all, you probably leaned your Internet budgets out before things in the market ever got bad – this is just something any good operator would constantly be working on.  I’m sure most of you have a threshold for a quarterly performance closing ratio that you hold all your lead vendors to.  You gauge your SEM spending based on the number of clicks you get based on past trends.  You look at your people based on their closing ratio and have numerous measuring tools for your own website.

I’d like to see this turn into a thread of comments that can help all of us find some direction in this crazy market.  Let’s talk about:

• Reporting – using it to show value before just saying “kill it”
• Statistics – where are you falling off?  Maybe we can help show why.
• Conversion – is a different consumer attitude killing your conversion ratios?
• Branding – what is a performance-based ad and where do you continue to brand?
• Consumerism – it has changed.  We are dealing with a totally different buyer now.
  
  Anything else you want to discuss

Season’s Greetings and Happy Holidays to everyone!

I had to post this. It’s makes you sick to watch, but you have to see it.

A D.C. family is saying there is a good reason why their vandalized car shouldn’t have been towed.

Could you imagine?