That title might be slightly inaccurate, as it really should say DEATH to cable.

I cut cable TV out of my life about a year and a half ago.  It is all Internet for me.  Admittedly, it has driven my chicken wing and alcoholic beverage consumption up because I have to go to the local sports bar to catch a game, but I’m not complaining.

I’m not writing this article to talk about my experiences in relying solely on the Internet to deliver anything and everything to my TV – you can catch that here.  I’m writing about how the TV was my last connection to the 3 big boys of traditional local marketing (Newspaper, Radio, Television).

Yes, I agree with you, I am a bit ahead of the norm.

As more and more people shy away from our marketing comfort zones how are we to get our messages out going forward?  Sure, there is PPC, SEO, billboards, display ads and all that jank.  But what we should really be talking about is a revolution in marketing.  This is a revolution that is going to rip advertising to its core.  It isn’t about shifting mediums; it is about a complete and utter shift in delivery.  And guess who isn’t in control anymore:  you the marketer.

Today’s marketing is about Push.  Tomorrow’s marketing is about Pull.

Today we push our message to a broad group of people as far as we can reach.  It doesn’t matter what media it is, we are simply trying to get as many eyeballs on our message as possible.  That has been the basic way marketing has been practiced ever since we were able to purchase ads.

Consumers are shying away from this method.  Supply is plentiful, deals are only a few clicks away, and your loud voice is just an annoying interruption.

Tomorrow’s advertising will be more about public relations than what we call marketing.  It will be based on your deeds.  It will be based on your image; your brand, and it will be shaped by your customers.  We’re starting to see the power of consumer reviews.  For car dealers, the power of reviews is still in its infancy.  For restaurants, it is full bore.

But there is another piece we can’t see.  It is a piece that lives behind privacy and topples governments.  It is social media and it is mostly Facebook.  For the first time individuals can quickly and easily rely on a lot of their friends to help them make purchase decisions.  These aren’t just decisions about cars.  Your friends are asking for advice on virtually everything.  Think of some of the questions as practice for when they really start looking for suggestions that have massive impact on the way local businesses are viewed.  If you’re on Facebook, you’ve seen your friends ask for advice.  I see it every time I view my news feed.  People flock to the most influential; the one with the most “klout” on that particular topic.  This is the person you’re going to see marketers flock to as well.

It is just the beginning.  Be cognizant of it.  As marketers, understand this is going to reshape the messages we send.  Don’t be the next Middle Eastern dictator.

P.S.  Have you ever noticed how DealerRefresh has had some major impact on various automotive vendors?

Share the wealth!

Mobile Visits to your Dealership are on the Rise

This isn’t news. We know that more and more mobile devices are accessing the web on a daily basis. What might news to you, however, is the coming mobile tidal wave reports are predicting. Cisco’s spring 2011 study cites 2010 mobile data traffic nearly tripled (2.6x) for the third year in a row. A Tech Crunch article states mobile traffic is expected to rise 40x in the next 5 years. Fortune’s August 2010 article sums it up: “The numbers don’t lie: Mobile devices overtaking PCs.”

The coming tidal wave of mobile devices is turning into a tsunami. As such we need to evaluate how mobile users are engaging with our virtual storefront.

Your Mobile Visitors

Have you looked at your site’s mobile traffic? Here’s how to with a Google Analytics account:

1. Log in to your Analytics account.
2. Once logged in, you need to look on the left hand column for “Visitors.”
3. Under “Visitors,” click on “Mobile.”

You will then see statistics of people who viewed your site with mobile phones.

Chances are you’ll be surprised at the number. Even more interesting – look at how that number has increased over the last few months. DealerRefresh focused on this topic in May of 2010 – read the comments section from participating dealers.

Hosting a weekly video series “Mobile and the Dealer” allows me to chat with dealers around the nation. Dealers are consistently reporting 15-20%+ of total web traffic coming from mobile devices. This has increased ten fold for some over the last 12 months!

Bouncing or sticking?

Take a look at how mobile visitors are behaving on your site. Specifically look at bounce rates of mobile visitors and compare them to traditional visitors. If you’re like many, you’ll see sky-high bounce rates on your mobile visitors. In this podcast: Eric Hanson talks about mobile visitor bounce rates of vegas.com and how optimization strategies effectively lowered those stats.

Understanding Mobile Visitor Behavior

More and more reports are showing different behavior patterns for mobile visitors vs. desktop. This only makes sense, but we are now seeing data to back it up. What’s clear: giving a mobile user a desktop experience results in bounces and decreased conversion, if any.

Time on site metrics for traditional desktop users continues to be higher than metrics for mobile devices. Mobile visitors are on the go. They consume information many times in sections rather than a single sitting. The essence of being on the go doesn’t allow for prolonged spans of attention. An interesting study by ClickTale, puts some numbers to the speculation that mobile users don’t like to scroll. Long loading times, scrolling, zooming,: – all of these functions are turns off and contribute to bounces for a desktop formatted website.

Capturing Mobile Visitors

Top dealers are providing a mobile-optimized experience for their customer. These dealers are using mobile sites and mobile apps designed to capture the customer, providing first the information they are seeking, then spurring them to action. If you buy a mobile site or mobile app from a quality vendor serving the dealer market, you’ll see a lot of attention has been placed on channeling the customer through a specific set of processes.

Now that dealer apps can be downloaded right from the dealership website, dealers are using apps to create long-term relationship channels with the customer from pre-sale to post-sale service and incentives.

As mobile device traffic increases, make sure your marketing strategy doesn’t forget your mobile customer.

What is your dealerships mobile marketing strategy for the near future?

Share the wealth!

Recently I was in a plumbing supply store.  I needed a small, custom part for my kitchen faucet.  This is what greeted me:

That’s right.  A bunch of white guys in dress shirts and ties, answering phones at desks with paper catalogues, and wood panels on the walls.

Seriously.  I had to check my phone to make sure it wasn’t 1980.

Wait.  It gets better.  After being gruffly greeted at the counter, my helper spent 20 minutes asking 3 different guys before finding the reference to the part I needed.  Then he went in the back of the building to their warehouse only to return and declare that the part wasn’t in stock, had been discontinued, and couldn’t be acquired any longer.

Now that’s extreme, but it got me thinking:  Surely we’ve done a better job in the car business keeping up? In my days back in the late 90′s I remembered the end of the parts microfiche days.  Don’t know what that is?  Go on a quest to find out.  I always find the exploration of the technological or cultural references backwards to be insightful.

Think your dealership is up to date?  Would your customers say so?  Consider:

Share the wealth!

Last week’s announcement by Autotrader.com, combined with previous announcements by Cars.com and other

automotive website providers, shines the spotlight on live dealer live chat.

Many of us are asking questions about what this means for our dealerships, so I conducted an exclusive interview with Marc Hayes, the founder and head of products for Contact At Once! whose software powers the live chat features on both Autotrader.com and Cars.com.

Jeff: What are the implications of last week’s Autotrader.com announcement?

Marc: The broad implication is that, if live chat wasn’t already a mainstream technology in automotive retail, it is now. The momentum behind dealer chat has been building for several years with adoption by Cars.com, CarsDirect, and others. Now Autotrader.com has implemented chat. Dealers that don’t already have a chat strategy will need to develop one.

Jeff: Chat is a 15+ year old technology so, unlike other trends born of “new” technologies, such as social networking, why is chat just now trending in automotive retail?

Share the wealth!

The year is 2035. The scene, a ramshackle car dealership with cracked asphalt, a few dim fluorescent lighting fixtures swinging on thin chains and empty jars of Folgers crystals where the keurig machine once brewed single servings of cinnamon vanilla dark roast.

The cars are still perfectly aligned in rows, but no one is hovering over them, buffing out the handprints. If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of nervous breathing beneath the shuffle of paper. It must be the sales staff, but why are they all hidden, crouching behind desks and lingering in the lavatory?

Who has instilled such fear in a once fearless sales force?

Share the wealth!