If 80%+ of your consumers are online, how do you attract them to you?

With what message?

Where do you place it?

If they respond to it, what do you engage them with? Your home page? An email where they can “Send an email?”

Would that be what you wanted if you were an online car shopper?

These are just suggestions, but how about using a message of “A 100% online car shopping experience for your next ?”

Where would you place that?

Where would you land them if they clicked on the banner ad?

Could you devise a blogging strategy, search engine marketing campaigns and video channels with a similar call to action?

By all means, let them send you an email any time they want.

Consider letting them shop your vehicles online (price, credit, interest rates, taxes, payments) in such a way that they have to tell you who they are in order to do so.

The Internet is a new medium. What is your message?

Internet consumers don’t have to do anything. How do you devise your messages and site interactivity so that they want to do what you want them to do?

If 98% of your visitors leave without engaging with you / telling you who they are, then the experience you have run them through has not met their needs and they’ve left rather than having to deal with you.

This isn’t a rant and it isn’t a commercial… just sharing some insight into the psychology behind the thinking that went in to the shopping cart and conversations we have with dealers about using it effectively. The shopping cart is only a tool in the greater context of how dealers advertise and then how consumers shop and buy from you.

To me one of the great game-changers beginning to happen to automotive is the shift away from physical premise to the virtual. Away from digital inquiries (leads) to being able to really shop online. From a hostage-taking approach over info such as price, credit, payments, to letting consumers realize for themselves that they want to speak to dealership staff (can you confirm my credit, firm up my trade valuation, do a bit better on interest rate, etc.)

What do you think?

As a former ISM from the San Francisco bay area, I can tell you that I’ve seen a lot of dealerships ignore the wealth of opportunity that the internet provides.

Andrew and his dealership have the right idea spending most of their ad budget online.

What I was most intrigued about was Alex’s reference to “spammy email.”

Have any of your gone online and acted like an online shopper would? By that, I mean you go to one of the 3rd party sites to configure a car and contact dealers thru email?

I have – and boy, what a nightmare!

Try getting quotes from about 4-6 dealers and your email box is quickly filled to the brim with every gimmicky and poorly executed marketing pitch there is.

Dealers respond to often and 90% of the time, I didn’t even get a hard price quote.

My opinion is to market to customers where they spend most of their time: social networks.

I know I’m in this market and am not pimping our biz, but this topic was too tempting.

By the way, Jeff, did you go to NADA 09? I’ve been here everyday looking for your review!

We have also been aggressively pushing our dealerrater.com reviews to help our online reputation, and we are starting to hear more and more consumers I chose your dealership because of what was said on dealerrater.

Another thing that worked for us was market based pricing on both new and used vehicles across all advertising mediums. Let me say this, our front end grosses were not huge, but we put 86 very satisfied units into operation and spent less than 20k in advertising. With a reduced marketing budget and bonus structure for salespeople, the business was able to be profitable at this reduced per unit average.

New vehicles have been very difficult to push, as the consumer is really seeing the value in like new pre-owned vehicles (2008′s with low miles) I highly suggest reading Dale Pollak’s book Velocity for more information on market based pricing in the pre-owned vehicle market.

There are too many technology tools.

Let me repeat… There are too many technology tools.

I recently led a sales meeting with the focus on how to improve sales in this “challenged” market. The prompting came from the dealer principal and several of his sales people asking “how can we win the customer of today?”

My response… I had the oldest sales person in the dealership speak. And by old, I mean chronologically and seniority.

What did he focus on?

Process, process, process.

This guy understands the majority of his customers shop on the internet first. He understands the best methods of communicating with his customers. And his tailors his messages for his customers. Those who like text messages, he sends them text messages. Those who like emails, he send them emails. Those who prefer hand written notes and cards, heaven forbidden, he uses his hand, writes the note (or card), places a stamp on an envelope and deposits the note in the mail.

I think we use technology as a crutch in some cases and are looking for the magic pill to attract customers. Paraphrasing one of my mentors, we have become crippled by technology. We look to technology to bring in the customers. All technology should do is aid us in servicing our customers (a big difference). If I want to get a six pack, I cannot take a pill and have a six pack when I wake up in the morning. I have to work at it. Sales is the same way. I need to work. Use all of the tools available, in their proper manner and in your process and the sales will come despite the incentives. Work your customers, maintain a relationship with your customers and they will return.

First of all, the question needs to be: “How do we market now? Advertising is just the tip of the iceberg and only a part of the process.

Marketing to today’s generation and future generations must tap into their addiction to instant gratification, as Dan Morgan suggested, but it’s got to be done in a unique and memorable way. Dan is right on target when he says, “I think it comes down to things that we are already using…. lots of thinking outside of the box and using other avenues in order to market them.”

I believe consumers will continue to respond to the familiar incentives, but they need to be PUSHED in a way that feeds their addiction to instant gratification.

How? Start with your lot and connect it to the Internet! Take your incentives and display them so the consumer can use the incentive to get information in a matter of seconds. Bingo! You’ve done it! Make 4000Rebate into 4000Rebate.com and you’ve taken a familiar, secure, visual medium and tied it straight to your inventory in a creative and unique way. Now that’s marketing!

If you’re into statistics, 67% of consumers are already aware of your dealership just from driving by; that’s what Cobalt told us in their 2007 Dealer eBusiness Performance Study. That’s almost double the amount of awareness to your dealership that search engines provide (36%); quoted in the same study. So what are you doing with your lot that is creative? Can you bring consumers to your inventory through a simple, affordable, visual display?

I believe every base has to be covered in order to succeed in today’s economic climate. Combine your incentives, visual displays, and internet advertising to complete your marketing process. Don’t forget why your dealership is located in a prime drive-by location instead some back-alley warehouse. Use every resource you have! The incentive is the PUSH, your dealership is the PULL.

Since the beginning of time we have exercised traditional “push” marketing. Tapping into the effectiveness of “pull” marketing is future of marketing. No matter how you spin it, or reword it..it basically comes down to PR/Public Relations. Building that true relationship with the customer from beginning to NO end.

What is your customer saying?
How do they want to be “sold” to?

The unfortunate part, this is much harder than “push” marketing. It takes effort to build a relationship with each and every one of your customers. Not only does it take effort but it also takes technology! And this technology truly suffers in our industry (as it does in many industries im sure).

Our industry is plagued with antiquated software or software that doesn’t and never will speak to each other in the way they we need it to.

Moving past the lack of technology; we need to figure out how to build that relationship using the technology we have. But even before that..how to get you get the opportunity to earn their business first (without the “push” incentive saying we are the LOWEST price in town”)?

Any dealer can jump on facebook, or add twitter to their dealer blog and use these mediums effectively (to some point), but again, this is WORK and work that is hard to measure an immediate ROI on (something dealers seem to want), not to mention you need to have the right person on the dealer level that gets it.

Does all this mean that incentive based “push” advertising is dead? NO…I don’t think so. It just means that we need to know “when” to push the exact message to the right person at the right time. Again, something that only technology can do on scaled amounts.

My thoughts on the future….
I think it comes down to things that we are already using..lots of thinking outside of the box and using other avenues in order to market to them. All of these 3rd parties definitely help with spreading the name around. But alot of the younger generation as we move along responds to instant gratification more and more (myself included since I’m about to turn 27). Prompt replies to inquiries are huge. It’s incredible how many internet dept leads were lost to the non-Internet sales folks here b/c of slow response times to inquiries. Luckily it was a slap to the face of the ISM’s and really helped to show the importance of the quick phone call and email response.

I’m also the Scion Champion here and I really get a kick out of Scion’s abstract marketing. And that it’s not all about “selling a car”. It’s about an image and it’s all about the customer.