That necessary alignment between retailer and consumer is the reason why most dealerships invest in in-house or 3rd-party sales training. While product brand and product knowledge will bring a dealer closer to a sale, close is a long way from closing.

Like sales training, dealer websites and dealer marketing are most effective when they reflect both the philosophy and deep retail experience possessed by the team within the store. That unique perspective provides the dealership its best opportunity to succeed in its specific market.

What we are talking about here is the ‘last mile’ of highway to the customer; the stretch along which the people closest to the ground often make – as you say – the most “nimble” decisions. Finding a way to facilitate bottom-up success, rather than constrain it, will help bring the OEM, dealer, and consumer back into alignment.

Being me a German and observing what is going on in the automotive online market in Europe (by the way: Absolutely nothing is going there!) in regards to website design and widget or gadgets we are here in the States should almost feel like a Kid coming to “Candy-Land”. I am very confident that our creative minds and practitioners of Internet Sales Professionals and the Marketing Departments of OEM’s and Digital Media vendors are in the early stages of learning this very young medium to an extent, where no dealership need to suffer the “Live of Blah”.

As long we are having these posts and forums of industry professional creative ideas won’t die.

I am looking into a bright future for us to come.

Nice commentary… I couldn’t agree more about ISM’s and Internet Directors joining ADM and participating! By the way, a shortcut URL is just type ADM.fm into your browser address bar and hit enter… voila, you’re there! Actually, any more I only have time for DealerRefresh, David Kain’s site and my passion for the ADM community. OK, OK, yeah, you see me on FB writing commentaries and stuff… This social/pro networking and UGC thing is addicting.

My hat is off to you, VJ.I wish I has 18,000 clients just liek you :’)

I am totally honest. The beginning in learning the new back-end tool and following accordingly to compliance rules with MINI USA (which is known as one of the strictest OEM’s out there when talking about Branding and Image) was indeed an ordeal.

However what I certainly appreciated was the fast and seamless support from Cobalt’s end, when questions or problems occurred in getting feeds set up and so on. The time saved on these operational tasks I used more in the things we are suppose to do: Selling Cars or make or sales teams stronger and being more involved in their daily tasks instead of fulfilling the job duties as a webmaster.

As we all agree OEM’s and dealers are spending tons of money for bringing their “message” in front of their potential customers. Seeing it from the OEM perspective I can certainly see also their frustration, when for example “Mr. Opportunity for Honda is knocking at your screen” and only 6 out of 18 Honda dealers in the South-East region are having the branding message “Hello Mr. Opportunity” on their website shown” after being mystery shopped by Honda Motors.

As long OEM’s are recognizing this kind of disconnect with their dealer’s Internet Departments, I guess it will be difficult to get OEM’s listening more to the Internet staff but instead articulating their frustration to the dealer principals and GM’s.

I believe that is typical evaluation for the current situation in the e-commerce world.

The “good ones” among us Internets Sales Director, e-Commerce Director, etc, who take pride in doing something different on their websites and bringing traffic through these messages into the dealership are getting punished, and the other ones, who may don’t have the capabilities, or the ideas, or the time, or….you get the point, don’t even see what is wrong with this picture.

Let’s be honest, with approximate 18,000 dealerships we should have around 15,000 Internet Sales manager or whatever the title is – How many of these Internet managers are actually showing up at Digital Dealer Conference or are a member and active visitor of the ADM or DealerRefresh websites?

Am I wrong when I assume it is below the 3,000 mark? I think it is time that every Internet Sales Professional needs to be joining the groups, blogs, communities and discussions to find out where help is needed.

My point is that the good and old Pareto principle of 80/20 is right on, once again. For us remaining 20% we just need to follow our instinct and do things differently than others do. We still have chances to be unique and to be engaging with other channels during this “digital revolution”.

I have sworn to myself “whatever decision is made by one of my OEM’s” I will deal with it most likely Hannibal The Great did, when he was on his way through the Alps and stated “We must either find a way or WE MAKE ONE”…

With this attitude in mind you’ll be able to set yourself apart from the competition, even so “your homepage and your competitor’s website” looks the same – also when they are not. Think about your content and the usable links you can include in your website. Set direct links your facebook page, to your Blog (which I have shown worked for me and now generated than 60,000 visitors in 12 months), get a life-link set up with your “dealerRater.com” onto your website pages. Yes even your staffing page, we have “simpsonized” or sales people with their portrait, which a) was approved by MINI and b) people actually ask on the phone when calling us if we really look like the cartoon character.

I know extreme measurements (almost like my thick German accent), which I’ve applied in my 8 dealerships, but believe me they have worked fantastically for us – even so we have an OEM “suggested” dealer website.

Although, vendors use different ways to calculate this number to show the “best results”. For example, many web vendors show lead to visitor ratio as the number of leads from total unique visitors. But they remove shoppers who have been to the site multiple times from that equation. So the lead to visitor ratio looks higher for competitive purposes, but it’s not accurate. Be-Backs are much more likely to send a lead so the lead to visitor ratio should include be-backs in total visitors. This will make the lead to visitor ratio appear smaller, but it is more accurate.

Another prime practice for web vendors is to show dealers a Site Index search on Google. This can be done by typing into Google “site:www.mydealerwebsite.com” this will show you how many times Google indexes your site in their listings. As long as your inventory is spiderable, then it’s indexable and each unit will show up in Google as an “index”. Now perform the same test put a space between the “:” and the website address. What happens? The number of “listings” shoots up to the 10s of thousands. This is completely irrelevant because what this does is show how many times a particular work within the URL shows up. For example if my dealership name is EZ Motors, and I do a listing search in Google putting the space between the “:” and the web address, it’s going to show me every site that has any combination of “EZ” and any site that has the word “motors”. So if a local company is named EZ Lawn Care, they will also show up in that number.

Back to the original conversation…OEMs should be the sniff tests for these dealers to “sniff” out the vendors who do use the best practices, the best tools but mainly the best information to help educate dealers on how to use all of these tools to their advantage. As OEMs and Vendors, our main goal should be to give the dealers everything we can to help them sell more cars. After all, where would any of us be if dealers don’t sell more cars? Mazda has done exactly this…the philosophy is to bring as many legitimate tools to the table that actually help dealers sell more cars. Having worked with a large domestic OEM on this same subject, I walked out because the OEM’s statement to me when I questioned their Internet strategy was… “All we are trying to do is sell people on the brand, it’s up to the dealers to sell the cars.” This is a perfect example of the OEM and Vendors not having their goals in line with the dealers. Mazda’s focus is on selling cars period, so they went our searching for the companies that are best at just that; the steak not just the sizzle to borrow an abused phrase.

I guess in short my point is to say that any OEM can have a successful Internet strategy with their dealers ONLY IF, the OEM and Vendor have a mutually aligned goal that is in direct relation to the goals of the dealers. Where every tool, every decision, and every new idea is critiqued with one guiding principle: does it help sell cars? In this new economy and new financial environment, if we are not ALL committed to selling more cars, the next recession will take even a larger toll

Thank you for your kind comments. The manufacturer programs that Dealer.com is involved in are always dealer-centric. Acura has been a fabulous client and truly understands that the dealer needs flexibility to get their individual branding out there.

Manufacturers are understanding that their tier 1 messaging and branding is often lost as the customer moves down the chain to tier 3 (dealership websites) where the transactions finally occur.

The Manufacturers that are moving towards corporate programs are not engaging in these strategies because they want to “control” the dealership. Most are creating solutions that allow the dealership tremendous flexibility to market their own brand while still maintaining the branding and national incentive programs the manufacturer has spent millions to achieve and run.

The cost savings to the dealer for manufacturer programs is also incredible. The economies of scale that dealers can enjoy when participating in a manufacturer program are many. The manufacturers out there now that are creating new programs have learned a tremendous amount from the flexibility failures and dealer base push-back in the past.

Dealerships are truly becoming “Internet Dealerships” and they have advanced to the point that manufacturers are understanding that they can be more effective with a manufacturer website program that includes dealer flexibility.

Also, the manufacturers understand that there are still dealerships out there that refuse to engage “all in” on the internet. They have an outdated website, are doing nothing to engage with consumers online… This doesn’t mean that the consumers in that market aren’t using internet right? How does the manufacturer ensure that someone shopping their brand in a market with a sub-par internet dealer get the message they are spending millions to put out there? A strong manufacturer website program is a great alternative for those OEMs to fill gaps in their marketplace.

All in all, if done correctly with a dealer focused approach, Manufacturer website programs can be a win-win for the OEM and for the dealer. We’re seeing incredible results with Chrysler, Subaru, and Acura.

My thoughts were recently changed by the Acura program launched with Dealer.Com. There’s plenty of choice as far as templates and editable areas so no two websites should ever look the same but it also has all the OEM info, specials etc. that a dealership would need. I also find the SEO work to be outstanding where Mercedes-Benz’ was non existent. I am completely happy, and surprised, with the way Acura and Dealer.Com handled this solution!