DealerRefresh

Obstacles, Observations and Opinions of an Automotive Internet Sales & Marketing Manager

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Three Ways To Find Candidates With Quality – For Hire!

Most dealerships struggle to find quality applicants for their open positions. Merely acquiring resumes to review is not enough; your goal is to find a small number of motivated and qualified job applicants with whom you can invest time.

When attempting to fill an open position within your dealership, it is important to use your time and money efficiently. The best way to do that is to leverage your existing brand, to leverage your existing employee network, and to make strategic use of all the different online job boards.

three-ways-find-quality-employees-for-hire

Attracting the highest quality candidates can be difficult if you don’t know where to begin. Consider the following strategies: [Read more…]

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Down Market? Time for a Little “Old School” Automotive

Old School is New Again

While most of those who use the term “old school” in automotive retail are speaking disparagingly about dealerships, managers and salespeople relying on outdated marketing, sales techniques and processes; the truth is that the most successful dealers I work with today understand that sometimes “old school” is still the best way to move some metal.

In the current flat-to-down market, most dealers have no idea where to cut, where to spend, or where to focus their efforts. This, of course, is because most dealers just rode the wave for the past 6+ years, and only now are they faced with falling sales.

For these dealers, I recommend mixing in a little of what others consider “old school.” Here are four quick, old-school strategies I recommend you start with if you’re looking to gain share in a down market: [Read more…]

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VIDEO: Choosing a Chat Provider for Your Website – A Refresh Friday Webinar

The majority of dealer websites have some kind of chat provider, whether it’s in-house, fully managed, or automated. The reason for having chat may seem obvious – to help conversions.

Ninety-eight percent of visitors leave the dealership site without submitting any kind of information. If you can improve that tiny number, great, but it must be done correctly.

Improving the Customer Experience

[Read more…]

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For Car Dealers: All Search Is Local

All Search Is Local

SponsoredLet’s be clear: for car dealers, all search is local.

If you’re a dealer, it does no good for you to rank high nationally for obscure keywords if you’re not also ranking in the first spot for core searches like “ford dealer near me” or simply “ford dealer.” Moreover, because most searches are now conducted via a mobile device, search engines (like Google) can deliver hyper-local search results (because they know the user’s exact latitude and longitude).

Hint: This means that any search results reporting using just ZIP Code as a qualifier cannot possibly capture where you rank when someone is sitting somewhere in your PMA, but not smack dab in the middle of your ZIP Code. Couple this with the skewed results your SEO shows you when they include your city and state name in every keyword (like “ford dealer meridian idaho”) and you’ve got an inaccurate picture of the true strength of your SEO.

All Search Is Competitive

Now that we agree that all search is local, let’s also agree that all search is competitive.

Plainly stated: If you had no competitors, you wouldn’t need great Search Engine Optimization services, as there would be no one trying to outrank you for your core keywords. No competition? No worries about who shows up first in a Google search, right?

Competition is the only reason you need great SEO!

Unfortunately, if you’re a typical car dealer, your SEO is not great. In fact, it probably does a poor job at helping you drive in-market shoppers to your website. (Which, by the way, should be the only goal of your SEO.)

Great SEO Means Less Reliance On SEM

Let’s also agree that the better your SEO, the less you need to spend on expensive Search Engine Marketing (SEM), right?

Imagine for a moment that you had Perfect SEO. That is, you showed up in the first three spots organically for all the keywords important to your dealership. If this was the case, by how much could you reduce your PPC (Pay-Per-Click) budget? 50%? 80%? 100%?

It’s precisely because you do not have great SEO that you’re spending so much on PPC!

Oh, your SEO vendor is also your PPC/SEM vendor… Hmmm… No comment.

[Read more…]

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He Gets That From Your Side of the Family: The Myth of Attribution

When things go right, people hope to claim credit for it. When they go wrong, the blame must be pointed elsewhere.

This is how it has gone with children and sales. When your child gets straight A’s, they get it from the mom. When they are cuter than cute, well that’s good genes on mom’s side. When the child is funny and popular and gifted, thank the mom’s side of the family. When the child smarts off or gets in trouble, it’s dad’s fault. Somehow. And moms will let dads know. “He gets that from your side of the family.”

This same dichotomy exists in sales. When sales volume is up, the team must have worked harder to make it happen. Our marketing did what it was supposed to do this month. Lead providers, digital solutions, and direct mail partners rejoice. It was single-handedly each of them that are responsible for the uptick. Right? Wrong. [Read more…]

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Amazon is Coming. How to Stay Ahead With Outstanding Marketing Tools

If you’re like many of us in automotive, your inbox is full of forwarded articles like this one from the Wall Street Journal proclaiming the demise of car ownership. This threatening disruption is causing much buzz – and much speculation. But although we can’t predict the future, one thing’s for sure: we need to step up to the challenge of innovating for whatever tomorrow brings.

The auto industry has always been a space for explosive growth. Transportation is a core human need that spurs enormous business opportunities – and also leads to game-changing innovation. Think about it from a historical perspective: for 15,000 years, humans have been trying to get from point A to point B faster and more safely.

In the ancient world, this led to serious innovations involving horses and camels, driving enormous economic opportunity: saddles, stirrups, feed supply, roads, and new commerce all emerged as a result. (Who were those Tier 3 camel transport suppliers?) These powerful new transportation models granted ancient kingdoms military superiority and economic superpowers.

With all this potential, it’s no surprise that the most innovative corporations of our time – Google, Apple, Amazon – are turning an eye to transportation. And it’s not just autonomous driving and connected cars that are catching the attention of retail giants – it’s establishing sales models that put them into direct competition with today’s dealership, powered by some of the most sophisticated marketing tools available.

Competing with such giants is a daunting prospect – but if we’re being honest, inevitable. Dealers facing the current landscape will find themselves going head to head with great companies to capture the attention of tomorrow’s car shopper. To be successful, they need access to the tools that enable the likes of Amazon to be so successful. [Read more…]

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The Enormous Untapped Potential of Live Chat for Service – Part 2

Your service department is integral to the success of your dealership. Service brings in vital revenue and often accounts for the majority of a dealership’s profit. Yet, it’s highly likely that your service department’s manpower and resources are already stretched to the max, limiting the number of service leads and appointments your dealership is able to generate.Scheduling Service visit Dealership

In Part 1 of this article, I explained how live chat benefits your service customers. But, have you thought about what automotive live chat can do for your service department’s processes? [Read more…]

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The Enormous Untapped Potential of Live Chat for Service – Part I

New vehicle sales in the US came in below Spring’s market expectations, evidence the industry is starting to experience the decline analysts have been expecting despite new vehicle incentives. As new car sales flatten, the service drive will play a critical part in dealership revenue. Not that it hasn’t in the past:

Total profit-for-average-US-dealers-light-vehicles

According to recent NADA data, fixed operations account for nearly 50% of dealership revenue. But for some reason, dealers still don’t give the service drive any digital love. In fact, a recent study by the National Automobile Dealers Association indicated that dealers are only leveraging 3% of their digital marketing to optimize service drive performance. Fortunately, you probably already have the tools available to vastly improve your service department’s digital presence and your bottom line. One of those powerful tools is live chat.

Before I get into the ways your service drive can utilize chat to boost ROI (I’ll save those tips for another article), let’s go into WHY chat is the untapped potential of your digital fixed ops and, specifically, service. [Read more…]

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What Traditional Dealerships Can Learn from Carvana

If you’ve been in the car industry, you’ve probably heard of the new dealership on the block, Carvana. They are known for their car vending machines. That’s right, vending machines.

Carvana’s mission is “to change the way people buy cars by providing a completely painless and transparent car buying experience online, eliminating the need to take the intimidating trip to the dealership.”

Their aim is to provide exceptional service and cut the dealership costs, saving customers $1,500 or more on their vehicle purchase.

Carvana’s business model is quite intriguing, but the real reasons why traditional dealerships can’t compete with Carvana are different than what you may think.

[Read more…]

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Can a $100 Chatbot Really Replace 2 BDC Agents?

 

SponsoredCan a $100 Chatbot Really Replace 2 BDC Agents?

Before I answer the question posed in the title, let’s agree on a few things:

  1. Facebook is not going away;
  2. Most of your customers are already there;
  3. Your kitten pictures and inventory vomits aren’t being read; and
  4. Facebook Ads work, but you need to start communicating with these prospects!

Because you have a dealership Facebook page, you already have Facebook Messenger – that’s a given. Every Facebook account has access to Messenger and everyone on Facebook can and many of them want to communicate with car dealers and other businesses via this application.

You do understand that, right? Many people on Facebook (and on your website) want to communicate with you via Messenger!

But I Already Have Online Chat & Text, Why Do I Need Messenger?

Your online chat is fine; and as I’ve written before, online chat is no longer an option on your dealership website. But, with all of chat’s pluses, it’s not Facebook Messenger. Unlike online chat, which allows the prospect to remain virtually anonymous, Facebook Messenger gives your team instant access to all of the prospect’s publicly available Facebook information as soon as they start communicating with you!

Yes, this means you get ALL OF THE PROSPECT’S PUBLIC INFORMATION AS SOON AS THEY INITIATE A MESSENGER CHAT!

With Facebook Messenger, you can actually answer your prospects’ questions and begin to build rapport, since you don’t have to get personal with them in order to create a lead in the CRM. Oh, and with the right partner, your chatbot actually does nearly all this work.

Okay, But Can a $100 Chatbot Really Replace Two BDC Agents?

Sort of…

The truth is that while a $100 Car Dealer Chatbot can do the work of an infinite number of BDC Agents, for some dealers this means they might actually need to add BDC Agents.

This happens because their Facebook Ads, Facebook Posts and even their own websites begin generating hundreds of new chats each week via Messenger with each one of these chats turning into a real sales lead! (Because none of these Messenger chats is EVER anonymous!)

Chatbots can not only answer your Facebook Messenger communications instantly and correctly, but they can do so 24/7/365. Chatbots never get sick, they’re never late to work, and they can handle a nearly infinite number of conversations simultaneously.

Oh, and chatbots cost you a whole lot less than a single BDC agent. (Great car dealer chatbots can cost as little as $100 per month for round-the-clock coverage.)

Wait, What’s a Chabot?

A chatbot is like an answering service that works with virtually any major provider of chat-like applications and/or products (Facebook Messenger is the most famous of these). Chatbots are most often driven by rules and scripts, though sometimes can be powered by artificial intelligence.

Just like an answering service, the best car dealer chatbots act like an extension of your team. The only difference is that the chatbots do all or most of the work that a human would normally do when communicating with a prospect or customer.

In fact, great chatbots are basically decision trees that can answer customer questions faster and with more accuracy than an expensive salesperson or live BDC agent. When necessary, based on the rules created, chatbots can even “warm transfer” a customer to a live agent who can assist with anything requiring human intervention.

Car dealer chatbots provide instant two-way communications between your dealership and your customers. They help you build trust while maintaining a single communication thread that includes the lifetime history of messages. Facebook Messenger chats become sales leads your team can follow up with, because you’ll immediately have access to your customer’s Facebook public profile information.

Moreover, with the right Chatbot partner, you’ll even answer Messenger chats on your own dealer website!

Okay, I’m Ready to Learn More, Now What?

Just a few steps and you’ll be going strong with the one chatbot partner I recommend in automotive; one with no contract and no commitment:

  1. Start with this link.
  2. Watch the quick 88-second video on that page.
  3. Click “SIGN UP” on the link to the right of the video (also on the bottom of the page).

That’s it. They do all the work; but understand that at $100 per month and no contracts, this is not a “high-touch product” many dealers are used to overpaying for. In other words, this does not require a 5-hour meeting followed by seven demos and a final okay from your group’s CEO.

Be ready to buy and start generating real leads really freaking fast!

Good selling!