Happy Holidays from Jeff Kershner / DealerRefresh – see you in 2006!

The end result noted 92% of auto dealers are going to expand their Internet departments this up and coming year. Are dealers finally catching on?

A result from the survey; "Twenty-seven percent said they (dealers) followed-up leads for at least two weeks and 21 percent said they followed-up on sales leads indefinitely." Dealers still have a long way to go is this is true.

  Click here to read more of this survey.

Here’s a statistical chart borrowed from the latest J.D. Power New Autoshopper.com Survey. I thought it was interesting to see KBB to have such a lead on the other sites. I thought for sure Edmunds would be closer behind.

I’d be interested in seeing this broken down by demographic locations and what content is being viewed the most on KBB. Are shoppers visiting KBB more frequently for new vehicle information or for trade-in evaluations?

It’s interesting and educational to what sites our shoppers are visiting and where they are gathering their information. I recommend taking an hour or so and visit these sites to get a feel and understanding of what your customers are viewing. This can help overcome objections that your customer might gather from these websites. We all know these sites are sometimes full of opinions and not so accurate information.

I’m always searching dealer websites hoping to find something new with all the right elements. What I have found is an increasing number of dealers switching to ADP and ReyRey websites.

I’m really baffled by this. On average I find their homepages to be sloppy, navigation hard to follow, vehicle details and homepages lack call to actions and multi photos (sorry for the slap guys). From what I have heard around the block, they usually produce a below average conversion rate. (Some of their newer sites are an improvement but they are far and few between).

What’s happening here? One site that I visit often, Paul Miller, was a user of BZResults. BZ has used them in their “many” advertisements. I just checked their site only to find ADP has taken over (What happened Sean?). MileOne, another huge dealer group dropped their many providers for ReyRey.

ADP and ReyRey have to be getting aggressive with their sales pitches or throwing their websites in with their CRM software (that sounds more like it). Sorry for the slander guys, but with the power and money at your disposal, you could be at the forefront of dealer website design and technology.

Anyone have an idea or know first person what’s happening here? I’m curious.

Has anyone recently switch to a ReyRey or ADP website?

According to the latest study from J.D. Power and Associates, online product information is more influential than Price to New-Vehicle shoppers. That’s a shocker to me!!

They also show that New-Vehicle buyers using the Internet has again reached record levels.

Manufacturer Website visitation continues to increase among all new-vehicle buyers, while visits to independent sites such as edmunds.com, kbb.com and others have remained the same. On average, buyers say they rely most on manufacturer websites for product information and independent sites for price related information.

A Quote from the article "There is tremendous market share at stake in the battle to turn site visitors into buyers," said Galbraith. "Manufacturers will continue to move hundreds of millions of marketing dollars toward their online efforts and will become more efficient marketers in the process."

I think it’s funny, better yet, totally ignorant. You have Manufactures dumping millions into online advertising but yet your lucky if 90% of dealerships are spending over a thousand for online marketing. Something doesn’t jive!

WAKE UP People!! (GM’s, Sales and Marketing managers.)

I noticed something else as well..many dealers hire marketing firms for their TV and Print ads. BUT yet so many of these firms have no clue about online marketing. How many commercials do you see or hear that never mention the dealers website?

What’s your Opinion?

  Click here to read the full Article.

Ok..well, I just sent in my $99.99 for a Charter Membership to AAISP (Association of Automotive Internet Sales Professionals). I was thinking I would have received more then just an autoresponder, thanking me for signing up and to let me know that my information has been listed in the database.

I guess I was expecting a phone call from someone, maybe even from Mr. Lloyd Richardson himself. I have yet to receive anything from anyone from the AAISP.

I thought I would visit their website www.aaisponline.com just to be sure I was not missing something. I’m curious to why they had Cobalt design their website. I’m not too impressed with all the little scrolling windows? It’s really hard to find or read any information on the site. Sometimes you are redirected to another site that has some additional information. There I was checking the database of members only to find out that my name and information was not yet available.

I hate to say but I’m initially a little disappointed. Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions and I need to be more patient. I’ll be sure to post if and when I hear something from someone at the AAISP.

Has anyone else signed up? Leave some comments!!

I found this interesting article about blogs and googling on the Wards Auto website.  I’ve been on the Blog bandwagon for some time now. I’ve had a blog for my son since the day he was born (over 2 years) and I started this blog (DealerRefresh.com) as a way of getting my thoughts, opinions, and obstacles as a automotive internet sales manager and marketing director out there for others to read and comment about. I also run a Mercedes Blog that pushes traffic to our Mercedes dealer website. There is no doubt that Blogs can be a great asset to any dealers online marketing efforts.

The article also talks about SEO for your dealership website. Here is a quote from the article "SEO, also known as search engine marketing, is new to automotive marketing. Dealers using it are reporting good results but many Internet managers still are unaware of what it is. At a recent seminar, only two Internet managers out of 50 in attendance said they were familiar with it."

I feel as if it’s important for an Internet marketing director or sales manager to have some familiarity with search engine marketing. Dealers continue to spend THOUSANDS a week or month on traditional print media and yields to next to no results. I could only IMAGINE what I would be able to do with the same monthly budget spent on the average dealers prints ads and apply that amount to online marketing..talk about tremendous ROI !!

Read this Article :: Agog over Googling? Bitten by Blogs?.

I heard about this coming together several months ago and was dieing to see if it would actually materialize.

At first I wasn’t too sure…just another group of people trying to start up some “Certification” process that eventually fizzles. However, it seems they are going to make a go of this. They have a great board of directors and have begun advertising, accepting memberships. Their it first annual Conference has been scheduled for April of 2006.

The purpose of AAISP is to raise the level of respect and professionalism for Internet sales manager and professionals in the automotive dealer business. You know…I’m all for that. I personally have had to and continue to overcome countless obstacles in this field of the business.

Hopefully the AAISP will be able to achieve what they have set out to do.

In an interview of Lloyd Richardson – Founder of AAISP, Lloyd says “I would like to see an assignment in dealerships Internet departments, or their equivalent, universally recognized as an essential prerequisite in the career path to upper management.” – This will happen..it has to. As technology changes and our consumers change so will the evolution of automotive dealers. More so, the evolution of the dealer staff; Sales, Service and especially Management.

I believe I’m going to join the AAISP. It would be nice to attend the conference and to surround myself with people that “speak the same language”.

Submit your thoughts and comments with the "comments" link below.

"Carfax, the pioneer of the vehicle history report, and AutoTrader.com, the #1 online automotive classified advertising company in the U.S., today announced they are entering into a new partnership."

Now..if the consumer only knew how unreliable CarFax really is!!

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