AutoHook Now includes OEM Real-time Rebates and Incentive Offers

W2S Incentive confirmation display

We keep on moving! We don't stop!

Yet another feature has been added to our AutoHook suite of products. This time, we have coordinated with AIS Rebates to bring our Dealers and Partners realtime OEM Rebates and Incentive offers within our Web2Show and Lead2Show products.

The inclusion of incentive and rebate information will help our dealers build transparency, while presenting decision-influencing information in front of the new car buyer at critical moments of decision making.

AIS Rebates in Confirmation Email

For more information on this new feature - contact us for a complete demo and receive a $25 Gift Card .

Read the full Press Release, see below...

ANN ARBOR, MI- January 30, 2014- HookLogic, a leader in automotive incentives for dealers nationwide, announced today that it has partnered with AIS Rebates, a product of vAuto, to integrate rebates and incentives directly into HookLogic’s AutoHook suite of products .

This new feature combines the latest national and regional Manufacture incentives and rebates into the confirmation form and email - integral parts of the AutoHook Web2Show and Lead2Show - and is an industry exclusive. This solution takes into account all consumer-facing programs offered by the Manufacturers and automatically includes bonus cash and other special programs at the zip code level.

According to Greg Kelly, Business Development Director for AIS Rebates, “incentives and rebates have come to be “expected” by consumers. Manufacturers spend billions annually in rebates and other special offers to attract consumers to purchase their brands. Dealers should consider the various creative channels to communicate these offers to prospects who are considering their products.” Consumers benefit by knowing in real time which rebates and/or incentives are available for their specific vehicles of interest.

HookLogic dealers can now provide a feature that not only continues to build transparency with the customer but, more importantly, keeps valuable, decision-influencing information in front of the new car buyer at critical moments of decision making.

“Throughout the testing period of including incentives and rebates into our suite of products, HookLogic recorded a 17% increase in showroom activity,” noted David Metter, president of HookLogic Automotive.

Smart integration of current incentive and rebate information into Web2Show and Lead2Show showed to be an essential feature. The inclusion of AIS Rebates allows HookLogic’s AutoHook the ability to present incentive and rebate information to consumers at a very influential time of the vehicle shopping process.

About HookLogic:

HookLogic, the global leader in commerce search advertising, enables marketers to influence in-market shoppers and Win the Moment of Truth™ on the world’s leading retail, travel, and automotive sites. Network partners and advertisers including Expedia, Target, Dealer.com, Chrysler, Intel, Kia, Newegg and Rakuten Shopping use HookLogic to increase sales and monetize site traffic with industry-leading solutions such as Retail Search Exchange, TravelAds, and AutoHook. Backed by Bain Capital Ventures and Intel Capital, HookLogic is headquartered in New York City, with offices in Ann Arbor, Atlanta, and London, UK.

About AIS Rebates:

AIS Rebates is a product of vAuto, Inc. which is a subsidiary of AutoTrader Group, which includes AutoTrader.com®, Kelley Blue Book®, vAuto®, HomeNet Automotive®, AIS RebatesTM ,Genius Labs® and HaystakTM. AutoTrader Group is a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises. For more information, please visit www.autotradergroup.com. For more information about AIS Rebates please visit www.aisrebates.com

Toyota Dealership Results Utilizing HookLogic

toyota HookLogic performance report header

A few days ago I posted the Performance and Purchase Analysis info-graphic for Chrysler Dodge Jeep RAM dealerships utilizing HookLogic’s AutoHook. Just prior to that, we released the Performance and Purchase Analysis info-graphic for dealerships on the Dealer.com platform and for dealerships utilizing AutoUSA ShowPro (a similar product we built for AutoUSA).

To help bring more transparency to our reporting, I would like to point out that we have partnered with Polk to help acquire and validate the lead close rates for our customers.  This is provided by matching all leads to Polk’s census of vehicle registrations for actual close rates of all new and used vehicles purchased by the consumer submitting the lead.

Here’s the Performance and Purchase Analysis info-graphic for…

Toyota

toyota dealership performance infographic

Starting from the top, we have “Leads Generated“. During the months of  January 2013 – June 2013 HookLogic’s AutoHook generated 15,536 for 65 Toyota dealerships.

Of the 15,536 incentivized vehicle shoppers, 5,197 customers walked into a Toyota dealership that utilized HookLogic’s suite of products, during this time frame to test drive a vehicle after engaging with either Web2Show or Lead2Show.

Of the total amount of leads submitted or engaged with, 1 in 3 showed up at the dealership for a 33% Lead to Show Rate. Considering the average national lead to show rate is around 17%, this is GREAT NEWS for Toyota dealers.

Moving onto the SALES Data.

Of the 5,187 that were incentivized and walked into this one of these 65 Toyota dealers for a test drive, 48% purchased a Vehicle.  

This group of Toyota dealers are closing incentivized showroom ups at 48%, with an overall lead closing ratio of 16%.

Whether it’s a lead originating from your dealer’s website, 3rd Party Lead, Online Chat lead or HookLogic Web2Show – By getting more in-market shoppers to Show Up at your dealership, you get more opportunities to make a sale.

*If you're a Toyota Dealership, or any dealership for that matter and would like to increase your show rate -  contact us for a complete demo of our AutoHook Suite of Products and receive a $25 Gift Card .

Chrysler Dealer Results Utilizing HookLogic

chrysler_dealer_performance_header

As we continue to receive amazing feedback regarding our results and the latest Performance and Purchase Analysis info-graphics, we have had quite a bit of conversation internally here at the HookLogic offices. What additional data could we expand upon?

Partnering with Polk to help acquire and validate the lead to close rates, so far, we've put together Performance and Purchase Analysis Report info-graphics for dealers on the Dealer.com platform and for dealers using AutoUSA ShowPro (a product we build for AutoUSA.) But what is next?

Next up – Dealership performance who utilize our Web2Show and Lead2Show products organized by OEM.

The first OEM we’re going to analyze is Chrysler Dodge Jeep RAM.

The results in the Chrysler Dealers Purchase Analysis Report below will have Chrysler dealers not utilizing HookLogic's AutoHook, wondering why not.

Side Note: Remember, HookLogic's AutoHook is currently Chrysler Digital Certified.

Let’s break this down from top to bottom..

chrysler performance infographic

Starting from the top, you see “Leads Generated“. During the months of  January 2013 – June 2013HookLogic generated 12,317 leads for 68 Chrysler dealerships.

Of the 12,317 incentivized vehicle shoppers, 3,594 customers walked into a Chrysler dealership, that utilized HookLogic’s suite of products during this time frame to test drive a vehicle after engaging with either Wed2Show or Lead2Show.

Of the total amount of leads submitted or engaged with, 1 in 3 showed up at the dealership for a 30% Lead to Show Rate. Considering the average national lead to show rate is around 17%, this is GREAT NEWS for these Chrysler dealers.

Moving onto SALES Data.

Of the 3,594 that were incentivized and walked into this group of 68 dealers for a test drive, a stellar 67% purchased a Vehicle.  

This group of Chrysler dealers are closing incentivized showroom ups at 67% with an overall lead closing ratio of 20%.

Most dealers do a good job at measuring their lead closing ratios and closing the customer once they’re in the showroom. What dealers miss out on measuring, is their Lead to Show rate.

Whether it’s a lead originating from your dealer’s website, 3rd Party Lead, Online Chat lead or HookLogic Web2Show – By getting more in-market shoppers to Show Up at your dealership, you get more opportunities to make a sale.

*If you're a Chrysler Dealership and would like to increase your Lead to Show rate,  here is a special Chrysler Certified sign-up form.

**If you're not a Chrysler dealership and would also like to improve your Lead to Show contact us for a complete demo of our AutoHook Suite of Products and receive a $25 Gift Card.

Lead to Show - A Consumer to Dealer Perspective

A customer bought a vehicle, but NOT from the dealer they had intended to buy from.

Find out why...

Receiving a (dealer) customer testimonial is GREAT! Just like the one below from Justin Brun from Acton Toyota.

Justin Brun, E-Commerce Manager for Acton Toyota has been a long time user of HookLogic Autohook's suite of products. Justin was looking for a unique way to incentivize their customers to not only increase their showroom traffic but to help drive and retain customer loyalty within their Service Department. Without giving up the secret sauce, Justin has utilized HookLogic's services to help Acton Toyota accomplish exactly what they set out to do.

A testimonial like this is not only motivating but reconfirms we're doing things right while offering our dealers and partner clients great customer service.

We have proven over and over with our new HookLogic Performance Reporting that Incentivizing the right person at the right time to take action, has massive persuasion and is very effective at getting more in-market buyers into your showroom.

As great as it is to receive a testimonial like Justin's, especially from someone of his expertise, there are times when we (dealers) like to hear or read something from the side of the consumer that's being influenced to take action. It's not every day we're able to read a testimonial like this.

Well, here we go. We stumbled across this testimonial from a customer on a dealer review website (dealerrater.com).

customer testimonial dealerrater

This particular customer, after researching online, had already found a vehicle they were very interested in. From the sound of it, they had mostly made up their mind to purchase this researched vehicle. Instead of the consumer going straight to the dealership that had this researched vehicle, they stopped by another dealership first.

Why? Because during their online vehicle shopping they had visited the Rusty Eck Ford dealership website. And while searching through their online inventory, they were incentivized to visit Rusty Eck Ford for a test drive. That they did.

The result...

"Was just planning on stopping by to take a quick test drive & collect my $25 gift (had already picked out a nice CPO car we wanted to buy at another dealership). But Nick was able to show a car that had just come in on a trade-in that was perfect and almost $1,000 less than the one we had set on..."

Todays market is much different than what it was even just a few years ago. Consumers have OPTIONS! Consumers are NOT as loyal to brands and dealers as they once were.

According to Google's latest report - Digital Drives Auto Shopping, cross-shopping amongst brands and segments is standard behavior and auto-shoppers are doing more research than ever before -  with more than 20 research points on average.

24 Points of Research

Dealers spend a LOT of money trying to cover as many of those 20+ research points as possible, but often do not budget around campaigns and services that increase the actual Show Rate.

If you're already differentiating yourself and using a service to influence more shows into your dealership - then you already know how powerful it is. If you're not - you may want to consider. 

*If you're not - come take a Test Drive of the AutoHook Suite of Products and get a $25 Gift Card

AutoUSA Dealers Performance using ShowPro

AutoUSA Performance Infographic

After all the amazing feedback we received around our latest Purchase Analysis Report, you know - the one we published last week that drilled down on the performance dealers using HookLogic on their Dealer.com websites, it only made sense to continue on by comparing and calculating additional/other groups of dealer clients utilizing our Web2Show and Lead2Show products.

Some of you may know that early on we built a product called ShowPro for AutoUSA. ShowPro is based on our existing Web2Show and Lead2Show products. The included Purchase Analysis Report was originally put together for AutoUSA and HookLogic internal performance meetings, but we figured why keep all this great performance data and results to ourselves?

Lets get to the good stuff…

The results in the below AutoUSA Purchase Analysis Report could potentially have you re-thinking your current position on 3rd Party Lead acquisition.

Too often, industry consultants and online marketing/Internet sales managers are quick to dismiss the potential and performance of new vehicle 3rd party leads. A majority of the time dealers only measure the closing ratio of their leads, while missing out on measuring the Show rate of their leads – that’s an article for a other time.

Before we get too far, allow me to clarify how I view what a 3rd Party Lead is. 

To me, a 3rd Party Lead is a lead that is NOT associated to a particular vehicle in your inventory (new or used). It’s a new vehicle lead you purchase through a new car lead aggregator such as AutoUSA, Dealix or AutoBytel.

These leads typically derive from a “get your price quote” or  “configure your next vehicle” call-to-action, where a customer chooses or configures a new vehicle of their choice on a vehicle information website like Edmunds.com, TrueCar, AOL Autos, or one of the other million websites designed to capture "in-market" leads.

Click here for more specifics around my views and opinions of a 3rd Party lead vs vehicle classified leads.

Al-l-l-right – that’s enough talk around the difference in 3rd party leads. In the end, we just need to get more of your leads to show up at your dealership.

Getting back to this AutoUSA Purchase Analysis Report; starting from the top, you see “Leads Generated“. During the months of  1/1/13 – 6/30/13AutoUSA ShowPro generated 20,990 leads for their dealerships clients.

Of the 20,990 incentivized vehicle shoppers, 5,985 customers walked into a participating AutoUSA ShowPro dealership during this time frame to test drive a vehicle after engaging with ShowPro.

Of the total amount of leads submitted or engaged, 1 in 3 showed up at the dealership for a 29% Lead to Show Rate. Considering the average national lead to show rate is around 17%, this is outstanding!

Now lets get to the SALES Data.

Of the 5,985 that were incentivized and that walked into this group of 119 dealers for a test drive, 58% purchased a Vehicle.  

Let’s agree, HookLogic / ShowPro nor any other marketing / lead generating feature has a direct correspondence to how well your sales floor can close deals. However let’s consider this - J.D. Power studies show that consumers are visiting LESS than 2 dealerships before purchase. That equates to a 50% show to close ratio on average by default.

This group of dealers are closing incentivized ShowProshowroom ups at 58% with an overall lead closing ratio of 16%.

Are you tracking your dealer’s Lead to Show Rate?Without shows, there's no test drives, no writes up and no opportunity for sales.

As I have pointed out before, most dealers  do a good job at closing the customer once they show. What dealers need to be measuring is the customer Lead to Show rate.

Whether it's from a lead originating from your dealer’s website, 3rd Party Lead, Online Chat lead or HookLogic Lead2Show or AutoUSA ShowPro – if you can get more in-market shoppers to Show Up at your dealership, you get more opportunities to make more sales. 

Dealer.com Dealer Results Using HookLogic

hooklogic ddc results

Okay - this gets exciting so follow me here...

Over the past few months, we have been talking about "Building the Ultimate Attribution Engine”.  As part of that story, we introduced our new Purchase Analysis Reports powered by IHS Automotive, driven by Polk.

Over the next few months, we are going to break down sales data by OEMs, vendor partners, and marketing campaigns. Drawing the line between digital marketing and a sale in the showroom has always been blurry..until now.  You are about to see why HookLogic is used by so many dealerships and manufacturer programs.

The data and results in the below "info-ish-graphic" represents the real results for 193 dealerships using HookLogic's Web2Show feature and are on the Dealer.com website platform. There's quite a bit of information included so lets break it down, starting from the top and moving our way to the bottom.

Before we get started - I would like to point out that we have partnered with Polk to help acquire and validate the lead close rates for our customers.  This is provided by matching all leads to Polk’s census of vehicle registrations for actual close rates of all new and used vehicles purchased by the consumer submitting the lead. You can’t get any better than the data Polk provides.

Moving on...

Starting from the top, you see "Leads Generated". During the months of  January 2013 – June 2013 HookLogic Web2Show generated 29,577 leads for dealers on the Dealer.com platform. Of the 29,577 incentivized vehicle shoppers,  9,814 customers walked into a dealership during this time frame to test drive a vehicle. Of the total amount of leads submitted, 1 in 3 showed up at the dealership for a 33% Lead to Show rate.

Now lets get to the final result - A SALE!

Of the 9,814 incentivized customers that walked into this group of 193 dealers for a test drive, 6,320 or 65% Purchased a Vehicle between 1/1/13 – 6/30/13.

Dealer.com HookLogic Results

Let's agree, HookLogic nor any other marketing / lead generating feature has a direct correspondence to how well your sales floor can close deals. However, let's consider this - J.D. Power studies show that consumers are now visiting LESS than 2 dealerships before purchase. That equates to a 50% show to close ratio on average by default. This group of dealers are closing Web2Show incentivized "shows" at 65%.

What's your dealers overall showroom or show to close ratio?

A better question might be - what's your dealers Lead to Show Rate?Because without shows, you sell...very little.

Let's be real, most dealers anymore do a good job at closing the customer once they show. How can you not, if on average consumers are visiting Less than 2 dealers before purchase? In todays world, it truly comes down to your dealers Show Rate. Whether it be from a lead originating from your dealers website form, 3rd Party Lead Provider, Online Chat or HookLogic Web2Show - if you can get more in-market shoppers to Show Up, you're going to sell more vehicles.

Dealers using HookLogic's suite of features get MORE  in-market shoppers to SHOW!

BTW - quick math for you internet managers that measure your Lead to Close/Sold, the closing ratio on Web2Show Leads generated from this group of  dealers was 21%.

Note: HookLogic has been recently added to the Dealer.comCertified Provider Program. In addition to expedited installation and training, this will provide you with integrated reporting in your dealer dashboard. HookLogic’s Web2Show and Lead2Show solutions can be added in the Marketing Upgrade Center or by clicking here. 

Introducing Our New Purchase Analysis Report

We are extremely EXCITED here at HookLogic.

Why? Because over the last year we have been working to "Build the Ultimate Attribution Model" for Auto Dealers.

By diligently working with RL Polk, we have developed a monthly Purchase Analysis Report to complement our existing reporting suite.

You already know our weekly performance report that breaks down your lead and show ratios.  Many of us on the HookLogic team have spent several years in the business and know that you are wondering ‘But do I sell cars using HookLogic’. Now we provide the answer. By providing sales data, not just with our dealers, but with surrounding dealers as well, you will see your true HookLogic ROI as well as lost opportunities.

Let’s review our new Purchase Analysis Report:

example analysis report

In the example Purchase Analysis Report, we are able to match nearly every showroom visit into the dealership that resulted in a sale (29). This is found under the Data Summary in the top left portion of the report.

walkin rate analysis example_report

The first bar chart you see is the Overall Walk-in with Incentive Buy-Rate (66%). This is the percentage of overall customers that were incentivized with HookLogic that resulted in a sale during a 90 day period.

Important to note here - this is the OVERALL Incentive Buy-Rate. Meaning that, these matched customers bought a car, somewhere.

The next bar chart is your Dealer Buy Rate or what we like to call, your Show to Close. In this example, the dealership Sold 16 of the 29 opportunities (customers that walked into the dealership), resulting in a 55% Dealer Buy Rate, or show to close percentage.

Next up is your Dealer Lost Opportunity. These are the customers that HookLogic incentivized to show up at your dealership to buy a vehicle, but walked out of your showroom without making a purchase and then went to another dealership.

lost analysis example report_final

In this example you see this dealership lost 3 sales to a competitor. Not only does this report show you the number of lost sales, but at the bottom of the report, you will see which 3 dealers they lost the sale too. Not only did they lose 3 sales BUT these customers bought what they intended to purchase.

Compelling  isn’t it?

monthly analysis example report

The middle performance bar charts includes the same information but broken out into the last 3 months by New, Used and Lost Opportunities.

We are confident these new Purchase Analysis Report will close the loop on the sale and help HookLogic and you create the ultimate attribution model.

If at anytime you have ANY questions about this report, please contact our support team and we will schedule a time to review. We want you to have a complete understanding of these reports.

Thanks for taking your time to read this; which hopefully has opened your eyes to the value HookLogic provides.

HookLogic is Building the Ultimate Attribution Model in Automotive

Building the Ultimate Attribution Model in Automotive

I know, I know…that is a pretty bold statement but if you know anything about me, when I truly believe in something, I will stand behind it.

In the infancy and quick growth of the Internet in automotive, everything was supposed to be trackable and accurate.  What we found was that because an automotive purchase, done offline in a dealership, it was hard to quantify an absolute ROI.  So we stuck to the basics; how many leads could we produce and how many sales came from those leads.  All that did was raise more questions. In reality, the real black hole was in the transition of the lead to a showroom visit.

Now, that’s not a revelation. But when you ask most dealerships and OEMs what their “show” ratio is, they are not comfortable with giving you an answer. In fact, in the past two years of speaking at 20 groups, large dealership meetings, OEM regional meetings, and dealerships, I have only run into 3 instances where the answer was given and backed up with data. But that’s ok. We have spent the past 6 years focused on this stat, having driven almost 300,000 “shows” at HookLogic.

What we know is that the national “show” ratio is 17%.  So when a dealership looks at their closing ratio of 10,15,18% they are only getting a piece of puzzle. Here is a better way to look at it.

100 Leads = 17 showroom visits  = 10-12 sales =10-12% closing ratio

90% of the dealers in the country fit into this bucket. What this basically means is that most dealerships don’t have an operational issue at the store level. In fact, they close 60% of the opportunities that visit their dealership from an Internet lead.  Just so you know, this is the national average.

When you see dealerships with a higher closing ratio, it's usually because they have a higher “show” rate, not necessarily a higher in-dealership closing ratio.

For years, this has been our focus; driving more showroom traffic.  That’s why our tagline is “We aren’t a Lead Provider, we are a Show Provider”.

HookLogic was first to market and has proven to be the subject matter experts. Others try to copy what we do but most of our secret sauce is behind the scenes. Over the past 6 years, we have an overall “show” rate of 32%, nearly double what the national average is.  For those who like simple math, this is what it looks like.

100 Leads = 32 showroom visits = 18-19 sales = 18-19% closing ratio

For most of our customers, they see this everyday.  HookLogic has real-time reporting that breaks down lead and show ratios for our dealers. The majority of our clients don’t question the ROI or the math. But this is the car business so you have some level of pessimism and mud slinging involved, right?

So what are the objections? These are the three that I hear:

1. "These customers aren’t real car buyers.  They just want the gift card."
2. "They would have come in anyways."
3. "They weren’t buying my car. They wanted a different make, model."

That’s why we have added our latest added benefit to our solution set. It is the last piece of the puzzle for the perfect attribution model in the car business, the inclusion of sales data, not just with our dealers but with surrounding dealers, after the customer has visiting our dealer’s showroom.

Adding another layer to our premier partnership with RL Polk, HookLogic has developed a monthly Purchase Analysis report.  Because of the rich registration data that exists with Polk and HookLogic’s prowess for complete customer data, it allows HookLogic to match sales from showroom visits without tapping into a dealer’s CRM or DMS system.

In the example report, HookLogic is able to match nearly every showroom visit to the RL Polk Master Name File.  In doing this, we report shows very clearly that the majority of the customers that show up at the dealership for the incentive end up buying a car somewhere, killing the objection that these customers aren’t buyers.

More importantly, over 60% of those driven into to the showroom end up buying a car from that participating dealer.  In most cases, when a customer leaves that showroom and buys a car somewhere else, they usually buy the intended make, dispelling another objection.

Closing the loop on the sale helps to quantify Internet Lead Management ROI, not just with our solution, but with a dealer’s website, 3^rd party leads, chat, trade evaluation, PPC, direct mail and email campaigns, and many other digital products.  Our goal of building the Ultimate Attribution Model in Automotive just got a lot closer with our latest addition.  People continue to talk about big data but this is an example of how big data can be used to power more sales and better reporting in the automotive business.

We Keep Making It Easier to Help You!

New Support Tab

In a recent article we reviewed the many different ways our dealer clients are able to contact us for support. Whether you have a simple question about one of our industry leading services like Web-2-Show or Lead-to-Show, how to use our Mobile App for redeeming incentives or to simply let us know that we are (or not) meeting your expectations, we make it easy to contact us.

Continuing with our approach to pro-active support, we have made a small but welcomed addition to our support tab in your dealers Admin. When you log in, you may not notice the new addition right away UNTIL you click on the "Support" tab or link located right on the first screen of your admin.

As you can see in the screen shot, after clicking on the Support link to tab, you are presented with several options on how WE CAN HELP YOU.

Need Help?

Need Answers? Maybe you have a late delivery and are caught at the dealership late but have a question about a customers incentive - click on Frequently Asked Questions. It's quite possible the answer will be found in our FAQ.

Continued Training? Check out our Library of training videos and Webinars

Card Status? Customer calls in for one reason or another and you offer to check the status of their gift card. Here's a quick link to www.mygiftcardstatus.com

Chat Chat Chat? Hopefully you hadn't overlooked our ActivEngage chat / social bar located at the bottom of your admin screen. If for some reason you did, we have you covered with a quick link to open up a chat session.

Email anyone? With all the tools of communication, email still gets the job done. And our support team is quite quick to respond to your support emails.

Who uses the Phone (to make calls)? Let's face it - there's nothing like hearing a live support reps eager voice to help. If you don't already have our phone number in your address book, well…here it is for quick reference. Give us a call.

We look forward to hearing from you. If you're not already using our products to increase your lead to show rate, then give our sales team at call at 855-LEAD-2-SHOW  - (855-532-3274)

Hooklogic At Google - #DSMV13 Recap

google DSMV

The HookLogic Crew was at Google!

Google. It’s still hard to grasp after being home for a few days that we were, in fact, on Google’s campus, learning from the very people who shape how Google in the automotive industry works for you.

Sharing means caring, so here is what went down --

Todd Rowe (Google) spoke about the search, trends (which favor our industry) and what we can learn from the people searching for our cars.

• 20 percent of online searches are for a specific brand. That’s a lot higher than other industries. Search generates $154 billion in offline sales in the automotive industry.
• Smartphones are the number ONE screen you need to focus on. To be found you need a multi device strategy
• 44 percent of buyers will look up your phone number on their smartphone, ok that’s a lot – BUT over 90% will visit that same day.

What would happen if they couldn’t find your number?

hook_dsmv_sponsor

Mitch Joel (Twist Image, Digital Marketing Professional) gave us a quote that I won’t soon forget. Mobile devices are the remote controls of our lives.  Joel energetically, as well, in a practical way gave us roughly five new rules to digital marketing.

• You must own the direct relationship to the consumer. Personalization is paramount.
• Utility or death – Be useful or provide something useful for your consumer.
• The only screen that matters is the one that’s in front of the consumer.

Joel left us with thinking about being more active with media rather than passive.  Can a buyer find you from where they are on their one screen – be in blogs, Twitter or Instagram?

Dan Moore (VIN Solutions) spoke about website and consumer paths to websites.

Most shoppers are visiting Monday through Thursday – are your specials updated?

Duncan Scarry (Haystak) took the stage to tell us all we needed a little bit more common sense in our approach to digital marketing.  He’s right. Scarry’s presentation brought some great questions from the crowd:

• Q - What content is critical? A – The content on your website should be integrated across all platforms.
• Q – Should I be spending more on SEO or SEM? A – Don’t spend less on either.

David Metter chilling over Coffee

Jordan Hyatt (Google and former Internet Manager) and his YouTube presentation sparked the majority of the room to stop and think – and, to drive home the fact that so many dealers don’t take advantage of the importance of a YouTube presence.

• The magic of YouTube is in the stats. 183 million automotive consumers watch video in the buying process (9 out of 10 vehicle shoppers). One in 4 views are from a mobile device.
• Forget Generation X, Alpha or whatever – this is Generation C – The Connectors and they share moments that matter to them. They spend more time watching videos than TV.
• YouTube’s magic is about to go up a notch with True View for ads. If you’ve been passive about getting into video ads – you’re time is up. Get on board.

Kevin riding across Google campus

Neil Hoyne (Google) hit up everyone’s favorite – Analytics.  Also, he talked about everyone’s other favorite – Conversion.

• Consumers have four stages: Dormant, Aware, Consider, Convert
• The majority of us only focus on the last stage, conversion

It’s not new information to tell you that today’s shoppers research more than any other – research is not conversion, so be sure you’re there when they are aware your dealership has the specific model they’re considering buying.

Lindsey Schultz (Google) peaked the interest of the room with her presentation on enhanced campaigns and the data behind them.

• Reach the right person at the right time with the right message
• 47 percent of auto inquires come through mobile devices

No matter how you slice it, Google’s ability to determine which ads to show a consumer based on time and location of search is beyond awesome. It's that big data that determines which ad should be shown, one about 0% APR or $15 oil changes.

Dinner at DSMV

In a technology-focused event, Cardone Cardone had us checking our ability to focus on people.  He advised us that if we focus on people, our employees, our customers, our future customers, the technology will solve itself.

Monica Morse (Google) had the big job of speaking to our group about Google +.  Between reviews and multiple location confusion this can’t be the easiest presentation with an audience of automotive pros.  With that being said, Morse did come to the rescue and helped many dealers in the room.

• Claim your Google + URL, upgrade your page and start engaging with the 390 million users.
• Use Hangouts!
• Merge your YouTube and Google +
• 1 in 3 buyers consult online reviews

If you’re skeptical about using a Hangout, (understandable) members of the audience admitted to successfully using it for sales – and, check out this Toyota Prius Hangout.

Jonathan Rosen (Kenshoo), was all about the assist. How will you assist the consumer via your marketing? Rosen stressed that one part of your marketing assists the path to conversion.  For example, email blasts assist and integrate with other marketing efforts to facilitate the conversion.

Q&A Dealer Panel:

Moderator: Christine Merritt Head of Business Development and Partnerships Channel Sales North America

Dealers:

Kevin Frye Jeff Wyler Group Gordon Howard Hoover Toyota Gabriel Montano Groove Auto Group Jim Bell Don Ayres Honda

Hoover Toyota says they’ve fully embraced digital marketing and the proof is in Gordon’s “silly” YouTube videos, over 600 of them.

Jim Bell says he keeps his team educated and thirsty for knowledge through his own educations and training with his 20 group.

Gabriel Montano is a data guy and uses it to his advantage to track metrics that are specific to shoppers’ buying habits on his websites.

Kevin Frye advised the audience to focus on mobile devices, but to go a step further and check everyone’s phone skills.  With so many people click to calling on their mobile devices the dealership employee answering that call better be good.

As if all of this wasn't enough, we were trusted with seeing even more, learning even more - but, we took a Google vow of silence to not share "coming soon" programs, technology and just great goodies for our industry.

Jeff Kershner and Alex Jefferson