The Dealer Impact Blog

A Few Words Of Inspiration

Staying motivated and engaged in today’s economy can be a tricky proposition. But there are a few folks out there who still have the power to rouse you to action and bring you a new idea or two in the process. So if you’re looking for marketing inspiration, check out these three individuals…

Gary Vaynerchuck — http://garyvaynerchuk.com/
Gary ‘s day job is hosting Wine Library TV, where he tastes and talks new wine. But his self-titled video blog leaves the wine (mostly) behind and concentrates on the bigger picture of marketing, new media, business strategy and his beloved New York Jets.

Seth Godin — http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/
Seth is the author of numerous best-selling books on marketing, entrepreneurship and business strategy, including Purple Cow, Small Is The New Big, Meatball Sundae and his latest book, Tribes.

Chris Brogan — http://www.chrisbrogan.com/
Chris is a social media strategist and new media guru who blogs daily about the integration and co-mingling of marketing, communication and tech.

D. Jones

Marketing Strategist/Creative Consultant

SmackDabble, LLC

How To Keep Your Website on the Cutting Edge

Published: October 03 2008

By Adam Michelson

The web is changing, and your ecommerce site needs to change with it. Here’s the low-risk way to implement innovative ideas that will drive increased ROI.

As many ecommerce sites celebrate their 10th birthdays, web stores are facing the reality that the internet is changing and current sites need to be refurbished. From left-hand navigation and search to product catalog and product detail, from the cart and checkout to the general design and format — most sites are in desperate need of a makeover. With changes in web innovation being accompanied by drastic changes in the economy, no major vertical has more to gain than ecommerce.Many new ideas are emerging all the time — including social shopping — that not only drive traffic, increase conversion and decrease abandonment, but also increase brand loyalty and provide customer feedback directly to merchants. Ecommerce is changing at a rapid pace. Projects are getting funding, action is taking hold, and innovation is being born.There is considerable pressure to innovate and grow. However, retailers are hesitant to prematurely invest in anything that may harm their current ecommerce sites, which is the basis of the business. The fact that new ecommerce ideas have not yet become part of standard commercial ecommerce software does not calm fears, but the rapid pace of ecommerce innovation makes retailers nervous to stand by and wait.

The testing grounds of microsites

  The hesitation to adopt new concepts fuels the relevance of the microsite. Microsites are testing grounds for new retail concepts, technologies and architectures with unique business models. These sites explore new ideas and brands within their own URL, often only loosely associated or not associated at all with the main ecommerce site.

One of the most important things new retail concept sites must prove is return on investment. In order for this to be successful, the investment and risk involved must be low to protect the main ecommerce site. If the risk and effort remain relatively low, a microsite is the perfect way to explore new retail concepts, brands and technologies.

Let’s take a look at some retail concepts that leverage this technique.

Using RIAs to drive conversion and brand loyalty

 Rich internet applications (RIAs) can be used to enhance customer experience and address the rapidly growing expectations of online shoppers. For example, many ecommerce sites now feature a left-to-right navigation in place of the traditional top-down navigation to reflect the changing shape — from taller to wider — of screens. Sites are also using drop-down carts that keep the shopping experience moving and help increase the average order size.

Another innovative technique — made possible through RIAs — that is being adopted by companies is a smooth outfit configuration tool that uses a dress form as a virtual subject. The feature gives potential consumers the ability to drag and drop various clothing to assemble outfits. Some sites even have features where interactive models spin and twirl as customers mouse over them to show off the looks. Not only are customers able to see what the clothes look like paired together, but many of these tools also allow customers to price the outfits and add them directly to their cart.

American Eagle Outfitter’s site Martin + Osa has these features and more — including models that prance in and out of the frame when a customer filters through collections. This clever, unique and fun feature gives customers a more complete feel for the outfits. Martin + Osa also features a highly effective zoom capability. When zoomed, a product takes up the entire product-detail page and the informational and transactional product detail is opaquely layered on top of the zoomed image.

While this is an interesting take on the zoom feature, it is also highly controversial. Nothing should distract or hinder the customer from purchasing from the product detail page. Interlacing the product zoom image behind product information and order-taking functionality is perfect to attempt first on a retail concept site, but would be considered blasphemy on a major ecommerce site.

Social shopping

  Social shopping is a major focus for retailers today. Most of the current social shopping ideas are derivations of allowing users to put links or very simple widgets on social sites, or they are copycat social networking sites with some basic ecommerce built in. However, the addition of merchant blogs drives search engine optimization and customer loyalty. Additionally, allowing customers to refer to retail products through sites like Facebook, Delicious and Digg has become popular. Despite how mainstream these concepts have become, retailers still struggle with measuring the ROI associated with the techniques.

Done right, social shopping has tremendous monetization. However, most ecommerce solutions do not take into account how customers make their ecommerce decisions. Typically, information architects have a keen understanding of the mindsets of users and can construct optimal user interfaces for them. They worry about how the program is used, how easily information is found and the feelings the program elicits. In order to optimize the social shopping experience, information architects need to begin thinking about this new social state of mind and gain a general understanding of the desired behavior of the group. Retailers have mastered understanding and guiding consumer behavior for in-store shopping; however, their online counterparts are not as in tune.

Some of the successful standard principles in social shopping seem to be that users want to be anonymous, but not alone, creating buzz, but not annoyance. Any feeling of belonging or exclusivity is a good thing. It is a generational phenomenon driven by a younger generation that craves having an online identity. Keeping these characteristics in mind, it is important that the social mindset is identified first and then the features and functionality are created to fit the desired experience.

An example of this is a concept called private event retailing (PER). The events are first-come, first-served, and run for a limited time with a limited inventory. Shoppers are given exclusive access to premium goods at private sale pricing. Being offered a special deal via a limited time event, like in PER, the experience becomes even more exciting because of the exclusivity, setting the stage for a frenzied shopping experience. Updating the site in real time, to show items as they are sold out, drives an emotional mindset for the group. It is a retail concept that spreads virally and effectively taps into crowds.

Retail Convergence, a company with a portfolio of ecommerce sites, wanted to create an invitation-only, event-based ecommerce site. RueLaLa.com was developed in response to this. The social shopping concepts integrated into the site are innovative and branded specifically to enhance the PER experience.

In addition to the standard ecommerce functions — product catalog, product detail, shopping cart and checkout — RueLaLa.com focuses on features like how the invitations are sent and how the events are created. Almost all of the effort involved in constructing RueLaLa.com was spent on the unique retail concept because the back-end ecommerce capabilities leverage services that already exist within Retail Convergence. Time was not wasted on building baseline ecommerce functionality.

Driving a unique brand

  A wide variety of sites are created to drive unique brands. The fundamental idea behind all of them is to push products over a variety of retail concept sites by leverage existing merchandising capabilities, with each one focusing on a different customer demographic. For example, Anthropologie’s site is targeted to a very different audience than its parent company, Urban Outfitters, and Arizona Jeans has a very distinct look and feel from its parent company, JCPenney.

Each site effectively targets different demographics. Both JCPenney and Urban Outfitters are selling their products in very different ways using these distinct digital properties. They are doing so through the use of their core abilities to merchandise products on their sites.

How to build microsites

  Now that we’ve discussed retail concepts, it is time to build the microsite. The effort’s primary focus should be the user interface, with only 20 percent of the effort being devoted to back-end functionality. Do not create a new back-end for your retail concept because it is too hard to maintain. If the previously existing main retail site has the basics — such as checkout, pricing and promotions engines, tax and shipping costs and order management — it should be used to build a new retail platform.

User interface engineers need an interface that can be altered and adapted quickly, with little to no architectural hindrances. If the existing retail platform cannot readily support the back-end ecommerce features, then a lightweight service-oriented architecture (SOA) can be put in place. The SOA can handle the translation of the new retail concept user interface to the back-end of your existing retail store. This should eliminate any difficulties presented by previous back-end features.

With this perspective, a retail concept site provides IT owners with a realistic path to evolve the existing application architecture to a far more agile one — while simultaneously allowing retailers to readily meet the innovation demands and achieve measurable ecommerce growth via retail concept sites.

Adam Michelson serves as the director of ecommerce at Optaros Inc.

Source: http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/marketing-channels-websites-how-to-keep-your-website-on-the-cutting-edge_20685.html

What is Branding and How Important is it to Your Marketing Strategy?

By Laura Lake, About.com

The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines a brand as a “name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers.

Therefore it makes sense to understand that branding is not about getting your target market to choose you over the competition, but it is about getting your prospects to see you as the only one that provides a solution to their problem.The objectives that a good brand will achieve include:

• Delivers the message clearly
• Confirms your credibility
• Connects your target prospects emotionally
• Motivates the buyer
• Concretes User Loyalty

To succeed in branding you must understand the needs and wants of your customers and prospects. You do this by integrating your brand strategies through your company at every point of public contact. Your brand resides within the hearts and minds of customers, clients, and prospects. It is the sum total of their experiences and perceptions, some of which you can influence, and some that you cannot.

A strong brand is invaluable as the battle for customers intensifies day by day. It’s important to spend time investing in researching, defining, and building your brand. After all your brand is the source of a promise to your consumer. It’s a foundational piece in your marketing communication and one you do not want to be without.

Source: http://marketing.about.com/cs/brandmktg/a/whatisbranding.htm

Building Your Marketing Channels

by : Bruno Lucarelli

Your dealership is still the hub of your sales universe, but you continually need more spokes in the wheel to survive. These “channels” will vary by geography, market size and brand. They do however, serve a critical function. They are the difference between success, mediocrity and failure.

Your customers’ media consumption has changed radically in the last 24 months. Have you altered your dealership’s media plan to adjust? The answer from 99 of 100 dealers reading this will be “no,” and with good reason. Your expertise is in automotive sales, not media. But paying attention to what’s going on around you, or for that matter your own daily experience, could make the difference.

For almost a century, there were a very limited number of “channels” that led a consumer through your door: location, newspaper ads, radio ads and local TV ads (in smaller markets) comprised the majority of most dealers’ “media mix.”

The radical change in consumer behavior in the last five years, however, has companies scrambling to catch up to the elusive auto customer. Are you paying close attention to the new “channels” that could help shoppers discover your inventory? Look no further than your own habits, showroom, friends and family.

• Your web site is your new front door, you know by now. Keep it clean, open and easy to use. If there isn’t a car for sale one click away, make it a priority.

• Many dealers stay in constant touch with their store through their Blackberry or similar device. Yet, they haven’t considered text messaging as an advertising option. Try it. Soon.

• A large proportion of dealers have children of high school and college age. Yet they miss the opportunity to examine how their own family consumes media. According to a recent Pew Research Study, two thirds of all Americans under the age of 30 are regular users of social networking, yet less than one percent of dealer and OEM ad budgets are spent in this space. Start a “group” on a social media site for your dealership. Why not a “social networking channel?”

• Are you still buying cable TV? Make sure to move your money into news, sponsorships and sports. This category of programming is less likely to be pre-recorded by a cable DVR or similar Tivo device. The major networks are lowering rates around the Tivo effect for their large clients. Are you getting a similar deal? Drama programming (FX, TNT) is much more likely to be recorded, with over half of these DVR viewers skipping your spot. Take a closer look at your store’s “cable channel.”

• Still using newspaper? Do your best to measure your response rate, even anecdotally. A few well-placed questions in the buying process will determine your ROI.

Draw a chart of your “channels,” and constantly measure which are contributing most to building your dealership’s brand. This exercise never ends. Learn it. Live it. Make it a part of your daily routine. Knowing where your sales originate is the key to long-term success.

Bruno Lucarelli is the Eastern U.S. sales director for Cardomain.com, the largest automotive social network in the world. He has over 20 years experience in both traditional and digital advertising, including eBay Motors, Autotrader.com and CBS Television.

Source: http://www.dealer-magazine.com/index.asp?article=2044

Don't Blend

There’s a common type of feedback I get from clients when presenting new marketing and creative ideas. It goes something like this: “This doesn’t feel like a <insert client’s industry> ad. Let me show you what my competition is doing and we can mimic that.”

I hear this all the time. And itss the single most common form of misguided feedback I receive. Why? Because the point of marketing isn’ to help you blend in — it’s to help you stand out. I’ll say that again… The point of marketing isn’t to help you blend in, it’s to help you stand out.



Striving for anything short of standing out is a waste of time, money and effort.





D. Jones

Marketing Strategist/Creative Consultant

SmackDabble, LLC

There is Nothing Tricky About Permission

There’s an increasingly popular trend among advertisers that think they have to trick consumers into paying attention. They do it with too-good-to-be-true offers, flashy production and bait-and-switch techniques. Does it work? Yes, sometimes it certainly does. But it’s the most expensive, invasive and difficult sort of marketing to pull off. So why try?

Instead, consider just asking your customers and prospect for permission to talk with them. And once you have that, begin an open, honest, straightforward dialogue with them about who you are and how you can serve them. It’s inexpensive (darn near free, actually) it’s totally non-invasive and it works better than interruption marketing.

So who do you have permission to communicate with?

D. Jones
Marketing Strategist/Creative Consultant
SmackDabble, LLC

Web Marketing Grows, but How Much?

JULY 3, 2008

A Look Behind the Numbers

“More than one-half of the average marketer’s budget is now spent online,” according to a press release from lead generation company Clash-Media. The firm conducted its “Online Lead Generation (B2C) Report 2008″ in May with E-consultancy.

But the press release may be a misreading of the report. According to respondents, a greater proportion of lead generation budgets is being spent online (on average, 53%) than offline (44%).

The survey’s methodology seems to confirm the point.

Of those polled, 73% said their channels to market were “online or multichannel,” and 23% said “online only.” Only about 4% said they were “offline only.”

So respondents were focused largely on online approaches. The rest of the summary issued with the report was more accurate. Among the findings:

• Seven out of 10 responding marketers said their companies used search engine optimization, paid search and e-mail marketing to in-house lists.
• Offline marketing methods largely decreased, with only press and television advertising growing. Over 90% of marketers saw online lead generation as a growth area.
• Print media was still the most commonly used offline method to generate consumer leads (65% of organizations).
• Natural search (79% of respondents), e-mail marketing to in-house lists (75%) and paid search (71%) were the three most commonly used online methods for lead generation.

Without question, online ad spending in the US is rising quickly. eMarketer predicts double-digit growth will continue for the next several years.

Source: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1006376

Auto Ad Spending Down, Except Digital

Double-digit Web ad growth

Automotive advertising spending in the US dropped to $1.99 billion in Q1 2008, according to TNS Media Intelligence. That was down more than 14% compared with Q1 2007.Ad spending is “sinking as fast as new car sales,” said Jon Swallen, senior vice president of research at TNS, in a July 2008 Detroit Free Press interview. Mr. Swallen noted that consumers’ focus on fuel economy has cut into truck sales, which has affected ad spending. “A year ago, for every dollar spent on truck advertising, they spent 80 cents on passenger auto,” he said. “This year, the ratio of truck advertising to car advertising is almost 1-to-1.”Automakers have traditionally been the biggest advertisers in the country. General Motors is the fourth-largest advertiser in the US, and the company spent $535 million in Q1 2008, according to TNS data cited in a July 2008 Media Life article. GM spent $2.1 billion on ads last year, which was the third year in a row of lower ad spending for the company.

Last year total auto ad spending was down 10.8%, to $12.3 billion, according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus data cited in the Detroit Free Press article.

If there is a bright spot in auto ad spending, it is online. Internet spending was up 57.9% last year, to $441.6 million. TNS put GM’s Internet spending alone at more than $212 million (excluding search and online video), 79% over the previous year’s spending.

eMarketer predicts double-digit growth for auto online ad spending through 2012, when it will reach more than $5.61 billion.

Learn how auto marketers are using the Web. Get your copy of eMarketer’s Automotive Marketing Online: Negotiating the Curves report.

Source: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1006426

The Newest Sales-Boosting Strategy

By David Wengel

Making the sale hinges on the lead. On-demand lead scoring is a technique that clarifies who your best leads are and allows you to target them accordingly.

How many sales versus marketing conflicts would vanish if marketing could easily vet and prioritize every lead it passed on to sales? And how much airfare could you save if you could grow wings and fly?

If you’re a marketing executive, then you would probably put both questions in the same box because one is just about as likely to happen as the other. Vetting and prioritizing sales leads is labor intensive and expensive. Doing it fast enough to get the hot leads to sales before they cool off has been close to impossible — maybe only slightly less impossible than actually sprouting wings.

It would be in the marketing organization’s best interest to rank the promise of every lead it passes to the sales organization, but the realities of time and cost effectiveness have not allowed the necessary information gathering and analysis. Devoid of solutions, marketing executives have been left to soldier on as best they can: No matter how much they spend on marketing, most companies still treat every inbound lead the same, no matter how valuable the leads are likely to become.

Recently, however, on-demand lead scoring, supported by advances in marketing technology, has developed to improve the quality of leads that marketing sends to sales.

On-demand lead scoring should ideally combine historical customer information with consumer data and predictive analytics. If you’re setting out to automatically prioritize each incoming lead, then you’ll need the level of insight that comes from combining these three types of information. Without all three, you’re throwing away chances to boost sales conversions and customer value.

The most basic on-demand lead scoring solutions reveal exactly who is contacting your company through your marketing programs, whether they’re reachable given the contact information they provided, which leads should be top priorities and which products or services are most relevant to the lead.

This information enables salespeople to target the hottest prospects, whichever criteria you use: those who are most interested in your products or services, most likely to buy a lot of them or most likely to turn into long-term customers. The same knowledge can tell you which of your messages and offers will provide a more customized experience for each prospect.

For example, an auto dealer receives names and phone numbers of active car shoppers within minutes of their filling out forms on auto-related websites. The leads are instantly and automatically scored based on 1) the individual’s verified contact information, 2) household demographics and 3) the dealer’s experience with customers fitting that demographic profile. The sales team knows to immediately pursue leads that score in the top 20 percent with an immediate outbound call or customized email. Others are prioritized for follow up in order of their potential.

On-demand lead scoring applies the same methodology to phone channels. When a credit-card issuer’s advertising drives prospects to its toll-free numbers and websites, the on-demand scoring solution grades them for potential value, matches them to the most suitable credit card and immediately routes likely-to-convert prospects to the best agents. The callers who are least likely to convert are routed to an interactive voice response (IVR) system, allowing the likely-to-convert callers to get more attention from agents.

A lead scoring solution’s predictive power is limited only by how much a company tailors it to specific business, goals and customer knowledge. For example, is the objective to grow revenue by increasing conversions or by focusing on cross-selling opportunities? Has the company found more upside in identifying prospects who look like its most loyal customers or in those who look like those customers most likely to respond to a particular offer?

In each case, the key is a rich mix of data that includes demographics, lifestyle and behavioral information, sales histories and product and channel usage. With currently available services, a company’s customer database and sales histories can be combined with descriptive and behavioral information to create predictive profiles. Companies that have embraced on-demand lead scoring have found three best practices that determine how successful their solutions are.

The first is that the lead-scoring information must be actionable at the moment you need it. Most existing customer insight platforms can offer microscopically precise insight on existing customers, but none of this rich information is actionable in the instant new prospects submit an online form or call in. In the past, you could segment your customers but you couldn’t predict which prospects would behave like your best customers unless you stopped to ask each prospect, say, the five attitudinal survey questions you’d found to be predictive. A lead-scoring solution must be able to link your customer knowledge to brand new prospects in the instant you begin to interact with those prospects.

The second best practice is a basic tenant of good solution development, but it merits mention nonetheless: data quality. Your lead scoring is only as good as the information that drives it. If your scoring doesn’t include verification of contact information, then you won’t even know which leads can be reached, making the effort worthless. And if your scoring solution doesn’t include up-to-date consumer contact information, then you’re slashing your ability to assign scores to your leads.

Finally, if your lead scores aren’t customized to your business, then their predictive power will lack punch. Off-the-shelf lead scoring systems typically rely on consumer profiles that aren’t even tailored to your industry, much less your company, so they provide uneven results when used to drive your real-time decisions. An online shoe store will miss some sales if it relies on the same customer profiles that an insurance company uses for its automated processes. A lead scoring solution that includes information from a company’s customer databases and sales history will be more predictive than one that doesn’t.

There is no single instant cure-all to the problem of dead leads, but on-demand lead scoring solutions are a huge step forward from what passes for lead qualification at many companies today. Lead scoring can improve the relationship between sales and marketing, which creates a stronger company that closes more sales and spends less on qualifying leads — without growing wings and flying.

Source: http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/19811.asp

Hybrid Marketing?

With $4.00 gas putting a slow down on the automotive business, and the economy in general, auto manufacturers are clamoring to develop and build hybrids and other energy efficient vehicles.

Amid all this, you’re still trying to run a dealership. Chances are, you’ve had to make cutbacks across the board. And even if you’ve had to cutback marketing, that doesn’t mean you want to cutback the number of customers walking through the door.

So that raises the question: What are the most energy- and cost-efficient marketing strategies you can employ? Mass marketing is certainly out. You’ll have to go direct… very targeted. And get creative… chase after a new audience or trying a medium no one else is using. What would you do if you had to reach the same number of customers on one-fifth the budget? What can you do that costs nothing at all? The dealerships that use a downturn to get stronger and wrestle away market share are the ones that will dominate the next age of automotive retailing.

What are you doing to make the most of your marketing dollars?

D. Jones
Marketing Strategist/Creative Consultant
SmackDabble, LLC