News

In the past nine months, there has been more changes to search marketing and social media than any other period of time I can remember. It is truly a special time for online marketing professionals as we invest to stay ahead of the learning curve for our clients.

In many markets the competition for online car shoppers is so intense that business owners feel that they are in the Super Bowl of online marketing, where every play (strategy) could be the difference in their sales each month and winning the “prize”. The difference between being #1 in the market or the country is getting smaller and smaller.

Businesses who understand the competitive nature of online marketing will only be rewarded with the “winner’s trophy” if their play book is evolving. Resting on past laurels is a game of Russian Roulette.

So the question for you to answer is this: “Are you using outdated plays that the competition already knows or that fails to move the needle like it once did?”

Creating a New Playbook

Dealers wanting to be the next market leader and want to bring home the Super Bowl ring need to be testing “new” automotive advertising strategies. New is a relative word since I’m not suggesting ideas that some dealers have known about for years.

Dealers who are not testing 24×7 managed chat, mobile text marketing, retargeting banner advertising, mobile websites, and localized social media advertising are missing very important “plays” that will move the needle.

There are another handful of “new” ideas that are working at dealership we coach, Google is forever changing the rules. These changes give opportunities to those who are watching the ball.

Quick example: What process at your dealership is in place to identify customers with Google email accounts? What process has been setup to encourage them to “Google +1” your key website assets?  Have you updated your blogs to integrate the +1 button?

If you are saying that you already tested chat, text-marketing, banner retargeting, etc. and they didn’t work for you I would respond that you had the wrong players executing the strategy.

Thinking Like Greece

I’ve also noticed a growing trend that dealers are shunning investing in new areas of opportunity because of fear of a double dip recession. It’s like the Greece austerity measures have crept into the mind of dealer principals and the thought of increasing or changing their marketing budgets have strong resistance.

No dealership will get to be the dominant player in their market by cutting budgets and reducing marketing investments.

I understand that for some dealers the summer months may be filled with anxiety over supply shortages. It been public for some time that some imports will not see their pipeline levels back to normal until September. So if this shortage is not new news, what has your dealership done to compensate for this reality?

In theory, this would be the best time to test new strategies but in reality the resistance to change is seemingly stronger.

I love to work with dealers that challenge their “lizard brain” that Seth Godin speaks about in his best seller “Linchpin“. (We all have Lizard Brains by the way!) I love to work with dealers willing to embrace change and work to create a customized marketing strategy for their dealership.

So if you are doing the same old thing every month at your dealership, you are like a football superstar that is sitting on the bench during the Super Bowl. So much potential but no commitment to engage your opponents.

When you are ready to get off the bench, and want advice on how to revise your playbook, give me a call. 732.450.8200

Want To Learn About New Marketing Strategies

Members of the automotive community who want to move the needle NOW can send two of their staff members to an upcoming PCG Pit Stop event for a special price of $495.

That’s two people for the normal price of one. Details on upcoming dates and cities can be found at http://www.pcgpitstop.com.

Autotrader’s decision to purchase VinSolutions has created an interesting dynamic in the automotive advertising industry. The acquisition further reinforces industry predictions that Autotrader wants to create a comprehensive integrated marketing and advertising solution for car dealers.   CEO Chip Perry, in a letter to VinSolutions customers, confirmed that:

“This acquisition of VinSolutions nicely complements the vAuto, CDMdata and HomeNet acquisitions, enabling us to eventually provide you with a one-stop, single-sign-on software solution.”

In the past 12 months Autotrader has been on a buying spree with purchases of Vauto, HomeNet, Kelly Blue Book, and CDM Data.  Already industry bloggers are predicting what future Autotrader purchases would look like! For the record, Cox Enterprises, which owns Autotrader, also owns Manheim Auctions.  When you step back and look at the roles that each company plays in automotive wholesaling, pricing, valuations, advertising, marketing, and sales of cars the lineup is very impressive.

VinSolutions Will Operate Independently

There are many ways to view this latest transaction so I will share mine.  First let me say that Chip Perry also stated that: “VinSolutions will continue to operate independently and function as it does today under current CEO Mike Dullea.“  What this actually means one year is anyone’s guess; this industry is far from predictable.

The purchase of VinSolutions is a win for existing VinSolutions customers in many ways. Before I present my opinion, some background information is needed. In the past year VinSolutions has been a marketing juggernaut.  Bravo to Mike Dullea and Sean Stapleton. Their booth at the recent Digital Dealer Conferences and NADA, for example, has been buzzing with activity.  Some would say that they have had the most active booth in the website niche for the past year.

The VinSolutions marketing buzz promises dealers an fully integrated platform which reduces the number of vendors dealers need to contract to deliver a robust digital marketing platform.  I have to congratulate their marketing team for taking their brand to the next level, which obviously caught the attention of Chip Perry.

The Cash It Needs To Smooth The Pavement

VinSolutions’ aggressive sales program have created a surge in new dealer accounts and brand visibility.  This growth has not come without hitting some bumps in the road on customer service and technical support.  Since I speak with dealers across the country,  its not uncommon that people share with me their vendor aches and pains.  No dealer platform escapes criticism so this is not unique to VinSolutions.

The feedback I received from VinSolutions customers is that the promises of product integration are really impressive but the installation, training, and technical support was a bit frustrating. Some components were not as seamlessly integrated as promised and needed extra calls to work out the kinks.  Any company that is growing as fast as VinSolutions often faces cash-flow constraints. These practical constraints can result in not having enough trained back-end staff to handle growth.  Without specific internal knowledge of VinSolutions, I would predict this is close to reality.

The cash-flow from the Autotrader.com purchase plus the expertise the AT management team can offer will be near term benefit from this acquisition.  I’m sure the Executive Team at VinSolutions is aware of their opportunities to improve platform support which will make VinSolutions an even stronger competitor to companies that include Dealer.com, Cobalt, and Dealerskins.

Will Sales Synergies Be Realized?

One of the potential benefits of this acquisition will be a more robust, local sales presence to introduce dealers to VinSolutions products. Selling Autotrader advertising solutions is much different that selling a comprehensive marketing platform so I would predict that field representatives would be best utilized for appointment setting and not product demonstrations.

Also, for the most part, Autotrader sales representatives are not replacing a product or service when they close a deal; most dealers use both AT and Cars.com.  So it will be interesting to see how field representatives can maneuver the politics and emotions that come up when a conversion about a website change emerges.  This sales channel will also be a benefit to existing VinSolutions customers because it will provide more real-time feedback on what dealers want in their marketing platform.  This should feed and enhance their product development cycle.

It will also be interesting to see if the Autotrader hook-up will accelerate OEM preferred vendor endorsements for VinSolutions technology.  With automotive website providers jockeying for “preferred vendor” status, it is clear that a big piece to profitability will be OEM co-op funding to dealers using specific website providers.

Consolidation & Integration Will Accelerate

This acquisition will trigger further consolidation in automotive marketing and advertising platforms space. The VinSolutions marketing team hit a nerve in the auto industry.  If given the choice, dealers would prefer NOT to deal with 6-8 vendors to handle websites, ILM, CRM, Social Media, SEM, SEO, Chat, Analytics, and DMS.  Stand alone vendors you are forewarned!

The push for companies to provide fully integrated data and marketing products will be accelerated by this transaction. The coming year will be very interesting indeed!  I’m very glad that PCG Digital Marketing can serve dealers regardless of their marketing platform choice.  I fear that smaller, single solution website vendors will be forced to merge or eventually shut their doors.

If you haven’t noticed, Dominion Dealer Solutions has already started to jointly market their robust independent marketing solutions to car dealers. Their message is clear; we also have end to end solutions for car dealers.  One decision I fully endorsed was the consolidation of  the XIGroup and Dealerskins website technology.  We’ll have to wait and see how their companion products to the new Dealerskins platform for CRM, Social Media, etc. will be packaged.

I am sure that this acquisition will inspire Dealer.com to deliver an integrated CRM solution sooner than later to complete their award winning comprehensive advertising platform for car dealers.  Dealer.com recently released the Social Relationship Manager (SRM) and improvements to their paid search platform called TCD which are leading edge products with virtually no peer.  These advances leave just one big hole; CRM.  Let’s start the egg timer and see when Dealer.com delivers the missing piece of their integration puzzle.

The Cobalt/ADP merger is another example of consolidation and coming innovations.  I recently had a demonstration of the new Cobalt platform and the speed of change and focus to deliver a powerful platform to dealers was confirmed.  You might remember I wrote about my optimism with this merger after visiting with the Cobalt design team right after the merger was announced.  I am glad to say that the team did not disappoint!  I’ll have a comprehensive report published shortly.

Fall-Out From Acquisition?

Now that Autotrader is in the dealer website business, how will this impact their product portfolio with industry players like Dealer.com, Cobalt, ADP, and Dominion.  Will this trigger less favorable product recommendations like Vauto in favor of DealerTrack AAX?  Will Cars.com benefit from new alliances formed by this new competitive stance?  It will be interesting to see what the industry players have to say about this; privately of course.

Chip Perry wants to head off potential concerns about anti-competitive behavior in his letter which states: “As we evolve and grow our suite of software solutions, we want you to know that we recognize your need for choice and flexibility in the tools you use. Therefore our vision is to offer open platform solutions that provide you that flexibility to work with our and other vendors’ tools as much as possible.”

Looking Ahead

The entry of Autotrader.com into the car dealer website business will produce more innovations in integrated advertising and analytics.  I’ve stated a number of time that the ADF 1.0 specification, which defines how data passes between marketing partners, is outdated.  Now that Autotrader has all the pieces of the data stream, I wonder if they will pioneer the equivalent of a ADF 2.0 specification for these own products to give them an Analytical Data advantage?

It will also be interesting to see if the larger website platform providers will seek to integrate an offer an automotive advertising solution to compete with the synergies that Autotrader will offer VinSolutions customers.  Will new alliances be formed with Cars.com, Automotive Advertising Network, or EveryCarListed?

ADP/Cobalt already has a strong marketing platform in their sister company Dealix with UsedCars.com but Autotrader has made a major push to brand itself as a new and used car marketing platform.  Dealer.com has the best integration with Google Adwords of all platforms and one could argue that this technology is superior to Autotrader.com for generating leads and sales.

I congratulate Chip Perry and the Autotrader executive team for taking a bold step to create an integrated automotive advertising and marketing solution for car dealers.  This is good news for VinSolutions customers.  The industry will be closely following these developments because consolidation and integration are long overdue. Dealers can truly benefit from seamless integration of data and better business intelligence tools that are based on this data.

Looks like I’ll have to be expanding our dealer training classes on some new marketing strategies this year!

Download Copy Of Article

You can download a copy of this article as a PDF on this link:  http://www.slideshare.net/brianpasch/autotrader-purchases-vinsolutions

Did you know that your local competitor just got smarter?  You thought that they were behind the ball with digital marketing, social media, and leveraging the Internet but that was yesterday’s news.

Your local competitor did wake up.  They realized that they were behind and took action.  Good entrepreneurs are not perfect but when they realize that they are losing market share and wake up they can be a fierce competitor once again.

If I were you, I would be looking over my shoulder because your competitor is using their recent knowledge to mount an attack.

Your competitor attended a 20-group meeting, a social media conference, or a digital marketing workshop, and the lights went on.  You were too busy to notice this change so I thought I would send a warning shot over the bow.

You Once Had An Edge

I was pleased to know that you got started with social media and digital marketing a few years ago and had an edge in your local market.  You exploited that edge and basked in the sun of your success.  Congratulations.

You were rewarded with greater sales, website traffic, and market share. Over the past few years you have been busy implementing the things that you learned by engaging in the educational opportunities offered by this industry.

In fact, I’ve noticed that you have been so intent on implementing what you learned you have been too busy to attend any new workshops in the past year.  Is it still true that you got so many ideas in 2009 and 2010 that you have decided to skip attending conference this year?

Why pile on more ideas when you haven’t had a chance to implement those from 2009 right?

Your Competitor is Smiling

To paraphrase a famous business book, while you have been busy implementing last years’ digital marketing strategies  “the Cheese has moved again”.

Do you need an example?  Today being on Google Page One is not as important as being on Google Page with strong positive review stars.   If you are one Page One with bad reviews, your advertising budget is helping to direct more business to your competitors.

If you haven’t focused on a strong IRM process, much of your Automotive SEO work may be actually hurting more than helping your online sales.

No Time To Get Complacent

Is this scenario describing your dealership?

• Are you the incumbent that has decided to attend conference every other year?
• Are you the dealership that recently woke-up and engaged?
• Are you the dealer who wants to engage but needs assistance creating a competitive digital marketing strategy?

The dealers who want to remain relevant cannot afford to skip a year of education.  The industry is moving faster that most can comprehend yet I hear so many excuses why dealers think they can take a break from learning.

• “I’ve been to that event last year”
• “I can’t take time out of the office.”
• “The speakers and topics are always the same”
• “I’m the only person in my market that gets it.”

The reality is that the best conferences have not only new topics but also important revisions to existing strategies that you are using.

Two years ago little data on consumer behavior on dealer mobile websites was being shared, today we have a wealth of data to discuss.

Two years ago the conversation on reputation management was just starting and today the case studies on the impact of online reviews is chilling.

Google has recently changed their standards for organic search rankings and many dealers were penalized for poor link building processes.

Invest in Education in 2011

Since your competitors are heading to conferences, workshops, and online learning opportunities based on the most relevant topics for 2011 I thought you would want to reconsider your lack of action.

You have the power to remain ahead of your competition and find where the cheese has been moved.  What will you do?

I hope to see you in Orlando for starters.  Lock in a $100 discount off Boot Camp Registration by taking advantage of this special registration link.