I recently had a demonstration of Dealer.com’s Social Relationship Manager (SRM), and I was so impressed that I decided to write a formal review of the product.

The raw potential of SRM should advance the widespread adoption of two software categories in the automotive sector. Social Relationship Manager is both a content syndication platform as well as a reputation management platform.

Dealer.com has fired the warning shot over the bow for stand-alone products that offer car dealers software dashboards to manage their online reputation or social media engagement.

Customers of Dealer.com will find it hard to justify paying for third party reputation management, and social media publishing tools, since SRM integrates tightly with other powerful features of the Dealer.com platform for only $399 a month.

Content Publishing For Car Dealers

I’ve long been an advocate for content publishing strategies for online branding and marketing.  In 2008 I stated at an automotive conference, “the most important hire next year for a car dealer will be a content writer”.

That statement was true then and more urgent today; however, I was a few years ahead of the market.  Content syndication tools make it easier and more affordable for dealers to start their own content publishing strategy.

In fact, at the NADA Convention in San Francisco, Digital Compass Marketing announced the release of Dealer Syndicator (DS), web-based software for members of the Automotive Advertising Network (AAN).  Dealer Syndicator leverages content syndication technology over the thousands of websites in the AAN network.    Dealer.com and the AAN are leading the way in this exciting new product category.

In 2011, content syndication software will be a fast growing segment for progressive dealers who have a strong digital marketing strategy.

Content Syndication Delivers Strong ROI

What is content syndication?   Content syndication tools take exclusive and/or modified content and publish it across social media websites, microsites, or a private network of automotive sites.  Content syndicator tools simplify managing multiple logins across blogs, microsites, and social media sites.    With a single login dealers can view, monitor, and post to dozens of websites.

In benchmarking tests conducted by PCG Digital Marketing, content syndication tools will increase the productivity of the internal or outsourced content writers 100-300%, depending on the task.  This increase in productivity easily justifies the investment in syndication software for dealers with an active digital marketing strategy.

Content syndication tools use a single-login to allow car dealers to craft original content about dealership news, sales, promotions, incentives and post that content on multiple website platforms.

Content syndication tools integrate and directly publish content into all popular blogging and social media websites that include Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, LinkedIn, Blogger, TypePad, Slideshare, Posterous, and dealer customized microsites using these blogging platforms.

Platform Independence

Social Reputation Manager (SRM) is the first time Dealer.com has created a software platform that can be used by any dealer regardless of whether the dealer is a Dealer.com customer or not.  According to Dealer.com, “Social Relationship Manager is designed to Listen, Talk, and Connect with today’s social customers”.

Platform independence is one of the reasons I was very excited about SRM because any dealer that wanted to double the productivity for their content writers could purchase SRM and amplify their investments.  Dealers who have not started to leverage content writing and social media now have another reason to get in the pool:  SRM makes it easy and cost effective!

The price/performance of SRM also makes it a strong product consideration for any dealer that may be using tools by Xteres.com or GoSo.com.

What Does SRM Do?

Social Relationship Manager is a multi-function dashboard that summarizes the most important elements of a dealer’s online presence.  From one login, dealership staff can review changes in online reviews, leverage OEM news on blogs and social media platforms, and amplify their brand across the Internet in a fraction of the time!

• · Monitor Your Dealership’s Brand and Reputation
• · Compile and Inspect All Dealer Ratings In One Location
• · Easily See How Your Online Rating Are Increasing or Decreasing
• · Escalate Consumer Reviews or Blog Posts That Needs A Response
• · Suggest and Syndicate Custom Content
• · Schedule and Auto-Deploy Content Over Weekends or Holidays
• · Leverage OEM Incentives and News For Content Ideas
• · Make Your Facebook Page More Engaging

Social Relationship Manager Dashboard

In the photo above, you can see how the SRM dashboard would appear to dealership employees.  The initial dashboard screen is divided into six regions, which summarize the current snapshot of time for the dealership.

The top navigation menu provides fast access to the core features of SRM:

• Social Media
• Reputation Monitor
• Dealer Ratings
• Social Syndication

I found the product navigation menus and overall user interface intuitive.  After a few minutes it was clear how to navigate the product, which should be encouraging to dealers.  This is a sophisticated product that anyone can use with ease.

Content Syndication

Let’s start with one of my favorite topics; content syndication.  I’m a proponent of content and inventory syndication and the SRM allows dealers to monitor ANY RSS news feed and syndicate custom versions of that news across blogs, Facebook, and microsites.

So if you are a Porsche dealer, you can monitor the news feed from the OEM and when you see an article that interests you, you can copy the content, customize it for your market, and post it to MULTIPLE consumer facing websites minutes.  In the example above, it will post the article to the dealer’s blog, Facebook, and Twitter.

You can connect SRM to all your third party blogs, micro-blogs, and social media sites and track how much “content” is being published to these sites.  I don’t know about you, but dealers I speak with are OVERWHLEMED with how many websites, logins, and reports they have to use to INSPECT their online content publishing strategy.  SRM simplifies all that with a single activity based dashboard.

In the photo on the right, you can see that each social media site you connect to SRM will show all recent activity.

If you have custom WordPress, Blogger, or TypePad microsites, they all can be managed from this central SRM dashboard.

This is a significant time saver and the consolidated reporting makes it easy for a manager or dealership executive to inspect the productivity of internal or third party content writers.

The dashboard application for content syndication will provide dealers with a way to inspect the amount of work that is being done to promote their brand online.   If SRM is leveraging all the best content publishing platforms, then this will prove to be a winning productivity application for car dealers.

The Holy Grail?  Integration to publish content to other third party automotive content networks, like the AAN,  to expand the reach and power that SRM offers to dealers.

Monitoring Your Online Reputation

There are a handful of automotive specific software tools that have assisted dealers monitor their online reputation.  Companies like Xteres.com and GoSo.com were first to market.

Good ideas never go unchallenged and leading automotive platform providers like Dealer.com, Cobalt, Dominion, and TK Carsites have measured the market and are broadcasting a clear message; Reputation Management and Social Media will be an integrated part of their software strategy.

SRM will result in significant marketing consolidation for stand-alone reputation management tools. Why?  SRM makes it easy for existing dealers to monitor their online reputation and it comes with additional functionality.

In the photos above, you can see that dealers will be presented with a live scrolling feed of news alerts, blog posts, and reviews pertaining to their dealership, or any other set of keywords they decide to follow.

SRM Simplifies Manual IRM Resources

Dealers who are using free monitoring tools like “Google Alerts” should know that Google Alerts does not accurately track commentary that is going on inside popular websites, reviews sites, and industry communities.  The data mining tools that are leveraged by Social Reputation Manager are innovative and very thorough.  It was designed with the content writer from a car dealership in mind.

Each piece of content found by SRM on the Internet is pre-marked based on logic to determine whether it is a positive or negative post.  Of course, these predicative grades can be overwritten and marked for follow-up or deletion.

Why deletion?  For some dealers they share a name like “Classic Chevrolet” with dealers in many different states.  So posts brought into the review window can be deleted if they do not pertain to them.

By monitoring, reviewing, and scoring all activity properly, dealer principals can develop a very accurate picture of the online reputation scores.  In fact, SRM provides scoring for both Reputation and Social Media engagement.

Facebook Fan Pricing

Social Reputation Manager (SRM) also replaces stand-alone software tools that add inventory to a Facebook Fan Page.

SRM offers a new spin; encourage consumers to get your special Facebook pricing but it requires them to become a Fan.

Very cool idea and I’ll be looking forward to seeing how much this helps to increase fans.

The design and layout of the Facebook tab is attractive and compelling but once a consumer becomes a fan, they may not have a need to visit the dealer’s Fan Page.

Social Reputation Manager Will Energize Digital Marketing Strategies

Any dealer that wants to increase the productivity of their existing content writers and social media team should get a demonstration of Social Reputation Manager.   The product is well designed, easy to use, and can assist dealers in better engaging with consumers on the socialized Internet.

Dealers who have held off investing in content writing and social media have a compelling reason to get started.  SRM simplifies the management of multiple websites and tracks all activity to measure the ROI of your investments.

Content Syndication takes traditional blogging and social media engagement to the next level. SRM is one of those groundbreaking products that energizes the automotive community and provides the momentum to build innovative, time saving, products in the years ahead.

For more information on Social Relationship Manager, visit: www.dealer.com or call 888.894.8989

SRM Video Provided by Dealer.com

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The shift  to integrate social media tracking and reputation management alerts will eventually limit the business upside of stand alone reputation management software companies and social media syndication tools.  I predict that these stand alone tools will be seen as a silo applications in the near future.  These companies will be either purchased by larger website providers or they will fade away.

Dealer.com Social Relationship Manager

The Dealer.com Social Relationship Manager which was unveiled at the  2011 NADA Convention was impressive. Customers of Dealer.com that are engaging in social media and use third party reputation management tools should get a demonstration.  This is one slick application!

After seeing the integration of social media signals as well as content aggregation, dealers on the Dealer.com platform will be pleased with this timely feature set.  I would say that car dealers are finally waking up to the fact that consumers are influenced by the reviews that they find online.

@utoRevenue Reputation Management Tools

@utoRevenue which focuses on client retention processes for the automotive industry has added an IRM dashboard into their product line.

According to their press release: “The 360-degree reputation management solution provides dealers with an innovative approach to tracking, managing, and influencing their online reputation. Going beyond the traditional solicitation techniques employed by most in the industry, customers engage at key points in the retention cycle, when positive experiences are most likely to be captured and negative experiences can be quickly addressed.”

It makes sense to me that the service provider that is already responsible to email clients, produce newsletters, and keep client’s engaged with the dealership via coupons, offers, and education should leverage that same channel for reputation management.  I know that consumers do NOT want extra calls and email from car dealers.

If you are a current customer of @utoRevenue, I would call and get a demo of this new product offering.

Check With Your Platform Provider

Other major website vendors will be rolling out integrated reputation management alerts, escalation processes, and review progress monitoring in the upcoming months.  So before you go out an purchase a stand alone product, talk to your website vendor and see what they have in the pipeline.

Data integration will become increasing important in the years ahead, Integrating your IRM data and social engagement stream into your main CRM system will be a wise choice.  The opportunities for data mining will only increase when all contact data and outside content are combined in one data warehouse.

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This of course is a good time to remind vendors to send us press releases when new products or announcements are made.  PCG always tries to communicate products and services that can benefit car dealers.  Future announcements can be sent to: news@pcgdigitalmarketing.com.

The Power Of Three

BMW USA in fact had selected three website providers to bestow the coveted “preferred” website vendor status. The preferred website providers will work with BMW dealers and BMW USA’s compliance partner Williams-Forest, to ensure that all BMW dealership websites achieve their new written website standards by April 1, 2011.

All BMW dealers must achieve Level 1 compliance by April 1, 2011. Dealers who comply with Level 2 website standards can apply to have co-op dollars used for their website marketing costs. The co-op funds max out at $2,000 a month which is not an insignificant savings!  Dealers should request details on which products and services qualify for the $2,000 co-op funds.

BMW dealers by now have most likely received their website compliance letters and actions that need to be taken.  The clock will be ticking to meet the mandatory website standards by April 1st. The three companies approved for BMW dealer websites are well versed on what is needed to achieve Level 1 and Level 2 compliance.

Cobalt BMW Websites

Cobalt has created a PDF document that outlines their specific services and website opportunities for BMW dealers. You can download that PDF on this link: Cobalt Websites For BMW Dealers.  Cobalt also offers a special bonus for BMW dealers.

According to the Cobalt brochure: “All Cobalt-endorsed website packages include pre-owned vehicle listings on BMWUSA.com and your regional marketing sites at no extra charge. This is a $300 per month value and a significant source of additional exposure for your pre-owned BMW inventory.”

BMW Dealers can call Cobalt for more details on this program using this special BMW dealer hotline: 1-888-434-1053

Reynolds & Reynolds BMW Websites

Reynolds has created a microsite dedicated to their BMW dealership offering.  That website can be reach on this URL: http://bmw.reynoldswebsolutions.com.  Dealers interested in the Reynolds BMW website solutions can reach them at: 800-767-7879.

Dealer.com BMW Websites

As previously stated, Dealer.com is also a preferred partner and Matt Murray added these notes to the original story we posted:

“Those centers compliant with Level 2 standards will be able to submit their website invoice to NSI for retail co-op reimbursement beginning May 1, 2011. Eligible items will include general website management, search engine optimization (required to adhere to BMW policy), chat, mobile, video products and reputation management.

These costs will be reimbursed at 50%, not to exceed a co-op reimbursement of $2,000 each month. A onetime set-up fee for one of the BMW preferred website providers will be reimbursed at 50%. More details will follow with the revised retail co-op guidelines in February. If there are questions regarding this or any other facet of the program dealers should feel free to call Dealer.com at 888-437-8159 or email sales@dealer.com.”
If you are a BMW dealer and would like to reduce your website marketing and support costs, you should check out this new offering by Dealer.com. The website links that explain the program are: http://bmw.dealer.com.

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This summary is not a full review of the SEO architecture and search strengths of the new platform. A full review will come when PCG Digital Marketing presents the 2010 ASMA Awards and Study Report on October 13, 2010 in Las Vegas.

It is hard to improve on a product that has so many strengths but Rick Gibbs, CEO of Dealer.com, has managed to inspire his team to greatness. One of the highlights of the presentation was the demonstration given by Eric Mayhew who is the chief architect behind their TCD Platform (Total Control Dominator). The Dealer.com TCD platform is truly one of the most important automotive advertising tools that car dealers can utilize for digital marketing success.

TCD is best described as a car dealer’s personalized digital advertising dashboard. TCD directly communicates with Google, Yahoo and Bing paid advertising networks so car dealers can adjust Pay-Per-Click budgets and targets without being a Digital Marketing Geek.

TCD is Google Adwords on steroids!

(If I had to rename the product I would call it Total Competitor Domination.)

Dealer.com TCD digital advertising platform takes business operating rules and translates them into actionable tasks in Google, Yahoo and Bing’s paid advertising network. One rule could be to advertise all off-make used cars as soon as they come into stock.

Another rule could be to start a weekend advertising campaign which offers a $2,000 reduction off of MSRP on select new models starting at 5:00 PM on Friday. Google Adwords out of the box is not designed for the average Internet Sales Manager to operate proficiently and in many cases, self-managed Adwords campaigns can be very costly to dealers.

In the screen shot above, a dealership executive or Internet Sales Manager can easily see their current cost per lead and current balance. Need to make a change? Slide the $ button to increase or decrease spending. The Marketing Focus panel allows high level adjustments of spending by marketing focus. Do you want to increase the distribution of spending in your current budget to include “Used Vehicles”? Simply click on stars 1 – 5 to activate those keyword goals.

Innovative Phone Number Tracking

Dealer.com has integrated phone number tracking with all Pay-Per-Click campaigns. You may not be impressed by that fact since other companies offer similar services. However, Dealer.com takes it to the next level by scraping all pages on the dealer’s website that has a phone number and replacing it with the PPC tracking number. This includes all custom text content pages created by the dealership staff or advertising agency that may have embedded different phone numbers.

This creates more accurate PPC campaign metrics so more calls can be attributed to their true source of visitor engagement.

What is brilliant with TCD is that once campaigns are setup, these high level executive controls can really keep the dealer engaged with digital advertising success. I could write a 20-page report on the unique benefits of TCD but that is not the focus of this overview. Suffice to say that Dealer.com clients have a distinct advantage in automotive digital advertising if they choose to leverage the power of TCD.

Automated Integration of Dealer Inventory

TCD is the leader in integrated car inventory management that is seamlessly connected to Google Adwords as well as Yahoo and Bing PPC services. Pay Per Click advertisements can utilize information in the dealers DMS about any new or used car in stock. (See graphic below) Dealers who use PPC campaigns for used cars will save significant setup time if they compare the time it takes to create campaigns for individual used cars.

Behind these well-designed executive level controls is an amazing drill down user interface that can control every detail of a Google Adwords campaign from inside TCD. In the graphic above, dealers can decide what time slots to allocate their paid advertising dollars.

This panel also provides check boxes to turn on or off their powerful integrated inventory advertising features. Other automotive website providers can operate Google Adwords from inside their administrative panel but offer little in terms of user interface and integrated business intelligence rules.

Dealer.com has even enhanced the Google Adwords platform by adding new geo-targeting functionality that even Adwords does not provide. Dealer’s ability to create custom advertising “bands” could not be easier with the custom interface provided by TCD. What this means to potential critics is that TCD does not “dummy-down” Adwords so proficient PPC experts will not be held back.

It is hard to capture my excitement for the TCD platform because there is nothing on the market more perfectly designed for car dealers who believe in paid digital advertising, aka Pay-Per-Click (PPC). I tip my hat to Eric Mayhew, TCD’s chief architect, because not too many people can claim that they reinvested Adwords functionality for the automotive industry.

One more kicker that Eric added to TCD put a smile on my face. Dealer.com looks at the top organic search phrases that bring consumers to a dealer’s website and that produce leads. If these keywords are not in the current Adwords campaigns, they can be automatically added. Slick!

Those that don’t believe in the benefits of PPC will be out of business shortly. Why? Because Automotive SEO strategies cannot place a car dealer on Google Page One for broad search terms like “Toyota Camry,” “Used Cars,” or “BMW Dealer.” As long as consumers continue to use broad search phrases, dealers will need to invest in Pay-Per-Click advertising campaigns to stay on Google Page One.

Managing OEM Incentives

Dealer.com announced a new integrated Incentives Manager package after the 2009 ASMA Study was completed. This month we had the opportunity to drill down into the features of this add-on product. Car dealer websites are notorious for having “specials” pages blank and clumsy integration of manufacturer incentives. Normally, these incentives are not listed on inventory pages where consumers spend the majority of their time on a car dealer website. Go figure!

With Dealer.com Incentives Manager, dealers can leverage direct incentives data streams to their dealership website. These incentives can be controlled to integrate with car inventory listing pages as well as car detail pages. Attempting to integrate incentives manually is impossible and that is why this feature is a great value to Dealer.com customers. Since consumers “shop price” as part of their online purchasing decision, having the lowest price in real-time can make a big difference in lead volume.

Not to dwell on the TCD platform again, but Dealer.com can also take the real-time OEM incentives and create PPC campaigns that advertise their current programs. This is another innovation that is ground-breaking and a time saver for dealers who like to advertise OEM incentive programs and be first to market.

Automotive SEO Architecture

Once again, the Dealer.com administrative management tools show careful consideration to the skill levels of car dealer employees. The user interface to change SEO Page Titles and META tags continues to be a breeze.

One of the nicer elements of editing pages in Dealer.com is that once you are in editing mode, you can navigate through the website using the same menus that visitors use. This may not seem important but it is a time saver. Try matching website pages to cryptic back-end file naming conventions and before you know it, you can waste hours of your time.

The Dealer.com Page Builder tools continues to grow with more widgets (see graphic on right) to create pages on the fly.

The Page Builder tool is intuitive and customers do not need to call technical support to create a blank page to edit.

One limitation in the current version of the software is that custom pages cannot be placed more than two levels down in the navigation tree.

Content is King

Consumers search for answers and recommendations for the questions that are top of mind and car dealers need to build content on their websites to meet this need. Dealer.com has a multi-pronged approach to adding content; video blogging, integrated car reviews, and consumer reviews.

The video blogging feature creates optimized blog pages for each car in stock with unique text and META tags based on the audio script for the vehicle. This feature creates a large number of content pages that are indexed by Google which has many benefits from an SEO perspective.

Consumers who purchase a car from a Dealer.com dealer can add their comments on the car that they purchased. Dealer.com will compile and leverage these positive consumer comments on similar cars in stock. Over time, this feature will allow car inventory pages to have more content and targeted keywords to increase the authority of their website pages. This is another example of Dealer.com’s leadership in applying proven Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies.

Dealer.com offers a blog with their base platform which is a customized WordPress installation. This was also added after last year’s ASMA Awards. This move further reinforces the automotive industry’s growing love affair with content building tools. I’ve been preaching that all dealers need to have content writers as part of their advertising budget. Dealer.com’s latest platform offers many ways to leverage content writers and third party SEO companies.

Fixed Operations Marketing

Lastly, Dealer.com and DriverSide made an announcement in April 2010 which an excerpt has been included below:

The two companies are partnering in an exclusive agreement to launch a series of products for new and used car franchises, the first of which will add robust fixed-ops content to Dealer.com’s industry leading platform. A full line up of further Fixed Operations and service marketing products will follow in coming months.

We agree with Dealer.com that the next area of opportunity for car dealers is in Fixed Operations SEO and digital marketing. Dealer.com has tightly integrated customer data into their product offering for targeted direct marketing. The Fixed Operations package can also be integrated into TCD to drive more service revenue via PPC.

Summary

We look forward to testing the new content management features in the latest Dealer.com platform as part of the 2010 ASMA Study. The product development team at Dealer.com should be recognized for not resting on the laurels and delivering a cutting edge product. Bravo!

Dealers searching for a well integrated digital advertising platform that masters Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing and integrates a powerful Search Engine Optimization (SEO) infrastructure should get a demo of this stellar performer.

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Click on this link for a full a list of all the 2009 ASMA Winners.  Brian Pasch, CEO of the PCG Digital Marketing, congratulates the winners.

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