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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We hope to increase the number of dealerships participating in the survey with your help.  Pass this survey link to dealer staff within your organization, in your 20 groups and friends in the business to grow the number of dealers involved.

If you have not yet participated in the survey, take a minute to do so. We will be posting the results of the full study prior to NADA.

Take The Survey

Participate in the survey by clicking on this link:  http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/automotive-digital-marketing

Adoption of Digital Marketing Strategies

The chart shown above is from 130 dealers to date.  Some of the responses may jump out to you like they did for us. For example, if you add the “not using” and the “ready to start” columns, you can see that in many area of digital marketing 30-40% of dealers have not yet engaged in their use.

This great digital divide will allow early adopters to gain a significant advantage on their peers.

Automotive retailers who redirect more of their marketing dollars to online spending in 2010 will be rewarded with increased market share.

Our data is skewed slightly because the survey is being done online. That means that the dealers participating in the survey are already engage in online discussion and communities. So, the numbers of dealers “not using” or “ready to start” is actually higher.

Internet Marketing Training

Thirty-four percent of car dealers surveyed are not budgeting for their staff to attend Internet marketing seminars or training. This is a discouraging fact. Regardless of a dealers’ level of engagement with digital marketing, they should at least understand the value of collecting best practices from their peers and face to face events are often a place for accelerated learning.

Dealers who do not budget for Internet Marketing skills development in 2010 will not be rewarded by many proven engagement strategies discussed on this forum. With NADA coming up in 30 days as well as the Automotive Marketing Boot Camp the prior day in Orlando, dealers would be best served to send their key marketing and sales staff for the latest strategies that can improve their 2010 results.

Digital Marketing Spending Still Small

With 39% of  car dealers surveyed having less than 20% of their overall marketing budget focused to digital marketing, dealers need to wake up and educate themselves on how to move that needle closer to 50% in 2010. Making decisions in a vacuum doesn’t work.

We Can Help

If you need assistance mapping out your 2010 Internet Marketing budgets and strategies, give us a call at 732-450-8200.

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I love to share great ideas with the automotive community as I find them. Since Facebook is a hot topic I thought I would write about ways to make your Facebook page more interesting.

In the past few months I have been testing and implementing some of the free tools that come from DealerRater when a dealer is signs up for the Certified Dealer program. There are many benefits to the program but I would like to discuss one of the new recent ways their dealer platform can be leveraged.

Facebook Car Inventory Pages

Dealers can now add their car inventory to a Facebook Fan Page tab using tools from DealerRater.com. You can see an example of this technology on the Infiniti of Norwood Facebook Fan Page below.

There is a tab called “Classified Ads” on their Fan Page which when you click on the tab it shows their inventory. This is a tasteful way to add additional functionality to Facebook withoput posting cars in the main Facebook news stream. This feed is free to dealers on the Certified Dealer program and it is easy to add to your fan page.

The trick is to add graphics or call to action messages to make your fans aware of the tab. Then if they want to look at cars they can and you can keep your news stream more meaningful and a value to your followers.

Facebook Tabs Customized

If you didn’t know it, you can add HTML code pages to your Facebook Fan Pages that can look just like your website. It can also have active buttons that bring people to your website.

You can see another example from ABC Motor Credit’s Facebook Page shown below. They are a Buy Here Pay Here dealership in Ohio and they have a contest running which they wanted to leverage on Facebook as well as getting clicks to their website. So this custom tab was created: http://www.facebook.com/ABCMotorCredit

If you are not handy with HTML coding, find someone to help. It only took a few minutes of our team’s time to take the HTML code from ABC Motor Credit’s website and created this tab. Once these TABS are created, you can add graphics to the Fan Page to encourage people to click on the tabs.

There is a number of creative ways to enhance Facebook. Inventory feeds, video channels, website forms, specials pages or something completely crazy can now be implemented to super-charge your Facebook page.

2010 Internet Marketing Education

Do you like these ideas? You can super-charge your 2010 Internet Marketing Strategies by attending the Automotive Marketing Boot Camp in Orlando. It is being held on February 12th, one day before the NADA Convention in Orlando.

Get the edge on your competitors regarding social media, SEO, microsites, pay-per-click and video marketing strategies from industry leaders.

Jared Hamilton will be the opening night keynote speaker on Thursday evening February 11th. Sign-up today.

Learn more about this limited engagement event at: www.internetmarketingbootcamp.com

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Automotive Internet Marketing specialists, the PCG Digital Marketing (PCG), announce the launch of a new comprehensive Internet Marketing package price at $995 per month.  The new offering will provide car dealers with customized online marketing solution that will include microsites, content development, blogging, social media, internet reputation management and Adwords strategies on a monthly basis with the convenience of a predictable monthly budget.  

The services delivered in PCG’s monthly package is configured based on the dealer’s current marketing strategies and vendor relationships. The PCG Digital Marketing package can work with any car dealer platform or existing service providers.

Automotive Social Media Strategies

Automotive social media platforms and online automotive portals have grown in popularity as the majority of consumers begin their car research online. By 2010, Generation Y will outnumber baby-boomers and become one of the most important consumer targets.  96% of Generation Y have already joined social networks. 

Dealers looking to leverage blogging, social media, Automotive SEO and Internet Reputation Management  networks can be overwhelmed with the amount of time and work needed to make an impact online.  Hiring a full time employee who can effectively manage these tasks would require a minimum $50K per year salary. 

With the new PCG package, dealers can saturate their local and statewide online marketing efforts for under $12K per year.   PCG’s new program includes a comprehensive approach to state-of-the-art Automotive SEO, blogging, online press releases, Internet Reputation Management, and social media networking. 

Predictable Marketing Budgets

Brian Pasch founder and CEO of PCG saw a need for this type of fee-based package in the Automotive community.  According to Pasch, “I hear the frustration of dealers at conferences who share stories about just how hard it can be to find the right person, or the person that was designated for Online Marketing was pulled off to work on other projects.  With this package, dealers can leverage the Automotive Internet Marketing expertise that PCG is known for and free up other employees to focus on what they do best.” 

Pasch also points out that Internet Marketing has no one-size-fits-all option.  Those not specifically experienced in the world of Automotive SEO and Marketing may have a harder time understanding the best practices for the industry.  “It’s another gamble that dealers don’t have to take.  PCG has proven success in Automotive SEO that a typical Internet Marketing Agency cannot immediately claim.”

Auto dealers who would like to learn more about our new comprehensive Internet Marketing package can contact the PCG Digital Marketing at 732-450-8200.

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