“Imagine for a moment that the power of your desktop computer is now in the palm of your hand,” said Richard Keith Latman, Chief Executive Officer of iMagicLab.  “Using DealerCRM for iPhone, car salespeople can, for the first time, cut the cord and have their complete customer profiles, their total inventory and the award-winning DealerCRM anywhere they are. It’s never been easier to stay connected, engaged and responsive to the ever-increasing demands of today’s tech-savvy car buyer. Essentially we’ve turned the iPhone into the iCRM and the bottom line is that every user will make more money than they did the day before they installed it.”

In 2004, iMagicLab was the first dealer technology company to offer mobile-enabled lite versions of their automobile-dealer CRM, and now DealerCRM for iPhone raises the bar to a whole new level.  Using the full power of the iOS 4 operating system and of Apple’s revolutionary multi-tasking engine, DealerCRM for iPhone delivers real-time leads, active alerts, tracked outbound-calling, full email-template support, enhanced duplicate-checking and much, much more.

iMagicLab expects the app to be available in iTunes and the mobile App Store the first week of August 2010.

About iMagicLab
iMagicLab is one of the fastest-growing customer relationship management software companies in America.   They exclusively serve the automobile-retailing marketplace and are an approved solution for most of the major automobile manufacturers in the United States.  iMagicLab creates customer relationship software, Internet lead management solutions, inventory management systems, service scheduling and  retention, lead generation, DealerCRM for iPhone, websites, DeskLog, AutoPencil and eBay auction services specifically for the automobile-retailing industry.
Visit the company’s website at http://www.imagiclab.com for further information on iMagicLab or dial 888-304-2525.

CarFolks.com Main Purpose

What is completely lost in this diatribe is the fact that networking is a great source of business, online or otherwise.

It leads to referrals, direct sales and staying in touch.  While I agree that people can go over board with networking online but what about the great networkers that sell cars to members at their church, the masons lodge or the golf course?  While these activities can take away from business time too they can be a huge marketing tool.

Businesses do not network online or otherwise.  People who work in them do.  Online is no different.  Our friends, old classmates and family are utilizing online networking sites to reconnect, stay in touch and to share memories.  Anyone who has been in auto sales for more than a month knows that people buy from people they like and staying in touch is the best way to insure repeat business.  Online has made that easier.

Nobody wants to connect with “Old School Dealer Group” they want to connect with the individuals who work there.  Everyone has a sphere of influence and by connecting with you online they are opening letting you into their circle where as they may be more hesitant to do so in real life.

• Will they want to follow you on twitter if the only thing you share is the deal of the day or hour?
• Do people want to really want to read your blog if it is nothing but a pitch?
• Would your brother 350 miles away be interested in your facebook wall if your message is to call for a great deal on a car?
• What would your grand ma say if all you did was try to get her to fill out a credit app because “Everybody Rides” from your myspace account?

Not only would it be counter productive to think that is the way to use networking sites it would be just as asinine as the Carfolks.com model.  If you took the time to make connections and become a part of the community and be a participant not just a marketing machine then these sites can work for you.

It is great to reconnect on facebook with an old high school buddy and to catch up on what has been going on in each others lives.  If  you really reconnected with that lost friend they would travel hundreds of mile to buy a car from you and to enjoy a dinner and a drink.  Two good things come from that interaction by not leading with the pitch.  Just by letting people know what you do.  (Personal Story)

The web today is about being connected with others and the applications that help bring everything together.  I get excited about finding applications that can help promote your business.  I was recently sent a press release by Wei at www.easyautosales.com that talks about how they developed an application where cars can be posted via facebook connect.

I see the application being a great tool if used properly in a networking environment.  Consumers can post a car they find and ask their friends for their opinion of it and a salesperson with a large network could feature a recent trade in and tell the cars story to their connections or use it to recommend cars to those that ask.

The line will have to be walked for dealership peronel using it as a marketing tool so not to appear spammy, there is already to much of that at every level in our industry.  Moderation is the key,but if your profile is strong enough you become the car expert in your circle and your friends will appreciate it.

People are going to Facebook not Carfolks.  With monthly visits topping 60 million and growing versus less than 1000 and falling where would you rather your people be? (I know a few blogs that get a lot more traffic than that)

Remember my motto: “Without Traffic Everything Fails”

Technorati Tags: automotive seo, automotive social networking, carfolks.com, facebook.com, myspace.com, online marketing

The automotive digital marketing space is now the wild west of the auto industry and represents the best opportunity for dealers, who have the ability to make informed decisions, to promote their dealerships and inventory online. Unfortunately for most dealers they rely on recommendations from individuals or companies that have a back end motive in recommending products and services to them. Like the scouting reports that General Custer had before “the Battle of Little Big Horn” and are being lead to the slaughter.

Carnival like atmospheres and gee whiz presentations with recommendations from people who have not changed their game plan in relation to digital marketing in several years is a recipe for disaster. In this space with enhanced consumer awareness and online trends changing at an alarming rate cookie cutter products with declarations of how well they did in 2005 should tell the dealer to be weary.

This problem is not only presented by consultants and agencies who are trying to carve out a space in a niche that they do not understand it is compounded by the fact vendors that operate in the digital space make recommendations that only serve them and not the dealer.

Today there are so many different flavors of cool aid that is being served up to decision makers it is easy for the dealer to become paralyzed and choose to do nothing. Another big mistake.

The list of terms, tools and disciplines in itself can be confusing to a lay person. Automotive digital marketing, online best practices, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, micro sites, landing pages, CRM, ILM, SEO, PPC, websites, process, conversion ratios, email templates, social media, social networking, dealer ratings, click to call, online chat, online classifieds, twitter, linkedin, plaxo, leads, online merchandising, pop ups, pop unders, text advertising, banner advertising, online directories, blogging, squidoo, consumer generated content, have you got lost yet?

Now you have vendors pitching these individual products or combinations of them in packages as the answer to the dealers online marketing effort. Not to mention the training that must be performed for the use and implementation and process development.

Here is the typical situation. A dealer attends a conference and hears buzz words such as social networking, web 2.0, blogging, seo and sem. Currently they have a website and are sending their inventory to classified sites such as cars.com and autotrader.com and realize that they are not getting the best return on their time and investment.

So they contact a SEO vendor and a SEM vendor to help deliver more traffic to their website and realize that their process is broke after examining their lead handling. In comes the process consultant that gets them signed up with a state of the art ILM and CRM system and buying every lead in a 200 mile radius of their store. However the dealer has set a budget for expanding her Internet presence and soon realizes that all the based are not covered so she starts exploring more options. The SEM vendor tells them how they are going to deliver traffic to the stores website through an intelligent PPC campaign and the traffic will be almost instant and the leads will pour in through the site and they don’t need to buy leads and give them more money to drive traffic that closes at a higher ratio.

Now the SEO vendor explains to her that SEM is not permanent traffic and gets is more expensive over the long haul and tells her that she can buy leads for half the price that most lead vendors charge by buying direct from the lead aggregators while they establish a permanent search engine presence.

Now the autotrader rep and cars.com rep are waiting in the showroom to discuss the cancellation letter that was sent in because the process consultant told her not to waste money there to free up more budget so she can access discount credit leads that have been sold to six dealers already in the last 90 days.

Finally after three weeks of this circle jerk she has decided that she has tried the Internet and it is not worth it because it is not working in her store. She can’t find the ball no matter how hard she searches for it.

All the time her inventory data feed has been down because the modem for her DMS is infected with cockroaches where the parts manager dropped a burrito behind it in the parts warehouse where he hides to take breaks during the day and every email from the store is going into a spam filter because they have a local mail server and the F&I manager and title clerk are sending porn and the email around that says microsoft is going to give them $286 for every time it is forwarded to their 800 person contact list putting all the email address in the to field and the person who did online sales two years ago has an autoresponder set up to send every person who has ever submitted a lead through the website a daily email to call him on his disconnected cell phone to get the best damned service and because they need a car today and it is time for them to step up.

And people wonder why dealers have such a hard time getting it.  It is not their process that is broke it all the processes going on around them inflicted by the vendors who ply their trade in the niche or people who are trying to figure out a way to stay in the car business in a consultave role when they do not even know how to set up an email client.

The good thing is for people who are serving the dealers with integrity and for the dealers that operate with integrity and own a franchise other that one of the big three there is hope.  Current market conditions are going to rid the industry of posers and carnies at all levels.  OEMs, Dealers, vendors, consultants and dealership employees who have been faking it for years.

Now is the time for the dealers to act to own their competitive markets and make rational choices.  This can be done through education or finding consultants that can guide them who do not have an interest in pushing a certain vendors products.

Transparency is a buzz word that vendors and consultants use in their pitches to dealers telling them they need to be transparent with their ionteractions with consumers now dealers need to hold them transparent as well.  If a consultant or vendor that is recomending other widgets for the dealer to use in their online marketing efforts will not provide full disclosure as to ther relationship with these other parties the best thing the dealer can do is tell them to play their shell game at down the road motors and seek education and non biased recomendations.

Now that you are ready to leave and go back about your day take a minute and leave a comment and let me know what you think.

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Technorati Tags: automotive internet sales, automotive vendors, online marketing

Email marketing is a powerful tool if used properly, car dealers and vendors understand this. Of course I mystery shop dealers and vendors and watch the emails I receive for ideas and also see some examples of not what to do. One thing is clear is that you must have a call to action in every contact via email. It can be anything, try to get a phone call or a visit to the dealership or a links to a special promotion which also has a call to action.

But first you must have your prospects open your messages!!

I currently have access to Cobalt’s LMCC product as part of our online marketing package we receive for being a 5 Star Chrysler Dodge Dealer, but I do not use it any more than needed for us to maintain compliance with the 5 Star Program. The problem I have with the Cobalt LMCC is that the subject lines are prepended with a customer number.

A potential customer is not a number and relegating them to one in your opening line to them does not endear them to being receptive of your message. Also they do not allow you to change the from field to make it personally identifiable. A dealership has never sent an email message people do!!

As I was exploring options on a replacement I checked with several other vendors in the market place and went with AVV. In my research I contacted several vendors I looked at iMagic Labs and BZ Results as well. I do not think I will ever do business with iMagic Labs based on the interactions I had with their owner when I was researching their product.

Apparently BZ Results uses their own product to manage internet leads. Which is probably an adaptation of an open source product Sugar CRM. For them to be one of the leaders in the market for CRM and ILM solutions they sure do not get the deliverability part right. If you are going to send out html emails you need to send the out in “Multi Part MIME format” which basically sends out a text version or an email as well.

While open tracking and click through rates can only be tracked using html format it is still more important to get your message delivered versus tracking them 100%.

(click the image to see it full size if it does not display properly)

You will notice that a recent email that I received from them in a gmail account does not load the images unless I chose to allow them. What this could do for most consumers is cause them to hit the “Spam” button and permantly delete all emails that come in this poor html format and eventually will cause all emails sent from that domain to a gmail account to goto the spam folder thus alienating a portion of business for them and their customers.

The bold announcement of the message being “Permission Based Marketing” is typical of declarations that mass spammers use and their message does not comply with The CAN-SPAM Act. They do not include their Physical Postal Address which is a provision of the act.

Even when I set up our account with AVV they do not even mention that to their customers. I just wonder if the whole industry is out of compliance? What would be interesting to see is when a case does come forward where a dealership and a vendor are held accountable for not being in compliance if the industry will wake up. This is a huge liability and eventually some litigious minded consumer will nail someone to the wall if it has not already been done. Keep in mind I am not an attorney so this is not legal advice but if you will visit The CAN-SPAM Act it tells you exactly what you need to do to be in compliance.

Technorati Tags: bz results, crm, email, Email Marketing, ilm

I use a lot of free resources like squidoo.com, craigslist, pay for my own 800 number and even have created my own microsites. All at my own expense. Fortunately I was able to work out a marketing reimbursement for sales I generate that do not cost the dealership any money, if it can be sourced to my own efforts. Now the dealership has taken this and turned it into a spiff for all sales people. Which is fine by me.

I shared this idea at www.drivingsales.com in a contest that they have for the best spiff idea and would appreciate you helping me with this. You can see my submission here (If you will take the time to register and vote for my idea it would be greatly appreciated. )

www.DrivingSales.com is poised to be the driving force in automotive social networking as it will be geared towards dealership employees allowing them to give honest ratings on vendors and share online and offline marketing ideas, management techniques, network and move your automotive career to the next level.

They will be a valuable resource. I have personally spoken with one of the founders and his vision is to move the industry into this century in it’s online initiatives. Stay tuned as I will be interviewing him here in the very near future.

Technorati Tags: drivingsales.com, social networking

I also like to publish about my passions as well. One of them happens to be raising money for SmileTrain.Org and reaching out to parents expecting a child with a cleft lip or palate. I have a son who has both. There is a lot of information available online for those expectant parents but I try to give our story and encouragement to those who are fearing this unknown. It has created some life long friendships and life changing experiences.

I recently had a “lens” of mine at Squidoo.com get featured as “Lens of the Day” and the whole purpose of this lens was to share our story and provide encouragement to others who are expecting a child with a cleft lip or palate. Nowhere do I talk about selling cars, buying cars, nor does it push any affiliate products. It is pure evergreen content. Click on the Image to see it.

The ancillary benefits of this though have been surprising. I sold a Hyundai Sonata to a visitor of this lens and traffic spiked to some of my other sites.

The long term SEO benefit for other “lenses”, my profile and other sites was greatly enhanced from providing evergreen content.

This was not the purpose it was just a bonus result and it will get into the eyes of the target audience.

Parents expecting a child with a cleft lip and or palate.

Technorati Tags: Automotive SEO, evergreen content, squidoo, ucg

Some of the mistakes I see being made in the Automotive Industry in this respect would cause you to become a pariah in many other niches, but it is considered acceptable in Automotive Digital Marketing.  While it mainly is not the dealers making these mistakes it is the vendors inside of the industry.  I get spammed weekly from one automotive website provider.  In a previous post about Dealer Micro Sites, I asked a vendor to respond and all they did was drop a very caustic remark full of spam links without using their real name, so I did not approve the comment.  Lead providers try to end around me at the dealership.  Automotive classified providers screw up invoicing.  I asked a new social media site to correct their database info and they responded by deleting my dealership from their platform.

This does not take into account that most all of the products offered by vendors is overpriced  for the level of service they give or the real value of their product.  Unfortunately for the dealers they only measure things by the 30 day window in which they operate and do not look at the long term implications of some of the decisions they make in regards to their online marketing.  This is good for me in my local market because I am creating many different levels of online marketing materials to attract traffic to the dealership’s website and my own unique selling proposition and I do not worry about the 30 day window as much as the long term benefits.

The good thing for me is as long as the vendors keep screwing things up it makes my job easier and my only real competition is mediocre products from online automotive vendors.

Technorati Tags: automotive, automotive digital marketing, Automotive Industry, Building, Dealer Micro Sites I, Internet Marketing Arena, lead, long, Make Money Niche, market, online, Unfortunately, vendors

Being paid only on measurable results does make it easy to get distracted chasing deals and not getting the department running like a well oiled machine, but with time all things will be there.  Because I do not have anyone that really knows what we have as far as existing web properties and tools, I discover something new every day.  One of the best discoveries that I made last week was that we have 3 free websites with the Chrysler 5 Star program.  Right now they are on directories inside of 5 Star and will be moving to their own domains tomorrow,  This will just make it easier for people to find up on the most critical search terms for a dealer to be optimized for, their own name and city / brand, any optimization outside of that from the start is a waste of effort.

While I am not ready to tackle self managed inventory it is my goal to have that in place by the end of March before the summer / fall selling season.  My immediate goal is to get the process of how leads are handled down pat.  I have caught a few falling through the cracks and have no one to blame but myself.  With a goal of 30 online measured sales a month by the May it does look like I have my work cut out for me.  Starting from scratch to this level may be a daunting task but one nonetheless that will be achieved.

Some of the things that still amaze me in the online automotive marketplace is that dealers and vendor are still following trends and not stepping out of the box to have a unique selling proposition.  This is good for me as I am also revitalizing my blog network and other avenues to getting inventory in front of as many eyes as possible.  In the short term it will be as simple as posting 10 listings to free classified services a day and doing one post a day in rotation on five different blogs highlighting inventory and why customers should do business with me.  This will eventually create a search engine presence that will be unstoppable with evergreen content.

The content and improving process is the goal for the next 30 days.  Wish me luck….

Technorati Tags: Because I, Chrysler Star, Cobalt LMCC, day, February, goal, Granted I, Inventory, March, Process, Star, Starting, time, While I, Wish

Social Media Networks in the automotive industry are fledgling and the dynamics created inside of them is atypical of what you see in other niches. Some of what I have seen are complete aberrations and others I have a special kindred for, all have afforded some decent networking opportunities, even the one that is a laudable project. Social Networking also includes blogs but for now I will just concentrate on the networks that I visited recently.

Here is how I rate the networks that are out there:

• Car Dealers Social Network – (145 Members) Very diverse network but a tight group. Lots of effort put in lately to cut down on the spam post. Tends to cater more towards dealership employees and some fledgling vendors. It goes through spurts of activity.
• Automotive Digital Marketing (399 Members) – Seems to be a sounding board for its founder to show off. Not a lot of quality there. I have had some good networking opportunities, but refuse to visit very often due to the myspace feel and the Me Me Me hand waving. Maybe it will make it if they quit spamming other networks trying to take away members and change the layout and feel there. Seems to have the most activity but it is mostly billboards for an outdated wealth of knowledge.
• iMagic Lab Connect – (198 members) I have not spent a lot of time there but like the fact that joining is moderated and they have in their TOS that advertising implicit or overt my cause you to loose your account. They seem to be doing a good job as far as it being real networking but then again the activity level seems to be low as well. (Up Date 4/17/08 Membership has not grown since this post and I have deleted my account there.)

Social Networking is not about showing off it is about community. As in all communities you will have leaders that provide the most benefit to the members but when leaders try to develop a community around themselves it is doomed to fail. I have seen it happen to many times. From forums to social advertising networks (Yes there is such a thing) when people try to over promote themselves or product it becomes ineffective and takes away from value that can be garnered.

All three of the networks listed above are sponsored one way or another by vendors in the automotive arena and tend to alienate their bread and butter, the dealers and are open for consumers to browse. Granted the car business has a bad stigma in the eyes of it’s customers but allowing consumers to see marketing tactics and to hear the general groan taking place in the industry right now is not going to help dealers or vendors to be more profitable. The doors need to be closed (previous post about this) and membership bases need to be strengthened.

To sum it up. The network with the largest number of members is really doing the worst job and has the least likely chance of making it in my opinion. The other two networks actually have a better networking atmosphere and free flow of ideas. They all have a dismal showing for the number of dealership employees and vendors in the marketplace and none of them have real gate keepers to keep the content out of prying eyes. With a rough estimation of 100,000 automobile dealers in the US if only 50% participate in online marketing and only 50% of them looked to enhance or share their knowledge in an online community we are failing miserably based on member levels in these communities.

Update – New Take on Automotive Social Networking Visit this Link- Update

Technorati Tags: automotive social networking, car dealer social networks

I just thought I had a task before. Now I have a real rebuilding process to go through, the difference now is I have a defined budget and complete latitude to make all of the decisions on where the money is spent. My job is to produce ROI. All “paid” services were shut off when I arrived other than the crappy Reynold’s sites, which are not charged to my budget.

Here is what I have for Free:

• Two Reynolds Sites that will eventually be merged into a “Group” website by the end of this quarter. Already in place before I arrived. Will kick and scream to get a location only site back on it’s own domain after this takes place. Those cost will be charged to my budget then.
• Cobalt’s LMCC – For being a 5 Star Dealer. I personally don’t like it other than the price.
• Inventory inside of the 5 Star Site, new and used. It does generate some leads and the price is great.
• Hyundai is rolling out some new features which will be similar to the 5 Star deal it appears. I do not have full details yet, I was made aware of this late this afternoon and did not have time to look at it.

My budget for the next 30 days is only $3000.00 and here is how I am spending it:

• Secondary Finance Leads – $1050. I am not real fond of this but I need to breed some fast activity and this seems to be the best way right now. We have a strong F&I manager and we have some new secondary finance sources available, which I did not have before.
• Automotive classifieds with Cars.com – $900. If it were not for a co-op that we have in place I would not of done it.
• Regional Classifieds – $175 on a rollout package the price is right!!
• Vehix.com – $250 again a rollout. Comcast has a high penetration of the TV market here and they are advertising it like crazy. Being sandwiched between two major metros with Comcast as the main cable provider as well as my local market’s only provider it is another no brainer.

So in all I have spent $2375 in just three days in reworking this. While that does leave some room to take on another project or lead source chances are I will not utilize it unless it is the right opportunity, I may start a PPC campaign with a microsite or two.

Of course I have some blogs going that are delivering leads to affiliate programs and may change their direction in the near future. However since the returns on this are known it may benefit me better to leave those alone as they are not subsidized by my employer. This is a fine line I am walking I know but in the for what it is worth category those are mine and were not developed on their time or dime. Any benefit I receive from them is mine alone. This does not mean I will not create or outsource some user generated content in social networking/publishing platforms to benefit the store, but even then I will maintain control.

Technorati Tags: automotive, benefit, budget, Carl Gregory Chrysler, Cars, Cobalt's LMCC, Comcast, Free, Hyundai, Internet, Inventory, ISM My, leads, Now I, Ok I, PPC, Regional Classifieds, Reynold's, ROI All, Secondary Finance Leads, Sites, Star, Star Dealer, Star Site, TV, Two Reynolds Sites, Vehix, While I