Digital Dealer Conference – Day One

Here’s a brief outline of my day at the first day of the Digital Dealer conference I talked about yesterday. At the end of each session, I did a little video that captured my immediate reaction to the material. Hope you find it useful and/or interesting.

First Session: Dealer Roundtable

[metacafe]http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4498687/[/metacafe]

Had some troubles with YouTube, so this video doesn’t have the quick annotations that the others have.

Roundtables are almost always a great way to spend time at a conference. I almost always get a good tip or idea, and I feel like I learn something about my customers (potential customers, at least) by sitting in and listening to the questions, problems, and ideas. This roundtable was devoted to Internet managers with multiple salespeople, which means that it was mostly a group of large and medium-sized dealers.

Second Session: Tomorrow’s e-Commerce Dealership Today

This was a nice presentation that hammered home the importance of marketing a dealership’s fixed operations (aka parts and service to all you non-dealer types). There were some good tips to be sure – especially the emphasis on customizing a dealership’s “Service” website to each individual owner. I.E., owners create a profile with their vehicle VIN, and then the website provides personalized service recommendations after consulting the vehicle owner’s records (stored in the dealer’s computer system).

This specific tip seems like something that dealers would be hesitant to do – every customer’s vehicle is different, and service recommendations can’t be provided online or over the phone…you’ve got to take a look at the car to know what it needs, what’s wearing quickly, etc. At least to provide service recommendations in any meaningful way.

Still, it was great to see someone emphasizing the importance of marketing parts and service instead of just focusing on sales.

Third Session: James Ziegler’s Online Social Media Extravaganza

This was just bad. In Ziegler’s defense, his presentation fell apart when the internet wouldn’t work. Having said that…Jim’s speech was very low on actionable tips and useful info. The best thing I can say is that he probably does a good job relating some basic online marketing info to a very specific kind of person. The worst thing I can say is that his knowledge and understanding of the subject matter he was speaking about is incredibly limited. I hope for his sake that I caught him on a bad day.

Fourth Session: Digital Marketing Checkup 8 Milestones…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rInqfz_prgM[/youtube]

Awesome. One of the best presentations I’ve seen in a while (and I’ve attended a few conferences lately being that I’m hanging out in NYC). Presented by Moore & Scarry Advertising, the best tip of all (to me) was to use keywords for ad tracking. Just tell the people that see/hear/watch your ad to search for a specific keyword phrase, then setup PPC and SEO campaigns to grab them when they search.

I want to take one issue with something the presenter said – he intimated that the only good PPC management providers are Google Certified ‘companies’ or ‘resellers’ and not certified ‘individuals’ like me. His point was to watch out for low-quality PPC management providers, but I don’t think a PPC company’s level of Google certification is too critical to determining their quality. Instead, if I was shopping PPC managers, I’d ask for case studies and references instead of worrying about what level of AdWords qualification they have.

Still, a fantastic presentation. Moore and Scarry know what’s up, and I got a lot of great ideas from them.

Fifth and Final Session: Internet Video Strategy

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsa6d8wRsTI[/youtube]

This was a good overview of the potential benefits of online video. The best tip: posting videos of used vehicle inventory alongside pictures probably increases turn rate. Even if video doesn’t add one dollar in gross profit or bring in one extra visitor (and I’m pretty sure it does both of these things), the fact that it results in faster turn rates is HUGE. Selling cars twice as fast = selling twice as many cars.

Anyways, this is just a cursory review. I’ve got lots of notes I’ll use to write some in-depth blog posts in the coming weeks. If your new to this blog, be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed.

Interesting People I Met Today

Unfortunately, I didn’t collect a business card from everyone I met today, but I did get a few. Here’s what I remember about each person plus an SEO-friendly link:

Phil Sura – VP of Automotive Sales at UnityWorks! Media, which sells Better Web Video

Richard Tolsma at Dan Wiebold Ford in Idaho, a smart guy who’s killing it on Twitter. Dan’s also the man behind BoldFord.com, a cool site for a dealer.

Ryan Corey and his lovely wife Suzanne who run AutoLine, an Atlantic Beach Used Car dealer. Ryan, his wife, and his sister Kelli are doing an amazing job on Facebook. Checkout their Facebook page and remember they’re an independent dealer with 865 fans likes. That, folks, is bad-ass.

KB Samaha of Sunnyvale Ford, a guy who could probably teach a class on managing a large customer base. It was clear from my limited conversations with him that he’s got it under control – very impressive.

The smart and hard-working Monica O’Connor, a Detroit-area Dealer Specialties dealer franchisee who works really, really hard to do a great job for her dealers. Show me another vendor that takes the time and spends the money to attend a conference like this . If you have a dealership in Detroit, call Monica at (734) 673-0077. I think you’ll be very happy with her work.

Steven Mortensen – Exec. VP at Automotive Broadcasting Network. This is a cool business if you don’t know about it. Basically, it’s like having your own TV channel. ABN creates TV content specific to your store, which you can then show to people waiting in your lounge.

That’s it for today – I’m looking forward to meeting more people tomorrow and doing some more videos. Thanks for reading and watching.

P.S. I haven’t heard anything about SEO yet at this conference – just social and video. The thing is, a lot of the people I’m meeting don’t have websites that are perfectly optimized – title tags aren’t what I would have chosen, some structural issues, etc. My point: let’s not lose track of the big picture. Social and Video are tremendous opportunities, but being at the top of the search page for your money-making terms is huge.