Digital Dealer Conference – Day Two

It’s 1:30 am and I’m finally finishing my re-cap of the sessions I attended at Digital Dealer 2010 today. I’m thinking of pulling everything together tomorrow, and then maybe charting out some blog posts for the next few weeks that will answer some of the questions that have come up today and yesterday.

So, don’t forget to subscribe to this thing if you haven’t done so already!

First Session: The Price is Right…Used Vehicle Pricing Cage Match

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1mMchGBMYs[/youtube]

I’m making a bit of a joke about the cage match, but not much.While the not-so-subtle animosity between a couple of panel members made for good theater, the session was long on used car pricing theory and short on data and actionable advice.

My friend Mark Harvey, who works for Sonic Automotive, pointed out that this type of discussion really isn’t applicable to the typical ISM. Unless ISMs are buying/appraising/pricing cars, this session is off-topic. While it was pointed out to me that a lot of attendees enjoyed the conversation (shout-out to EssermanNissan), I would have gladly traded this session’s one hour block for something else, and I met a few others today who agreed.

While I’m on my soapbox: I haven’t appraised a trade or bought a car at auction since Sept. 2006, and my perspective might be as outdated as Jim Ziegler’s AOL account (yes, that’s a dig at ‘Da Man’). I’m not as smart as a lot of people that were on the panel, but I know this: there’s no mathematical formula that accounts for “eyeball.” Until someone figures that one out, the pricing tools aren’t worth getting too worked up about.

Second Session: YouTube Walk-Around Essentials

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue12kNPITo8[/youtube]

I’ve got mad respect for Tim Jennings (the Internet guy). He’s a self-taught expert, and he’s the definition of authentic. He’s not overly polished, and he doesn’t try to be anyone he’s not. He’s just a guy – and I mean that in a really nice way. I had a chance to talk to Tim a little bit at the expo hall later in the evening, and he’s a nice, genuine person who loves his boys (one of whom is in Iraq, a place I hope he comes back from ASAP).

Third Session: Twitter Marketing With VJ

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3HLsolh2ow[/youtube]

VJ’s accent is just killer – he reminds me of the VW bug commercial and that guy from Die Hard. His Twitter advice? Excellent. I’m admittedly not a very good Tweeter (especially when it comes to building a long list of followers), and VJ’s T.R.I.A.N.G.L.E. with demographic break-down is a great foundation for a Twitter strategy. I’m definitely going to incorporate his advice into my Tweetin’ (both as @sporkmarketing and @tundrahq).

See VJ’s TRIANGLE presentation slides on SlideShare.

Fourth Session: Car Ad Tips

Pat Ryan put together a nice presentation on the best ways to optimize your vehicle descriptions to ‘get the click.’ Honestly, Pat’s suggestions reminded me an awful lot of writing a good PPC ad. If you incorporate the keywords into the PPC ad text, you get the click. Same thing goes for getting your listings to stand out on AutoTrader and Cars.com. He dropped a nice list of most-searched terms on AutoTrader too:

leather, navigation, sunroof, 3rd seat, seat heaters, manual transmission, dvd, tow hitch, bed liner, alloy wheels, quad seats, turbo, overhead airbags, 1 owner

Pat says you need to work these KWs into the first 150-250 characters of your vehicle descriptions (as applicable). I believe him.

Fifth Session: Advanced Marketing Analytics and Decision-Making Tools

There are times at conferences when you feel like you’re really going to learn something powerful, and this was one of them. Here’s why:

• I feel like I finally have a grasp on the practical application of ‘branding.’ I’m still not convinced it works, but that’s another post.
• I realize my understanding of pure marketing/advertising theory needs improvement.
• He didn’t pitch any products, he did a great job on questions, and he made everyone in the room feel a little smarter when it was all said and done.

The best take-aways were:

1. You’ve got to evaluate leads on a per-model basis. If you’re buying leads from an aggregator, evaluate the performance on a model-by-model basis. You might even want to break those models into trim lines.

2. You’ve got to evaluate leads on an incremental cost basis…I’ll go into this in greater detail at some point, but you should read Dennis’s website Revenue Guru.

Sixth Session: Internet Reputation Management

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AOvAyw_cG0[/youtube]

Brian Pasch is a smart guy, and he dropped a great slide deck that has a lot of very actionable info. When I start a reputation management project for someone, I do many of the same first steps that Brian recommends. You can view the presentation on SlideShare as soon as Brian posts it there.

Since SEO is what I do, I want to say three things:

1. Brian Pasch is an accomplished consultant that has a much better resume than I do. I study at the feet of the master, but smart people can disagree, right? No disrespect here, just professional discourse.

2. I think there are some ethical concerns with generating your own dealership review site. It’s a genius idea, but I worry that it could backfire. Creating a review site that you design to feature reviews that are almost exclusively positive is a little dishonest, and the last thing dealers need is another marketing tactic that’s somewhat dishonest.

I asked Brian about this, and he had a great point: If you don’t do what it takes to protect your brand, other people will try and make money off you. I can definitely see things both ways.

3. I’m pretty sure it’s a bad idea to use tracking numbers in Google Local ads, but I haven’t tested it. If you want to understand SEO, you’ve got to understand that Google is fighting a full-scale war every day with spam. So, if you want to rise to the top of the rankings, you’ve got to make sure your efforts appear to be 100% spam-free. Tracking numbers are problematic because anyone can get one, whereas a physical land-line (which can be verified with an address) is guaranteed to be spam free. Spammers don’t buy phone lines folks – it’s as close to bullet-proof verification of a ‘real’ person as you can get, which is why Craigslist uses phone verification (and why tracking numbers don’t work on Craigs).

There’s also some discussion in the SEO community that tracking numbers disrupt Google’s local algo – if you’re into SEO, you can read this Search Engine Journal post from a few months back about local SEO and tracking numbers.

My opinion: Stick with landlines. It’s cheaper in the long run to get a few extra phone numbers from the phone company than it is to risk losing your Google Local ranking because you wanted to use a cheap tracking number.

Interesting People I Met Today

Erin Stevens, an Internet Director with an MBA and a great track record. If anyone was looking for an in-store Internet marketing/Internet sales trainer or consultant, Erin would be a good person to talk to.

Tim Jackson, Colorado Auto Dealers Association. Tim and I are both Colorado guys who have been tweeting back and forth this week – it was great to put a name with a face.

Glen Garvin, an incredibly nice guy who’s a part of the Dealer Specialties group of companies. Glen and I are Twitter BFFs, LOL.

Tim Jennings the Internet guy and I had a nice talk today. He told some good stories and only re-affirmed my positive opinion of him. It was a pleasure.

…some other people I didn’t get cards from. My apologies…I was distracted today.

Anyways, that’s day two. Thanks for reading and watching.