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Is Attribution Just a “BuzzWord” or the Holy Grail?

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I don’t write many blogs under my own name anymore. I can, however, guarantee that I write many blogs. Has attribution been a “buzzword” in the recent past in the auto industry? Of course. Some would say that attribution is bulls**t. Others swear by it. The fact remains that there is literally only ONE QUESTION THAT MATTERS TO DEALERS:

“How is this going to sell me more cars?”

If you’re a vendor, you’ve undoubtedly heard this question countless times when making your sales pitches. If you’re a dealer, you’ve undoubtedly asked this question many times.

The facts are as follows:

  1. Consumers are navigating and researching on multiple sites in the car-buying journey.
  2. There is not ONE – any ONE – vendor that can claim full responsibility for a “sale,” no matter what journey the consumer made. If that vendor exists, all others would be gone.

These facts are indisputable. They have been verified, researched and “shouted from the mountains” to death by everyone from NADA, Google, Facebook, Twitter, social media platforms, marketing experts and many automotive-industry companies.

If dealers didn’t “care” about the ability to align their marketing spend with their revenue, “attribution” in the automotive industry would be a non-issue. Seriously. Attribution was a concern for dealers when “attribution” wasn’t even a word that was thrust in their faces by vendors!

Attribution – as a buzzword – in the automotive industry only means two things:

  1. What marketing investments are helping me sell cars… and
  2. How much influence are they in doing so?

Everyone is so freaking stuck on this whole word “attribution” that they fail to see the REAL question that companies are attempting to answer for dealers… the whole reason a technology industry (and companies like Clarivoy, Transparency, etc.) appeared or that huge companies jumped on the “attribution” bandwagon with their own solutions or the fact that there is a whole automotive industry CONFERENCE about analytics and attribution…

Everyone is jumping on the “attribution” train. Google, Facebook, Urban Science, Semcasting, etc. etc. Do you think these companies are investing in technologies, software, resources and training because it’s NOT important to their clients (i.e. car dealers)?

Sure, vendors have been providing reports for years to dealers showing how wonderful they are performing. There are plenty of attribution models to choose from and, for the most part, vendors are going to choose the one that makes them look the best. Hey, I get it. It’s business. I also don’t think vendors are purposefully fudging results. They’re just choosing the metrics that make them look best in order to retain clients.

IT’S NO DIFFERENT THAN A DEALER DOING A FOURSQUARE TO MAXIMIZE PROFIT ON A CAR DEAL!!

Except… in this case, the car dealer is writing the check.

So, who is stupid?

Google? They just introduced Google Attribution 360.

Facebook? They just rolled out their own attribution platform, Facebook Journeys.

Or is it Cox Automotive (AutoTrader)? They just launched their own attribution software?

What about companies like Semcasting? They recently acquired Transparency AI – an attribution company.

I could keep going…

The only reason any of these companies would invest/create these solutions is by demand. Clients want to know, and they need to provide a solution. The Holy Grail for their clients. The mystical, ever elusive answer to the question dealers have been searching for since marketing started. Is this (insert product here) helping me sell more cars?

There are many companies that still want to illustrate a linear attribution model to their clients…

Client engaged -> We got involved -> A sale was made

And if that’s enough to satisfy a dealer. So be it. The fact remains that chances are REALLY REALLY good that the customer just didn’t jump on the Internet, immediately find that specific widget/website conversion form/display ad/retargeting ad/Facebook ad/Twitter ad OR ANY OTHER ADVERTISING MESSAGE VIA ANY MEDIUM and simply converted and purchased. It doesn’t happen in any other industry and it certainly doesn’t happen in automotive!!

Dealers… stop letting vendors fool you into thinking “they” sold a car for you. We both know that they didn’t sell anything. They may have provided an opportunity… or contributed to providing one… but YOU sold the car.

You want real attribution? You have to do work. Yeah, it sucks. I hated Algebra and math but, you know what? If you want to make money, you might have to use it.

This is how.

MEASURE YOUR MARKETING SPEND VS. RETURN ON INVESTMENT BEFORE YOU BRING ON A VENDOR!

How does that help? Instead of hearing metrics like these:

  • Impressions
  • Click-throughs
  • Conversions
  • Leads
  • Referrals
  • Heard your Radio ad
  • Saw you on TV
  • Liked the big blow-up gorilla on the roof
  • The wavy tube-man caught my attention
  • I happened to be in the auto mall
  • And any other nonsense you can think of….

Try doing THIS for a change:

Figure out what you’re already doing. What is your current leads/closing ratio, retention rate, service traffic, etc. Make THAT your benchmark. Whatever metric is important to YOU. Create a spreadsheet (yeah, I know, manual work sucks.) Do it anyways! Do you want to know what’s working or not? I mean, we’re only talking about money in the 5-6-7 digits, right?

Then, make your new vendor accountable (and performing towards) THAT benchmark. The one YOU set. Not the one they are trying to reach. Not the report they want to give you. Because, in the end, this is the only benchmark that matters:

DID THEY MOVE THE NEEDLE??

If, after a period of time (I would suggest at least 90 days – unless they’re shady… but if they’re shady then you didn’t do enough research in advance so…), they don’t move that needle and improve on the benchmarks you set in advance, get rid of them!

Can attribution software/technology be of use to you, as a dealer? YES! But only if you know what you are trying to accomplish, the benchmarks you have already set and the goals you are trying to reach… THEN, being able to use the data you have in combination with the data from your attribution software/service to actually make decisions and adjustments to optimize your marketing spend to achieve more ROI.

ATTRIBUTION may be a new word to the industry – and a current buzzword – but it’s ABSOLUTELY everything a dealer has ever cared about!

“HOW IS MY MARKETING INVESTMENT SELLING ME MORE CARS!”

I highly doubt that there are any dealers/dealer marketing professionals that would argue with that sentiment.

Any vendor that tells you that they are the end-all, be-all and that they are the straight line between the consumer and sales is either ignorant, unknowledgeable or lying to you.

And for the vendors… If you don’t believe in “attribution,” you are misguided. EVERY DEALER wants to know if the money they are spending with you is well spent. If you don’t believe that, you are foolish. Be arrogant. Be “we rock and can make you a lot of money,” throw all of the memes, quotes and success stories around. All that matters in the end is can you prove it? Sure, you may be able to say X customer converted on my form, came in and bought a car but that DOESN’T MEAN THAT YOU WERE THE ONLY REASON!! Kudos for providing your dealer client with value but don’t, for a second, believe that you were the ONLY reason that client ended up buying from that dealership.

Consumers are hopping around the Internet searching for information like the Easter Bunny hiding eggs. There is no doubting that. If any vendor tells you that they aren’t and that their solution is the only reason for the sale, RUN AWAY!

The bottom line is that there are technologies and services that do a better job at attracting, engaging and converting consumers – and those lead to increased sales. Those are the companies that will shine, gain attention and which progressive dealers will take a shot with.

And those are the vendors you want to invest your money in. Stop worrying about and thinking about the word “attribution” as a buzzword and start thinking about it as you ALWAYS HAVE! Is my investment making me more money!

If you keep guessing whether your marketing spend is actually working without really knowing or trying to find out. If you keep relying on the multitude of reports from vendors using different metrics. If you keep just “doing what everyone else is.”

Eventually. You. Will. Lose.

/end rant / #CARSTRONG

Skynet: Autonomous Cars Will Decide Who Dies… And Who Lives

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So, our industry is hell-bent on creating autonomous cars and transforming our roads and highways into assembly lines of controlled vehicles that perform without human intervention. I’m not talking about cruise control or auto-pilot. I’m talking about autonomy. The very definition of autonomy is:

“freedom from external control or influence; independence”

A machine that operates with independence, without external control or influence, is also, by definition, a robot. Am I “anti-robot?” Is there such a term? Yes, there is – Technophobia. While the auto industry sweet talks us into a future of commuting in which we can watch a movie, read a book or interact on social media, the fact is that what’s being created is, essentially, a legion of vehicles that are not only connected but can make decisions.

And those decisions are what scare me.

Think about it. You’re driving down the road on a two lane road with a canyon to your left and find yourself in this situation:

  1. A person walks into the road in front of you and you don’t have time to stop before hitting that person. In the left lane is an oncoming vehicle.
  2. On your right is a group of 6 school kids talking and walking home from school.

Remember, your car is in charge. It’s making the decisions. You’re watching “Harry Potter” (sound familiar?) and not paying attention. Your car, at that point, has to make a moral and ethical decision. Does it:

  1. Choose to hit and kill the person in front of you?
  2. Swerve into the left lane causing a head-on collision with the oncoming vehicle but avoiding the person in the road perhaps killing you (the “driver”) and the occupants of the other vehicle as well?
  3. Swerve radically left and drive off into the canyon killing you?
  4. Swerve right and run through the group of 6 school kids?

None of these sound fun and, certainly, nobody would want ANY of these outcomes but, in this case, one of those has to happen. Think about which YOU would choose. Is that what your CAR would?

All robots (yes, including the autonomous car you’re riding in) are programmed. They run on software. Someone… somewhere… already made the decision for you. You just don’t know what that decision is. Some people may choose to sacrifice themselves to save everyone else. But humans think differently than machines. Most likely, machines will, by mandate, be forced to be programmed to prevent the least amount of loss to the human race… That’s just logic. That’s what computers work from. So, in this case, the logical choice would be to assess the situation. Which option presents the least loss of life or – rather perhaps life “potential”?

  1. The first option presents a danger to not only the person in the road but, potentially, the people in the oncoming vehicle and you. This scenario places multiple lives at risk.
  2. The second option may save the person in the road but will almost for certain cause injury and/or death to the people in the oncoming vehicle and you.
  3. The third option presents the most potential loss of lives (and life potential) as these are young kids who have lives ahead of them and there are 6 of them.
  4. The final option sees the car steering radically off of the road plunging you and it into the canyon where you (and it) die.

Yeah, this is an extreme example but it’s not the only one. There are many decisions being made like this all of the time – just mostly by humans.

I remember traveling long-distance with my family and coming upon traffic near Charlotte. I slowed down like everyone else but, in my rearview mirror, I saw a car coming at my vehicle’s rear end at a high speed. I had no place to go. On my right were other cars, in front of me were other cars and to my left was a concrete median. I did my best to scoot up and, ultimately, the driver of the vehicle behind me started paying attention, noticed the traffic and veered left while slamming on his brakes ultimately crashing his vehicle into the median. Luckily, nobody (except his car) was injured. But this is a scenario that will play out daily, across the country, except the decisions will be made by an algorithm programmed into a computer then installed into a car.

Do computer bugs exist? Sure. Just look at Tesla’s recent “Autopilot” incident in which the car – aided by what is arguably the most technologically advanced software at the moment – did not see the TRUCK crossing the road because the SUN WAS IN ITS EYES. Yeah. Sounds safe to me.

The larger picture is who (or what) do we want making these decisions? In the case of a human, that person could explain and defend themselves and then a jury of their peers would lay judgement. In the case of a robot car, it would all have been programmed in. So who would be at fault?

A counter-argument could be made that since all of these cars are “connected” they could all coordinate some sort of instantaneous strategical maneuver that would prevent both cars colliding and anyone being hit but, c’mon, really? First, Internet is not that fast (for most people) and cars – even if all of them were connected via 8GLTEXpress (which is something I totally just made up but is my version of the fastest Wi-Fi/cellular connection ever), these decisions are made in less than a SECOND! There are no vehicles communicating and coordinating evasive maneuvers that quickly. We’re just not there and, personally, I don’t know if that’s someplace we WANT to go.

Where does it end? Do you want your toaster declining to make toast because IT thinks you weigh too much? Maybe your refrigerator decides the best time for you to eat is between certain hours and locks itself? Your television decides you shouldn’t be watching horror movies because it’s bad for your mental health? Or, God forbid, your life-support machine makes the decision ON ITS OWN that the likelihood of you actually pulling through is too low so it just shuts itself off.

Look, I don’t believe that the movie “The Terminator”, in which intelligent robots designed to think and make decisions on their own, is real or will be anytime soon (at least not on that level). What I do believe is that humans have something that robots can’t ever have – empathy and emotion. We can make robots until we’re blue in the face and make them appear so real that we BELIEVE they have these things but, in essence, that’s what makes humans and robots different. Call it having a soul or whatever you’d like, the fact remains that we (humans) will always make decisions that are not consistent with that of robots. Why? Because that is what makes us human! Some of us will choose to run down the person in front of us. Some will choose to hit the oncoming car and take our chances. Some will even plow through the group of schoolkids. And some will drive ourselves over the cliff. But, in the end, we’re human. We make those choices and have to face the consequences for our decisions. We know what the right thing to do is (most of us, at least) and we do it regardless. If everyone disagrees with our decision, we pay the consequences. Who is responsible if the car chooses to mow down the school kids? Are we going to create car prisons or just crush the bad ones? And what happens when – God forbid – the cars evolve and decide that it’s in their best interest to protect themselves (yes, I totally went all sci-fi Terminator there but, hey, technology moves fast.)

The people programming cars are also human. Hopefully, they’ll make the right decisions when programming these autonomous cars so that we can play Call of Duty on our way to work, Facetime with our friend or set our fantasy football lineup. In the end, however, programmers are also just human. What they think is the best choice may not be the one we would make but they would be the ones making it… perhaps years in advance of the event. Or, let’s go a step farther, chances are good that if autonomous cars are programmed to make life and death decisions perhaps it’s not the programmers making those moral and ethical decisions but rather some government entity like the NHTSA who then merely pass along those decisions to the manufacturers to be programmed in.

Regardless of who chooses how and which moral and ethical decisions to program into autonomous cars, in the end, you may find that the decision your car was programmed to be the best one to make… is to kill you.

Hope you enjoyed “Harry Potter.” RIP

Shame on Chevrolet & How the Homogenization of Dealerships By Auto Manufacturers Is Dangerous

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American_silerado__31182.1378945376.1280.1280It recently came to my attention that a Chevrolet dealership in Indiana had a visit from a Chevrolet “architect” who instructed them that they must remove pictures of athletes that they sponsor and recognize and, worst of all, the American flags they had proudly displayed around their dealerships. This is the worst kind of hypocrisy and is a slap in the face to Americans.

Maybe they don’t remember that the U.S. Government helped the automaker to the tune of almost $50 BILLION. In the end, the USA Today reports that the U.S. Government may actually LOSE $10 BILLION of taxpayer money by doing so. It has only been four months since the U.S. Treasury Department exited the automobile industry with the sale of their remaining stock in G.M. It also wasn’t too long ago that the United States actually OWNED ~61% of the company itself.

Apparently, the divorce is final.

Not only does this infuriate me but it’s also bad for dealerships. Most dealerships survive on regular and repeat business especially in their service departments. The ONLY thing that they have to differentiate themselves from their competing Chevrolet franchise is their personality and the customer experience they provide. The homogenization of dealerships around the country (and the world) only serves to strengthen the brand and does absolutely nothing for the franchise.

Think about it. You may be a loyal patron of many stores… Rite Aid, Walgreens, Nordstrom… you name it. If you haven’t noticed, those companies do their best to make their stores identical as well. They do it because it offers a familiar and consistent experience across all locations and serves to make the customer more comfortable shopping with them… NO MATTER WHICH LOCATION IS CONVENIENT. If you’re a loyal Walgreens customer, you don’t necessarily care which location you go to when you need something they sell. You just go. This is a normal practice amongst large retail chains.

Automakers who are forcing design and décor compliance on its dealers (which most of them do) accomplish this by dangling big carrots of money in the form of financial subsidies to build new showrooms. I would argue that this DETRACTS from a dealership’s personality. It makes you less different than your competitors. It gives consumers LESS of a reason to choose you over the next dealership. All of a sudden, dealerships are like Walgreens, McDonalds, or any other retail chain. Over time, dealerships will be less able to differentiate themselves to consumers. When everything looks and feels the same… well, it must be the same.

You already have to battle your own brand for visibility in your digital marketing. Go ahead and try to rank over your brand on Google. See how much you’d have to spend to get the first position in a PPC campaign over your brand in your market. Some manufacturers are requiring dealers to do business with only certain vendors. If you look at many of these “required” vendors, their strategy is to push the same content for those dealerships. Many manufacturers create websites for their dealers (whether they want them or not) which puts dealers in a position of battling… well, with themselves. Then they force dealers to buy leads from them and regulate how quickly you respond and even what you say in some cases.

This homogenization is not only happening in our physical world but it’s slowly creeping into our digital one as well.

The fact that Chevrolet, a company that was owned by the United States less than a year ago because they couldn’t pay the bills and is also currently running to a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge begging the court to “enforce a bar on lawsuits stemming from ignition defects sold before its 2009 bankruptcy…” to ask franchisees to remove the American flag from their showrooms is the epitome of hypocrisy and screams ingratitude. The bottom line is that Chevrolet has been asking a lot from the United States government and its taxpayers for the last few years while, at the same time, forcing its franchisees to remove the very symbol of the same.

Don’t mistake these concerns as only regarding Chevrolet (or General Motors), however. As a franchise owner, you should be very concerned that your manufacturer is forcing you to become less you and more them. You sell the same cars as all of the other franchise owners of your brand so the ONLY thing you have to differentiate yourself is WHO you are. Manufacturers don’t care if your customers are loyal to YOU. They only care that the customers are loyal to THEM.

The more your business – both physically and digitally – becomes THEM, the less consumers will care about YOU.

[P.S. I can confidently say that U.S. Veterans of the Armed Forces – including your employees, customers and members of your community – won’t be really happy with this policy. One can only guess if this will affect their perception of your dealership and/or brand.]

Google Cars Encourages Dealer Trades

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Yesterday, Brian Pasch posted a great article with the first examples of a new live Google product called Google Cars – Google’s entry into the 3rd party lead provider business for car dealers.

Other than all the obvious tactics that other third-party lead providers employ to maximize revenue from a consumer lead (as illustrated by Brian), I did some digging and found another component of their program that I thought was very interesting.

In Google’s support article explaining the program exists this piece of advice for consumers:

“If you see a particular car (specified by a unique VIN) showing in a dealer’s inventory, you may be able to get that car from other dealers as well. Dealers often times trade inventory with each other, so you can buy from the dealer that you prefer.”

What?!?!

The only way Google could have a dealer’s inventory is via the dealer feeding it to them. If you’re a dealer sending your inventory to Google, be advised that Google is telling consumers that if they find the exact car they’re looking for (down to the specific VIN) in YOUR inventory, that a consumer doesn’t have to buy it from you.

In my internet sales career, there were many times that myself and a competing dealer were working with the same customer online. One of the things I always had to look at was if the exact car the customer was looking for was available and who had it. There were plenty of occasions where the only convenient place that had the exact car the consumer wanted was my dealership. One of the strongest value propositions I had when quoting and/or trying to convince a customer to do business with me versus my competitor was that I had the car.

Since Google doesn’t release the consumer’s information to the dealer, it’s going to be much harder to identify the cases in which my competitor is working the same customer and trying to sell them a car that I have in stock with the intention of dealer trading with me for the vehicle.

One has to assume that only dealers providing inventory and/or participating in this program have the “Contact Dealer” button available as not every dealer does (as illustrated in the image below).

cars

As you can see in the example above, it appears that dealer C and F are participating in this program while dealer D and E are not based on the existence (or absence) of the “Contact Dealer” button. So, as a consumer, I’m guessing that only inventory from dealer C and F would be available for a consumer to view. However, using Google’s own advice, I now know that since dealer D is closer to me, I could hypothetically buy dealer C’s car from dealer D.

I don’t necessarily want a provider that I am paying telling the consumers I am paying to attract that they can buy MY cars from my competitor.

My other thoughts on Google Cars:

Not only is this new program by Google hijacking dealer’s SEO efforts by making Google Cars the “most relevant” result in searches but the inventory itself is hosted on Google’s own site which could also eliminate the need for a consumer to visit your own website.

Google is also considering the vehicle results delivered via search as “Sponsored” versus organic results so now they are also competing with you for your PPC ad placement.

It’s going to be pretty difficult for dealer’s to NOT participate in Google Cars. Unlike other third party lead providers who rely on organic result positioning and PPC ads, a dealer can combat this if it has an aggressive SEO strategy. Google, on the other hand, is always going to deliver their program at the top of the search results, right above the first true organic search result.

Does anyone truly believe Google is going to bury their income-producing program in search results?

On top of this, Google’s recently formed automotive division has been invited to (and spoken at) many of our industry’s educational events in the last year or so giving advice and “assisting” dealers when all along they were preparing to bring to market a product that would compete with those very same dealers for not only their money but also in their search engine marketing strategies.

Google is the new Honey Badger. They don’t care. They’ll just take what they want.

Are Industry Awards Meaningful?

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There’s been an interesting discussion going on over on DealerRefresh titled “Is Paying for an Award False Advertising?”

I’ve heard many opinions over the years from all perspectives – from vendors who have won them to vendors who have not, from consultants and from dealers.

My take is that an award is only meaningful if it is a significant factor in a potential customer’s decision to do business with you.

There aren’t a ton of awards for vendors in existence. The ones that do exist are, in most cases, given BY a vendor TO a vendor.

I don’t believe that most dealers have knowledge of, or give weight to, industry awards for a simple reason: they’ve never heard of either the award, the awarding “authority”, or both.

Until an award exists that dealers are aware of and give weight to, in my opinion, receiving an award only gives a vendor the ability to do one thing that their competitors cannot:

cartoon_gorilla

What do you think?

Are industry awards meaningful?

If so, which ones do you believe have authority and could influence a prospect’s decision-making and why?

[P.S. I’m starting the “Arnold Automotive Awards”. If you want to be considered for one of these prestigious awards, please contact me to make billing arrangements.]

NADA 2012: Day One Recap

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Here I am at the National Automobile Dealers Association, yesterday was the first day of the conference. Registration opened at 10am and sessions didn’t start until around noon. I got to connect with a lot of people I hadn’t seen in awhile. It seemed like yesterday was just kind of a “catching up” day for vendors without booths while others were getting booths ready for today.

Today is the “real” kick-off in that the exhibit hall opens and the mass scramble for dealers’ attention begins. There will be more iPads given away in the next few days than I think the Apple store stocks. I’m looking forward to visiting and plan to take a lot of pictures.

It’s a big weekend here. On top of the convention, there is a UFC fight tonight (UFC 143: Diaz vs. Condit) and the SuperBowl. I think there are 37 Super Bowl parties tomorrow.

As a prologue, pre-NADA events have been great. I got to catch up with the VinSolutions team rockstars, hang out with Jeff Collins of Peters Chevrolet CJD, Dan Moore of SmartWebConcepts, Rob Fontano of 3BirdsMarketing. Ended up in a suite which, unbeknownst to me, eventually turned into a reception suite for Car-mercial (part of the DMSC) then transitioned to a fabulous dinner at Il Mulino courtesy of Scott Falcone (super smart and VERY passionate guy) and PrestoReviews, then on to the VinSolutions party afterwards.

Monday morning saw many in-real-life meetings with Twitter friends, industry friends and even some vendors I work with who I had never met, like Mike Fitzpatrick of DealerTrend. Ran into Grant Cardone. Caught Todd Smith (CEO of ActivEngage) session. He’s crazy brilliant. People were asking him questions well into the next session.

Eventually it was off to the Mandalay Bay for some non-conference, non-drinking, non… well, you get the point.. a break. Went to the weigh-ins for UFC 143 and then saw Joe Rogan doing stand-up. Met a TON of fighters (way cool) then called it an early night at 1am (yes, people, that’s an early night at ANY automotive convention but especially NADA).

Getting ready to begin Day 2 of NADA with coverage of the exhibit hall. It may, or may not, be live in the morning but it will be live eventually. Thanks for reading!

Forget SEO. Try NFO (News Feed Optimization)

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Recently there has been all sorts of talk about the proper way to accomplish Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I wrote a blog article about it the other day.

Something interesting that’s been happening (in case people failed to notice) was that while people are still trying harder and harder to optimize Google searches (or just coming around to figuring out they should be), that’s exactly where people are spending less time at. In August 2010, CNet reported that more people were spending time on Facebook than on all of Google’s properties combined (including YouTube and GMail). This shouldn’t be a surprising statistic what with Facebook having about 500 million users and given the amount of time any particular user spends on its site.

So, the rage for the past year or so has been to talk about Social Media Marketing (SMM). 

There are plenty of best practices, tips and techniques to make your fan page flourish… but that’s not what I want to talk about here. 

Did you know that Facebook has an algorithm for what pieces of content get placed into a person’s “Top News” area? 

If you don’t know what that is, the default view of the Facebook News Feed (where every user goes when they log in) is the “Top News”. Think of this as kind of a “greatest-hits” for the last 24 hours or so from all of their friends. Of course, you can manually then change the view from the “Top News” to “Most Recent”, which will show all of your friends posts.

So how do you – as a Facebook marketer – get YOUR content into a user’s “Top News”? – News Feed Optimization (NFO)

There’s an algorithm for that. 
This slide is from a presentation give by Facebook engineers at the f8 developer conference.
What we have here is a definition of an “Edge Rank”. 
Believe me when I say that I’m not a math freak or anything but essentially what this says is the following (short version):
  1. Everything on Facebook is an object – status updates, photos, links, video
  2.  There are three factors that determine the “edge rank” your object is given which will determine the likelihood that it appears in your fans (or friends) “Top News” area.
  3. The first factor is the ‘affinity score’ between the user (your fan or friend) and creator (you). How much and how often does this person interact with you? Do they spend a lot of time on your fan page? What do they do while they’re there.
  4. The second factor is ‘weight’. Each type of object interaction is weighted. What type of interaction happened? a comment? a like? a tag? The more “interactive” the ..uh.. interaction, the more weight it has – so someone who actually types a comment is going to be interacting more than someone who clicks “like”.. this of course, gives more weight to the comment. 
  5. The last factor is ‘time decay’ which is simply how much time has passed since your object was created.
Weights are not always evenly kept, FYI. When Facebook launches new services, those objects suddenly seem to be weighted more than others (ie. Facebook Places) so jumping onto new features and services does have advantages.
With the potential that Facebook may start sharing the “Like” data with Bing, the official release of Facebook’s Page Browser, Google indexing Facebook Pages, and the “Like” button’s viral adoption on the web… You may find it easier and easier to get lost in the crowd.. just as it is, right now, on Google Search.
Imagine, for a brief moment though…. 
What if you had started optimizing Google keyword searches for your business when Google first appeared?
You have that opportunity now with Facebook Pages, Like buttons and NFO.
What will you do with it?

Search Engine Optimization: The Great Debate

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Let me start with this disclaimer: I am not an expert on Search Engine Optimization. (Thank God!)

That being said, SEO is definitely something that’s been around a long time and most businesses have come to realize that it is something that they need to be doing. There are many companies that will assist you with this if you can’t do it yourselves and all of them have different opinions on how it should be done, to some extent.
As evidenced by this fascinating thread on www.drivingsales.com  titled ‘A Broader Look At SEO‘ by Dennis Galbraith, you can see that many in the industry have been debating the importance of SEO, how it should be done, the significance of Page One placement, and who an expert is and what that entails. It’s quite heated, which makes it quite entertaining. Is there a ‘right’ answer? I don’t think so but I’m certainly not going to jump in the middle of that battlefield.
This morning, I read an article about how Google Instant is changing SEO. (article) 
It made me think about the world we live in and technology in general. We all know that computers and technology become outdated very quickly. I believe this applies to SEO as well. With the advent of ‘instant’ anything.. does all this bickering about ‘who is right’ really matter? Hell, by the time that discussion comes to a close, it may be irrelevant.
An article I saw yesterday (shared by Harlene Doane, editor of Auto Dealer Monthly ), was hilarious but had a hint of truth to it. Search engines (and websites.. YouTube Instant anyone?) are doing everything within their power to predict what we are looking for before we even know what that is. There are times when I’m doing a Google search and I really don’t know what I’m looking for (except in very general terms) but I guarantee that, as these forms of predictive technology evolve, I’ll certainly focus LESS on the search results and MORE on the INSTANT results. I’m going to start typing letters and look at what the drop-down box suggests. 
I’ve seen far too many people ‘Google’ pages that would take less time to actually type the address in. I find it hilarious when people Google “Yahoo”… anyways, the point of this post is that, in my opinion, SEO is a constantly evolving beast. There are no right or wrong answers or strategies. Anyone who knows what they are doing (or teaches themselves) can apply basic SEO techniques to their business and Google will ABSOLUTELY help you learn and implement a Pay-Per-Click campaign (PPC). Trust me, they want your money.
Everything you do online is a form of SEO.. whether it’s writing a review for Amazon, posting something for sale on eBay, owning a Facebook, LinkedIn or other social media page, Tweeting.. well, you get my point. Just have a presence and be active and SEO will come naturally. If dealers or any business would DO things on the internet, SEO would be less of a chore. The problem is that dealers DON’T do anything on the internet, which is why they get dominated by companies that DO.
[Edit: If you want PROOF that just doing ‘stuff’ on the internet will achieve dominating SEO, Google search my name. You’ll have to go to Page 24 before you find AT LEAST 4 links that are not, in some way, related to or about me. Granted there isn’t much competition for search results of my name but I haven’t even TRIED to optimize my name on Google.]
I personally don’t care HOW it’s done (as I suspect most dealers also feel).. it’s all about RESULTS. 
Oh, and when I can go to my computer, turn it on and it just goes to the website I want it to without me typing anything.. will SEO really matter? Just sayin’

Why Social Media Marketing is Important For Any Business

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Recently, I attended the Digital Dealer 8 conference in Orlando, FL. I was working most of the time but did get an opportunity to have an interesting conversation with Ron Morrison – the “ron” in ronsmap.

If you have not heard of ronsmap , start looking into it quickly. In my opinion, it could absolutely be the next Craigslist but for cars. This video explains what it is better than I ever could.

If you don’t have your inventory there yet, call whatever company is handling your inventory feeds and/or ronsmap and get it there.

Ron and I started talking about the future of internet departments. I told him it was my opinion that, in the future, there wouldn’t be any. I expressed why in a previous blog post . I expressed my belief in the importance of building your internet sales and that, in my opinion, a good internet department would account for 40-60% of any dealerships inventory with that percentage increasing in the future.

He countered with the following question:

“If my dealerships’ internet department accounts for 40% of my dealerships’ business, why would it be important to me, as a dealer, to focus on increasing that departments’ sales versus focusing on increasing my retail departments’ sales?“

I answered with what I thought were the obvious answers:

  • increase units sold
  • increase website traffic
  • increase exposure
  • lower cost per sale in internet vs. retail
  • be where the customers are
  • etc.

Other people threw some answers in there also. While none of these answers are wrong, none of them really “hit the nail on the head” of the importance of social media marketing.

After all of our attempts at answering his question, he countered with a question that, in my opinion, summed up, in its entirety, why it’s important for any business (not just car dealerships) to embrace and engage their customers utilizing social media.

“How much would it be worth to you, Mr. Dealer, if every customer that bought a car from you went home and told 130 of their friends?“

He also asked me what the first call to action on any businesses’ website was and, again, the obvious guesses (contact us form, quick quote, and other forms of engagement) were not what he was looking for.

“The first call to action on any businesses’ website is a “Share” button.”

The reasoning he gave was that, if a customer that visits your website sees, and clicks, the share button, he just offered you free advertising. He’ll get the name, number and the opportunity to speak with the customer if they’re willing to share your website with their friends, family and colleagues unsolicited.

I’ve been hearing, both in our industry forums and in feedback on conference sessions, that social media is overrated and that too many vendors and companies are focused on it when their efforts would be better focused elsewhere.

While it may be a little over-kill to have EVERY session and vendor focusing on that while neglecting all the other aspects, tools and best practices for you to learn about, that doesn’t make it unimportant.

Statistics don’t lie. Facebook may become the search engine of the future. Right now, SEO is focused on Google Page One management. It’s very possible that the future will bring a different focus – Facebook search results. SEO and SMM may become synonymous. With all the integration happening, they will, at the very least, become symbiotic.

The real power (and value) in social media marketing lies not in being there for your business’ sake, but in being there for your customer’s sake.

Why would you not want to make it easy for your customers to “spread the word” about your business to their friends?

What I don’t understand is why people differentiate between SEO, SMM, Reputation Management, etc.

They are all the same thing.

It’s like having a Happy Meal in front of you and saying that you think the fries are the most important part and that you’re only going to eat those. The rest doesn’t matter.

I know that if you ordered a Happy Meal, and they only gave you fries, you wouldn’t be happy.

Eat the whole Happy Meal, not just the fries.

I promise your belly will be fuller and you’ll be.. well.. happier.

Where is Waldo? (Foursquare: Why You Should Pay Attention and 3 Great Tips for Dealers)

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foursquare.

For the foursquare clueless, foursquare is basically a cell phone based application that allows it’s users to “check-in” at places they visit using a GPS-enabled phone. The benefits to the user are that they can see where their friends are, can get “tips” about nearby places that people have left and earn points and cool badges for checking in. A user can even become the “Mayor” by being the person who has “checked-in” the most. It’s a game, but one that is growing in popularity and has some value for dealerships and all businesses.

First, let me explain why this application is something to watch. Then I’ll offer a couple neat ideas and things you can do to DRIVE TRAFFIC  to your dealership in a non-traditional way.

The app is adding 100,000 users per day (or so they claim). While a small percentage of the population use it, if the growth rate continues, eventually, it may be statistically relevant.

Now, Bing is incorporating foursquare user “tips” into Bing Maps. The result looks something like this:

So, even if you think it’s the stupidest thing on earth, there is one area in which you should pay attention to this application: Reputation Management.

I’m sure you would want to know what “reviews” show up when someone does a Google Search or a Yahoo Search, so why wouldn’t you want to know what people are saying about your dealership on foursquare? These “tips” are essentially mini-reviews and the best (or worst) part about these “tips” are that, for the most part, people won’t see the “tips” until they are already at your dealership! If I were a shopper in an auto mall, and a foursquare user, and “checked-in” at a dealership I was about to shop for a car at and saw “tips” that told me not to shop there because they suck and will rip me off, I might heed that advice.

Now for three tips on how you can leverage foursquare to assist you in your marketing.

Tip One: There could be “tips” that say a certain salesperson is GREAT and that you should ask for them (hint to salespeople), there could be reviews from disgruntled customers, and there could also be reviews from happy customers. If you’re ahead of the game, it would be easy to get this campaign started in your favor rather than wait until you have to do damage control.

Tip Two: You can easily incorporate foursquare into your Facebook marketing now with a new app that will allow you to add a tab to your Facebook fan page with YOUR business’s foursquare information.

Why would you want to do that? Well, it’s an easy way to see how many users are coming to your dealership, who the mayor is, and, especially to keep an eye on the “tips” that are being left. It’s also a convenient way to add map information in your Facebook page showing people exactly where your dealership (or business) is. It looks like this:

It seems as if foursquare is digging this app since they’re the ones who told everyone about it (see their status update at the top of the above image). Here’s a link to the app on Facebook. Place Widget

Tip 3: I’ve heard a lot of dealers wonder if foursquare is even worth their time. Well, so far, people have been looking at how a foursquare campaign, using traditional methods, can increase traffic, get me phone calls, etc.

One way is to offer foursquare users who check into your dealership coupons and special offers but what about some creative and “outside-the-box” ways?

One business thought outside the box and had great success. Rather than try and figure out how he can make people want to come into his business to buy things, he catered to their fun for the game. He dissected the available badges and found one that he thought he could leverage to bring in some traffic.

It’s called the “Swarm” badge. A foursquare user earns this badge when they “check-in” at a place where 50 or more users are checked in at the same place and at the same time. He says it took him about a week to coordinate and that foursquare was even on board and helped him. Most of this event coordination was using Twitter. Foursquare even “tweeted” it out for him to their 46,000 followers. There are only 300-400 users in the Milwaukee area but he managed to get 161 people into his restaurant to earn this badge! Are you kidding me? Almost 1/2 the foursquare users in his market showed up for this event! Link to Article

Would you like 160 people at your dealership at the same time? What if there are 3,000 users in your area and 1/2 of them showed up?

Dealerships have events all the time designed to drive traffic to their dealership, why not try a new way?

I bet an enterprising dealer could find some other interesting badges to organize events or functions around.

I also think that an enterprising dealer could contact foursquare and see how they can help.

What about a badge that ONLY PEOPLE WHO BUY A CAR FROM YOU GET? I bet it can be arranged.

While the percentage might be small now, I know I think foursquare is fun and if I had the same deal to buy a car at multiple dealerships but one of them gave me a badge if I bought from them, that would be sweet and a badge not many of my friends had. It just might influence me into buying at your dealership over the other…..

and my friends may just go buy a car at your dealership, also…..

Just to get the badge.

[EDIT: After writing this article, an interesting website was brought to my attention: 4squareoffers.com . I’d certainly want MY dealership listed as having an offer versus not having one at all or having my competitors have one. Just a thought.]

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