Are you giving your customers what they want, when they want when they arrive on your website?  It’s important to keep your content relevant and updated frequently.  In order to do this you need to know what is important to your customers.

Cardealer Magazine reports Dealer finance uptake on new cars grew by a record rate in December as the upturn continues. The Finance & Leasing Association reports December’s new car finance uptake was up a massive 91 percent compared with (an admittedly weak) December 2008.  Overall volumes for Q4 2009 rose by 56 percent.  The biggest growth was in the PCP area – where uptake rose by 90 percent in December, and 9 percent as a year-whole.  

FLA’s Gerladine Kilkelly says “ …Car Dealer finance remained extremely popular.  Nearly 46 percent of private new car sales were financed using car dealer schemes.”   

In this economy it becomes more important for customers to be able to calculate a finance package suitable to their economic situation.  One option to meeting this need for visitors to your website is the finance calculator. 

Is this visible to your customers arriving on your website?  Have you updated your APR?

I was at a Dealer Group meeting recently where during the course of the meeting, they reviewed their website KPIs one of them being bounce rates.  There was a lot of interesting discussion around the evaluation of this and other measures and the effectiveness of the group websites. So what’s a bounce rate?

A bounce rate is the time a visitor spends on an entry page and can be used to help determine the effectiveness or performance of an entry page. An entry page with a low bounce rate means that the page effectively causes visitors to view more pages and continue on deeper into the web site.

Google.com analytics specialist Avinash Kaushik has stated:

“It is really hard to get a bounce rate under 20%, anything over 35% is cause for concern, 50% (above) is worrying.”

However what’s important is interpreting this measure within context and in line with the business objective for the website.  If a bounce rate is low is this because your visitor couldn’t find what they wanted or because you did gave them what they wanted when they wanted when they arrived on your site. 

Do you know what works and what doesn’t work on your website and how frequently do you review website performance?

I found this article by G-forces rather interesting!  Twitter ignored by dealers…. http://www.cardealermagazine.co.uk/publish/twitter-ignored-by-dealers/29199

So does this really matter?  Is this fad or revolution for our industry?  It seems what’s being suggested is really about using social media to improve SEO (is that the primary strategy?)  compared what is mentioned, to quote:  ”….. dealers would do well to think about how to tap into its true commercial potential.”

I don’t believe the automotive industry has really figured out the direct impact and benefit of SMM (social marketing media).   So what if you’ve got a twitter account… does it generate leads or promote brand awareness for your business? How do you deal with customer who broadcast complaints online – have you seen Virgin’s facebook group? It’s a minefield of disgruntled customers.  Do you know how to manage your corporate image online which means dealing with disgruntled customers whilst also raising and managing brand awareness?  One of our Dealer group clients is uses social media to spread the word by allowing visitors to their used car section to bookmark or tell a friend.

On the point of raising awareness, very recently on my facebook newsfeed I noticed some really interesting status updates from all my female fb friends around the globe – this was in a matter of 3 days! Soon enough I got the viral ‘marketing’ message.  By the end of the week this was the status update:

“ladies, your red, black, pink, blue, white, butterflied, cheeta printed, and clear bra colors made the channel 4 news tonight. facebook doesn’t know who started it going but the Susan G Komen foundation says it was great way to raise awareness for breast cancer. Way to go! Post this on your walls and spread the word x x x”

A very smart and effective way to raise awareness, where the message has been creatively considered as has the target audience (18 to 35’s).  So what should the priority of social media be in your communication mix?

I saw this article on the BBC Website today and couldnt help smiling when I saw the photograph and read the text. Its great to see the condition the cars are in – they dont build them like that anymore (I’m beginning to sound like my Dad!).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8465785.stm

Besides the obvious benefits of snow like snowball fights, building snow men, watching people go skiiding on the ice (jokes) and getting snowed in for some (!), some companies have benefited from their punters being snowed in. I was chatting to one of the guys that works for an e-retail company that works in the same building as us, he said they had a huge increase in sales when everyone got snowed in. Think about it, how many of you jumped online and scored a few bargains from your favourite brands online? More importantly, do you know how many prospective car buyers were making their pre-purchase decisions online at the same time? Do you know how many leads were generated over this period or how many people left your website because you didn’t give them what they wanted when they wanted it? This same person that I was talking to said that according to their research, online growth in the UK has increased 17% year on year – that’s 17% increase of people buying and researching online! How prepared are you this year to attract, convert and retain customers on your website?

Welcome aboard Frédéric!  

We’re looking forward to cementing our business relationships on the Continent with your assistance and delivering new ideas and thinking into our clients.  About Frédéric and his experience and insights:

As Director of Europe, Frédéric will take on a senior management role and will lead a number of existing key client accounts as well as driving business development with new brands in the region.

Frédéric Doux, aged 42 is a French National based in Quimper and Paris with many successful business interests, ranging from eCRM, digital marketing and display signage to one of France’s best known food producers, Doux.  Commenting, “For many years, I have sought to bring the very best in technology and digital services to the French market and I am excited about the opportunity to demonstrate that the French can become world-leaders in this space.” 

He continues, “I have firsthand experience across a number different verticals in implementing a step change to the way they leverage the internet and all things digital – specifically to engage, acquire and retain customers and increase profitability.”

With one of his family businesses buying around 300 new vehicles a year in France, he says “An integrated approach is now needed more than ever, as many brands have lost control of how their dealer network promote the parent brand whilst still selling other automotive brands (multi-franchise).  This can dilute the overall customer experience and negate all the work done on the overall brand proposition.”

Frédéric will operate out of our Paris base and will work closely with our UK Head Office.

I agree with Mike’s comments in response to Clive’s ‘CarDealer Web Innovation’ article that web innovation in automotive is limited and behind the curve relative to other industries, in fact the automotive industry is still grappling with how to engage, understand and use social media and related digital marketing technologies to target their customers and prospects

Yesterday autotorq.com hosted the Car Dealer eAwards judging panel for the Innovation Award which kicked of a lively debate around the what my fellow judges thought was innovation; ranging from smart ways to use digital – engage consumers, through to how the trade use some fairly basic tools to help them manage part of their day to day business (process).

 One thing we all agreed on was there had been precious little innovation in  the last 12 months covering the area of customer engagement, and other than a couple of manufacturers with an appetite to continue to experiment on the web it’s all been rather flat.

 With 9 of the industry’s key players in attendance; Richard Lawton (Really Good Domains), James Tew (Codeweavers), Tim Smith (G-Forces), Daniel Burgess (HPI), Shaun Armstrong (Visit Cars), Chris Green (Motoring.co.uk), Chris Sutton (Black Horse Motor Finance), Keith Rountree (BCA), Stewart and myself enjoyed the opportunity to push the debate on and test the boundaries of where we all though the industry is going and, and where it needs to evolve – not necessarily the same outcome.

I very much enjoyed the opportunity to chat further with Chris and Tim with whom I shared many perspectives. They have both carved a nice position in the market place and through their own actions are creating healthy competition; essential if business models are to evolve.  Whilst Tim is I guess a competitor of sorts to autotorq.com within the UK, although we have not directly positioned our offering at the multi-franchised market, (we are a predominantly manufacturer/brand partner) the competitive element has certainly caused us to re-visit this segment… I can’t say that we are itching to tackle the number one portal in the UK (yet), but I do admire what Chris is doing with motoring.co.uk which does provide dealers with an alternative for the franchised dealerships and the fact that he is gaining ground on the establishment is again healthy competition.

 All in all a very enjoyable day.

you may attract the punters to your website… but can you keep them there long enough to convert to a lead?

working together with one of our dealers, we recently further augmented their website with one of our services.  Results: content on that page 75% more “sticky” than the average site.  What service did we provide? Rich Media.  These are  independent video reviews from prospect car buyers. Not only did the visitors to the website stay longer on that particular page but a majority of them clicked through to other sections of the website. 

It’s important to continually update and refresh your web content relevant to your customers’ needs.  You need to continually attract prospects and customers to your website, but once they’re there you have to engage with them.  Do you know how what customers find important on your website – do they leave immediately or linger and explore further, or better still contact you?

35% open rate; trackable results using eCRM – autotorq.com email marketing and eCRM services

This morning I read an article online by Cardealer magazine about dealers missing out on revenue opportunities for missed services; “Car owners are simply not thinking about going to their local car dealer if their oil level runs low. This means dealers are missing out on a big source of aftersales income, says oil firm Chevron.”

This raises the question, why are car dealers missing out on revenue opportunities when they can deploy trackable, cost effective and targeted measures?

By dealers sending out timed service reminders and MOTs to their customers, they reinforce the message they provide these services and lower the risk of missing out on this profitable stream of revenue.