COVID-19 Online Car Sales for the Rest of Us Pressures to close your stores from COVID-19 are building, and you need some of your retail sales online NOW. I’m not talking about becoming Carvana or what some big groups have put in place, on and off, over the last few years. It’s much simple, and you already have the tools to get much of it done. 1) Attach a fair,
Author Archives: keithshetterly
Yes, I’m “attacking the clicks” again: Because Clicks Don’t Buy Cars–HUMANS Do!™ The is no competitive advantage to clicks, only to vehicle sales. And clicks just keep on being some asinine and sales-distracting measurement. You have to dig DEEPER to get your competitive advantage. Examples: I just had a dealer client with 4,000 clicks from website visitors who had never visited before–maybe sounds good, right? And the “click vendor” involved
Facebook® has the advantage over Google® now, as it is natively focused on people and not information, and why Facebook® advertising has become key to those seeking to gain sales advantage by connecting with people AND information. AND why email is a needed channel but is now “Internet legacy” just like the newspapers became. And why texting is the most important of all. AND THIS IS WHY THIS IS TRUE:
AN UNKNOWN LEAD VENDOR CONVERSATION THAT MAY HAVE OCCURRED A DECADE OR SO AGO IN THE CAR BUSINESS . . . Mike: “Hey, Jimmy, I gotta’ GREAT idea to make crazy money on the few real leads we have for dealers while charging them even more money. Before we starve.” Jimmy: “I’m sure it’s crazy, Mike, but shoot! I’m hungry.” Mike: “You know we’re trying to sell our leads to
OEM “co-op” digital advertising programs can far too often be a useless “Participation Trophy” that isn’t “free” because the OEM reimburses you–No: YOU Still Pay The Bill For Them by losing competitive sales. Especially in geos with lots of stores from the same OEMs, digital co-op programs can too easily render NO or little useful competitive advantage. Or even drag you backwards in sales. What?? Yes. Lemme ‘splain: If you are one
Sales “match-back” reports, without solid web traffic to support them, are definitely bogus. Essentially, sales “match-back” ALONE WITHOUT ACCOUNTABILITY CHECKS are just fake “math-back”. How? Using a non-vendor-specific hypothetical example (thank my lawyer for that phrasing) of a disreputable email vendor’s program that emails something like 125-150k “in-market” shoppers. The sales match-back report shows 22 sales…and the story is that the emails “touched” these sales, and even if you only
About fake PPC and SEO traffic. YES, it happens. I’m not talking about fake clicks on ads to reap PPC payment, I’m talking about agencies who provide false clicks to get paid for PPC and SEO services that they DO NOT REALLY DO. Read on, but overall, if you don’t do these services in house, then you must engage and monitor/hold accountable REPUTABLE PPC and SEO companies. That’s your best
For a first sense of this hard truth, consider your dealership’s website: Did you know that your website vendor, especially your OEM-approved website vendor (and other vendors), most likely allows tracking “pixels” (scripting) from 3rd party data companies? That track your visitors? “So what?” you think: “What can they do with an IP address?” A lot, it turns out. If you’ve been watching the news about Facebook’s data issues, it
It’s far too easy for a digital advertising service or agency to send traffic to your website, wash their hands of the situation for sales after that, and hand you their invoice. Or, they also give you some “custom” reporting that shows how great they are—and how much YOU suck—and hand you their invoice. What happens when you question that invoice? Good things, always, but sometimes surprising things, too. We had
First, let’s just look at the size of the problem for the marketplace, then examine the situation for dealers. Online Ad fraud will cost companies an estimated $16 billion this year. Dealerships are not exempt from this problem. For dealerships, click fraud via click robots (called “bots”) can be the first thing to identify: Does your traffic look and shop like humans, or does it appear to provide fake click