The conference room and agenda were both jam packed at the Canadian Digital Dealer II conference held yesterday in Toronto. The event is organized and hosted by the Trillium Automobile Dealers Association, and was the first of three events being held this week across Ontario.
After yesterday’s event, the conference speakers boarded a train for London where they are speaking today, and are then off to Ottawa for the third and final leg of this whirlwind digital marketing and social media tour on Thursday.
Speakers hailed from across North America, and offered the more than 300 dealers and their staff in attendance insights into what they need to consider to transform their operations from bricks and mortar stores to fully-fledged Internet enabled dealerships.
The day kicked off with an overview of the impact of the Internet and how it is affecting consumers. The ever energetic Sean Stephens, CEO of TreeFrog Interactive, reminded delegates that the Internet itself is still in its relative infancy compared with other forms of communications, and that social media is even newer still. “There are actually goldfish that are older than the Internet,” he says.
But these tools have forever changed the communications landscape, and the pace of change is accelerating. Dealers need to adjust and adapt and become a trusted source of content.
“The average person will spend five years of their total life on the web, he says. “The bulk of the time we spend online is absorbing content.”
They are looking for credibility and will turn to information sources they know, like and trust, he says.
In terms of trust, Heather MacKinnon, Vice President of Sales with DealerRater, warned dealers not to try to take any shortcuts to boost their online reputations by hiring firms that write fake reviews.
She says Google is policing reviews, and has found automotive related reviews are a category with questionable or fraudulent reviews.
She says some dealers have been advised to set up a kiosk inside their dealerships to collect reviews, or they use dealership computers to have customers set up Google accounts so they can enter reviews. Bad idea, she says, because Google recognizes the reviews are coming from the same IP address and will ignore them. Some dealers have complained they went from having more than 400 reviews on Google to less than ten.
She says online consumer reviews are the second most trusted form of advertising, increasing 15 per cent in the past four years. She advised dealers to ensure they have reviews across a selection of review sites such as Google, Yelp, and DealerRater, but to do it the right way.
Todd Smith co-founder and CEO of ActivEngage Inc. gave dealers a detailed overview of how to improve their inbound marketing strategies.
He says 97% of visitors leave a dealership’s website without taking any action. A lot of that has to do with the way dealership websites are designed.
Smith showed dealers tracking data that revealed that for the vast majority of dealer sites, the number one hot spot sought out by visitors is their inventory section. Too often, dealers try to put everything in one place trying to scream out for the visitor’s attention, but this doesn’t work, he says.
Smith says dealers need to carefully track the metrics on their websites to make sure they are providing the right kind of content. This is what all the major corporations do when making decisions on their website designs. “Nobody actually knows unless they test, track and measure it,” says Smith. “Data tells the story and lets you make educated decisions.”
Dealers need to build their sites based on the ways people actually use them, he says.
Next up was Tim Wilson, the head of Google’s automotive practice in Canada. Wilson presented some of the same facts and figures from his February presentation at the TADA’s first social media boot camp event.
For dealers, they need to accept that their consumers are better informed than ever before. The average car buyer has sought out 18 different sources before they approach a dealership to talk about a vehicle. “It’s the most researched of any product vertical in Canada,” says Wilson. “They know so much before they get to your lot, before they talk to your salesperson. You need to understand that,” says Wilson.
Wilson advised dealers they should include Google in their advertising mix, and explained why he felt his company’s Ad Words program would provide them value. “Google is a database of intentions,” says Wilson. “That’s what makes Google so important to what you guys do day in and day out.”
Wilson also put in a plug for mobile, advising dealers that mobile search on smartphones and tablet devices is increasing sharply, particularly in the hours that consumers are out shopping for vehicles.
After his presentation, Wilson fielded more questions from delegates than any other speaker, some of whom expressed concern over Google’s dominance in the search marketplace, and Google’s experiment with a lead generation program for car dealers that is now underway in California. He said he couldn’t yet provide details on the success of that program.
The last speaker of the day was the entertaining Shaun Raines, the Executive Director of Driving Sales University.
Raines said that in his business dealings with auto dealers, they all advise him that they just want to sell more cars. Many are looking for the quick fix. “The automatic website recipe doesn’t exist. If there was one recipe — you would do it,” says Raines.
He says he has to deliver the bad news that the fix involves some heavy lifting to fix the processes, structure and marketing efforts within the dealership. Many of them don’t like to hear it, but if their processes are flawed, then it’s just like giving a bad golfer a new set of clubs — it won’t improve their game.
When it comes to digital marketing and mastering social media, no one has all the answers. “Don’t be afraid to be wrong. Don’t be afraid to ask for help,” says Raines.
He says dealers can start by finding one credible person whose opinions they trust, and then build out their network from there. Once burned by a vendor, move on, he says.
Jeff Cowan, founder and president of Jeff Cowan’s Pro Talk, gave an overview about express service at dealerships.
The luncheon keynote was delivered by TSN sportscaster Rod Black. He entertained delegates doing impressions of famous sports celebrities and then talked about his support for Toronto SickKids Hospital. Organizers presented a cheque in his name for $2,500 to SickKids.
