Packed house for TADA’s third Canadian Digital Dealer event
Sean Wolfington and Todd Bourgon
The world of digital marketing and social media is changing so quickly, dealers should plan to regularly send their teams to conferences like the third Canadian Digital Dealer event held Feb. 21 in Toronto, says Todd Bourgon, Executive Director of the Trillium Automobile Dealers Association (TADA).
More than 300 people representing a broad range of job titles within dealerships attended the Toronto event and heard from a new mix of speakers and experts. The speakers represented some of the best from U.S. digital marketing events and were chosen by TADA organizers.
Sean Wolfington, from Tier 10 Marketing, and a frequent speaker on the conference circuit, kicked off the Toronto event with a session on integrated marketing technologies.
Wolfington talked about the importance of being passionate about what you do, because passionate leaders inspire their teams. “As a leader, most of the time your people can only care as much as you do,” says Worthington. “People love to do great things. They are junkies for greatness and the pursuit of excellence.”
After his overview where he presented some videos on the importance of digital marketing and social media, Wolfington presented a case study of a successful U.S. dealership, Paragon Honda and Acura in New York. The dealership embraced a range of digital marketing, social media, and search and video search optimization to propel themselves to the top.
Bill Tighe
Bill Tighe, client partner for Facebook Canada presented on “Facebook and your dealership.”
Tighe, said that “the Internet is being rebuilt around people. It’s not going to be about search it’s going to be about discovery,” he says. “Every business is going to be a local business.”
He says this is good news for dealers because they can be at the pillar of their communities. Tools like Facebook’s news feed are tools that help dealers get their content “right into the palm of their customer’s hands.”
He walked dealers through different ways of using Facebook more effectively and gave them tips on creating good content that would resonate with customers.
Shaun Raines, Executive Director of DrivingSales University, presented an overview about the importance of digital marketing. In his overview, he talked about strategies to effectively manage the staff you have, making sure they are in the right roles.
He also said dealership staff need to work on their own to learn some of the basics. “We need to close the knowledge gap by doing some self study,” says Raines, and offered some websites delegates can visit to stay informed. “If you want to be as good as Wayne Gretzky, you need to take lessons.”
Michael Soon Lee
Diversity author and consultant Michael Soon Lee, talked about using digital marketing to reach visible minorities.
He said that when it comes to visible minority groups, such as Latinos, Asians, Blacks and those of Middle Eastern origin, their approach is high-context — i.e. placing a very strong emphasis on building long-term relationships. “People from these groups tend to be much more brand loyal than your average consumer,” says Soon Lee. “Provided they trust you, they will keep coming back again.”
Soon Lee also says that social media is big among visible minorities. “Asians are the fastest growing group on Facebook,” he remarked. Obviously, based on the emphasis of trust, loyalty, social standing and connectivity, for dealers that can understand the needs and desires of minority groups, the potential opportunities for significantly increasing and retaining business is huge.
Clayton Stanfield, senior manager at eBay Motors, said that the parts business is another area that has seen rapid growth. Stanfield says that there is pent up demand for OEM parts (click through rates are triple those of aftermarket parts), the trouble is, most dealerships don’t do a very good job in promoting parts online. He says they really need to get involved and merchandise online. With 30 million people now searching for parts on eBay alone, it’s not that difficult to see where the parts business is heading.
Todd Smith
One of the most popular speakers from TADA Digital Dealer II, Todd Smith, CEO of ActivEngage, hosted a breakout session this time out, talking about the benefits of online chat for dealers.
During his session “Advanced SEO for dealers,” Ali Amirrezvani, President and CEO of DealerOn, talked about how dealers need to pay attention to the changing Google algorithms. Amirrezvani’s company helps dealers improve their SEO and lead conversions on their websites.
He says it’s hard for dealers, and even SEO experts to keep pace and keep tabs on all the changes. “You need to be a lot more careful about who you trust your SEO strategy to.”
He advised dealers to avoid “black hat” tactics that are against Google’s guidelines. This can backfire and result in Google punishing your website. Focus on making sure you get people to the information they seek as quickly as possible. That’s what Google wants for their user’s experience.
“It’s really now about creating quality content that wows the end user,” says Amirrezvani. “We are now web strategists.”
“If you do it well, you will dominate your space,” he said.
