I joined eCarList nearly three months ago and have yet to write a single blog post — a fact that our president reminds me of frequently.  So, here goes.

First, some background: I came to eCarList because I saw an amazing opportunity to transform the way the automotive industry markets itself online starting at the local dealer level.  The internet has matured greatly over the past 10 years, but quite frankly, car dealers have lagged behind.  There are a handful of companies that build websites for the industry and I think most are doing their clients a disservice.

I have directly been a part of the web transformation, having worked at internet giant Yahoo! since 1999.  My experiences in marketing, branding, website usability, and online consumer behavior have shaped the way I think about selling cars and promoting dealerships online.

eCarList is a rare find in the automotive space; it’s a company that gets it.  I am fortunate to now lead such a remarkable team of talented designers, front end engineers, and project managers.  They understand the automotive market, yet are light-years ahead of what the industry is accustomed to. Read More »

Great advertising - really creative!  No deep thoughts, just wanted to share this ad from a dealership I worked for back in the 90’s.

New Ownership at North Texas Nissan Makes Reputation Cleanup a Priority

New ownership and management take over North Texas Nissan with a new attitude in efforts to regain customers and improve community presence as a Dallas area Nissan Dealership

Dallas, TX (PRWEB) June 4, 2009 — As of February 2009, new ownership and management stepped in at North Texas Nissan to rebrand the dealership and take control over their image in the community as the leader in customer appreciation. According to customer loyalty maps in the region, it appears the previous management did not make customer loyalty a priority as it showed most customers did not return to buy a second vehicle, and rather bought from the competition. New ownership and management believes the store is due for an overhaul.

North Texas Nissan is now committed to making every customer feel like they are family,” claims Wesley Spence, Dealer Principle and General Manager. “Our primary task is to provide the most enjoyable buying experience possible so that we may retain our customers for life.”

Spence comes to North Texas Nissan after 5 years of service with another large dealer group in Texas, and brings with him a team of experienced staff to help clean up the store’s reputation. “We hope to be able to reach out to our customer base and community in an effort to reestablish the relationship that had been tarnished. We will do this by reaching out to the community through mail and community involvement,” says Spence. “North Texas Nissan, unlike other dealers, is a non-hassle dealership who caters to the customer’s needs. There are never hidden or unwanted ads on our vehicles that surprise the customer once they arrive at the dealership. We are also committed to maintaining an ongoing relationship after the sale to insure that our customers have a positive buying experience.”

Considering dismal news in automotive including Chrysler ’s and GM’s recent bankruptcy filings and possible further bailouts and closures, it seems there is a lot more pressure for dealerships to create a pro-consumer environment. Spence weighs in on the current economic conditions by saying, “Although we do realize that consumers are concerned with the current state of the economy, in most cases we are able to take advantage of the aggressive lending and rebate programs from the manufacturer to lower a customer’s current payment in a newer model car.”

Some of the initiatives Spence and his team have put into motion to compete with other Dallas Nissan Dealers to increase sales are 100% guaranteed loan approvals, a no-gimmick $6.99 oil change, free AutoCheck and trade appraisal, and a guaranteed “apples-to-apples” price-match from their competition. Future plans include a car wash and body shop for customers and local residents. “North Texas Nissan is no longer a dealership who only looks out for its best interest regardless of the cost to the customer…” explains Spence. “…rather we are a dealership who realizes the satisfaction of its customer will determine its future success.”

When asked about the future of North Texas Nissan, Spence says, “In 2009 we have two priorities….first we want to build a dealership that people will be proud to buy a car from, and second we want to be the best and biggest Nissan dealership in Texas. We realize that it will take a lot of work to accomplish these goals, but with hard honest work and the help of our community we will be able to accomplish these goals.”

About North Texas Nissan:
North Texas Nissan, based in Corinth, Texas is a franchise Nissan dealership selling new Nissans, used and certified pre-owned cars and trucks to the communities of Dallas, Fort Worth and the DFW Metroplex.

It will happen to any car dealership eventually.  Search your dealership’s name (or worse) your own name… and the search engine returns a high-ranking “complaint” result.  This happened to me this past weekend and after my lawyers were called and my blood fell from a boil – I wanted to really look at this “plague” that looms for all businesses no matter the industry and/or size.

The “complaint” is designed to resolve a dispute.  Customer complains, company reviews, and resolution options are decided.  Should the company decide to not resolve the dispute, the customer can then choose legal action to have the dispute heard in a court of law.  That is how proper business resolution has always played out.

However, the Internet has changed everything.  Complaint websites are booming and the potential damage to businesses couldn’t be greater.  These websites fail in one critical area – this type of complaint is not designed to elicit an amicable resolution, the purpose of a “complaint website” post is strictly to cause reputable harm to a business – that’s it!

From rippoffreport.com’s homepage:
“Unlike the Better Business Bureau, Ripoff Report does not hide reports of “satisfied” complaints. ALL complaints remain public and unedited in order to create a working history on the company or individual in question… Your Ripoff Report will be discovered by millions of consumers! Search engines will automatically discover most reports, meaning that within just a few days or weeks, your report may be found on search engines when consumers search, using key words relating to your Ripoff Report.”

So here’s the skinny…  anyone can post anything for free, remain anonymous, post disparaging remarks against any person or business – and search engines will promote these to the tops of the results?  What’s to keep your competitor from posting remarks?  Nothing!  Read More »

I’m not here to preach one way or another about dealership microsites because if used correctly they can be very effective.  I’d rather tell you a story and let you decide for yourself on how best to apply them to your dealership (if at all).

I had a dealer in New York call me about two weeks ago inquiring into our dealer websites and SEO.  The first words out of his mouth were, “can you build me a bunch of microsites”?  My regretful response, “why”, led him into a 5 minute seminar on microsites helping with SEO, creating additional SEO rankings and hundreds of back-links to his website.   He also shared his theory on how automotive shoppers “hate dealers”, and that by taking the dealer’s brand away from a microsite makes the customer feel more comfortable to fill out a lead form.

My experience with microsites started in 2004 when I started an online marketing agency providing SEM/SEO services to Retail Automotive.  We were one of the first (if not the first) companies to market Search to car dealers.  Our core product was in-fact a microsite….we called it an “SEO sub-site”.  The SEO sub-site was born out of necessity because our first client’s website provider refused us access to the backend of the website where we needed upload our SEO code and content.  The client wanted SEO and we offered SEO.  Their website provider did not.  So we developed a work-around…

Read More »

Watch Video:
http://www.automotivedigest.com/video/video.aspx?nid=1&videoIndex=457

DALLAS, Apr 01, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) –

Dave Hanson has been named vice president of Interactive and Creative Services at ecarlist, a leading software provider to the automotive industry.

Prior to joining ecarlist, Hanson was director of Brand Marketing at Yahoo! Inc., where he led partnership development and interactive engineering to produce marketing programs for the company and its top advertisers.

Hanson will be responsible for ecarlist’s full-service interactive and creative division, according to ecarlist CEO Len Critcher.

“Dave combines strong creative and interactive leadership with great expertise in online consumer experience,” said Critcher. “I am thrilled to add him to our executive team. With Dave leading our interactive group, ecarlist will be positioned to grow its online product offerings and provide unparalleled creative services to our increasing dealership base.”

Hanson noted that ecarlist is considered to be one of the most innovative companies in the industry.

“I am very excited to join a team that is already producing such dynamic and visually stunning websites,” Hanson added. “I look forward to bringing an even higher level of functionality and usability, while streamlining operations to support the company’s rapid growth.”

The Interactive and Creative Services division will serve as an in-house agency offering custom website design, video production, online-media-campaign creative services, search engine optimization, automated specials integration, interactive lead capture and a full suite of online website capabilities tied to ecarlist’s inventory management software.

“Consumers today turn to the web as their primary source for research,” explained Hanson. “As a part of that process, their impression of your company is determined almost immediately. We will produce websites that are effective in converting web traffic to qualified leads, while building trust in the dealership’s brand, which in turn drives revenue for the dealership.”

Read More »

I think I’ve been here long enough to post a disgruntled little blog.  During my time here at ecarlist over the past 4-ish months, I’ve spoken to a lot of dealers.  Many of them are engaging in SEO and/or SEM and many are not.  Usually I wouldn’t bash on the dealers who are proactively invovled with Search, but it seems that there is a major disconnect in regards to their spending.

I conducted my own little experiement in which I surveyed dealers who were using some of the more well-known SEM management firms which will remain un-named…uhhhreachlocaluhhhnmm.   Now this study was put together by a huge team of one with an enormous panel of 10.  Here are the results….

10 out of 10 dealers who were spending money on SEM with their “SEM Agency”  had no knowledge of  how much money was going to Google, Yahoo and/or MSN and how much was going into the pocket of their agency who was charging a percentage of the dealer’s gross monthly spend (usually with minimum spending requirements).

Does that concern anyone?  Apparantly not.  Because these firms are sending their weekly home-made Excel spreadsheets that show the dealer is getting “clicks” and apparantly that’s all that matters to the dealer.  They send nothing from the Engines themselves who have great reporting systems that show the actual spend, average Cost Per Click and Click Through Rates.

I’ve heard from some dealers who actually took the time to analyze their SEM campaigns directly with Google that the percentages their Agencies were taking were sometimes as high as 40%.   That means for every $1.00 you spend on Google, it’s actually costing you $1.40…assuming you are getting information on how much you’re spending per-click.

So anyway, for the dealer that cares about what you are spending these days I recommend going with an SEM management firm that either charges you a flat rate (i.e. ecarlist) or a  reasonable percentage with complete transparency.  In fact, I would call your SEM firm today and ask them if you can get a cost breakdown from Google - which they have readily available.  If they aren’t interested in showing it to you, you may want to reconsider who you are spending money with.

What is SERM?  Sounds like a bad case of the flu, but it’s actually a serious and rapidly growing segment of Search Engine Marketing.  SERM stands for Search Engine Reputation Management, and any company who struggles with negative PR online should get to know it well.

North Texas Nissan runs a very successful operation and uses ecarlist for Inventory Management and recently a premium website with SEM and SEO.   

Let’s just say the old management didn’t focus heavily on customer service.   North Texas Nissan suffers from serious negative online public relations just like many other dealers and companies online who may or may not be aware of it.

A Google search for “North Texas Nissan” brings up first page results for RipoffReport.com and Complaints.com that were posted by consumers (or bashing competitors)  from years ago during the previous management.

Many brand name companies suffer this same fate - Pay Pal, Bosley Medical, and countless dealers are losing an unforeseen amount of business from negative postings that appear in the search results.  And the worst part is that it’s near impossible to get these negative postings removed since they are protected under the 1st Amendment.

SERM is the process of achieving additional rankings for certain keywords in efforts to push down any negative PR websites “below the fold” or to the 2nd or 3rd page of the search results - or at least out of the way of it interfering.

As ecarlist strives to bring our dealers cutting edge online technology,  we are proud to launch a SERM program for North Texas Nissan and will be posting the results soon.

HOUSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The Planet, the global leader in IT hosting, today announced the addition of ecarlist (www.ecarlist.com) to its dedicated hosting platform. Headquartered in Dallas, the company provides hundreds of automobile dealers in the United States and Canada with critical data for inventory management, pricing analytics, search engine optimization, marketing and Web site design.

According to J.D. Power & Associates, an industry research firm, approximately 75 percent of all car shoppers use the Internet when evaluating car purchases.

“Technology and the Internet have created a monumental shift in pairing buyers and sellers for automobile purchases,” said Len Critcher, Chief Executive Officer of ecarlist. “Dealers are facing new challenges to ensure their inventories are current, and their sites always up and running, particularly in today’s difficult environment. The services we provide enable them to take full control of their online marketing and be more competitive, backed by the critical data required to make strategic marketing decisions for their businesses. Our SaaS (Software as a Service) solution means customers count on us to have this information available around the clock, and that’s why we switched to The Planet. The company’s corporate stability and reputation, its reliability and scalability gave us the confidence to make the change.”

“We hear time and again from customers that they select The Planet for our world-class data centers and enterprise-quality network,” said Steve Kahan, vice president of marketing and product management for The Planet. “With the broadest complement of products and services in the industry, we offer customers the power to choose the precise solutions and services for their IT infrastructures.” Read More »