News

On February 6th, Google had an announcement that enhances their online advertising solutions, so here is the the post that was shared on the Google blog.  You can also get more information about this on this link: Google Adwords Enhanced Campaigns.  The new announcement is Google’s ”first step to help you more simply and smartly manage your ad campaigns in today’s multi-device world.”

I will also be asking more direct questions to the Google team at DMSC and NADA so I will keep you posted on how car dealers can leverage these new enhancements.   I did like this excerpt from the information page on Google’s website:

AdWords has always allowed you to reach potential customers based on their intent. That’s what makes it so effective. But now AdWords also lets you capture the power of context. Context such as location, time of day, and device matter and provide you more opportunities to reach people with more relevant messages.

Being able to target a mobile device with an ad based on their location of the consumer is something very exciting.  Dealers can target their messages based on the proximity of the consumer to the dealership, which I think would be ideal for Fixed Ops marketing as well as car sales in competitive markets.

Here is the information on the Adwords enhancements from the blog post made by Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President of Engineering

Why enhanced campaigns?

People are constantly connected and moving from one device to another to communicate, shop and stay entertained. In fact, a recent study of multi-device consumers found that 90% move sequentially between several screens to accomplish a task. There’s also a proliferation of new devices — PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones, hybrid devices, mini-tablets, televisions, and more. And there are many more digital screens and devices to come, with the lines between them continuing to blur. For example, as devices converge, consumer behaviors on tablets and desktops are becoming very similar.

This creates great opportunities for businesses, but can also make marketing more complex and time-consuming. For example, a pizza restaurant probably wants to show one ad to someone searching for “pizza” at 1pm on their PC at work (perhaps a link to an online order form or menu), and a different ad to someone searching for “pizza” at 8pm on a smartphone a half-mile from the restaurant (perhaps a click-to-call phone number and restaurant locator). Signals like location, time of day, and the capabilities of the device people are using have become increasingly important in showing them the right ad.

With enhanced campaigns, instead of having to cobble together and compare several separate campaigns, reports and ad extensions to do this, the pizza restaurant can easily manage all of this in one single place. Enhanced campaigns help you reach people with the right ads, based on their context like location, time of day and device type, across all devices without having to set up and manage several separate campaigns.

Key features
Here’s an overview of some key features.

1. Powerful marketing tools for the multi-device world
   People want search results that are relevant for the context they are in — their device, location and the time of day. Enhanced campaigns help you better manage your campaigns and budgets for this multi-device world. With bid adjustments, you can manage bids for your ads across devices, locations, time of day and more — all from a single campaign.Example: A breakfast cafe wants to reach people nearby searching for “coffee” or “breakfast” on a smartphone. Using bid adjustments, with three simple entries, they can bid 25% higher for people searching a half-mile away, 20% lower for searches after 11am, and 50% higher for searches on smartphones. These bid adjustments can apply to all ads and all keywords in one single campaign.
2. Smarter ads optimized for varying user contexts
   People on the go or near your store may be looking for different things than someone sitting at their desk. With enhanced campaigns, you’ll show ads across devices with the right ad text, sitelink, app or extension, without having to edit each campaign for every possible combination of devices, location and time of day.Example: A national retailer with both physical locations and a website can show ads with click-to-call and location extensions for people searching on their smartphones, while showing an ad for their e-commerce website to people searching on a PC — all within a single campaign.
3. Advanced reports to measure new conversion types
   Technology is enabling people to take action on your ads in new ways. Potential customers may see your ad and download your app, or they may call you. It’s been hard for marketers to easily measure and compare these interactions. To help you measure the full value of your campaigns, enhanced campaigns enables you to easily count calls and app downloads as conversions in your AdWords reports.Example: You can count phone calls of 60 seconds or longer that result from a click-to-call ad as a conversion in your AdWords reports, and compare them to other conversions like leads, sales and downloads. 

Upgrading to enhanced campaigns
Enhanced campaigns will roll out to advertisers as an option over the next few weeks, and we plan to upgrade all campaigns in mid-2013.

Enhanced campaigns are designed to help you succeed in a multi-screen world, but we know that transitioning may involve some initial changes. Here are some resources to help you:

• Website
• Help Center
• Upgrade videos and guides
• AdWords Community forum

February 6, 2013 – Dealer.com, a leading provider of digital marketing and operational products and services for the automotive industry, announced today that it has partnered with Contact At Once! to provide its automotive customers with greater visibility into the effectiveness of dealer live chat on their websites.

The seamless integration of the live chat data will allow Dealer.com’s customers to view the impact of chat performance across multiple digital channels, while taking advantage of rich analytics and behavioral tracking available through Dealer.com’s integrated platform. This new level of analytics will complement the company’s recent product enhancements that help to further leverage data, reach targeted audiences, and better manage and view marketing and dealership operations performance.

Chat Connect is designed to simultaneously scale to the many types of websites online car shoppers visit while searching for vehicles. The data derived from Chat Connect will enhance Dealer.com’s comprehensive set of products, tools and services including inventory, websites, advertising, and CRM.

“Car shoppers are empowered like never before and gather information from dozens of places while they’re looking,” says John Hanger, Contact At Once! chief executive officer. “Our chat helps dealers make interactive connections with online shoppers from a variety of online sites, so they can build trust and rapport while there’s an opportunity to influence the purchase.”

“Embedding chat data and management into our platform means dealers have additional insight that will help them to focus their efforts more effectively when connecting with potential buyers,” says Rick Gibbs, Dealer.com president and CEO. “This partnership will deliver a comprehensive set of data in our analytics tool and ultimately help us empower dealers to take advantage of interactive connections from all the places online shoppers are searching.”

Both Dealer.com (Booth # 1201) and Contact At Once! (Booth # 3159) will be at the National Automotive Dealer’s Association (NADA) Convention in Orlando, Fla, February 8-11. Presentations about how dealers can leverage the Dealer.com digital marketing and operations platform and Contact At Once! Chat Connect will occur at 11:00 a.m. Saturday and Sunday in the Dealer.com booth. For more information, chat with Contact At Once! now, or call 866-358-3880.

Dealer.com Product Reveal at DMSC 2013

On Friday, February 8th at 9:00 am, Dealer.com will be hosting a breakfast at the 2013 Digital Marketing Strategies Conference to discuss their new products and strategies for car dealers, just prior to the 2013 NADA Convention in Orlando.  Dealers will be able to ask questions about all their new products and partnerships, including the most recent announcement with Contact At Once!.  Dealership employees and managers who would like to register for the breakfast, should contact Carrie Hemphill at 908-601-6475.

About Contact At Once!

Contact At Once! pioneered the use of live chat in automotive advertising, enabling more connections between online shoppers and sellers than any other chat provider. More than 12,000 dealers, the world’s busiest automotive classified sites and many automotive manufacturers rely on Contact At Once! to build relationships with potential buyers and increase their return on advertising investments. For more information, visit www.autodealerchat.com.

About Dealer.com

Dealer.com is the automotive industry’s leading provider of a streamlined and intuitive solution for managing dealership marketing and operations. The company’s platform-based Inventory, Advertising, Website and CRM products allow OEMs, dealer groups, retail and agencies to leverage innovative technology to relevantly connect to their customers. The company’s unique commitment to culture, with a focus on health and wellness, has made it one of the most desirable places to work. For more information on Dealer.com can be found at http://www.dealer.com.

Jason Ezell – Dataium

Nashville, TN – 02/04/2013 – Dataium, the largest aggregator of in market automotive shopper behavior, and HookLogic, the industry leader in understanding and influencing shopper decisions to Win the Moment of Truth™, today released the initial results of their partnership, introduced in fourth quarter of 2012.

A combination of Dataium’s contextual behavior analysis and Hooklogic’s targeting incentives, resulted in redemption rates above 30 percent. Based on the high performance of the combined offering, the integration between the partners will be expanded in to further increase results.

During the first three months of integration, the Dataium-HookLogic program delivered customized incentives to roughly 25 percent of the 150,000 lead submissions representing 70 participating dealers. The incentives were primarily targeted to shoppers typically considered inactive or no longer in the market for a vehicle, resulting in significant incremental sales for dealers.

According to Jason Ezell, President of Dataium LLC “Data is only good when it’s actionable. HookLogic is a perfect example of how to take data and turn it into showroom traffic.” He added, “By better aligning consumer interest with the sales process, HookLogic has quickly become an industry leader. The initial results were excellent and tighter integration will deliver even greater results.”

David Metter -HookLogic

David Metter, President of Automotive for HookLogic, stated, “This test and partnership is further validation that when you execute based on big data, great things happen. Dataium’s unique data set allows us to target a dealer’s older leads, typically 31-60 days after submission, and then use consumer intent to better align our offers with current consumer interests, and deliver a more productive shopping experience for the consumer and dealer.

Because this customer has shown high intent to buy, it allows the dealer to align messaging, offer, and timing to better meet consumer need, thus influencing the customer to choose their dealership. Our solutions and data prove that happens.”

DMSC Workshops Feature Metter and Ezell

Representatives from HookLogic and Dataium will be presenting workshops for car dealers at the 2013 Digital Marketing Strategies Conference in Orlando, February 5-7th.   David Metter’s workshop is entitled “Learn From Apple – Taking an App Store Approach to Vendor Selection” and Jason Ezell’s workshop is entitled “Using Big Data to Manage Your On-line Presence From Key Word to Lead Submission“.  The timing of this announcement, coinciding with the start of DMSC 2013, will allow participating dealers at the conference to be first to obtain additional information and insights to this integration strategy.

About Dataium, LLC

Dataium is the largest aggregator of Internet automotive shopping activity. With its Cloud Intelligence® platform, the company collects, analyzes, and indexes billions of online automotive shopping events from over 20 million active auto shoppers monthly. The company supports cutting-edge data collection and reporting technology; VisiCogn® Knowledge Center, and is also known for its ASI™ index. For more information, visit www.dataium.com, email: info@dataium.com, or call 877-896-DATA (3282).

About HookLogic’s Solutions for the Auto Industry

HookLogic is the industry leader for understanding and influencing shopper decisions to Win the Moment of Truth™. HookLogic solutions are easily implemented, work with nearly any marketing medium and enable end to-end reporting and optimization. Headquartered in New York City, the company has offices in Ann Arbor, MI, Atlanta, GA and Manchester, UK. Clients include many of the top 10 dealer groups, DCH, MileOne, Jim Ellis, Jeff Wyler, Germain Motor Cars, Suburban Collection, Acton Toyota, OEM, agencies, and vendor partners. Learn more at www.lead2show.com.