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In Best Practices

In Case of Emergency–Would Your Dealership Be Prepared?

Within the past year, Maryland has been hit by an earthquake and a hurricane (in the same week!), as well as a huge snowstorm, all fairly uncommon occurrences in our state.  While DealerOn, both the office and our employees, were lucky enough to dodge any real damage, it definitely made us all think about how prepared we are for these kinds of emergencies.

DealerOn had enough warning before Hurricane Irene (and dodged damage from the earthquake) to ensure our account managers were set up to work remotely if necessary.  That way we knew that all of our customers’ dealership websites wouldn’t be affected, and we could continue to provide the exceptional customer service on which we pride ourselves.  And while we were lucky to avoid damage, many in our area were not, and are still without power.

After a natural disaster, your first priority will obviously be to ensure your friends, family, and co-workers are safe.  But after that?  Here are some things to think about to keep your dealership up and running:

Who is expected to report to work?  What if they can’t get there?  What are your leave policies for those without power, damaged homes, etc?

How will you let your employees know if you are open for business?  Does a phone tree exist?  Will you have every employee call you to report their status?

What about dealership customers that have appointments set?  Is your service manager responsible for contacting his/her customers, and a sales manager responsible for contacting theirs?

Taking the time to think about, plan, and inform your dealership staff about these things could reduce a huge headache (as well as save money) after a natural disaster.  As we recently learned ourselves, no natural disaster scenario (or two) is too far-fetched.

How prepared for such an emergency is your dealership?  For those affected by Irene, what steps did your dealership take to get ready?

In Web Analytics

How to Create a Trackable QR Code for Your Car Dealership

After writing my post on QR Codes Best Practices, I wanted to make sure those dealerships interested in starting a QR code marketing campaign knew to create QR codes in a way that will allow your dealership to track them through the Google Analytics on your car dealership website.

Here’s how to create a QR code that is trackable by Google Analytics:

First, make sure you are signed into Google (in the account that houses your dealership’s analytics).

Next, go to the Google URL Builder.  Enter the URL that you would like the QR Code to link to.  Choose “QR Code” for campaign source, and then choose your campaign medium and name.  For example, if you’re going to put the QR Code on window stickers for a Chevy Cruze, your Campaign Medium could be “Window Stickers” and the Campaign Name could be “2011 Chevy Cruze”.  Once you’ve entered these fields, click Generate URL.

Copy the URL you’ve just created and go to goo.gl.  Here, you’ll shorten your newly created QR Code tracking URL, and click “Details” to generate the QR Code. By shortening the URL before generating the QR Code, you will make the QR code less dense, and therefore easier for your customers to scan.

Now that you’ve created the QR Code, you can use the link that Google provides to put your QR Code graphic onto your site, or you can right click on the generated QR Code and click “Save Image As” to save it to your machine or servers.  You are now ready to start tracking your QR code campaigns!  Let me know if you’ve found other ways to effectively track your QR campaigns.

In Best Practices

QR Code Marketing Best Practices

Some of DealerOn’s car dealer website customers are incorporating QR codes on their sites, though it remains a technology that’s still maturing.  While others in the industry have debated the benefits of using QR codes as a part of your dealership’s marketing strategy, I wanted to share some tips for running a QR Code campaign if your dealership is going to test this technology.

Before you start any marketing campaign, including one using QR codes, it is essential that your dealership lays out your goals.  What are the business or marketing objectives you hope to accomplish with the QR code campaign?  For example, are you looking to increase your email list or increase traffic on your mobile website?  If you don’t determine what you’re hoping to accomplish, you won’t be able to tell whether or not the campaign is successful.

Make sure you test your QR code extensively.  If someone tries to use your code and it doesn’t work, it’s similar to someone trying to click a broken link on your website.  That user isn’t likely to seek out that information elsewhere on your site…they will just move on to the next dealership.  Make sure your codes are big enough, and have enough “clean” space around them.  Test them where they will appear (on a window sticker, for example) to help ensure they can be read in the environment that your customers will be scanning them.

Link the QR codes to a mobile landing page.  I’ve written about the importance of having mobile dealership websites before, but when you know people have to use their mobile phones to scan QR codes, it doesn’t make any sense to send them to a traditional website page.  These are just some basic best practices for QR codes.  Have you used any other standard processes that you’d recommend for QR Code Marketing campaigns?

In

How to Import Dealership Contacts into Social Media Sites

One of the difficult parts of maintaining a successful social media marketing campaign is attracting the “right” people and getting your customers and prospects to interact with your dealership online.  While this won’t solve all of these problems, being able to find your dealership contacts in social media accounts is a start.

There is a pretty simple way to find your dealership contacts in social media sites like Twitter that I found while reading SEOptimise, an SEO blog from England.

First, export your customer list into a CSV file.  Below is an example of how to do this from Constant Contact. Since you’ll only need names and email addresses, go ahead and delete all of the other fields.  Also, make sure you delete those with no email address.

Using a Gmail account, import this CSV file.  If you create a separate group for these contacts, they will be easier to manage.

Now, log into your social media accounts (like Twitter) and search for contacts using Gmail.

How does your dealership help ensure you connect with your customers and prospects through your social media accounts?

In

Facebook Allows Ad Targeting by Zip Code

Until now, Facebook has allowed advertisers on their platform to target users based on age, sex, interests and location (country, state, and city).  In order to drill down even further, Facebook now allows users to target their ads by zip code as well.

When creating your Facebook ad, just add the zip codes that you would like to target.  Unlike Google AdWords, you can’t use a radius to target further, so make sure that you are including any zip codes from which your dealership could draw customers.

This is especially helpful for dealerships either in or near large cities. For example, if your dealership is located south of a major city, it may make sense for you to only target those in the southern zip codes of that city.  For dealerships in cities like Los Angeles or New York, targeting your ads by zip code, instead of broadcasting to the entire city, could save a lot of money and help bring in customers more likely to buy.

This refinement will also allow your ad to appear more often.  For example, if before your ad was being shown to everyone between the ages of 25-34 in Washington DC, and you can now limit that to show to those in one or two city zip codes, the average number of times your ad shows during your campaign should increase.  Your ad will be shown more times to a smaller, more targeted group of people.

As a side note, some data firms are noting that there may be discrepancies in the number of users Facebook is showing in each zip code when compared to census data.  According to XA.net CEO Rob Leathern, this issue isn’t exclusive to Facebook and should get more and more accurate as geographic, IP, and user reported data gets sorted and more refined.

Does your dealership use Facebook ads?  If so, are you going to test the ability to target by zip code to increase ROI?

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