#DSES Day: 2 Recap

The DrivingSales Executive Summit continued today with a full slate of keynote and breakout session presentations. The day began with Mike Hudson from eMarketer delivering a keynote address on the shifting demands of today’s consumers. This first full day of DSES also offered attendees 11 different 35-minute breakout sessions. Rounding out day two were four more keynote addresses including those by Jared Hamiltion and Rand Fiskin.

Mike Hudson, the first keynote speaker of the day, talked preliminarily about mobile. He explained that only 62% of people have confidence in the business sense of mobile. Hudson said, “People don’t have a lot of confidence in the ROI for mobile.” He went on to talk about the reality of retail, that it must be appealing to consumers. Hudson said, referring to car lots, “Why would I want to spend my time there? Why would I want to spend my money there? Hudson referred to in-store geo smartphone tracking as a huge invasion of privacy. He said, “Coming from a journalism background I expect people to have more of an expectation of privacy but they don’t.” He went on to say that 84% of those surveyed about in-store geo-tracking were in support of it because of perceived savings of time and money.

A breakout session by JD Rucker introduced a few outside-the-box social media marketing strategies. One of the items that he explained was that many targetable events often go underutilized. Graduation day was one of his examples. He explained that a dealership he was working with put around $40.00 on Facebook advertising (plus the use of dark posts) for recent college graduates. The result of that relatively small investment was three verified cars sold. He also explained when he was a dealer during his 10-year stint in retail automotive, he had one particular type of transaction that brought him great satisfaction. It was when a Chevy truck guy turned his Chevrolet in for a Ford. He turned that experience into another example of how social media ad targeting can produce positive results. Rucker explained that one Ford store advertised that their trucks were, “7 years recall free.” This both made light of the endless string of GM recalls and gave consumers a real reason to choose Ford. Finally, Rucker suggested that dealers search for outside-the-box when planning their social media marketing strategy.

DrivingSales Founder and CEO, Jared Hamilton, gave a keynote earlier today that shared original research with the attendees. Hamilton began by telling the audience that times in the business world have changed. He reminded the crowd that the Blackberry used to be the dominant smart phone until the iPhone showed up and essentially reinvented the market. Blackberry had been the gold standard for mobile emails. He noted iPhones didn’t necessarily offer better access to email, but was presented in a package that was more attractive to the average consumer. Hamilton then introduced the customer experience project that DrivingSales has been working on for over a year. It reportedly cost over a million dollars and has enlisted the help of anthropologists. DrivingSales found individuals who were ready to buy a vehicle and conducted on-camera interviews. One such person was “Bill,” a fifty-something male who said he trusts manufacturer and third-party car sites before those strictly from a dealership. Another shopper, “Tara,” said dealership websites have a lot of “cobwebs’ of what she felt were unnecessary. Tara was talking about dealer websites full of ads. Many dealers likely disagree with the notion that their website may not be good, however, Hamilton said, “We are not the consumer and our opinion doesn’t count.” He went onto explain that companies like Tesla are taking advantage of the unpopular dealership experience by eliminating it completely. The research Hamilton mentioned is ongoing and more of the findings will reportedly be explained during a special session at the NADA conference in January.

Rand Fiskin topped off a day of keynote addresses as he brought an outside the industry perspective to an automotive audience. Fiskin is an SEO specialist who co-authored The Art Of SEO and co-founded inbound.org and Moz. Fiskin spoke about SEO, and at one point, he explained how organic search results are improving.

“Google is taking their understanding of language and intent and brand and mushing them together in a way that’s creating an answer engine,” Fiskin said. He explained dealers could take advantage of the more specific results through very pointed marketing campaigns. Marketers are able to create digital marketing campaigns and “group keywords by intent.” Fiskin also mentioned the importance of creating quality in the SEO of your dealership. “I want content that’s going to do two things,” Fiskin said. “Engage people and fit with the topic modeling algorithms.” He explained by following these principles, and building up a strong SEO footprint, Google will recognize the useful nature of your content and move your results up higher.

As mentioned earlier, the customer experience theme really took hold on day 2. Dealers and vendors alike were given a window into the state of CX. Furthermore, attendees had the opportunity to learn what is potentially around the corner for 2015 and beyond in the automotive retail industry.