AdAgencyOnline.Net

Automotive advertising agencies gather online at AdAgencyOnline.Net to listen and learn from automotive advertising insiders who host a blog talk radio station — WAAOL, All Automotive Advertising News All The Time.  These automotive advertising experts will be discussing The Art Of The Deal In Vendor Negotiations on Monday, March 07th. 2011 at 12:00 Noon EST.  The show will focus on best practices for automotive advertising vendors who are actively negotiating software consolidations in the technology sector; but not for the same reason as the consolidation in the retail auto industry. 

Newly forming technology platforms link complementary applications into more comprehensive sales and service process.  Small independent vendors are partnering with other best in class vendors to leverage their proprietary software and processes allowing them to provide superior products and services than they could individually. Applications that integrate sales and service processes online with the auto dealership to enhance the customer experience are shaping the future of the automotive advertising industry and the retail auto industry that they serve.

Philip Zelinger, the President of Ad Agency Online, L.L.C. and the moderator of the Lunch With Phil Discussing Automotive Advertising blog talk radio show, shared his own best practices with his affiliated automotive advertising agencies.  “I have a self delegated role in my company to find and review cutting edge automotive advertising applications provided by best in class vendors.  I prioritize people over product or price when evaluating a solution because support services after the sale and the ability to act vs. react to the changes that will shape our shared futures depend on them.”

“My policy to only do business with friends has served as the foundation for my advice to vendor clients who are seeking partners and/or investors to expand their business.  Men make deals, attorneys break them and human nature controls them all.  Relationships change and any partnership must be built on a common understanding of our individual needs.  Communicating and recording those needs in the formative stages of the partnership in an objective manner is the art of the deal in vendor negotiations.  If I negotiate to protect your needs and you focus on defending mine our partnership will last.  If our agendas are purely self serving any meeting of the minds will have to reflect that and that is no way to start a relationship!”

Specific subjects that will be discussed during the show will include:

• Evaluating market demand to build an accurate pro-forma
• Establishing brand identity and barriers to entry
• How to pick a partner
• Preparing a Memorandum Of Understanding, (MOU), and a Letter Of Intent, (LOI)
• Monetizing applications
• Building a sales channel

About Philip Zelinger

Philip Zelinger is the President of Ad Agency Online, L.L.C. and host of a nationally respected automotive advertising social networking portal, AdAgencyOnline.Net.  Philip invested 25 years as a General Manager and Dealer Principal followed by his last ten years in the automotive advertising industry representing auto dealers and technology vendors focused on the automotive advertising industry.

His role as a “Dealer Coach” is enhanced by his hosting a nationally recognized blog talk radio station – WAAOL, All Automotive Advertising News All The Time.  As the author of two books on the auto industry, including “How To Sell A Car – a Career Guide to The Automobile Industry,” he is a recognized authority on market trends and developing technologies with the responsibility of selecting key vendors and applications for his dealer clients as well as forming strategic partnerships for his vendor clients to leverage their shared resources to help them bring their products and services to market. Read the rest of this entry »

In today’s consolidating auto industry automotive advertising agencies must maximize the R.O.I. in a quantifiable manner for any investment they make of their time or with their client’s money.  Social media, including directed investments in and with Facebook, presents some unique challenges to monetize the services provided by an automotive advertising agency.  I recently replied to a question posted on FOCUS, a social networking portal I support composed of professionals sharing best practices, titled — Do Facebook Stores Really Do Anything – How Do You Monetize Facebook?

That question revealed a new area of responsibility for automotive advertising agencies.  Agency retainers are no longer supported by production fees associated with conventional radio, TV or print advertisements.  Media savings and commissions for placing broadcast media have also taken a back seat to consulting on Internet based investments and enhanced selling processes leveraging the viral nature of social media.  In part, providing production and associated Creative and Marketing Services have been supplemented by Consultation Services focused on key vendor selection, directing social media activities and integrating selling processes on websites with those at the dealerships.  Easier said than done when attempted through the glass wall of the Internet.

Automotive advertising agencies are constantly challenged to provide a verifiable R.O.I. for their services in a consolidating auto industry.  Most agencies take credit for everything from website and floor traffic to conversion rates and increased sales to support their fees.  Unfortunately downsized dealers with reduced staff and budgets now rely on detailed R.O.I. analytic tools built into every process and application to track their individual investments; or at least they should!

In response to these new dealer expectations, most vendors integrate a Dealer Portal into their solution that quantifies and qualifies the results of their application independent of the advertising agency’s possibly self serving analysis.  Automotive advertising agencies have found that, as with any recommended vendor or advertising investment, their agency retainers and commissions must also be supported by quantifiable results.  In a performance based business model with line item accountability the R.O.I. from Facebook and other social media investments in time and money can prove to be hard to quantify.

My actual answer to the post on Focus concerning how to monetize Facebook was, “The key to answering this question is to manage the expectations of the advertiser.  If their goal is to make as many friends as possible with the confidence that people like to do business with people that they like — then the answer is an unqualified yes!”

“Social networking sites have unique personalities and rules that govern the conversations that they manage for their online community of friends designed to filter out direct sales messages. The market on Facebook is a conversation that exists before, during and after the shopping / buying decision. Any sales and/or marketing message is best delivered from the inside out as a C2C message between like minded consumers sharing their experiences vs. from the outside in as B2C message delivered by a self serving retailer.”

“As a result, direct sales messaging in Facebook stores will only go as far as the reputation that the retailer has earned by his/her other contributions to the community and of course their track record with previous customers and their willingness to share their experiences online.”

“The R.O.I. from Facebook is realized by collecting a data base of Facebook friends that allow retailers to group their friends by categories. The ability to then deliver relevant messages in a scalable and efficient manner to a qualified and targeted group of potential customers as one friend to another is the way to monetize Facebook.”

“In addition, the R.O.I. should not be limited to considering only short term sales since it is often reflected by increased traffic to the retailers website and/or an enhanced reputation that is only evident over time and reflected in the referrals and customer satisfaction / retention that it develops.”

“Finally, the search engines have weighted references in social media in their algorithms to determine their rankings and page positioning for retailers. As a result, conversations about the retailer on Facebook can be reflected in improved S.E.O. that might not be otherwise achieved. Also, the value of W.O.M.O. — Word Of Mouth Optimization — is less tangible and verifiable, however it has similar value which must be factored into any R.O.I. analytics.”

I have since added specific areas of responsibility concerning the need for the affiliated automotive advertising agencies of Ad Agency Online to help build, manage and monitor the Facebook stores that we are recommending for our auto dealer / vendor clients.  As with any website, price and product matter … unfortunately, in that order.  It is not enough to simply set up the site and sit back to monitor and manage the results.  The more productive Facebook stores are built with the same focus on their online retail displays as they apply to their brick and mortar facilities.

AdAgencyOnline.Net is a networking / resource portal where automotive advertising agencies are able to review cutting edge automotive advertising vendors and their applications.  Philip Zelinger, the President of Ad Agency Online, L.L.C. and host of the blog talk radio station WAAOL, All Automotive Advertising News All The Time featured on AdAgencyOnline.Net, reviewed CarFolks.Com in an interview with  Mark Dubis.  The interview was conducted on the Auto Industry Insiders blog talk radio show that aired on Thursday, November 18th. , 2011 between 12:00 Noon EST and 12:30 PM EST.  Philip Zelinger announced that an encore presentation of the show is scheduled to replace the Lunch With Phil Discussing Automotive Advertising show on Monday, November 22nd., 2010 during the same mid-day time slot. 

Philip explained his reason for the unusual repeat airing of the CarFolks.Com updated review. “CarFolks.Com was one of the first preferred automotive advertising vendors to be featured on AdAgencyOnline.Net and I was surprised to discover some of the new applications that have been added to their already comprehensive reputation management platform.  Social media has matured as the media of choice for consumers anxious to gather information about not only the vehicles that they want to purchase but the auto dealership they want to do business with.  Mark explained that they have included several integrated solutions to CarFolks.Com that allow the auto dealer to promote comments about them on this consumer centric site to their own websites and other social media including Facebook and Twitter.  The market is a conversation between consumers that exists before, during and after their shopping/buying cycle.  CarFolks.Com has come up with a consumer focused platform that allows auto dealers to participate in the dialogue from the inside out vs. from the outside in with their customers providing the content.  After all, what are friends — and now Carfolks.Com — for!”

About Mark Dubis

Mark R. Dubis has over 26 years in the automotive and transportation fields. He has worked in executive, management, and sales roles, developing marketing and e-Commerce strategies, web development projects, and other business development strategies.  He was the first full time editor of Digital Dealer magazine and continues to write for industry publications.

About CarFolks.Com

CarFolks.Com is a free, reputation management resource for automotive sales and service professionals to help build, protect and enhance their online reputation. They highlight neighbor approved dealers as an online marketing platform for dealers to help them offer the public an accurate picture of how they and their teams take care of their customers. They now integrate with Facebook, Twitter and the dealers own website. Read the rest of this entry »

Automotive advertising agencies are being asked to deliver more for less by a consolidating auto industry in response to reduced sales volume, profit margins and automotive advertising budgets.  The solution, as is often the case, lies in the leveraged use of technology applied to a constant in automotive advertising and the auto industry that it serves — change.  Another constant that can be found in automotive advertising is human nature.  These two constants, change and human nature,  power the explosive growth of the use of social media by automotive advertising agencies.  Unfortunately, the change is happening at warp speed on the Internet Super Highway and automotive advertising agencies don’t know what they don’t know when it comes to new automotive advertising technologies and applications being developed to monetize social media.

Attempts by automotive advertising agencies to provide a presence for automobile dealers on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter fall short for the same reasons that these online communities of friends are so successful with consumers.  People hate car dealers and they often turn to advice from likeminded consumers on social networking sites to get away from them.  Automotive advertising agencies that impose on these personal conversations with self serving sales messages are often ostracized and even virally attacked as an intruder.  The potential damage to the online reputation of their auto dealer clients represents a risk to reward formula that has forced many automotive advertising agencies to abandon social media as a viable channel to deliver a retail sales or service message.

Fortunately, the same social media that teaches consumers how to buy a vehicle can provide automobile dealers with the information and the tools that they need to sell them one.   Social networking portals developed by likeminded automotive advertising agencies, automotive advertising vendors and auto dealers allow their members to share best practices with the common philosophy that a rising tide floats all boats. 

Philip Zelinger, the President of Ad Agency Online, L.L.C. and the host of the automotive advertising resource / networking portal AdAgencyOnline.net, discussed a number of auto industry focused social networking sites on the blog talk radio station WAAOL – All Automotive Advertising News All The Time featured on AdAgencyOnline.Net.  “I host a network of networker in a special section hosted on AdAgencyOnline.Net titled Auto Industry Insiders.  Contributing member sites include Ralph Paglia’s AutomotiveDigitalMarketing.Com, Jared Hamilton’s DrivingSales.Com, Brian Pasch’s InternetSalesmanager.Org, Chris Saraceno’s DealerElite.Net, Jody Devere’s AskPatty.Com, Keith Whann’s Auttr.Com and Scott Monty’s ScottMonty.Com.  Each online community boasts its own personality and rules of the road to keep members in their lane.  The temptation to sell to each other is controlled by the same social pressures that exist on consumer facing social networks for those that forget why they are there — to listen and learn so they can presume to teach their auto dealers how they can sell cars and service to their online friends.”

In addition to sharing best practices, many automotive advertising agencies use social media to discover new automotive advertising technologies and vendor applications that have not yet been discovered by the mainstream automotive advertising industry.  New automotive advertising platforms and vendor clients that Philip Zelinger sourced from his searches on social media include SiSTeR Technologies Video CarLot – an automated video production platform that produces scalable interactive videos from pictures using human voice to narrate them that are placed on the auto dealer’s website and pushed through a dedicated API with You Tube onto the WWW.  An equally revolutionary discovery claimed by Philip to have been discovered using social media was ronsmap.com — a consumer centric inventory marketing platform that offers auto dealers free listings and free leads with the ability to purchase real time market analytics and social networking profiles that empower the salesperson to answer the customer’s questions even before they ask them.   

Each of these vendor applications were introduced to the market through automotive advertising social networking communities that enabled them to listen and learn from their members about how they can improve their products and services before they introduced them to the general market.  Philip claimed that his access to these automotive advertising solutions and new vendor clients of Ad Agency Online was only possible as a result of the time he invested on social media looking for them so that he could stay one step ahead of the competition.

Online blog talk radio stations hosted on automotive advertising networking portals — such as AAOL featured on AdAgencyOnline.Net — provide a another social media forum for finding and reviewing new automotive advertising solutions.  Regularly scheduled blog talk radio shows with live interviews of the developers of bleeding edge automotive advertising applications allow their online audience to ask vendors questions in an open forum.  These open exchanges of ideas in a problem solution format help the vendors as much as the automotive advertising decision makers that follow the shows.  A new mobile sales presentation platform with an integrated training component — IntellaCar by Hughes Hunter — was recently discussed on a blog talk radio show hosted by Philip Zelinger to solicit feedback from the audience.  Their insights were used to modify the platform before IntellaCar began their beta test it in the real world saving thousands of wasted dollars and man hours that would normally be required to mature their application.

The opportunity for automotive advertising agencies and auto dealers to listen, learn and contribute to social networking communities allows them to discover what they don’t know while allowing them the opportunity to share what they do know.  Auto dealers are people too!  The same efficiencies and extended resources that attract consumers to social media to research their next vehicle purchase is sourced by automotive advertising agencies who need to stay one step ahead of the competition in a consolidating auto industry that demands more for less.  Automotive advertising agencies don’t know what they don’t know but they can definitely find out on auto industry focused social media.  After all, what are friends for! Read the rest of this entry »

Shrinking auto sales, profit margins and automotive advertising budgets have forced automotive advertising agencies to shift their investments from conventional radio, T.V. and print media to the internet and social media such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and too many more to list.  Unfortunately, conventional automotive advertising wisdoms don’t always apply on the Internet Super Highway.  As a result, automotive advertising agencies are struggling to find out not only what works, but how they can prove it to their auto dealer clients who are demanding a verifiable short term R.O.I. for every dollar in today’s struggling economy.  Philip Zelinger, the President of Ad Agency Online, L.L.C. and the host of the automotive advertising resource / networking portal AdAgencyOnline.Net, is directing automotive advertising agencies to promote people over product or price using social media to produce quantifiable and qualified results.

Relationship based selling systems and marketing messages have always been part of the plan for auto dealers in their brick and mortar facilities and it has been carried over to their new online virtual showrooms. However, the assumption that people and personality serve only to build brand awareness or to enhance the retail message vs. replacing it is a dated concept that must be adjusted to fit the demands of today’s empowered customers.  Auto dealer’s self serving retail messages delivered by their automotive advertising agencies — regardless of the media — is no longer perceived as relevant or transparent to online shoppers who prefer to ask their friends and/or trusted third party resources for information they need to make a buying decision.

Digital marketing techniques and priorities established by automotive advertising agencies — such as focusing on Search Engine Optimization, (S.E.O.), Search Engine Marketing, (S.E.M.) and various other manipulations of the algorithms that determine page positions for the online search engines — are no longer the best and/or the only way to deliver a call to action to potential customers.  The newest opportunity for automotive advertising agencies to deliver a message that will sell new and/or pre-owned vehicles as well as service and/or parts is to have their past, present and pending customers do it for them.

Initial attempts to transfer hard retail advertising using conventional media and even digital marketing on the WWW using auto dealer websites or dealer centric third party automotive advertising platforms were not received well by the typical online shopper who traveled onto the Internet Super Highway to avoid car dealers and fast talking car salespeople.  Today’s empowered customers prefer customer centric messages sourced from likeminded consumers sharing their shopping/buying experiences before, during and after their purchases. 

Auto dealers who marketed directly to these social networking communities were seen as wolves in sheep’s clothing as they attempted to sell their products and services from the outside in vs. from the inside out.  Automotive advertising agencies were also challenged by their inability to quantify the short term R.O.I. from their efforts to justify their fees. 

Philip Zelinger discussed some of the new technologies and applications being applied to social media that allow automotive advertising agencies to prove the R.O.I. for social media on his blog talk radio show Lunch With Phil Discussing Automotive Advertising.  The show is an open business meeting featured on the blog talk radio station WAAOL, All Automotive Advertising News All The time that is hosted on AdAgencyOnline.net. 

Philip commented on the subject with some suggested resources that automotive advertising agencies can turn to for best practices in social media and accumulating R.O.I. analytics. “Automotive advertising agencies first and best resource is to listen, learn and apply the best practices associated with social media and social networking offered on automotive advertising resource portals including AutomotiveDigitalMarketing.Com, InternetSalesManager.Org, DrivingSales.Com, DealerElite.Net, Autr.Com, AskPatty.Com , ScottMonty.Com and networks of networkers such as Auto Industry Insiders featured on my own AdAgencyOnline,.net.   I also suggest that automotive advertising agencies continue their education in real world venues like The 9th Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition scheduled Oct. 12-14th, 2010 at The Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas. Many of my affiliated automotive advertising agencies and auto dealer/vendor clients will be hosting sessions there on leveraging social media including mine: C2C + B2B – B2C SQUARED; Learn How This New Social Media Formula Provides New Revenues, New Efficiencies And Greater Profits.”

“As far as leveraging limited resources to promote people over product and price one solution that comes to mind is a vendor client of mine — DealerMouth.  They offer auto dealers a master website that allows them to manage and monitor individual sites for each of their sales people and service writers. The sales people can promote themselves to their own spheres of influence in both the virtual world of Facebook and Twitter and the real world at the dealership by directing them to their personal website as a form of online “Why Buy Here Book” or as a personal blog like forum to talk about life.  More uniquely, the dealer can make sure that their staff is using their online time in a productive manner vs. planning their vacations on company time by using the built in moderator functions to monitor content and online activities during business hours.  The individual sites hosted on DealerMouth are internally linked to the dealer’s online resources so it provides salespeople and service writers with a seamless transition to information they need during or after hours to sell a vehicle or service to a friend when the conversation warrants it.” Read the rest of this entry »