Auto Dealer Monthly Magazine is the daily operations publication serving the retail automotive industry. This automotive publication serves dealer principals, officers and general managers with the latest best practices.
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ON THE C OV E R Mike Shum, general manager at Sunnyvale Toyota in California, is one of the dealers piloting Google Cars. The service lives up to the hype, he says. SHOW 'EM WHAT YOU GOT Engagement isn't Google's top priority for Google Cars, a new service the frm is piloting in the San Francisco Bay area. Mike Shum, general manager at Sunnyvale Toyota in Northern California, was one of the frst to test the service, which allows shoppers to search new-vehicle inventory by ZIP code without ever leaving Google. "If you go to Edmunds, there are many more research tools on it, whereas Google is really just getting you straight to the inventory," Shum says. "Google wants less, not more: 'Here are the vehicles, here's where they are at, here's the price on them.' Tat's what they're matching up. Tere's no other piece to it." Shum's lead conversion continues to see a boost as Google enhances the service. He captures anywhere from 100 to 150 leads per month by bidding about $20 to $21 on each one. His spend is slightly lower for leads coming from other sites — generally close to $18 — but he says the quality is what counts. "Sometimes you pay for what you get — you pay a little bit too low, and you think it's great, but in the end it really isn't," he says. Te main complaint he hears from other dealers is that Google Cars masks leads throughout all communications with a car buyer, which Google limits to six interactions. Shum says that hasn't been a problem for his dealership. "Whether I have your actual e-mail or this masked e-mail address, if you don't answer me in nine e-mails, or you just don't answer me at all, the likelihood you're going to answer on No. 10 is pretty much nonexistent," he says. "Really, employees going past six [calls or emails] is rare." But not everyone in the auto industry is as FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH M arketers on Facebook are pleased to fnd that the site's return on investment (ROI) reporting continues to improve, Experian found in its 2013 Digital Marketer Report. And Google's latest research shows YouTube's video promotion service can prove valuable for dealers as well. "Although the direct attribution to ad spend likely will be more diffcult for Facebook to prove than Google, advertisers have seen their cost per click (CPC) go down on Facebook in 2012 and the overall value of their campaigns increase with new ad units, plus greater focus on mobile and addressable advertising," Experian's report states. Addressable advertising is a reference to Facebook Exchange (FBX), where dealers can now bid in real-time for a specifc impression of retargeted ads for mobile or desktop, and Custom Audiences, the data-mining tool that matches dealers on Facebook to their offine customers. Facebook Offers is another promotional tool available to dealers. In one case study touted by the social media site, Chicago-based Castle Automotive Group's Dealer Principal Joe Castle saw an ROI of 24 times the proft from his ad spend with a buyone-get-one-free oil change offer. 16 When it comes to the younger crowd, Experian found that Facebook and YouTube captured the highest share of visits among millennials within the social networking category and accounted for 62 percent and 21 percent of all visits, respectively. "When compared to the online population, millennials are more likely to visit other social networks like MeetMe, Google+, Pinterest and Instagram. While Facebook and YouTube clearly have a large reach with millennials, marketers should consider other social networks that can provide additional opportunities to get in front of this key audience," the report states. "The offers that we see tend to be really resonating with dealership fanbases are those that relate to fxed operations, and not vehicle sales. That's because the majority of fans of any dealership's page are already owners and have purchased from that dealership," says Patrick Workman, Facebook Autos' client partner. Castle also found a 57 percent match rate among his customers through Custom Audiences, where he added 8,000 users to a customer list of 14,000 people. "The beauty of engaging with customers on Facebook is that for the AUTO DE ALE R MONTHLY • M AY 2013 frst time, I have the ability to reach out to potential customers and build a relationship with them before they have done business with my dealership," Castle says. "This gives me a huge competitive advantage to win over fans as customers before my competition has the chance." He's not alone. Google's "Think Insights: Automotive" page tells the story of Davie, Fla.-based Rick Case Honda. The store has earned an additional $50,000 from online videos, while the dealership's monthly unique site visitors shot up by 18 percent. The store has been on Google-owned YouTube since 2010. Last year, however, Rick Case signed on for TrueView Ads, where companies only pay if users view at least the frst 30 seconds of a video. Case targeted local competitors from brands like Toyota, and his number of trade-ins doubled from 10 to 20 per month. "It didn't take long for us to realize that video converted much better than pay-per-click ads or online displays. And for video, YouTube's the biggest place," Richard Bustillo, general manager of Rick Case Honda, tells F&I; and Showroom. "That's what got us."