One on One with Kendall Billman, VP of Creative Marketing at VinSolutions
How can dealers best integrate social media onto their websites?
Integrating social onto your website is a must, but you should first determine your dealership goals and more importantly develop a full social media plan. We have created several packages for clients and it allows for simple integration of the top social platforms to a more advanced offering where the dealer integrates Facebook, Twitter and their blogs directly on the home page of the website.
I believe the biggest question is the time and needs of the dealership. We understand the many options and hired a series of social media experts to help build and establish our client’s social media plans.
What is the best way for dealers to promote their website and their online inventory?
There are many ways to promote your website and inventory and many directions depend on the direction and goals of the dealership. Below are a few areas I would check:
1. Insure the website is properly promoted on all traditional media.
2. Does the website have relevant SEO? Many companies start off with advertising your dealership name for the title bars instead of starting with make, city or more detailed SEO phrases. This is really an area you can advance when your dealership name is the same as your URL.
3. SEM is an area with minimal cost when comparing advertising and the ROI gives you higher levels of tracking. When looking at SEM, you want to concentrate on Google first and then move to Yahoo and Bing. We are also a big fan of Facebook and the cost for brand promotion is one of the best.
4. Social media is another place where you can promote your inventory. We have several tools to allow dealers to insert inventory on Facebook. It displays inside of the page and does not continue to popup additional sites. Twitter is also a great source for promoting inventory. We like to promote a new special every day on Twitter and one vehicle special each week.
In what ways can a dealer improve or update their website without spending a fortune?
Good content is the best way for any dealership to begin updating their website. I suggest having each department concentrate on creating pages and pages of content. Have every salesperson take a vehicle and write a real time review. Look at service department and have them create FAQ’s for customers. Ask yourself questions such as “How does my finance department differ from my competitors?” Those types of questions are exactly the ones your customers are asking and more importantly they are searching those terms in search engines. Hiring a content writer can make your dealership stand out in your area.
The next area I would look at is the overall flow of your website. Look at it from the customers view. Can you easily find and search for a vehicle? Can they easily get to service? Parts? Now look at the website with conversions in mind. Do you have call to actions on each page helping the customer to get more information, contact the dealership, and talk to a sales professional? Improving the usability of your website can lead to higher customer conversions.
If your website provider gives you reports with greater access than the industry norm, Google Analytics, then you have many areas to help increase your overall website performance.
Name the top three “must haves” for any dealer website.
Narrowing down the top three must haves for a dealership is not as easy as it sounds. I am going to focus on the areas that will increase conversions and overall give more push to the dealership.
1. First you should be using a website platform that has the inventory management system built in and is 100 percent integrated. This will give you many benefits and advantages over your competitors. Being able to add inventory comments, enhance the keyword SEO, show rebates, or offer detailed prices gives you flexibility over many of your competitors.
2. SEO is the next “must have” for every dealership. The SEO needs to be fully customizable and easily changed from the dealership level. Every page and I repeat every page must give you the ability to change the title bar, URL keywords, description meta’s and page content. You should also be able to insert video’s and HTML. The flexibility of the SEO can give you a good indicator of how easy your website platform is built for the many changes search engines make.
3. The last piece, and one that is currently provided to every VinSolutions customer, is our VinLens. This is a true customer information application giving the dealership real time traffic with the ability to convert those shoppers into customers. VinLens also helps you by reactivating leads that were marked lost, but who are back on your website. The reactivation contacts the salesperson and the overall system continually reaches out to keep all parties connected. Reactivating lost leads gives your sales staff a huge advantage over your competition. There are many dealership specific advantages of VinLens and not enough space to properly detail. This is one product that is a true game changer and worth a quick demo.
What are the most important new tools and technologies to help dealers use their website to sell more vehicles?
The industry for automotive websites is changing quickly. Stand alone website providers are losing any advantages due to the integration of the website with CRM, market pricing, and enhanced inventory management systems. VinSolutions offers the first fully integrated system helping dealers gain a competitive advantage.
We first looked at the website and developed a series of call to actions to enhance the consumers time on the website including inventory features to increase stickiness. One feature is the high resolution photos. This small enhancement gives the consumers the ability to zoom in and out of each picture. The attention to detail and ability for the consumer to fully shop online is a proven winner.
We also released VinLens. VinLens is a consumer information application and is an automotive industry first combining the real time data of the website with the power of the CRM. Instead of just having a lot of people on your website, we can tell you how many people are on the website right now, if any of those shoppers have been a lead before and if not the dealer has the ability to chat or push offers to the consumer, all in real time.
Integrating social onto your website is a must, but you should first determine your dealership goals and more importantly develop a full social media plan. We have created several packages for clients and it allows for simple integration of the top social platforms to a more advanced offering where the dealer integrates Facebook, Twitter and their blogs directly on the home page of the website.
I believe the biggest question is the time and needs of the dealership. We understand the many options and hired a series of social media experts to help build and establish our client’s social media plans.
What is the best way for dealers to promote their website and their online inventory?
There are many ways to promote your website and inventory and many directions depend on the direction and goals of the dealership. Below are a few areas I would check:
1. Insure the website is properly promoted on all traditional media.
2. Does the website have relevant SEO? Many companies start off with advertising your dealership name for the title bars instead of starting with make, city or more detailed SEO phrases. This is really an area you can advance when your dealership name is the same as your URL.
3. SEM is an area with minimal cost when comparing advertising and the ROI gives you higher levels of tracking. When looking at SEM, you want to concentrate on Google first and then move to Yahoo and Bing. We are also a big fan of Facebook and the cost for brand promotion is one of the best.
4. Social media is another place where you can promote your inventory. We have several tools to allow dealers to insert inventory on Facebook. It displays inside of the page and does not continue to popup additional sites. Twitter is also a great source for promoting inventory. We like to promote a new special every day on Twitter and one vehicle special each week.
In what ways can a dealer improve or update their website without spending a fortune?
Good content is the best way for any dealership to begin updating their website. I suggest having each department concentrate on creating pages and pages of content. Have every salesperson take a vehicle and write a real time review. Look at service department and have them create FAQ’s for customers. Ask yourself questions such as “How does my finance department differ from my competitors?” Those types of questions are exactly the ones your customers are asking and more importantly they are searching those terms in search engines. Hiring a content writer can make your dealership stand out in your area.
The next area I would look at is the overall flow of your website. Look at it from the customers view. Can you easily find and search for a vehicle? Can they easily get to service? Parts? Now look at the website with conversions in mind. Do you have call to actions on each page helping the customer to get more information, contact the dealership, and talk to a sales professional? Improving the usability of your website can lead to higher customer conversions.
If your website provider gives you reports with greater access than the industry norm, Google Analytics, then you have many areas to help increase your overall website performance.
Name the top three “must haves” for any dealer website.
Narrowing down the top three must haves for a dealership is not as easy as it sounds. I am going to focus on the areas that will increase conversions and overall give more push to the dealership.
1. First you should be using a website platform that has the inventory management system built in and is 100 percent integrated. This will give you many benefits and advantages over your competitors. Being able to add inventory comments, enhance the keyword SEO, show rebates, or offer detailed prices gives you flexibility over many of your competitors.
2. SEO is the next “must have” for every dealership. The SEO needs to be fully customizable and easily changed from the dealership level. Every page and I repeat every page must give you the ability to change the title bar, URL keywords, description meta’s and page content. You should also be able to insert video’s and HTML. The flexibility of the SEO can give you a good indicator of how easy your website platform is built for the many changes search engines make.
3. The last piece, and one that is currently provided to every VinSolutions customer, is our VinLens. This is a true customer information application giving the dealership real time traffic with the ability to convert those shoppers into customers. VinLens also helps you by reactivating leads that were marked lost, but who are back on your website. The reactivation contacts the salesperson and the overall system continually reaches out to keep all parties connected. Reactivating lost leads gives your sales staff a huge advantage over your competition. There are many dealership specific advantages of VinLens and not enough space to properly detail. This is one product that is a true game changer and worth a quick demo.
What are the most important new tools and technologies to help dealers use their website to sell more vehicles?
The industry for automotive websites is changing quickly. Stand alone website providers are losing any advantages due to the integration of the website with CRM, market pricing, and enhanced inventory management systems. VinSolutions offers the first fully integrated system helping dealers gain a competitive advantage.
We first looked at the website and developed a series of call to actions to enhance the consumers time on the website including inventory features to increase stickiness. One feature is the high resolution photos. This small enhancement gives the consumers the ability to zoom in and out of each picture. The attention to detail and ability for the consumer to fully shop online is a proven winner.
We also released VinLens. VinLens is a consumer information application and is an automotive industry first combining the real time data of the website with the power of the CRM. Instead of just having a lot of people on your website, we can tell you how many people are on the website right now, if any of those shoppers have been a lead before and if not the dealer has the ability to chat or push offers to the consumer, all in real time.
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