DealerBytes - Online Automotive Marketing Solutions » Practices http://www.dealerbytes.com Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:02:39 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Transparency – Buzz Word or Way of Life – Part II http://www.dealerbytes.com/practices/transparency-buzz-word-or-way-of-life-part-ii/ http://www.dealerbytes.com/practices/transparency-buzz-word-or-way-of-life-part-ii/#comments Sun, 11 May 2008 00:20:50 +0000 Paul Rushing http://dealerbytes.com/?p=39 Well it looks like John Reese at Income.com scooped me on my transparency series.  He did an excellent post about it and pretty well sums up my message here.

If you are selling anything anywhere you need to be the focus of your offering, online or off.  The first step in the road to the sale sale is to establish rapport and how you do that online is to be completely transparent and encourage the conversation about you, your business and your offerings.

While Jon’s blog deals mostly with the “make Money Niche” of online marketing the message still applies very much to the automobile industry and our marketing efforts.

Lead with you, then your offerings, cause others to seek you out, become the hunted not the hunter!!

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]]> http://www.dealerbytes.com/practices/transparency-buzz-word-or-way-of-life-part-ii/feed/ 0 Transparency! Buzzword or Way of Life? Part – 1 http://www.dealerbytes.com/practices/transparency-buzzword-or-way-of-life-part-1/ http://www.dealerbytes.com/practices/transparency-buzzword-or-way-of-life-part-1/#comments Thu, 08 May 2008 08:22:50 +0000 Paul Rushing http://dealerbytes.com/?p=38 Many people seek anonymity in their online dealings, that is why we get leads with bad phone numbers, real names are not given and our email replies go unreturned only to find out that the lead has hit the showroom and purchased a car using the information we have given them as a negotiating tool.

I have also seen this work the other way around too. A prospect that was worked in our showroom leaves and continues shopping and the internet department winds up with the lead after customer continues to shop online, usually through a third party vendor. To save that customer is a formidable task.

The consumer is placed in a bad position if it is discovered and may even decide to shop elsewhere or completely remove themselves from the market. A bad proposition for all parties concerned.

What does that have to do with “Transparency”?

Everything and nothing.

Almost daily the used car manager will request that I change prices on a car on the website or even delete it if the consumer has completed a transaction, which is done by default via the nightly DMS updates. Their is usually a huge disparity in the pricing online and those offered by the “lot lizards”.

Can this have long term effects on your business. Probably not!! It can have short term moments of panic for those the most affected by it. Long term it will push more consumers to the interwebs. Oh, that is already happening!

Not listing a price on an inventory item online, not giving the price of your service upfront and not worrying about others online conversation about you in your every interaction with a customer or potential customer is as antiquated as hiding behind “handles”, sending unsolicited emails and cloaked SEO tactics.

Eventually it all becomes known, so why doesn’t everybody get on the same page and become completely open in their dealings? The move is in that direction what are you doing to become more transparent at every level?

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