At the end of the day it does not matter what these bottom tier vendors think say or do.  It has also helped me to establish my personal marketing paradigm for the future.  I will not stop providing content that will help dealers reach wider in their online marketing mix and it will educate them on things they can do, while at the same time if people are not willing to do some of their own leg work to figure things out I probably will not waste much time on them any longer. People want advice and help all the time.  The problem is they are not willing to pay for it or they recognize the value and want it delivered for free.  No more mooches is my new philosophy.

What brought about this epiphany was conversations I had recently with two individuals.

One was with my old GM.  He was whining about me taking away traffic from the search term “Carl Gregory Hyundai” and claimed I was hurting his business and I needed to change my content to benefit him.  While at the same time he is unwilling to pay for it.  So I will use that traffic to generate the most income for me.  This is the same person who thought it was great that I sold every Nissan trade in we got because I took traffic away from “Golden Isles Nissan” and converted it to sales for the store.

The second conversation took place with my brother who is an Atlanta website designer.  He was explaining the problem with having clients that do not understand the value of something or how things work.  One of his lowest value clients keeps emailing him about use for different products like MS Outlook and using a feed reader.  He is showing more patience than I would after he forwarded me his email exchanges.  But it also helped me understand that not every client, contact or customer has the same value in the automotive digital marketing space.

People want free help on marketing their business which puts money in their pocket but the operative word is FREE.  There is a great website that will give you all the free information that you can handle, visit it here, there are plenty of resources to be found there.  That does not mean I am going to stop giving free tips and opinions it just means that I am not going to spend a lot of time on low value activities.

Time is not a commodity I have an abundance of.

When you call them out about bad they are getting it wrong they respond in ways that do more to damage their search engine reputation that you can possibly imagine.  The biggest crowd to suffer from watching these people in action are the old school second generation plus car dealers.   They are so used to being told the right way to do things by they forefathers and gurus, who proclaim a wealth of knowledge, when they dont really have a clue about online marketing themselves.

Online marketing is not just about capturing leads and the processes used to follow up with them, it is way more than that.  I often get criticized for my views of online marketing and that is ok I have very thick skin, but what is amazing when people realize you are onto a better way of reaching a target audience they try to cannibalize the idea as their own, when they do not have a clue about delivery.

Car dealers sell widgets that people can buy anywhere from anyone, within reason.  People using he internet to research cars will submit leads to dealers and third parties but more and more these are below the fold consumers.  They are ones needing help with special finance, buried in trade ins and price whore shopping, not saying these consumers are not valuable, which cause more work for the people working these leads.

Why not go after the best customers in a way that will harness the power of attraction versus the power of promotion?  Dealer rating sites claim that this is the wave of the future when actually it is a past tense thought on web 2.0.  Dealer review sites actually take away from the dealer one of their most highly trafficked search terms that bring buyers to their website, their name.

Just as explained at another automotive marketing blog.  Car dealers are not selling a unique product and to pay to have reviews of their dealership solicited by third parties is really ignorant, especially when part of that pitch is to dominate search traffic for their dealership name and their peoples name.  Those are terms that the dealer should control on their own and make it impossible for other sites to enter their primary search terms.

If you want to display testimonials from customers you should control the property that they are displayed on, unless you are selling a a unique product.  Then third party validation is worth something.  But when people are comparing where to buy a Ford from, you need to give them the reason to do business with you, not pay someone else to solicit your customers for them to have access to your database and monetize traffic for your name.

There are plenty of sites that you can use for free and solicit your own customers to give you a review, without them being encouraged to submit leads to third party lead providers for your widget.

People going online to look for car dealers by name are already sure they probably want to do business with you or to see if you have what they want.  Why confuse the matter by sending them to a third party for information about you?

*****Disclaimer for people who are going to be pissed about this post:  The thoughts and opinions expressed here are those of Paul Rushing and have not been expressly endorsed or encouraged by any affiliation he holds in the automotive industry.  If you have a problem with it feel free to leave a comment or to contact me directly.