Cash For Clunkers Program - Has Your Dealership Made Any Plans Regarding "Cash For Clunkers" Auto Sales Stimulus Legislation?

Now that the Federal Government's strangely name "Cash For Clunkers" automotive sales stimulus bill has been approved by both the House of Representatives and the US Senate, have you, or your dealership's management made any plans or prepared any marketing, advertising or promotional messages designed to leverage the $1,000,000,000.00 earmarked as cash incentives to customers for buying a newer, more fuel efficient vehicle? With the cash on the hood at between $3,500 and $4,500 per vehicle sold, do you think that this program will be effective in driving increased car sales?

I have been talking to several dealers about the Cash For Clunkers legislation, and almost every one says that if President Obama signs it into law, then they will gear up for it... But, will it be too late if you wait until after the bill gets signed? It has been approved by both the House and the Senate, so the likelihood of the bill not getting signed into law is very little.

One of the most useful places I have found to get up to the minute news on Cash For Clunkers is Twitter... You can use your Twitter account to get all the latest Cash For Clunkers legislation and best practices updates by following the Twitter feed at: http://twitter.com/cashforclunker

ATTN: Dealer Principle or General Manager,

If you have been watching or reading any of the major news channels, you’re aware that a new “Cash for Clunkers” federal economic stimulus bill is on its way to becoming legislation. Many of us watching the situation and the details of this federally funded car buying incentive believe that dealers who get out in front of this will emerge with a major advantage over their competition. If your dealership is the first in your marketplace to become associated with Cash For Clunkers, then you will become the first place that car buyers turn to when they see and hear news reports and want to find more information about the Cash For Clunkers Bill.

What To Do Today: Build Your Advertising Campaign
An example of what one dealer has allowed us to do with his GM mandated website is at www.CashForClunkerNow.com. Thorobred Chevrolet is a participating Cash for Clunkers dealership at www.CashForClunker-Facts.com, and has already begun promoting the program with Search, Behaviorally Targeted Display and Click-To-Play Video Advertising campaigns managed by ADP Digital Advertising.

ADP Digital Marketing is excited to offer your dealership an opportunity to gain a competitive advantage by launching this campaign using BT (Behavioral Targeting) display advertising. ADP’s contacts in Washington, DC have informed us that President Obama’s signing of this bill is imminent and we want you to get out ahead of the competition.

We are recommending that a minimum of $5,000 in display advertising be allocated to the first 30 days of this campaign for creating awareness in your market that YOU are the “Official” Cash For Clunkers dealer in your area. This will position you to benefit from the extensive media coverage that will break and continue when this bill is signed within the next few days. An example of a Cash For Clunkers animated display advertisement can be viewed at: www.Cash-For-Clunkers.BZ and at www.CashForClunker.BZ.

The first few dealers who sign up at a $5,000 or greater budget (30 day campaign) will receive use of proprietary CashForClunkers URL’s that have been reserved by ADP Digital Advertising and will further reinforce your status as THE OFFICIAL CASH FOR CLUNKERS DEALER in your area. ADP Digital Marketing has also created a Cash For Clunkers microsite that is available to dealers for use as a Cash For Clunkers advertising campaign landing page. You can see the template, which is customized for each dealer at www.CashForClunkerDealer.com.

Additionally, ADP Digital Advertising will register you as an official participating dealer in the national registry at www.CashforClunker-Facts.com

We have several VERY hot Cash for Clunker Keyword enriched URL’s available on a first come first served basis to dealers that sign up to spend $5,000 or more on BT Display Advertising of the Cash For Clunkers campaign theme…

www.Cash-Clunker.com
www.Cash-Clunkers.info
www.Cash-for-Clunkers-Deal.TV
www.DriveAmerica.net
www.CashClunker.net
www.Cash-for-Clunkers.TV
www.CashClunkers.info
www.Clunker-Cash.info
www.CashforClunkerDeals.com
www.CashClunkers.net
www.ClunkerCashFor.Me
www.CashforClunkersDeal.com
www.Clunker-Cash-For.Me
www.Clunkers.bz
www.Cash-Clunker.net
www.CashforClunker.bz
www.Cash-Clunker.info
www.Cash-for-Clunker.net
www.ClunkerCash.bz
www.Cash-Clunker.org
www.Cash-for-Clunker.org
www.Cash-Clunker.us
www.Cash-Clunkers.org
www.Cash-for-Clunkers.me
www.Cash-Clunkers.us
www.Cash4Clunker.bz
www.CashForClunkersBill.info
www.CashClunker.info
www.CashClunker.info
www.CashClunker.org
www.CashClunker.us
www.CashClunkers.org
www.CashClunkers.us
www.CashForClunker.me
www.CashForClunker.tv
www.CashForClunkersAct.info
www.CashForClunkersAct.net
www.CashForClunkersAct.us
www.CashForClunkersbill.us
www.CashForClunkers-1.com
www.CashForClunkers1.com
www.CashFordClunkerHQ.com

I think my favorite for a BT Digital Advertising campaign would be www.ClunkerCashFor.Me...

Here are a few concept ideas, including a logo tile for use on the your home page:

“Cash For Clunkers” Official Program Dealer…
Lock In Your Stimulus Money On A Newer More Fuel Efficient Car or Truck Today!

“Would $4500 in Cash from President Obama Help You Justify a new car or Truck?”

Prepare a Campaign Landing Page or Microsite:
The Cash For Clunker program has been and will continue to draw a ton of attention within the press and national media news channels. Already, we have seen professional efforts to secure Google and other search engine organic rankings around Cash For Clunker and Drive America keywords and phrases. Trying to get organic ranking for a dealership sponsored site that is above all the previously written and breaking news articles about the Cash for Clunkers program may be an exercise in futility. Brian Pasch e has created http://www.cashforclunkersfacts.com as both a consumer information site and a lead generation provider as his means of monetizing the site. For dealers who choose to use ADP Digital Advertising for their online marketing budgets and ad campaigns, we will register your dealership with Brian Pasch as a participating Cash For Clunkers dealer. The only requirement is that you let us place the official Cash For Clunkers logo on your website and link it to the information site. You can also purchase Cash For Clunkers leads from Brian Pasch, which is a great way to supplement the Cash For Clunkers leads that you self-generate using the ADP Digital Advertising Search and Display Advertising campaigns that have been prebuilt and optimized to take advantage of interest in Cash For Clunkers.

If you want to stay on top of the daily developments regarding Cash For Clunkers, you can follow our updates on Twitter, which includes Brian Pasch's updates as well as Cash For Clunker related posts on ADM and CNN... go to http://twitter.com/cashforclunker

Several Points of Guidance Provided by Brian Pasch:
www.CashForClunkersFacts.com generated CFC lead territories are exclusive and based on a first come - first serve basis, so be sure to contact Carrie Valentine at carrie@paschconsulting.com for enrollment. You can also call her during Eastern Time Zone business hours at: (732) 450-8200.

Why Would You Wait Any Longer?
Most dealers have described their current approach as "waiting to see what the government does...". However, there is an opportunity to sell more cars today by speaking with customers who are interested in the Cash For Clunkers program that the smartest dealers would not have otherwise had the opportunity to see. It makes sense to market and promote your dealership TODAY while interest in Cash for Clunkers is on the upswing, and use the promotion to drive showroom traffic seeking information about how it will work.

Limited Government Funding Means First Dealers On Board Will Take All the Money
The Cash For Clunkers Bill has been reduced from $4.5 Billion to $1Billion. The Cash For Clunkers Bill that cleared the house on Tuesday, June 16 will create a program expiration of October 31, 2009. This will create a narrow window of opportunity, and at up to $4,500 the program will run out of funding after about 225,000 new vehicles are sold.

In order to be successful, dealers will need to get out in front of this Cash For Clunkers wave, and not wait until the wave passes them to try and surf it into stronger new car sales. Most experts, including Brian Pasch, will tell you that a dealer needs to be aggressive and fast to benefit from Cash For Clunkers. Dealers do NOT need a fancy website, as you can see Thorobred Chevrolet simply modified their Trade-In Evaluation page to serve as a landing page for their Search and Display Advertising campaigns. Also, for dealers who allocate a $10,000 or higher advertising media budget, ADP Digital Advertising will provide a free Cash For Clunkers landing page with an AdTracker phone number and a CFC pre-qualification form on the site. This is a very short term, high-dollar opportunity to sell a lot of extra units for the dealers that start NOW with their online marketing and promotional strategy focused on cash For Clunkers. If you want to leverage ADP Digital Advertising, you do not have to be an ADP DMS dealer, nor do you have to use one of our web sites... Just go to www.ADPdigitaladvertising.com and select the get more information button in the upper right corner of the page, complete the online form and we'll get started for your dealership

Tags: automotive purchase, automotive stimulus, car sales, cash for clunkers, stimulus legislation

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This ADM Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ralph Paglia on June 19, 2009 at 7:08am: ADP Digital Advertising has created several online advertising campaigns and deployed them for several dealers already. We have Search Advertising, Display Advertising using BT, RT and Site Targeting as well as Microsites and vanity URL's that are templated and ready to go... You can see an example of a dealership landing page that we modified from a Cobalt GM website, then attached a vanity URL to at www.CashForClunkerNow.com for Thorobred Chevrolet in Chandler, AZ. And, you can see an example of our animated Flash based display advertising at https://apps.bzresults.net/bcc/adbuilder/previewSwfsForAdSet?adSetI...; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Finney on June 19, 2009 at 10:54am: Our dealership is making plans. We have created a microsite www.cash4clunkerstn.com. I posted a reply to the other topics a few minutes ago. We plan to back this up with some blind advertising to push traffic and also some dealership branded stuff. Any comments or help would be great....

Raplh I like the wording on your site for the contact form. I also suggested we plan a special invite day for customers from our database to get the first choice - also create urgency.

I am trying to decide if our BDC staff can work these people for appointments or if they should be contacted by our Internet sales staff. Any suggestions...; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ralph Paglia on June 26, 2009 at 4:14am: Joy, I agree with the risks you identified, so we are advising our dealer clients to get out in front with advertising in July, but treat appointments scheduled as $3500 or $4500 "Push, Pull or Tow" minimum trade-in guarantee prospects, if they have older cars. The reality is that the interest from car buyers is right now, and if 1 out of 10 dealers capitalizes on that interest using advertising that generates showroom traffic, phone calls and web leads, then that dealer will be in a position to sell cars to those who are better off outside of the CARS program, but who wanted to know more about it. For a dealer to establish his "participating dealer brand" association with consumers on such a short time-line program, the advertising needs to start ASAP. The other aspect to consider is that there is likely to be a certain percentage of consumers who will be interested early on, as in NOW, and those customers, whether they qualify for CFC or not, will be more likely to buy a car from a dealer who connects with them earlier, rather than later.

Personally, I suspect that a good portion of the car buying public that is already interested in finding a dealer, especially those who can qualify for new car financing, will most likely be better off with the wholesale trade-in value than the $3,500 or $4,500 from the Feds.

For the 90% of dealers who sit back and do nothing, while waiting for somebody to tell them it's OK... Well, that's why some dealers do better, or worse, than others! Check out Courtesy Chevrolet's Cash For Clunkers microsite: www.CashForClunkers-Facts.com. They decided to lead their market, rather than follow other dealers.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Brian Pasch on June 27, 2009 at 3:05pm: Ralph, as you know I have been encouraging dealers to start talking about the Cash for Clunkers on their websites and blogs over six weeks ago. Those who took action are now being rewarded.

Once Obama signed the bill there was a surge of interest and I respect car deales being conservative in not spending time before it was law. Now that it is a reality, still many dealers are considering waiting till Augsut to gear up their marketing. This would be a tragic event.

I wrote about what happened to SEM costs on a recent blog post on my site: http://www.dealer-seo.com/marketing/cash-for-clunkers-advertising/ and that dealers need to use these next three weeks carefully. SEM costs have gone up near 1000% in one week for the phrase "Cash for Clunkers"

Dealers who waited, can't wait any longer to setup a strong SEO strategy as well as a SEM budget that will now have to compete in a crowded market.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ralph Paglia on June 28, 2009 at 3:38pm: Brian, the run-up in costs from increased bidding on "Cash for Clunker" terms is why my team prepared in advance for what we all knew would happen. Our CFC Search Advertising Campaigns have been running since the middle of May and we now have a database of keywords used by people who respond to Cash For Clunker messaging, but who searched for terms other than the (now) expensive Cash For Clunkers. Additionally, as you probably know, using keyword enriched domains and proper terms in the ads themselves, combined with the right contextual content on landing pages all combine to increase a dealer's campaign quality score... The result is that the dealers using ADP Digital Advertising for CFC campaigns, at least right now, are paying less for the same website traffic that dealers using other providers.

You can check out one of our Cash For Clunkers Dealer microsites at www.CashForClunkerDealer.com. And, if any of you reading this comment like that URL, well, we should talk $$$ :-)

Additionally, we are encouraging our dealers to let us focus on Behavioral Targeting (BT), and since we have been using BT for CFC display advertising for several weeks already, ADP Digital Advertising has a head start on the competition to determine the behavioral pattern across hundreds of websites that reveal the car buyers most likely to respond to a Cash For Clunkers multimedia display advertisement, or Click-to-Play Video advertisement. Yup... I'll bet money that we got the largest database of BT Cash For Clunker campaign history with which to optimize dealer display advertising for CFC interested consumers. Here's the interesting part... Now that we have identified the key data points that predict car buyers who respond to a dealer's CFC message, the CTR's and Post-Impression tracking that our DoubleClick Floodlight technology provides is showing our dealers that CFC interested automotive intenders are easier to convert into a lead and a sale than any of us thought they would be... The numbers are VERY impressive!

I inserted below a static JPG image of a CFC advertising example that we are using in BT campaigns... Click on the ad to see it in full Flash glory, alongside a couple of other sizes used:

In fact, our ability to predict responsiveness to the CFC message in an advertisement has us shifting Search Advertising budgets over to display, when warranted. The other impact is that we are now rethinking our strategies around behavioral targeting, and considering that we may need to focus more on the advertising message and less on the make, model or vehicle type, which is what we have traditionally done.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ralph Paglia on June 28, 2009 at 3:48pm: ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ralph Paglia on June 28, 2009 at 3:49pm: ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by David Kost on June 30, 2009 at 6:33pm: We put together a little website.....

http://www.pcford.com/Recycle_Your_Ride.htm; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by ADP Digital Marketing on July 1, 2009 at 10:16pm: I checked out your landing page, and like it a lot... Simple, good information, aligns with CARS.gov... If you drive CFC interested consumers there, it seems certain they will call or fill out the form.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Steve Flanagan on July 1, 2009 at 8:49am: If you have a Cash For Clunkers Program at your Dealership, call me or send me an email and let me help you with a targeted list of people who are currently driving a vehicle that qualifies for the program in your area.

Steve
Direct: 805-267-1502
Email: steve@centurylist.com; ▶ Reply to This

RSS

Welcome to
Automotive Digital Marketing Professional Community (ADM) IMPORTANT: Please take the time to send an email to mail@automotivedigitalmarketing.com and after sending it, go to sent messages folder, open that same message and "right click" on the email address (in Outlook). Then select "Add To Outlook Contacts" to save in your address book... Otherwise, messages from ADM will end up in your "Junk Mail" folder. In 24 hours, open your Junk Mail folder and look for any messages from ADM... If any, then "Right Click" on the message, select "Junk Mail", then select "Add Sender's Domain to Safe Sender List" so that you will get your notifications, message alerts, invites, etc.

Sign Up
or Sign In

ADM is a network of Car Dealers, Automotive Marketing and Advertising Professionals sharing their best Internet sales strategies and tactics