With Today's Enhanced Marketing Applications Integrating SEO - vSEO - SEM - ILM - CRM - DMS - BDC / CCC and Social Networking, Comprehensive Dealership Websites Are No Longer The Only Game In Town!

The shift from brick and mortar dealerships to virtual online showrooms has been confirmed with 93% of car shoppers turning to the WWW vs. their neighborhood auto dealership to shop for a new and/or used vehicle. The role of the real world dealership is maturing into an "experience center" to test drive vehicles, take delivery - for now - and service the vehicles during their life cycle. Our virtual world dealerships are also taking on a new role in the retail auto industry with new technologies that are crashing through the glass wall that used to limit what could be accomplished on the WWW.

Marketing tools using SEO and SEM tied to individual vehicle videos linked to micro-sites with specialized information is more transparent and relevant than driving internet shoppers to a home page on an auto dealer's website that requires further actions by the customer to drill down to what they need - information on a vehicle that they are interested in purchasing. Online shoppers are less often looking for an auto dealer than they are looking for a vehicle so why not cut to the chase and take them there directly? Google and other search engines have recognized the value of video and more targetted search results with indexable vehicle videos taking a priority position over conventional postings and websites with similar local searches.

Once a shopper has landed on a vehicle why would we want to drive them to an email, a phone call or any similar disconnect in the process by directing them to our real or virtual showroom when technology can answer all of their questions directly from the video player with integrated third party resources like CarFax reports, credit applications, payment calculators and even online transaction tools with full two way video communications - real time - with complete CRM/DMS integration allowing a comprehensive desking tool for the dealer to push/pull all related information needed to actually sell the vehicle online and push/pull the required forms for the customer to buy it?

Simply put, are comprehensive auto dealership websites the best - or at least the only - place for us to drive our online customers or should we be more focused on internet based tools and techniques that allow us to do it the customer's way by providing them all of the information that they need to find and purchase the car without having to fit our selling processes built on an old and dated adversarial negotiation processes on our real or virtual showroom where they perceive that we will try to sell them something that they don't want for more than they can afford?

I have my opinion and answers but before I exemplify them with vendor applications that are currently available and being used by my affiliated automotive advertising agencies to accomplish all of the above I thought that I would first confirm that my ADM friends shared my vision and value in this evolution of the use of the Internet to sell cars.

After all, what are friends for!

PS: AutoNation has already announced their shift to centralized online transactions with one of Ad Agency Online's vendor clients and Sonic has proven out the role of video to enhance conversions using another one. Similar OEM and major vendor partners integrating their use of these applications are pending our announcements in Q4 of 2009 to further evidence that the horse is out of the barn - the question is will you close or open the door at your dealership to stay competitive?