Next Day Traffic

BOSTON — Auto search engine iSeeCars.com recently revealed the most sought-after used-vehicle brands and models on the site 

The nameplate that generated the most consumer searches on iSeeCars.com was Honda, followed by Toyota. Officials pointed out that the two automakers held the same positions a year ago, too.

The first domestic brand mentioned was Chevrolet, which came in fifth on the search frequency list. Last year, Ford drew the most interest among brands from the Big 3 on iSeeCars.com. This time, Ford came in ninth.

The rest of the top 10 list among brands included BMW, Nissan, Lexus, Acura, Mercedes and Volkswagen. 

Interestingly enough, the top two used models search for by iSeeCars.comusers are both made by Honda, the Civic and Accord. The next two drawing the most searches were the Toyota Camry and Corolla. 

Coming in fourth was Ford Mustang followed by Honda’s third vehicle on the list, the Civic CRX. Rounding out the rundown of specifically searched units were the Ford F-150, Jeep Wrangler and Chevrolet Impala and Tahoe. 

A pair of Texas cities were the locations where site users looked for vehicles most often. Leading the way was Houston and coming in third was Dallas. Atlanta was on this list of top five cities along with Chicago and Boston.

The filter “moving sale” triggered the largest amount of searches on iSeeCars.com. Executives highlighted that this filter often connected consumers looking for a superb deal with sellers having to unload a vehicle because of the need to relocate. 

This article can be found at:

http://www.autoremarketing.com/ar/news/print_story.html?id=9392

Free Gas, Free Maintenance, etc.
‘Free’ is the greatest word in the history of advertising 
closely followed by the word ‘new’. 

If your service department is struggling and you find yourself comparing your price to the local no franchise competitors here is a way to make up some ground. Customer love Free Items – so give them some. Don’t just discount the service ticket amounts give them a gift. In New York try some Yankee tickets to the new stadium. In Florida try Sea World passes. In Texas giveaway NBA tickets, just give them some compelling benefit to come to your store rather than a non-franchise dealers.

You can fight over and over with your service manager about how you are taking all his gross away by running big discounts or you can take his money from a fund he doesn’t see. 

Thrill is gone — GM’s Pontiac bites the dust

Auto enthusiast looks back at the history of storied U.S. automaker

The party is finally over at General Motors’ “We Build Excitement” division, Pontiac. The company said Monday it will discontinue the brand as part of its consolidation effort, letting it slim down its payroll and concentrate resources on its remaining, strategically more important brands: Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac and GMC trucks…

By Dan Carney, msnbc.com contributor

See the complete article:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30438201/

A Pontiac car is shown parked outside Mount Clare Station in Baltimore, circa 1935. Conceived as a line of ‘athletic’ mainstream performance vehicles, Pontiacs were first produced in 1926. By 1929, half a million had been sold.

Pontiac was conceived as ‘companion’ brand to General Motors’ Oakland Motor Car line. 
The first car offered by Oakland was a four-cylinder car Model A, which made its debut in 1908.

Pontiac launched the ‘Torpedo’ in 1940, taking design cues from the aerodynamic Cadillac ‘Sixty.’

The hood ornament of a Pontiac Chieftain from the 1950s is shown. Chieftains were among the first new car designs to come from Pontiac after the Second World War.

Pontiac’s Bonneville luxury convertibles first appeared in the 1950s and were packed with optional accessories.

The Pontiac Catalina was introduced in 1959 and by 1961 it was Pontiac’s best selling model. It helped to drive the division to third place in national sales by 1962.

The intermediate-sized Pontiac LeMans line of vehicles was first introduced in 1962.

A Pontiac assembly line is shown with a Pontiac Firebird under construction. The Trans Am was a specialty package of the Firebird produced between 1969 and 2002.

A 1977 Firebird Trans Am.

urt Reynolds and Sally Field are shown in a scene from the movie ‘Smokey and the Bandit’ in May 1977. The film included a series of modified 1977 Pontiac Trans Ams.

Introduced in 1984, the Pontiac Fiero sports car was the first two-seater Pontiac had produced since the 1930s.

The computerized car ‘KITT,’ which appeared alongside actor and singer David Hasselhoff in the 1980s television series ‘Knight Rider,’ was a Pontiac Firebird Trans Am.

The Pontiac Grand Prix line was launched in 1962. It was replaced by the G8 in the 2009 model year.

Pontiac’s ‘arrowhead’ logo is shown on the grille of a 2007 Pontiac Vibe. The ‘arrowhead’ logo replaced an American-Indian headdress, which was used until 1956.

Efforts in recent years to revive Pontiac as a performance-oriented brand failed to work. The stylish Pontiac Solstice small sports car was first introduced at the 2004 North American International Auto Show.

Pontiac unveiled the 2009G8 GXP at the 2008 New York Auto Show. The G8 GXP has a 6.2L V-8 engine that produces in excess of 400 horsepower, delivering 0-to-60 mph performance of about 4.7 seconds.

Customers want and need to be taken care of in order to remain loyal to your dealership. There are programs and service retention tools for everyone to use, but for all you readers who made it through high school reading the Cliff Notes version of those boring books, here is the bottom line.

Unless you stay in front of and market to your customers – 
SOMEONE ELSE WILL.

Simple – mail, email, and call your customers once a month whether they are buying from you or not. Well that cost money – you are right it does and so does buying a vehicle. Your customers spend money with you every time they drive in your dealership.

Spend money on them to keep them driving back in. If a person drives a car an average of 60,000 miles before trading, that is 20 service visits for oil changes alone, if they are old school and subscribe to the 3,000 mile oil change philosophy.

Market to your customers and their service business can not only keep you surviving but also keep you profitable in this market.

The Word ‘Repossession’ Resonates in the Minds of Your Customers.  

With the market being flooded with foreclosures, left out to dry by lenders, and buried by bankers, focus on a word in your automotive advertising that resonates in the minds of buyers not just looking for a deal… Oh no, find those people looking for perhaps the greatest deal ever – a repossessed vehicle.

Regardless of the market, people know what these are and what it means to them as a buyer. They will save thousands. That’s the real proof without the premium price. A dealer in the 83rd ranked market just delivered 40 units while running a 5-day repossessed vehicle promotion. It didn’t cost much either – a newspaper insert and a little bit of radio. You could be next.

Mike Strong reminded a lot of dealers around the country that people like to do business where business is being done. He says that nobody likes to get out of his or her car on a lot that has no other customers and he is right. 

Activity Breeds Activity. 

The latest mission that Strong, LLC has embarked on during this challenging market is helping dealers motivate their sales staff by “dressing for success” and I don’t mean coordinating uniforms or shirt colors. The day has come to bring out the banners, make the front lawn look as if there is something special or outside the ordinary going on. The day has come to plaster posters on the inside glass of the showroom and the managers offices. The day has come to put up table tents, multi colored balloons, neon signs and cash machines in dealerships.

Some of you reading right now may think this sounds too much like the wild west days of the 80’s when donkeys jumped off high dives, (thanks again for that one tooMike). But the truth of the matter is if you can make your sales people believe they are going to sell a few more cars this month because there is something “really big” going on, they probably will and this will make you more money.  

CAMPBELL, Calif. – When it comes to providing value and quality, the competitive gap between automakers is shrinking, according to IntelliChoice.com.   

For example, in the “Best Deals of the Month” list for April, brands like Hyundai and Lincoln continued to gain ground on Toyota and Honda, which are often thought of as the leaders in providing value and quality, officials noted. 

“IntelliChoice.com’s April Best Deals list shows the growing power of brands such as Hyundai and Lincoln to compete with likes of Toyota and Honda in offering value and quality,” explained James Bell, editor of IntelliChoice.com.   

“Similar to last month, we have 20 different nameplates on a list with 31 vehicles. It’s not that the brands long known for quality and value are slipping, but that other brands are catching up,” Bell continued. “The competitive gap is narrowing.”

The Greatest Fallacy of Automotive Internet Advertising Dollars. 

Ok, we all know that 33% of all new car sales for import stores are currently coming (or should be coming – WAKE UP CALL) through your website in the form of organic new car leads.

So what are you or your internet managers doing looking at a proposal from any vendor that tries to sell you impressions instead of clicks? To define each term the way car guys understand them:

Impressions – people who view a web page, or website that your ad is shown on and can be seen by the viewer. (There is no guaranteed way of knowing if they physically saw your ad or not)
 
Clicks – money, actually MO’ MONEY, because these people have seen an ad – either graphical or text ad in a search engine, taken the trouble to click it and have landed on your site. One small step for man, one giant step towards MO’ MONEY.  

Too many dealers are getting sold packages and programs through TV Stations, Radio Stations, Newspapers (The Birmingham News is notorious for this) that sell you nothing but impressions. My simple advice: DO NOT BUY THEM. The price you pay for an impression pails in comparison to the value that you get for paying for a click.  

Some people will listen to this and some won’t. If you don’t care about where you spend your money, that is your problem. Ad dollars are an investment in Traffic. If you want to invest with the “Bernie Maddoff of the Automotive Advertising World,” then go ahead and buy a package from the next sales rep that comes into your dealership and pedals “impressions.” If you want to invest your money in something that is worth your time and that of your staff – invest your money with a company like Strong, and put your dollars on a search engine like Google. Oh yeah, and do it while the market is rising – not when it is dropping.

Automotive Advertising

The question I find myself asking media vendors across the country is “are you going to be a vendor or a partner.” You see my agency works with over 150 differentvendors in any given month, and the number of reps from said vendors that are considered to be true “partners” is substantially less.   

Mistakes, making mistakes and not being accountable are what make me fire reps from accounts and inform local sales managers and station managers of why they are not being included on a buy. I would think from a sales perspective that you would want to retain every dollar that you negotiated a sale for. Some reps today do not understand this and don’t pay attention to their details to make your media order flow properly. 

So there’s the complaint, what’s the answer? 

Hold your vendors and partners accountable. Demand more than triple added weight, schedule – hell, go ahead and ask for the moon. They probably will give it to you to cover up their screw up. Ask your media reps and advertising agency if they are a vendoror a partner – if they give you the “deer in the headlights” look, it is time to fire them.