The IMN team just got back from NADA 2014 in New Orleans. Aside from a few dicey hours trying to figure out if all of us were going to get on a plane before Snowmageddon hit town, it was a great time to survey the digital landscape for auto dealers and talk face-to-face with dealers about their marketing goals. What was clear is, that for all the innovation in the digital space, there are still ample opportunities for dealers to maximize their digital marketing investment. A good example: We gave hundreds of demos of Loyalty Driver over the course of the weekend. When we presented the reporting module – even to existing customers – we always got a look of surprise and engagement when we showed a list of all the email subscribers that had clicked on a particular piece of content. Not to put myself out of a job – because the content we produce for each e-newsletter is vitally important to the level of engagement a dealership will experience – but the key to the Loyalty Driver program […]
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Last summer, IMN produced its second annual content marketing survey. In it, we found that respondents knew content marketing was essential, but almost half said that content marketing only represented 10% of their annual marketing budget. So how does a dealership curate content like a Fortune 100 company, if the budget isn’t there? My abrupt answer is that Fortune 100 companies don’t typically do a good job of curating content at all, so dealerships, with some content curation acumen, a passion for the subject matter, the right tools and a good journalistic instinct for what’s interesting, can regularly beat the pants off of Fortune 100 companies, for a significantly low investment. What is Curation? Content curation or aggregation is – according to C.C. Chapman and Ann Handley in their great book Content Rules – is the “act of continuously identifying, selecting, and sharing the best and most relevant…content…to match the needs of a specific audience.” There’s a difference between content curation and content aggregation, but both of them serve the same purpose. Content aggregators like Yahoo! News or Google News […]
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Remember playing “telephone” as a kid? Someone starts with a simple statement and it gets re-told from person to person. By the time it gets to the end, the last person says the statement out loud and everyone laughs. Why? Because it’s usually not at all reflective of the original message. While playing a game of “telephone” can be fun for kids, it isn’t very fun for businesses. “Telephoning” your brand messages through your email channel is the risk business organizations take when they leave their email marketing in the hands of their agents, field reps and consultants.
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A huge thank you to Chuck Olsen at the Boucher Auto Group for sending us such a great video testimonial.
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