JD POWER INTERNET ROUNDTABLE SUMMARY REPORT

What happened in Vegas….doesn’t need to stay in Vegas as far as I am concerned. The following provides a summary of what I felt were the 3 most important “take-aways” from my 2-day conference.

1. Social and viral marketing (Web 2.0)– along the lines of MySpace and Facebook – are becoming greater influencers to the car buying process, and more importantly – the decision on which dealership to go buy a car from!

This has been included in the VMAR “extra-curricular duties” roadmap

2. Mobile Marketing is the hot new trend being adopted quickly in the dealership space, and will only grow exponentially from here.

This is included in the current roadmap for ADPTouch, for an NADA rollout.

3. Behavioral Targeting is beginning to gain acceptance as it is being talked about more and more by the “bleeding edge” of dealers who have adopted BT targeting tactics in their direct mail and email activities to some great success.

a. This has been included in the VMAR “extra-curricular duties” roadmap

The following represent random research notes that I found to be worth repeating, as well as help to validate the ADPTouch platform strategy:

Search is the primary tool for filtering dealerships – 79% of consumers questioned said they used Search for their research on dealerships. (according to a recent study conducted by Cobalt). However, many consumers are experiencing “search fatigue”, which means they walk away from their search if they can’t find what they are looking for in the first 5-7 pages.

The dealer website is a key extension of the dealer's showroom – research conducted showed that the dealer website brought in the highest quality and most convertible leads of any other online resource.

Online advertising grows the dealer sphere of influence – the more a dealership’s name appears in advertising and in search results – both paid and organic – the more likely the consumer will click through to the website.

A third of consumers will drive more than 20 miles from home if they like what they see on a dealers website

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o We need to take this fact into account as we do location-based marketing.

More than 30% of all leads coming through the Internet are still going unanswered….

o This fact makes a strong case for our LeadTouch service Poor lead handling at a dealership can cause not only dealership defection,

but up to 23% brand defection over timeo Again, a strong case for offering an outsourced lead management

solution, particularly to handle inbound Internet leads. Social networks and online blogs are becoming more and more influential in

the car and dealership shopping experience: 21% of consumers stated they are influenced by online dealership reviews; 43% said they act on the information they find on CONSUMER review sites, which help them determine which dealership to go to.

o This makes a case for the value-added service of a VMAR handing social and viral marketing for the dealership. Someone has to keep an eye on what is said to be able to perform damage control (reactive) as well as provide pro-active positive social influences.

Dealership loyalty and location are less of an issue in consumers’ minds, given the power of information found on the Internet – and the experiences people write about and post on the Internet. Experiences are the new driver to consumer buying behavior – whether you are talking about cars or shoes.

73% of the Cobalt survey audience said they would use a dealership review site, and 58% said they would POST to a dealership review site.

Online car shoppers (that is over 80% of us) seek out, value, and reward transparency in their research online.

The top 10 internet automotive searches include (in order):o New vehicleso Local dealershipso Used vehicleso Car accessorieso Videos/photos of carso Reliability/cost of maintenance infoo Professional reviewso Local service/repair providerso Consumer reviewso Auto enthusiast information

Some noteworthy results of a joint study by Polk and AutoTrader found: An interesting point made by the study is that the Internet is given even more

consideration by consumers than feedback from family, friends and co-workers. According to officials, the Internet is second only to the dealer visit, where consumers can interact with and test drive the car, as the overall most useful source of information throughout the entire car-shopping process.

While the study found that 42 percent of new-car buyers think the Internet was the most helpful source of information during their car-buying process, only 8 percent said TV was most helpful,; 2 percent indicated direct mail was the most helpful source; and only 1 percent pointed to radio or newspapers as the best source. However, 2006 National Automobile Dealers Association data indicated 27.3 percent of dealer advertising dollars were spent on newspapers, 19.5 percent spent on TV and 18.1 percent spent on radio. Meanwhile, only 11.5 percent of

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dealer advertising dollars were spent on Internet. Direct mail accounted for 10.2 percent of dealers' advertising spend, and 13.4 percent was attributed to "other" sources.

According to the study, independent of price, when searching the Internet for new cars, 27 percent of new-car buyers said dealer inventory was the most important piece of information they wanted.

INTERESTING VENDORS AND TECHNOLOGIES SHOWCASED

1. Call Command has a new feature that recognizes a BlueTooth mobile device and will send a text message (SMS) to the person driving by.

2. AutoByTel has a new service called Rapid Response that will take an Internet lead and turn it into a phone call to the designated persons’ cell phone for immediate attention.

3. enPocket – very cool, hip mobile marketing company that provides location-based mobile marketing capabilities (they call it “mobile CRM”) based on consumer response to advertising. (Did you know that there are more mobile phones per household today than TVs and computers????)

4. Revenue Science – The kings of behavioral targeting. They are poised to explode once the market “gets” the advantage of BT in their marketing efforts.

5. PlaceCast - delivering hyper-local content and advertising. The reality of reaching every consumer with the right offer in the right place at the right time is finally here. Placecast story is they increase the relevance of content delivered to consumers by combining precise real-time user location information with product proximity and user profiling. True one-to-one marketing. Something to keep an eye on for future ADPTouch enhancements.

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