Moore and Scarry Advertising

Web Video

Matt — Fri, 13 May 2011 20:16:19 +0000

[myyoutubeplaylist q6NzX4IYpsA, 4NnroNLToP8, 8JMty-2E_0w, GHcAModmsQ0, Xk8P3qJwlJw]

The 10th Digital Dealer Conference Recap

Matt — Tue, 03 May 2011 13:55:07 +0000

The 10^th Digital Dealer Conference in Orlando, FL just ended and the turnout was tremendous. Over 1,000 dealer representatives attended with 90+ exhibits sprawling the packed show floor of the Rosen Shingle Creek. There were also a lot of great breakout sessions with a great buzz and excitement of interesting things to learn.

Duncan Scarry was a feature speaker on Wednesday with his enlightening presentation “Digital Marketing Hacks: Ten Digital Marketing Secrets That Will Save You $100,000 Next Year.” Session attendees learned about the best kept digital marketing secrets the industry doesn’t want you to know about and how to save on unnecessary expenses and shift focus to the highest ROI efforts. In case you missed it we recorded the session which you can watch on-demand now, as well as download the presentation for more valuable information.

People who dropped by our booth learned about another highly regarded secret of some of the nation’s largest dealers – the Haystack automotive search marketing platform. As the digital revolution continues shoppers are doing more research and shopping online. Dealers know that if your inventory is not properly presented and marketed on the internet, you will miss out on many opportunities to sell vehicles.

Enter Moore & Scarry Advertising’s Haystack - the most powerful online marketing solution the industry has to offer. The system creates custom pay-only-for-performance ad campaigns specific to your dealership profit centers. With powerful new features such as dynamic inventory-based ad creation engine, value based bid management and age based bid management tools, Haystack can create more internet leads, reduce advertising costs and offer increased accountability for you. Contact us for an in-depth presentation and a no cost analysis of your marketing.

Another great highlight of the 10^th Digital Dealer event was our Tech A Day Giveaway we held daily at our booth. We announced giveaway dates/times on Facebook and Twitter and handed out great items like a Sony Google TV and new MacBook Air. Congratulations to our winners Kevin Galer of Ziegler of Plainwell and Kristin Garini of Carter of Manchester.

We concluded the conference with an exclusive party we co-sponsored with our partner, DealerOn, at the Ice Bar Orlando Wednesday night. Literally the coolest bar in town, it was a hot event with a great turnout and a lot of fun.

We will keep you posted on our plans at the 11^th Digital Dealer event in Las Vagas in October and look forward to seeing you all there. As always, make sure you follow us on Twitter and Facebook for up-to-minute company news and updates.

Advertising and Marketing Adjustments You’ll Need To Navigate The Inventory Shortages

Duncan — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 13:44:09 +0000

With some of the most recent information arriving about how the Japanese tsunami is going to hurt inventory over the summer, a lot of our clients are asking what our recommendations are in regard to marketing.

We feel that how you handle your marketing over the next several months will have alot to do with how successfully you navigate the obstacle and how well you continue to perform on the other side.

Here’s our thoughts, from some of the best and brightest advertising minds in the auto industry:

Pull Your Horns In, But Don’t Stick Your Head In The Sand

Sure, you’re going to have to cut back on your marketing to meet your new budget goals, but don’t go black. While there are a number of obstacles facing the auto industry, for the well-prepared and analytical, there are a lot of opportunities.

Calculate your current inventory, your forecast allocations and develop a sensible budget going forward based on a solid PVR advertising expense.

Stick With The Digital

If you’ve already listened to our advice on how to construct a digital advertising plan, you’re probably spending about 28% of your budget on digital and keeping it to AutoTrader, search engine marketing, emarketing, some social and little else.

If you haven’t trimmed up your digital marketing plan up by now, it’s time to focus on core digital mediums and cut back on expensive, low-ROI mediums like third-party leads.

Make Deals With The Media

There are a lot of reactionary, irrational people who own and run car dealerships (let’s hope you’re not one of them). A lot of dealerships will go black in advertising for the next several months. This is a time to make friends with the media and get the most out of your spend.

If you’re going to trim your budget, make a commitment to media outlets to have a consistent (although reduced) spend over the next few months versus cancelling outright. You can very likely negotiate getting your full media schedules for as little as half the price and come out on the other end of this issue as a valuable client and friend of the media outlets. In this way, you’ll have reduced your spend significantly, yet to the market it won’t look like you took your foot off the gas pedal at all. In addition, you’ll have a lot of good will with the media outlets in the future.

Find The Next Best Thing Creatively

Creatively, you’re going to want to pick the right products and services to market. You still want to invest in new car advertising; don’t go black. Focus on your core products and market the best offers available.

But we’re also recommending you move some new car advertising to certified preowned. By shifting some new car marketing to certified preowned marketing, you’ll accomplish a number of things:

You’ll keep your brand in front of consumers by advertising like-new same nameplate products – and you won’t look like you’ve shut your new car dealership down for the summer
You’ll create a value proposition that will allow you to ask for and hold more gross – something that will be very important to successfully navigating this market
You’ll open the conversation about used cars with new car buyers – moving a customer to your used cars will be easier if they’re starting from a certified vehicle

Make Sure Your Service Marketing Is In Order

Just as it has been over the past few years, making the most of your service business is going to be essential over the coming months. This is another area where you need to make sure you’re marketing is in order – and if it’s not, get it there quickly.

The most effective service marketing is intelligent service marketing – products like DME’s RedRocket allow you to dig into your customer base, market intelligently and effectively measure the results.

Good processes and people are typically one of the most overlooked efforts. Doing what you know you’re supposed to do everyday is actually one of the hardest things to accomplish in any dealership. Double efforts to follow best practices.

Be Smart About What You Sell

Beyond advertising, there’s some more advice to be had. You certainly don’t have to take every deal. Take deals that are at the right gross, deals that have good trades so you can keep your inventory up and deals that will allow you to maintain the right product mix for months to come.

In addition, you don’t have to increase your gross all in one spot. Calculate the amount you’ll need to increase your gross and find several areas in the sales process (from front-end, finance and after-market) that you can increase. It’ll be easier to increase three different profit centers by 33% than a single one by 100%.

In The End

In the end, keep a level head. All of your competitors will be in very similar situations and the changes you need to make won’t be unique to your store. Basic economic principles will allow you to increase prices with reduced supply.

Keep your customers happy. It will be easier than ever to provide great customer service when you have a lot more time to spend with each customer. This is another opportunity to earn good will that will pay dividends in the future.

Hang tight. We’ve been through about four years of the worst many of us have seen in the auto industry. Four to six more months of obstacles won’t be the end of us.

Partner with a Full Service Marketing Agency to Increase Sales and Decrease Costs

Matt — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 19:42:39 +0000

American Executive Magazine recently interviewed Jack Donachie regarding International Cars’ impressive success over the years. His focus on customer service along with Moore & Scarry’s digital advertising expertise has propelled the group of dealerships past the competition.

International Cars has six dealerships spanning Massachusetts and New Hampshire: Dover Honda, Dover Chevrolet, Dover Auto World Collision Center, Porsche of Stratham, Audi Stratham and Honda North. The founders of International Cars created an environment that was customer focused. Donachie explained that marketing automobiles is difficult by nature. “As customers move from brand to brand, the most important marketing tool we have is our superior customer service at each location,” he said.

Prior to Donachie’s arrival to the company in 2008, each dealership took care of its own marketing. Donachie made the decision to use one ad agency, Moore & Scarry Advertising, to conduct marketing for all of the dealerships. “We wanted to have a consistent approach to everything we do, from our website to our business cards,” said Donachie. “Bringing our marketing efforts together lowered our advertising costs by 50% and increased our marketshare.”

With the help of Moore & Scarry Advertising, the company began incorporating SEM and SEO into their marketing mix. “It’s produced big dividends…Digital Marketing now accounts for 40% our sales,” said Donachie. The group uses other digital marketing and social media tools to gauge its levels of customer service.

A recent study revealed that over the past five years the average number of dealerships a customer visits when shopping for a vehicle has decreased from 4.1 to 1.3. Meaning, on average, customers buy their vehicle from the very first dealership they visit -not because of better sales tactics, but because of more informed online shopping. Customers now do the majority of their shopping online before ever visiting a dealership making it crucial more than ever to properly present and market your dealership on the internet. Contact Moore & Scarry Advertising today for an in-depth presentation and a no cost analysis of your marketing.

Read the full story at http://americanexecutive.com/current-issue/current-spotlights/7730-international-cars-coming-together

Crown Automotive's Joe Lamphier Took it all off to Support Pediatric Cancer Research!

Matt — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 15:39:34 +0000

On April 7^th at the Pepin Hospitality Centre in Tampa almost thirty men, including seven Tampa Bay Lightning players, had their heads shaved to raise money for pediatric cancer research. Joe Lamphier of Crown Automotive Group was one of the bold men who took it all off on stage! Joe received his new “hair” style from childhood cancer survivor and dear family friend, Dana Bertoch. Joe commented on the experience, “It’s an honor to be able to help such a great cause and I am proud of my shaved head. The outpouring of support for Cut for a Cure was amazing, and the event was heartwarming and fun for everyone.”

Cut for a Cure is an innovative annual event to raise money, get attention and find a cure for pediatric cancer. In total, the event raised over $175,000 for pediatric cancer research! The donations will support both the Pediatric Cancer Foundation and the Vincent Lecavalier Pediatric Cancer & Blood Disorders Center.

Watch Joe take it all off at: http://bit.ly/eNzi2f.

Joe Lamphier has been involved with the Pediatric Cancer Foundation since the early 90′s when a friend’s son lost his fight with cancer, and Crown Automotive Group has supported the foundation for years. In fact, Joe has served on the board since 2003 and was its president from 2006-2007. Joe shaved in memory of Camille Rawson, and in honor Dana Bertoch and their wonderful families.

Trends and Strategies in Auto Dealer Digital Advertising

Matt — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 16:15:26 +0000

Auto Revenue Insights interviews Duncan Scarry

In January we started the year here at ARI with the warning that digital may be our biggest competitor for advertising budget in 2011. Now let’s look at a view from an agency that opened in 2002 and today is one of the biggest leaders in the entire USA in digital strategies for over 250 car dealers nationwide. Our guest is Duncan Scarry, a partner in the digital marketing agency Moore & Scarry.

Here’s a look at some factual observations and opinions made by Duncan, as he was quoted recently on eMarketer.com. (We recommend their website as another great source of digital advertising trends.)

On Digital Growth
In the past two to three years, we’ve seen our dealerships increase the digital portion of their advertising budget from 12% to 18% to 28% to 33%.

On Dealer Ad Budgets
The vast majority of budget that auto dealers are putting towards digital is coming from print or other types of traditional display advertising. (ARI comment: that’s YOU.)

Search usually comprises one-third to one-half of a dealer’s digital marketing budget. We have dealers that do upwards of $25,000 a month in search engine marketing.

On Web Shopping
Roughly 70% of people who visit a dealership website get there from search, and almost 20% of dealer website visitors get there from search engine marketing.

Online search ads are the third most influential medium used in the purchase process next to television and print. (ARI: sounds like print is not as dead as we’d hoped.)

Our dealership clients attribute 10% of their sales to email marketing. For many dealerships, we’ve replaced large chunks of direct mail spending with email marketing, which they have tracked to increased sales.

Consumers are increasing the time they shop for a car from what used to be one to two weeks to two weeks to a month.

On Social Media
Right now I think social media plays a negligible role in auto sales, and I think reputation management is going to be more influential sooner than social is.

On Online Video
Online video is great. The more content you can create, the better. The difficulty – we call it the “celery and the cheeseburger theory” – is that dealers hear they should do more video, but their site isn’t properly indexed, or search optimized. They’re not spending money on search marketing, so when they put a video on a poorly optimized, poorly indexed, poorly marketed site, it really makes no difference. If you put celery, which is healthy, on a cheeseburger, it doesn’t improve your diet.

ARI interviews Duncan Scarry:

ARI: With your 250 dealers have you developed some basic marketing rules that you apply to all media? For example, what is the biggest mistake you see them making with their entire marketing?

Duncan: Marketing fragmentation – spreading the budget all over the place. Owning nothing.

ARI: WOW, we agree. We call it “The Glass Theory.” What media do you think works the best?

Duncan: We are media agnostics. That means we have zero media precedent. It all depends on the situation. It could be billboards, radio or TV, or print, or anything else. It all can work. It all depends on efficiencies and the market.

ARI: How about buying digital? What do you suggest a dealer should consider first?

Duncan: Buying the lowest CPM (cost per thousand) – ideally $5 to $7. This should be more important than placement.

ARI: What’s the biggest mistake dealers make with their digital?

Duncan: Their creative. Usually they just pull their logo and put it up with no call to action. Ideally, we want a specific offer… a specific make and model, and a link to a page – not the dealer home page, but a page with more on the vehicle offer.

ARI: Another WOW – we preach this constantly. That’s why there’s an article in this issue on branding vs. the call to action. Do most dealers know how to buy digital?

Duncan: No, they’re just buying anything being presented to them by a good salesperson – usually it’s a package. They’re not sure how to do it. They really can’t pull it off themselves.

ARI: What’s the best way to measure the success of a dealer’s digital marketing?

Duncan: A spike in web hits.

(ARI: Note) In his interview with eMarketing, Duncan made predictions about the future, which not only match up with the comments made by Ford’s CEO in this edition of ARI, but has profound implications for our dealers and the ads we write for them.

“I see the future of auto advertising hinging more on inventory than on offers.”

“Consumers have as much, if not more, information than dealers. For the dealer, the differentiation will become more about managing the inventory than trying to differentiate the dealership. Online tools such as Haystack orient search engine marketing around a dealer’s actual inventory. This helps connect consumers to cars that dealers actually have on the lots, rather than ones that search engines estimate that dealerships have. Our dealers that have gotten their inventory mix right and brought it online have seen tremendous success.”

Auto Revenue Insights – March 2011 Volume 17 Number 3

Crown Automotive's Joe Lamphier will Take it all off to Support Pediatric Cancer Research!

Matt — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 19:05:46 +0000

More than 160,000 children are diagnosed with pediatric cancer each year. On April 7^th, Tampa Bay media personalities, professional athletes and business leaders, including Crown Automotive vice president Joe Lamphier, will take a big step to help curb this staggering statistic. They will shave their heads to raise money for the Pediatric Cancer Foundation and the Vincent Lecavalier Pediatric Cancer & Blood Disorders Center. Cut for a Cure is an innovative program to raise money, get attention and find a cure for pediatric cancer through the Sunshine Project.

Joe Lamphier has been involved with the foundation since the early 90′s when a friend’s son lost his fight with cancer, and Crown Automotive Group has supported the Pediatric Cancer Foundation for years. In fact, Joe has served on the board since 2003 and was its president from 2006-2007. Joe is shaving in memory of Camille Rawson, and in honor Dana Bertoch and their wonderful families.

If you can help, please donate online at www.pcfcutforacure.org and select Joe Lamphier’s name. Moore & Scarry Advertising will match your collective donations dollar for dollar up to $1000.

Cut for a Cure will take place on April 7^th at the Pepin Hospitality Centre in Tampa, where almost thirty men’s heads, including Joe’s, will be shaved to raise money for pediatric cancer research. We’ll be sure you see a post event picture.

Five Days in the Future of Advertising: SXSW 2011

Matt — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 01:58:34 +0000

Moore & Scarry Advertising hit the SXSW Conference in Austin and spent five days looking into the future of advertising.

Beyond the expected hype surrounding mobile usage and social media, the main take away from this year’s SXSW Conference is location based services and the gameification of social media.

In the first five days of the conference, downtown Austin registered over 250,000 location based checkins between Foursquare, Facebook Places, and Gowalla.

People knew what events were hot by referencing new smart phone apps like Cluster that organizes the popularity of venues based on the Klout scores of those checked in at each location. Those looking to get shoulder to shoulder with the serious players knew exactly where to go in real time.

Location based Companies like Loopt and Foursquare had a serious presence at the event and pushed their products as the new platforms for marketers and brands looking to engage customers in a whole new space.

Foursquare unveiled their new Merchant Center for business owners that offers a wide array of tools. By claiming your business profile and setting up the merchant center, business owners are able to get check in analytics and manage specials through the Foursquare platform. In a recent statement, Foursquare founder and CEO said his goal was to “redefine loyalty” with his new platform.

Loopt’s approach to location heavily emphasizes prizes and rewards in a game like environment. By checking in with the Loopt mobile , Loopt can track your location and notify you when a flash deal was happening near-by. Walking down the street, you would simply get a notification sent to your smartphone informing you of giveaways at nearby stores and locations. Using the app effectively turned exploring the city into an interactive game that had tangible, exciting rewards.

After the first few days at the conference it was apparent: the intersection of mobile and e-commerce has the potential to change the way future generations of consumers interact with their surroundings.

The Facts:

As we previously discussed in Mobile Usage Making Unexpected Moves, Mobile traffic in our industry is exploding.
Social buying sites have exploded in popularity. Groupon has seen traffic increase over 750% year over year according to Compete.com. It won’t be long before these impact the auto industry.

Those of us looking to stay ahead of the curve will have to accept the fact that mobile is going to fundamentally change the nature of commerce. While there is no way to predict just how consumer behavior will change, it is evident from this year’s SXSW conference that there is no shortage of bright entrepreneurs not afraid to challenge the status quo.

Final Cut Editor

Katie — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 15:04:42 +0000

FINAL CUT EDITOR

Innovation, bright minds, and a lot of hard work have made Moore & Scarry Advertising one of the fastest growing automotive advertising agencies in Florida and the single largest advertising agency between Miami and Tampa.

We’re growing fast, we’re pitching often, and we’re looking for smart, hungry editors who want to transform their talents and advance their careers.

We are in need of an experienced Final Cut Editor to work on “infomercial” format style spots for clients local and throughout the country. Applicants must be located in or willing to relocate to Fort Myers, Florida.

REQUIREMENTS: Green Screen Keying, Audio Sync and music experience a must. Some basic After Effects skills are a plus.

Media Buyer Assistant

Katie — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 20:39:23 +0000

MEDIA BUYER ASSISTANT

We’re growing fast, we’re pitching often, and we’re looking for smart, hungry individuals who want to transform their talents and advance their careers.

We are looking for a Media Buyer Assistant to collaborate with clients and media team members to resolve media billing issues. The assistant will confirm placement and monitor the progress of client schedules. Potential applicants must have the ability to read, comprehend and write simple instructions, short correspondence and memos. You must also have a strong comprehension of basic adding, subtracting, multiplication, and division. Individuals should also have the ability to handle problems effectively.

REQUIREMENTS: Proficient in Microsoft Word and Excel. Knowledge of Smartplus is a benefit. Strong mathematical abilities required.

EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS: High School degree required, Bachelors degree preferred