Erich K Gail Talks Automotive Social Media And Getting Results

Erich K Gail Talks Automotive Social Media And Getting Results
Posted March 14, 2017 by admin

Automotive News has published an insightful article on the Cardinale Automotive Group’s social media efforts and what tools should be properly utilized to get a customer from their computer screens or mobile phones to the dealership.

Social media is no longer just a platform to chat with friends, share pictures, or update your status. These various platforms are now a strategic tool for businesses to reach, obtain, and maintain customers. The Cardinale Automotive Group is keen on utilizing each tool to its full potential. There is a science behind it all and these tools are part of the equation.


According to Erich K. Gail, Cardinale Automotive GroSocial Media Marketing Disiplineup CEO, this outlook on social media marketing campaigns is necessary. He states that “this mentality is driven by a disciplined approach to spending money in which simply covering costs isn’t good enough. If time and resources are spent, there must be a return on investment.”

Facebook and Instagram, in particular, are social media platforms that have come a long way over the years; now offering ways to effectively spend money in the right places to reach the right people. As noted by Automotive News, “The evolving targeting capabilities on Facebook and Instagram over the years have given dealers more control over who sees their ads.”

The group, with its 22 rooftops throughout California, Arizona, and Nevada, wants to ensure that money is not being put towards hope, but rather towards a worthwhile ROI. Gail further expresses that “the stores take a granular approach that enables them to attribute the marketing dollars of their digital campaigns to floor traffic and sales.”

An effective place to spend marketing dollars is in Facebook’s Ad Manager. This tool gives the group the Facebook Advertising for Auto Dealerscapabilities to target specific audiences throughout the market based on age, location, interests, and behaviors, and track the consumers that are taking action on each ad. Along with customer relationship management data, the group can further the analysis by knowing the sites consumers are coming from, how many have booked an appointment, and who physically came into the dealership to purchase a vehicle.

With the integration of Instagram and Facebook, customer reach has now increased and in a more Automotive Social Media Marketingefficient manner as Instagram Ads can be made by the checking of a box. The group understands the effectiveness of Instagram Ads. During the fourth quarter of 2016, the group launched an Instagram campaign for all of its dealerships. Through this campaign, there were 184,000 potential customers reached, resulting in 237 direct actions via phone call or online chat. Of those direct actions, 107 appointments were made, resulting in 66 consumers entering the dealership. The most impressive stat is that of 54 of the people that showed up to the dealership, left in a new vehicle. Overall, the investment per unit sold was $132.

 

The Cardinale Automotive Group is not new to the utilization of social media within its digital marketing strategy, but as the tools evolve, the group adapts accordingly in order to have an optimized social media strategy.

Erich Gail on ZMOT Auto

Erich Gail on ZMOT Auto
Posted April 27, 2015 by admin

MONTEREY, CA – Erich K. Gail, COO of the Cardinale-Group of Companies, gave a great interview the other day at the 2015 Denver Automotive Summit. He spoke about how the Cardinale-Group has become the #5 (now #4) Highest Sales Volume eDealer in North America through ZMOT Auto!

Gail stressed the importance of a dealer-first focus with a management-driven culture. This enables ZMOT Auto techniques to be fully utilized without ridiculous amounts of spend.

During the interview, he also touched on using a CRM as a nucleus for attribution, having a custom inventory and investment tool, mastery of phone skills, continuous training for associates and management, and, of course, a strong commitment to zero moment retail. All these things together make up a dealership group that is fully enabled to take advantage of ZMOT Auto techniques.

Finally, Gail stressed the importance of family within the Cardinale-Group, mentioning as an example how every employee and manager have books they must read along with the rest of the group to help everyone grow to their fullest potential. This kind of mindset fits in perfectly with the zero moment way of doing things, with the most unified and best possible staff ready to utilize the fully weaponized strategy provided by ZMOT Auto.

Watch the full interview here: http://cbtnews.com/2015-denver-automotive-summit-erich-gail/

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Flick Fusion Collaborates with ZMOT Auto to Produce Auto Inventory Videos for Spanish Speaking Car Buyers

Flick Fusion Collaborates with ZMOT Auto to Produce Auto Inventory Videos for Spanish Speaking Car Buyers
Posted January 5, 2015 by admin

Urbandale, IA — January 5th, 2014 — Flick Fusion today announced a collaboration with ZMOT Auto, a leading automotive digital velocity firm, to produce vehicle inventory videos with voice overs in a conversational style for Spanish-speaking car buyers. Auto dealerships that cater to a Spanish-speaking clientele can now include inventory videos as part of a comprehensive marketing strategy designed to reach a segment of the car-buying population that has been traditionally underserved by retail automotive marketers. Through this collaboration, Flick Fusion and ZMOT Auto are the industry’s only marketing and velocity firms to produce videos with voiceovers recorded by native-language speakers.

“For dealers who are serious about attracting and retaining Spanish-speaking customers, the ability to provide videos in a conversational style is important,” said Brian Cox, President and CEO of Flick Fusion Video Marketing. “Native language translation instills a far greater emotional connection than a computer-generated voiceover produced by an auto translator. This collaboration with ZMOT Auto allows us to provide distribution of relevant video merchandising of vehicles in conversational Spanish.”

When aligned with ZMOT Auto’s integrated digital marketing, Flick Fusion’s Spanish-language videos leverage the power of SEO and targeted behavioral marketing to attract and convert the many car buyers who conduct online research in the Spanish language. According to Google, over 30 percent of searches in the U.S. are conducted by people who speak Spanish or both Spanish and English interchangeably. If the primary language in a household is Spanish, the browser settings are likely to be set to Spanish. Even if users conduct some of their searches in English, if a dealer’s language targeting is set to English only, its inventory listings and ads will not display to this audience. Because of this collaboration, Flick Fusion and ZMOT Auto’s inventory videos incorporate Spanish keywords and are more likely to be displayed in organic search results and drive traffic to a dealership’s website.

Conversational Spanish videos are a unique component of ZMOT Auto’s integrated marketing solution designed to extend the brand reach and relevance of auto dealers with local Spanish-speaking car buyers. Other components of ZMOT Auto’s solution include; targeted and behavioral marketing; classified listing merchandising, long tail inventory marketing, social media, reputation management, blog marketing, live-chat and more.

“Spanish-speaking consumers prefer to purchase in an environment where they feel most comfortable,” said Robert Powell, Chief Performance Officer at ZMOT. “Providing consistent access as well as relevant information to this large and growing customer base, ensures our auto retail clients are in a position to be of service and capitalize on a huge business opportunity.”

Some demographic experts estimate the current population of Hispanics in the U.S. is over 50 million, which means approximately one in six people speak Spanish. All of the major auto manufacturers have dedicated advertising and marketing campaigns that cater to this growing population, but the majority of dealerships in the U.S. do not have dedicated Spanish-language marketing programs.

The collaboration between ZMOT and Flick Fusion is designed to assist and empower auto dealers to capture and engage this demographic with the goal of converting interest into direct-action leads and customers. For more information on a comprehensive Spanish-language marketing campaign, contact ZMOT, Nathalie Ruelas Godoy at ngodoy@zmot.auto. To schedule a private consultation or to meet with our team at NADA please email: corporate@zmot.auto

About ZMOT Auto

ZMOT Auto (a member of the Cardinale-Group of companies) was created by dealers for dealers and is recognized as the only digital-partner managed by active dealers. ZMOT is best known for providing tailor-designed digital sales solutions, 1:1 sales attribution and regional exclusivity for automotive dealerships within the United Stated and Canada. ZMOT targets and delivers a buyer direct to the client-dealership through an integrated digital strategy focused on a ‘zero moment’ buyer action.  To learn more about a ‘zero moment’ solution, visit zmot.auto.

About Flick Fusion

Flick Fusion specializes in creating, managing, and distributing dynamic and cost-effective online and mobile video products. Each video is designed to help dealerships reach and engage with customers, delivering rich content that results in increased sales and ROI. Flick Fusion produces video content for more than 3,000 dealerships and more than a dozen reseller partners. For more information, visit www.flickfusion.com.

Robert S. Powell
ZMOT Automotive Digital Velocity
rpowell@zmot.auto
831-642-7421

Brian Cox
Flick Fusion Marketing
b.cox@flickfusion.com
515-333-4337

Holly Forsberg
Carter West PR
hforsberg.cwpr@gmail.com
602-680-8960

Cardinale Automotive Group – A Study in Digital Marketing Success

Cardinale Automotive Group – A Study in Digital Marketing Success
Posted November 25, 2014 by admin

MONTEREY, CA – Autonews.com posted a great article on how one dealership group managed to weather the recent recession and make huge gains using digital marketing. The Cardinale Automotive Group has succeeded taking over the competition and obtaining zero moment of truth customers by employing several digital strategies in a concentrated, coordinated effort.

Most dealers will freely admit that 2008 was a tough time on most businesses, especially the automotive industry. Joe Cardinale, president and co-founder of the Cardinale Automotive Group of dealerships, decided to make some changes to bolster his various dealer website traffic with aggressive digital marketing, which has since paid off many times over with increased vehicle sales.

Part of this new focus included shedding several third party vendors and instead forming ZMOT Auto, a digital automotive velocity agency that encompasses multiple connected platforms including search, social media, retargeting, video, reputation management, blogs and classified listings, while employing industry-leading predictive modeling to anticipate industry trends rather than simply following the market. The platform is built so that companies like the Cardinale Automotive Group are able to tell exactly what marketing strategies resulted in sales, rather than leaving much of that connection to guesswork. Says Cardinale, “All we had was a website and third-party lead providers. That’s not good enough anymore. I don’t want you shopping on some other platform site. I want you shopping inside my website.” This aggressive approach has been combined with ongoing sales associates training in customer-experience and telephone skills to greatly increase the odds that a digital lead will be converted into an actual sale.

Continual sales training, multiple integrated digital channels, predictive modeling and direct attribution all continue to contribute to the Cardinale Automotive Group’s success. Contact the ZMOT Auto team today to learn how switching to these strategies can help make your dealership recession-proof!

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