Automotive Marketing

This morning I left my final comment in a fiery debate on another automotive marketing blog. Well, I thought I did. Turns out the owner of the blog, some Brandon Hoffman, didn’t like my last comment (or didn’t understand?), and he refused to publish it. I guess that means someone learned something today. I’m actually proud of myself for resisting insults when they were being thrown at me time and time again. Anyways, here are my remarks that you will never see added to the end of these comments.

?

I’m not sure why the pasted output from a 301 checker means much here. My last comment acknowledged that the redirect was a 302.

Besides, I just queried the link myself to discover what kind it was…

First

HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2007 19:52:52 GMT
Location: http://www.yellowpages.com/sp/yellowpages/dlp.jsp?p=1&searchId=1&displayTile=Y&st=NY&ci=
New+York&peid=24103566&id=108938175&q=plumbers
&purl=http%3A//www.tomtracker.com/redirect.cfm%3FbID%
3D4844%26hID%3D35282&_requestid=421259

Second

HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2007 19:53:47 GMT
Location: http://www.yellowpages.com/sp/yellowpages/ypout.jsp?outURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tomtracker.com%2Fredirect.cfm%3FbID%3D4844%26hID%3D35282&id=108938175&searchId=1&_requestid=422708

Third

HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2007 19:54:48 GMT
Location: http://www.tomtracker.com/redirect.cfm?bID=4844&hID=35282

Fourth

HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2007 19:53:44 GMT
Location: http://rotorooter.com/e-scheduling/yp.php

The point I’m trying to make to you is that pagerank isn’t the only benefit that a listing on yellowpages.com can offer, but I guess you’re not interested in hearing that.

I’ll let you have the last word. I’m done here.

Accountability is delicious.

Jeff is talking about eBay’s recent decision to stop all US advertising on Google’s AdWords network. eBay was the largest search engine advertiser in the nation in March, buying 4.1% of all search ad clicks.

Meanwhile, eBay is still buying Google traffic in other countries. AND this whole issue began because Google was going to host a protest party to start concurrently as eBay Live, the annual merchant conference. Why? Because Google Checkout isn’t a payment option on eBay, and there’s a good reason. The direct competition between these two companies is SO on.

First, eBay announces an auction-style advertising network that will undoubtedly compete with AdWords.

Google Base + Google Checkout = eBay auction competition. These services aren’t integrated yet, but let’s look at what they’re being built up to become.

Post it on Base. Find it on Google.

Find it with Google. Buy it with Google Checkout.

Those are the taglines on the front page of each of these services. Google Base is already creating automotive leads at a rate of mid-level classified sites, and this is because the Google Base API is fueling mid-level classified sites. A few service providers have already announced vehicle inventory feeds to Base, including the company I work for.

You might be thinking, “But Google doesn’t hold auctions. That’s eBay’s bag.” Right, but 80% of all web searches are computed by Google. A new Google buzzword, “Universal Search” is further integrating Google properties into the main search results–just when eBay is stepping out.

I can’t wait until eBay ramps up its text advertising network efforts. Recently an advertising platform developed by the ShoeMoney group, AuctionAds, made it possible for anyone to easily put eBay auction advertisements on their website and make affiliate cash on user registrations and sales. The program signed up 17,000 members in the first 3 months of its existence, and serves about 400,000 clicks a day. Click the last link and read the comments for added “we love eBay ads” impact.

Both of these companies are wrapping their hands around buying and selling products online, and news of increased competition is only going to get better and better.

My copy of the NIADA Used Car Industry Report arrived this week. My only remaining memory of last year’s edition was how a lot of the pie graphs did not add up to 100%. I wish I still had the 2006 report, because I found problems with this year’s graphs, too.

I’m hoping sure that this (and last year’s) errors are just graphical errors with the print and not the data in any way, but I could not resist. Fifteen is the new seventeen.

Non-subscribers can download a free copy of the 2007 Used Car Industry Report via the publications link in my last update.

NIADA is really stepping up their web presence. Although I could do without the sounds and commercials on their home page, the organization has a lot of great resources available for free online. Here is a list of my favorites NIADA web pages.

1. The Ultimate Vendor Guide : Directory of software and technology service providers
2. Publications : Including the monthly UCDM, PDF documents, IRS help
3. State Association contact list : With website URLs where applicable

Out of these resources, the State Association list is the one that I refer dealers to most often.

Phase one complete! This website is now located at TacticalTechnique.com. You have likely been redirected here via http://automotivemarketing.wordpress.com/, and that is just fine for a while.

Wordpress offers a domain redirection service that makes a move to a new datacenter a breeze. I started a decent discussion about this process, and the wp community stepped right up to help.

I want to improve this website. I found myself restricted on wordpress.com, although it’s so easy to start a new website there. The minute I considered using the tag line I made up for this blog, tactical technique, I scrambled to check its availability. I got the .net, too.

There’s an article in the May edition Used Car Dealer Magazine that I’m going to write about. That magazine just so happens to be online and downloadable for free.