Automotive Marketing

Network Solutions has been one of the most expensive domain name registrars for a long time. I have only recently considered buying a domain name from them because GoDaddy does not yet offer the .us.com extension. The reason I do not give this company my money is simple: Network Solutions has ridiculous prices.

I quickly described a phenomenon that exploded this week in my last post. Network Solutions has started registering (not really) domains that customers search for on their website.

The company deployed a new security policy to hold for 4 days any domain that is searched at their website to prevent domain tasters from taking domains from potential customers after searches are completed but before names are purchased. The Domain Tools blog has detailed this process and what the domain default parked page looked like.

Public Relations to the rescue…

I’d like to clarify what we are doing. In response to customer concerns about Domain Name Front Running (domains being registered by someone else just after they have conducted a domain name search), we have implemented a security measure to protect our customers. The measure will kick in when a customer searches for an available domain name at our website, but decides not to purchase the name immediately after conducting the search.

After the search ends, we will put the domain name on reserve. During this reservation period, the name is not active and we do not monetize the traffic on these domains. If a customer searches for the domain again during the next 4 days at networksolutions.com, the domain will be available to register. If the domain name is not purchased within 4 days, it will be released back to the registry and will be generally available for registration.

This protection measure provides our customers the opportunity to register domains they have previously searched without the fear that the name will be already taken through Front Running.

~Jonathon Nevett, Vice President of Policy at Network Solutions

The problem is that what they call a protection measure holds names hostage. Sure, no one will buy the name out from under you, but you are forced to pay Network Solutions premium price (almost 400% of average price) to get the name while they have it blacked out. A search for a name at a different domain registrar would show it as unavailable while the Network Solutions reservation is in place.

Network Solutions has responded to the wide criticism of this new domain front-running policy, but this is a gigantic disappointment to webmasters and the Network Solutions wiki has a well-sourced new section detailing the event.

CNet News.com reported last night that the latest public statement is that Network Solutions is “making improvements to our protection measure.” The changes mean that the names will still be reserved for 4 days, but the pages will no longer resolve to a sales pitch to “buy this now here for far too much money” like they have since the change was made this week. Now, an under construction page will be shown like you can see at http://www.networksolutionssucksmonkeyballs.com/.

Domain Jamming vs Domain Tasting

There exists an Add Grace Period (AGP) that all ICANN-accredited registrars must offer to domain purchasers. AGP is a 5 day grace period that means if you buy a domain that you decide you do not want you can get your money back. This rule is abused by some webmasters as a mechanism to evaluate a domain’s existing or natural traffic via a page full of ads. If the domain taster likes the pennies he makes within the first five days, he keeps it. If the taste was sour, the taster simply gets his money back via AGP.

What Network Solutions has done is created a mechanism that anyone can use to block domain registrations (or at least affordable ones) by searching for a domain and thus locking it into a Network Solutions only purchase option, 4 days at a time. A coworker has asked me, “Well, you can just wait four days for it to be released, right?” Sure can. Anyone can, including the person that jammed the registration in the first place.

The same coworker then said to me, “So, I could write a program that searched for a domain name every other day on Network Solutions and ruin the chances of that name being bought?” Sort of. If the name is purchased at the Network Solutions price it can still be registered, but only silly people register domains at Network Solutions, especially this week. The effect of such a campaign would be Network Solutions profits on the sale because the jammed domain can not be purchased anywhere else.

Check out the whois information on youguysseriouslyregistereverythingisearch.com. I found this via wolf-howl.com.

I openly accuse GoDaddy of sniffing searches. I have tried to buy a domain minutes after initially searching for it at GoDaddy and found it registered. The domains were not registered in GoDaddy’s name, but it has happened to me. The funny part is I research domain names on Network Solutions because of the GoDaddy issue I had and because of the multi-line text input. This is pretty convincing, though.

I am continually amazed at the brand position that CARFAX maintains. Consumers are seemingly unaware of any alternative to their vehicle history report service.

AutoCheck exists

AutoCheck LLC was born in 1998. By 2002, when almost a million AutoCheck reports were being served each month, the company entered an agreement with Experian and became an Experian Automotive product. This partnership would transform the AutoCheck reports from being primarily an auction product to a mainstream consumer product in direct competition with CARFAX.

Too little too late

The game was already over, and CARFAX won. By December of 1996, consumers could access reports through CARFAX’s website that contained title information for all fifty states. AutoCheck’s delivery of this feature was 5 years late, enough time for CARFAX to brand the product as their own. Today, AutoCheck is still reinventing their product and acquiring partnerships with sites like eBay Motors to boost their brand.

Experian doubles the amount of time that $25 can access unlimited reports; CARFAX gives 30 days and AutoCheck gives 60. I feel this is a small edge that has a small effect on consumers. When 11 out of 12 people can name CARFAX and no alternative, price points mean very little.

Update: I wrote this today when the Yahoo! Answers question had 12 responses. There’s a few more now, numbers 13 and 14 that are pro AutoCheck and surprisingly emotional. You goons. You fool no one.

eBay has sold its 2.6% of Autotrader to confirm the end of the relationship the two companies have shared since the year 2000. Next month, Autotrader will launch its own vehicle auction service.

When I found Autotrader’s official statement about the launch of auctions, I was surprised to read this quote from Autotrader’s Chip Perry:

“Now consumers have the option to not only buy and sell their cars via classified advertising but also through our unique Auction-Style Listing product, which allows conditional, local market bidding – unlike anything currently in the industry.

Touting the uniqueness of a car auction online is odd to me. The more effective here message is “it is free.” No listing fee is a good idea, and I like the way they are pushing it. While Perry is correct that this blend of an auction and a free listing is one of a kind, (the same NYT article says) eBay is the most popular automotive website and Autotrader is the seventh.

Six months ago I explained why I think Google will soon become a serious competitor in automotive classifieds, and I also expect the Goo to continue free listings as most of their services are delivered free with a side of text advertisements.

Will Autotrader make a splash in the auction market with free listings? Can Google seize the market by placing their own car ad listings in search results before links to Autotrader? How did Speed Racer defeat the mammoth car?

The hardest part of my job is to break some of the traditional thinking that dealers want to bring online. The car industry is traditional by nature; new flavors of the same cars arrive annually, dealerships are branded with family names, and the jingle-based commercial is a dealership classic. I will never forget the jingle that Century 3 Chevrolet of Pittsburgh uses in their commercials. Ever. Really, it has been more than 5 years since I have lived within their reach.

Domain names

I like to suggest using a three word domain with “usedcars” in it instead of “familymotors” as the primary location for a website that sells used cars. Sometimes dealers include a city name in their business name, which is fantastic. ClassicMotorsOfSomewhere.com is a great start, but length becomes an issue. Now, I am aware that this website resides on a domain name that is not short or easy to spell, but this site was not designed to sell things.

Website and advertisement copy

Dealers insist on writing sentences, even when embedded in properly-cased paragraphs, in all capital letters. THIS IS A TECHNIQUE USED IN PRINT ADVERTISING TO GRAB ATTENTION. While browsing the web, writing in all capital letters is perceived as shouting and takes longer to read than lower or mixed case. The most effective print on the web has a personal touch that reads like a conversation would sound.

Presentation

I prefer not to wrap text around a picture of a wheel. I do not think that drawing an ugly “burst” around words will make a message more effective. Instead, I very much like to guide the reader’s attention from the top left corner downward. I see no reason to disorganize a page to the degree that a message needs to jump out at the reader in order to grab their attention. Websites are advertisements, but to design them like ads severely dilutes their effectiveness.

I am a big fan of playing fair. Arguably, I have been in the car business for 0 years. Here are some challenges that I have faced since I started building websites for the car business.

• Using very vibrant colors instead of a blended palette. Most of the layouts and logos I designed prior contained more colors to cover a range of tones. Most dealership logos and signwork are cheesy and very brightly colored. Adapting to this change has expanded my versatility greatly, and now my designs have less bland, washed-out colors in them.
• Privacy-sensitive input. No one wants to get a call once a week from a dealership asking if they found a car yet. Email inquiries between a dealer and a shopper are very different than emails between a shopper and a private seller. Car shoppers (and dealers shopping the competition) are very discrete when they fill out contact forms, and massaging this data on the way into a database is a challenge.
• Creating an animated neon sign in flash. The glowing look is fairly easy, but animating light is a severe challenge that I still face. The signature flicker of a neon sign is something I have not yet been able to digitize.

What challenges have you encountered? Are there any you still struggle with?

One of the reasons I started this website was because the automotive marketing magazines that dealers read every month contain articles that are piss poor. This month’s Dealer Marketing Magazine is no exception. The cover story offers incorrect information and quotes an “expert” from Autobytel that helps reinforce the inaccuracy.

Search engine marketing is not paid search. Why this is not obvious is beyond me. Marketing does not equal “buying ads,” so how could something something marketing mean buying ads on something something? I expect a trade publication to conduct the small amount of research required to ensure they are not fabricating definitions and misleading their readers.

You might be thinking, “Ok, but are you being a little picky about one word, Corey?” No, this is not about one word. The article claims that SEM is an “elevated level of search optimization” that gets you placement in the paid results sections of search results. This leads readers to believe that some mystical “elevated” skill or knowledge is required to make a site appear in the paid spots, and this is exactly the type of bullshit that convinces dealers that they have to pay a search engine company to appear at the top. It is simply not true. Anyone with $5 and the will to learn can open an account and begin advertising on a search engine.

This mistake might have started with one of the “experts” that were consulted for the story. Autobytel’s senior vice president of dealer strategy and operations, Mark Garms, is quoted rather awkwardly on the following page. His statement only makes sense after you have learned the bogus definition of SEM. I do not think that Mark is an idiot, and it is obvious (to me) that he is talking about pay-per-click advertising costs. It is unfortunate that he has been quoted saying something goofy like dealers are not trying to increase their traffic from search engines, but is that the worst part? I think the largest oops here is the fact that the writer of this article, Jim Leman, took his quote and multiplied the mistake, and none of the editors of the magazine knew better to sort it out.

Search engine marketing is the act of promoting a website to (increase search engine traffic, whether that means buying ads, optimizing content or a employing a strategy to) improve rankings in non-paid, organic search results. Anyone can get into the paid spots, even if they have no “elevated level” knowledge.

If you would like to receive updates from this website, click any of the subscription icon links below to start that process. I have redirected the RSS feed to FeedBurner, because the default Wordpress feed could not handle flash animation insertion via JavaScript in my last post. Fake it ’til you make it.

These buttons go to RSS feed readers. Feed readers aggregate all of your favorite websites on to one screen by allowing you to subscribe to RSS outputs of each website’s content.

Here are a few links to add this website to your favorite bookmarking services:

The amount of time that elapses between a sale and receipt of payment for that sale provides information about the financial structure of a company, including how the company manages its receivables. Calculating days receivable, or the average number of days sales are outstanding, is easy now that I have created this flash calculator:

Efficiency ratios can indicate how efficiently a business manages its assets. Days receivable is the collectability of accounts receivable, answering the question “how fast can cash supply be built?” with a number of days.

Calculating this number of days receivable helps determine if a change in receivables is a result of a change in sales. Comparing days receivable with the company’s credit terms indicates how customers obey the terms of credit.

About the tool

I built this tool with Flash, but the all graphics were made in Photoshop. The reset button restores all values to defaults, and the about button launches this web page. If you have trouble or suggestions please leave comments here.

Accompanying the Winter 2007 AdWords Auto Industry Newsletter was an announcement for a new Goo product. The Google Auto Knowledge Center has Google’s newest advertiser training documentation. These pages include tips for text advertisement copywriting and organizing campaign structure. The Knowledge Center will also archive past versions of the industry newsletter in case you missed my blog post about the first one.

In a section called “Product Solutions”, you will find a link to a Local Business center help topic explaining how to create a business listing to show up on Google Maps. I explained why this is valuable last week.

“So you can get our website name, our dot com, right?”

Who is Donny Flinnich?

“Donnnnnny! How do you know Donny!?”

Donny owns your dot com.

“Really! Hah! Oh boy, I will have to give Donny a call! Donny is the fucking man. He used to work here and know all the Internet stuff, you know. He is a real good friend of the family and the business, but it has been some time since I have heard from him.”

 Glad I could help.