Automotive Marketing

The vehicle history report scene just got a little more cheesey. When I see the words “vehicle history report”, I think of CARFAX. The Virginia based company has successfully created and branded this concept, and I doubt that it was hard to market a such a useful product.

Experian’s AutoCheck was a carbon copy, right down to the buy back guarantee, until today.

AutoCheck is launching an innovative new feature for the AutoCheck® service that all of our existing dealers begin to use on July 16th. This new feature is called the AutoCheck ScoreSM. The AutoCheck Score is a number between 1 and 100, and we also include the AutoCheck Score RangeSM that provides a benchmark of how similar age and class vehicles perform. This new feature helps dealers and their customers better interpret the data in AutoCheck report.

For those dealer customers that currently have AutoCheck report link for their on-line inventories, we are offering a new implementation mechanism to display AutoCheck Score on the vehicle detail page.

Attached are the instructions for the implementation of AutoCheck Score tile on vehicle detail page. See also a sample “vehicle detail page” that shows how the AutoCheck Score can look on your dealer’s Web sites, as well as all of the creative you need to get it implemented properly.

AkA AutoCheck’s latest effort to outbrand CARFAX. Create a free widget and expand your real estate on websites all over the web.

Click anywhere on AutoCheck’s section of your page and go to the AutoCheck report. AutoCheck ‘owns’ the AutoCheck Score tile, so who knows what else might start showing up as a feature. Widgets are a great marketing tool, and it is no secret. AutoCheck’s new car widget provides a snapshot of the history report that can be seen before the actual report, which draws more interest to their primary product. I like the simplified rating idea, but let us visit the contrast.

CARFAX is not interested in the idea of modifying their product. They disallow custom wording on dealer websites to the effect of “the full report is not available” and deliver only the report or their record check summary page.

Both ideas are interesting. I think CARFAX benefits from not changing.