Why “Just Do It” Is A Waste Of Time

In this high tech age, there are numerous tasks that an Internet or eCommerce Director has to tackle in order to correctly market their dealership and its inventory. In the past, you were doing a great job if you were writing custom detailed vehicle descriptions and taking multiple photos of your pre-owned vehicles. You were a superstar if you were also doing these things for your new vehicles. Then video entered the picture. Some dealers embraced video and used data feeds to syndicate video, vehicle descriptions and photos to their website and other third-party sites. Forward thinkers also uploaded the videos with proper tags and descriptions to YouTube.

 

However, with the fast pace of advancing technology, the number of consumer touch-points keeps growing and it has become an almost overwhelming task to keep up and still try to sell cars.

 

But one thing hasn’t changed, the key to a successful marketing strategy is getting the right content, in front of the right shopper, on the right touch-point, and at the right time of the buying cycle. The more exposure you get for your content, the more impact that content is going to have on your sales. Content that’s not seen is worthless.

 

I remember a story from not too long ago about one of the largest volume dealers in the world. This dealer was manually uploading their inventory to their website and every third party website for over 10 stores – one by one – daily. They chose to pay someone $100+ per DAY, rather than use automation and data distribution technology to accomplish the same task at a cost of just $150 per MONTH.

 

I’m starting to see a lot of this same mentality today with video.  Many dealerships have gone out and purchased some great video production tools, and are doing a great job producing some very good video content.  They are then manually uploading their content to YouTube and manually embedding links on as many touch-points as they have the time and ability to do so (not all touch-points allow a manual upload).  They would rather invest hours of their time to manually place their content on fewer touch-points, than use automation and data distribution technology to accomplish the same task (with more touch-points) for just a couple hundred dollars a month.  

 

I believe that many dealers, managers and Internet directors understand the importance of having their dealership and inventory positioned properly and in as many places online as possible. The problem I see is two-fold: They either don’t understand that technology exists that could transform their Internet marketing and sales without putting an undue burden on their staff. Or they don’t believe that the investment in this technology will produce results.

 

I can guarantee you this. If you’re simply doing it for the sake of doing it, you’re wasting your time. If nobody sees the content you create, it might as well not exist. The fact is video is “content,” just like any of the other “content” that you utilize to market your dealership and inventory.  You don’t spend your day manually cutting and pasting your other content on multiple touch-points all day long -- manually uploading photos, and manually writing vehicle descriptions over and over.  Why on earth would you try to manually manage your video syndication when producing the content can be time consuming enough. 

 

If you focus your efforts on ensuring that you have great video content, and then utilize technology to get that content on as many of the sites consumers view in the car buying process as possible, then you will be significantly more likely to have the right content, on the right touch-point, in front of the right consumer, at the right time of the buying cycle. This is the only thing that’s going to engage more shoppers and increase sales.

 

Nike’s old slogan of “Just Do It” needs to be revised when applied to successful marketing strategies today to “Just Do It Right.”

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Comment by steven chessin on December 10, 2014 at 3:01pm

Tim

As you know  ... video is not one thing. It is production - pre-production - post production - posting - hosting - distribution / syndication - optimizing.  So I have to laugh when you say, If you focus your efforts on ensuring that you have great video content". But OK, let's accept that premise.

The video content data distribution syndication marketing issue you have raised  ---- is a work-flow issue   - that would only be understood by those that do this work   -- which is very few. Different sites accept different end-point data - specifically - dealer site - autotrader - cars.com, ebay, youtube, craigs, and others. They might take a url link, code, a total inventory feed, video limited to 3 minutes etc. So  ---  it used to require a manual effort to translate live video   - or you had to accept the automatic generated photo-stitched quasi-video crap. Take your pick of either time consuming and expensive HR for properly produced video THAT WORKS  but needs manual distribution or junk stitched photo automated. 

Flawed distribution of proper video or automated distribution of flawed video. Which bad solution do you prefer ?   Contributing to this syndication problem is the incorrect work-flow process by the "people we already have that do this for us" --- using Youtube hosting as the source point rather than the end point. This is the very definition of  "ass-backwards"  to use the end for the beginning. It works - but - is not the right way.

* I would still manually use Youtube as secondary hosting at least until I am sure all of the ultra strong Youtube optimization was being equaled by any alternative automated primary hosting source sending to Youtube. In the past vendors have promised me this and fell short when the performance evaluated.    

This WAS the problem without a proper primary video content host / distributor platform. Not Youtube,  unless the budget is zero because that isn't the "professional" solution. And yes ... I have had debates over this  ... where higher level management out-ranked my opinion  ... as I am only the schlemiel that has to actually waste my time doing it wrong for a hundred dollars a day when a software program can do it for me   --- so that I have the time to do what no software can do right   --- creating the human-based content - because "people buy cars from people".   

Tim - It is not about eliminating that guy - because "that guy is me"  --- it is about eliminating his  DRUDGERY  because he has more important work to do than data-distribution !  

The only way to fix this retarded manual distribution syndication problem  - is to fix the SOURCE first. Video has to come from the right place - in the right format - before sending it to the "touch-points".

But Tim   ... where could I ever find such a platform that can provide the hosting of the content  -  and distribute it in the proper format  - where I can modify vehicle audio   - or video and audio ?  It would be great if so much of my wasted time doing this manually could be saved for actual production and editing of more cars  --- the part of the work-flow that cannot be automated with computer-generated photo stitching or even nicely pre-produced new car marketing videos   ---  where ONLY actual live-human video will sell the car properly.  Hmmmm ?  If only  ........

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