RefreshClassifieds

According to the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), the average number of unique monthly visitors (UMV’s) to newspaper websites grew by more than 3.6 million in 2007, making it a record year for the industry. The 2007 UMV figure is an increase of more than 6% over 2006 numbers.

Monthly unique visitors to newspaper websites averaged 62.8 million in Q4’ of 2007 and it was the largest quarter reported, since the NAA began tracking online usage in 2004.

Additional findings in the Nielsen Online report created for the NAA state that:

• Heading into the holiday season, newspaper websites experienced a record in October 2007. More than 63.2 million people visited newspaper websites that month, more than any month on record – and an 8% increase from the same period a year ago
• For the year’s fourth quarter, 39% of all active Web users visited newspaper websites, with visits averaging 44 minutes a month
• In the fourth quarter, users generated more than three billion page impressions on average, a 7.3% increase over the same period a year ago

Just this past weekend I accompanied my brother to the dealership to pick up his new car and having just bought a new car myself two years ago, I assumed it would be as uneventful now as it was then. Surprisingly, what I experienced this time was nothing like the last, as I ventured down the path of Dealership Nouveau (that’s what I like to call it). While sitting with my brothers sales rep, here are a few of the things I found positively interesting, hence my need to blog about them:

Great Idea #1

You may or may not know this, but dealerships make their greatest margin from the service side of the business, and then used car sales and lastly new car sales. Recognizing this, this dealership invited my brother to come back to a ‘how to care for your vehicle’ workshop, hosted by none other than the dealerships service team. What a neat way to get you to feel valued by the dealership. That evening will also give the customer a chance to get to know the service team. We all agree that once you meet someone and they feed you, your affinity to that person increases. The event in its entirety, between staff OT and food for the guests, will probably cost that dealership less than $200. (One customers Type B maintenance on their car will more than pay for that.)

Source: NADA

Great Idea #2

The other thing that impressed me about this dealership was that they offered free WiFi to their customers. No more feeling as if you are missing those important emails at the office, while waiting for your car to have its oil changed. And, if your laptop is not WiFi enabled, no worries, the dealership also has Ethernet cables that will get you online.

Aside from the car clinic and free WiFi, the dealership was clean, bright and nicely furnished. The sales people were friendly and attentive – while we were waiting for our sales rep, we must have had three people ask if they could get us anything in the meantime.

All of this to say that this is what a dealership should be like. Providing a positive customer experience breeds further referral traffic. If your publishing product services auto dealers, a great idea would be to hold a dealer-training session covering lead sources, customer retention and the customer experience. If training is difficult to do because of the geography of your dealers, then create a white paper that is circulated to your dealers. Perhaps it goes out with their invoices or is downloadable from your site. No matter how you deliver it, this value ad from you will show that you not only know the business of selling cars, but that you also care about your dealers (customers) business.