ATLANTA -

In today’s digital automotive landscape where so many advertising avenues are available, it’s important for dealers to be able pinpoint the most effective mediums and channels for their advertising dollars.

This was one of the topics VinSolutions vice president and general manager Brian Skutta honed in on when talking with Auto Remarketing shortly after his company closed its acquisition of digital marketing services provider Haystak Marketing.

VinSolutions — which is part of the AutoTrader Group of companies — announced in early May it would be purchasing Haystak before finalizing the deal earlier this month.

One of the big goals for the acquisition, as detailed here, was “to help dealers maximize the value of their advertising spend.”

Given today’s ever increasing digital car sales environment, this becomes especially important, Skutta says.
 
“As the digital landscape unfolds, we’re seeing a lot of shopping behaviors across multiple websites, and what we really started to learn is that there are many varied paths to purchase, if you will, across valuation sites like Kelley Blue Book, across search engines like Google and Bing, and then again across classifieds sites like AutoTrader.com,” he told Auto Remarketing.

“And then there’s a whole unique set of search activity and shopping activity that goes on at a dealer’s website. What we’ve been able to do is start to put those pieces together by anonymously tracking what the behaviors are so that we can give our customers insight and know where to focus their dollars,” Skutta continued.

“I would say that it’s an emerging sort of perspective and I think it’s something that the industry is really going to focus on in the coming years and really be able to be more efficient with those ad dollars, which is really one of the promises of the digital age,” he added. “I think the big challenge is going to be simply that there is still quite a bit of activity that happens offline, so we cannot be too discreet in how we value things, but certainly there are some clear patterns and usages that will allow us to help our dealers be more efficient as we consult with them on how to allocate their advertising dollars.”

And that, he said, is part of how bringing Haystack into the fold can help benefit VinSolutions dealers.

To recap, Haystak’s digital marketing toolset will be integrated with VinSolutions customer relationship management and website products to help drive more consumer traffic to the websites of VinSolutions’ dealer customers. Haystak will also operate under its own brand, as well, and continue offering dealers digital products and services.

 It boils down to greater visibility with online listings

“At the core of Haystack is search-engine marketing, and ultimately, what we’re trying to do there is drive more consumer eyeballs to dealers’ websites,” Skutta said. “The way that complements VinSolutions is that we have a very robust website offering, and then what’s unique and something we think is going to be a really interesting proposition for us as we go forward is that our website is fully integrated into the CRM.

“Through a technology we call VinLens, we can give better attribution to advertising spend for our dealers. We can see that traffic originates through a certain medium, be it AutoTrader.com or Kelley Blue book or through a search-engine marketing query, and then we can actually track that activity on the website and tie it back into the behavior that led to the sale,” he continued..

“We’re able to do is give our dealers better perspectives on which advertising mediums are performing well for them, and then ultimately, give them better attribution of where to go spend their dollars,” Skutta added.

As far as the next step in the process, Skutta says VinSolutions wants to teach its customers about Haystack’s capabilities and help them figure out how they can utilize it.  Then, he said, it would be time to begin thinking about “what can we do next?”

Skutta touched on that a bit, sharing where he thinks things could be headed.

“I think the biggest thing would be incorporating search as a component of a broader campaign is one that comes to mind. And this could be done across all the assets of AutoTrader Group. Specifically, you might buy an ad package on AutoTrader.com. And in that ad package, you can highlight certain vehicles. And you can certain vehicles a level of prominence because they are a highly attractive model, they’re an aged model, you have a price reduction, whatever the case may be.

“We can now, through a turn-key solution, actually activate an SEM that goes along with that campaign that’s going on at AutoTrader.com or a potential campaign that’s going on at Kelley Blue Book.”

On the software side of the business at the AutoTrader Group, Skutta emphasized the prospects there, as well.

“Across those we have a lot of opportunities to create SEM-enabled activities related to CRM processes or related to pricing on a certain vehicle via vAuto,” he said.

Looking at all the group’s offerings, Skutta put it another way.

“The integration of them is really where I thinking the opportunities arise.”
 

Joe Overby can be reached at joverby@autoremarketing.com. Continue the conversation with Auto Remarketing on both LinkedIn and Twitter.