On a mild 60-degree day, the temperature inside of a vehicle can rise 19 degrees in a matter of just 10 minutes. The temperatures will continue to rise and can become a very dangerous climate for children.
According to safekids.org, since 1998, more than 740 children have died from heatstroke while unattended in hot cars.
Gary Karton of safekids.org took to the streets of Washington, D.C., alongside a black SUV and asked pedestrians how hot they thought the car was inside. It was about 85 degrees outside, and as each pedestrian guessed the temperature, they were off by at least 20 degrees.
The temperature inside the black SUV rose to 141 degrees within the time Karton finished talking to as many pedestrians as he could.
Life can be busy and hectic but never too busy to leave you child unattended inside a hot vehicle- not even for 5 minutes.
Dealers Challenged with Google “Questions & Answers”
George Nenni, Generations Digital
While setting up some new dealer marketing audits, I noticed a growing trend that will only become a bigger challenge for dealers. Introduced in August of 2017, Google’s “Questions & Answers” can be a helpful opportunity for dealers, but in many cases ends up being a runaway detractor on a dealer’s Google My Business Page.
What is Questions & Answers? It is an above-the-fold, consumer-facing function similar to the Q&A feature on Amazon, Trip Advisor and others, that allows anyone to pose questions and answers about the business. Questions & Answers lives on the dealer’s Google My Business page and is visible every time a shopper searches on Google for the dealership’s name. If dealers are monitoring this page, they can answer the questions, but most dealers don’t monitor and leave the asking and answering to online consumers. Ideally the questions would be helpful ones that a shopper might really have, but for many of the dealers I reviewed, they were simply online reviews or worse, opportunities for shoppers (or rogue competitors) to bash the dealership.
While dealers and other businesses spend tens of thousands of dollars monthly on managed SEO, paid search, they are not paying enough attention to their Google My Business page, and Questions & Answers creates another compelling reason to start paying attention. In searching for examples for this article, I looked on Google Maps in a number of large metros, for a number of large brands. I found it very difficult to find a dealer who did NOT have one or more Questions & Answers. A survey by Get Five Stars showed that 35% of dealers on Google Maps have questions, I think this number is far understated.
Here are a few of the examples I found of runaway Google Questions & Answers for dealers. You can see in some cases it is someone bashing the store, but in other cases they are missed sales opportunities:
In the example below, if the question and answer has been “liked” by anyone, it appears directly on the dealer’s Google My Business page, making it even more damaging.
On a positive note, here is a great example from Davis Chevrolet in Houston Texas, who monitors Questions & Answers, and turned this into a sales opportunity:
Unfortunately, unlike Google Reviews, the alerting system for Q&A is nearly non-existent for the business owner. Supposedly, if you have an Android phone, logged into your Google My Business account, it will send you the alert. Ironically, consumers are notified automatically. Any consumer who has in the past left you a review on Google, will be prompted to answer a new question that was posed by another consumer on your Google My Business page. The good news is that there is a flagging system in case the dealership sees any inappropriate content posted. The dealer can simply notify Google to review and remove as it violates their guidelines: http://bit.ly/FlagQA
My advice for dealers and other businesses? Embrace the change. Just like when online reviews began appearing many years ago, you can’t fight transparency. Instead you should monitor Questions & Answers the same way you monitor your online reviews, answer the questions professionally, and quickly flag inappropriate ones.
I hope you have found this article helpful. If you are an automotive retailer, I would love to help you with a complimentary digital marketing audit, including analyzing your paid search and social media spending. I can help you improve your return on ad spend and gain more transparency with your digital marketing investments. Details here: generationsdigital.com
CPR Saves the Day for Cincinnati Family on Vacation
A sudden cardiac arrest can happen at any time, anywhere. When it does, having someone on hand to administer CPR can make all the difference. One Cincinnati family experienced this firsthand when 12-year old Jalen Ventus was on vacation in Disney World. Jalen went underwater and didn’t come back up. Thankfully, his 22-year old brother rescued him and administered CPR. Jalen was then flown to a nearby hospital to be further treated.
While he is still recovering from the incident, his story highlights how crucial CPR can be to saving someone’s life. No one can predict when sudden cardiac arrest can happen—and if you are trained and there to administer CPR, you could save a life. Combined use of CPR and AED within minutes of cardiac arrest can increase a victim’s chance of survival by up to 80 percent. Approximately 95 percent of sudden cardiac arrest victims die before reaching the hospital.
As part of our commitment to public safety, GCADA celebrates National CPR and AED Awareness Week every year during the first week of June by producing a Public Service Announcement to encourage members of our community to receive training. Cincinnati are dealers also donate CPR and AED training equipment to local nonprofits who provide this lifesaving training in the community—to date they have donated over $30,000 worth of equipment to fire stations, hospitals, schools, and more.
If it weren’t for his brother’s heroic actions, Jalen Ventus may not be here today. Being trained in CPR is one of the most important things you can do. You never know if whose life you could save!
Senior Promise 2018
In this day in age, the amount of distractions one can encounter while driving are endless. From texting and driving, loud music, difficult driving conditions and impaired driving; all of these can lead to fatal car accidents.
While some of these distractions are outside of our control, driving impaired is not one of them.
Decreasing the amount of death and injuries of our teen drivers requires action on the national and local platforms. National Foundation for Teen Safe Driving has created a program exclusively for retail auto dealers designed to raise awareness and educate teens, parents and others on ways to develop good driving skills and make smart choices that will help save lives.
NFTSD works alongside dealers to provide support and knowledge to help create a successful program that impacts the community the dealerships are located in.
Dealerships can host teen/parent workshops to raise awareness and educate teens and parents on the importance of responsible driving.
These workshops address topics like, educating parents on the importance of staying involved with their teen driver, being a role model, the importance of seat belts and the effects of impaired or drowsy driving.
NFTSD has a campaign every year called the “Senior Promise’, this initiative is to educate teens on the importance of responsible driving in such an exciting time of their lives.
This time of the year is one of the deadliest times for teens. Seven of the top 10 deadliest driving days occurring between Memorial Day and Labor Day. According to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration statistics, nationwide, 48 teenagers die and another 5,202 are injured in car crashes on a typical prom weekend. For the past several years during prom weekend, approximately 300 teens have died in alcohol-related crashes.
Safety is a shared responsibility that starts with your smart choices and safe driving. Make a promise today and do your part to make this a safe, exciting and memorable time for the graduating class of 2018!
Accessory Myth: “Accessory sales will take away from parts sales.”
Most dealerships today aren’t actively selling accessories; customers typically approach the parts department at their own discretion. So when I bring up actively selling accessories during the vehicle sale, the inevitable response from many parts managers is, “accessory sales will take profit away from my parts department.”
This brings us to accessory myth number four.
Parts managers say they are concerned that by actively promoting accessories during a vehicle sale and by adding the sales department into the mix, the commission for the sales reps will cut into their profits.
While this is technically correct—the sales team would earn a percentage of the accessory sales profit—the parts department and the dealership as a whole stand to gain more profit opportunities from a more active accessory-selling strategy.
An increase in sales will cover the difference from splitting profits.
Today, dealerships that don’t actively offer accessories to customers during a vehicle sale are earning only a few thousand dollars a month in accessory sales. Even if 100 percent of that money stays in parts, the department is hardly making a significant profit.
However, if a dealership actively promotes accessories, parts departments could earn a percentage of a much larger sum.
The 2018 Auto Accessories Trend Report looked at 150 dealerships across the country that have adopted new technology to sell accessories. These dealers reported a combined $59 million in accessory sales, with $197 in accessory profit from each unit sold. At these dealerships, even with parts only seeing a percentage of that money, the departments involved earned much more than they did previously.
Customers may come directly to the parts department anyway.
While sales may initially present accessories to customers as they are finishing their vehicle purchase, buyers might not jump on the opportunity right away. Some may wait to gauge what accessories they need, while others might not believe they have the finances to add accessories at the time of purchase.
Should those customers decide later to buy accessories, they very likely may head straight to the parts department, instead of to another retailer. This is a win-win for the parts department. They have a chance to sell accessories to a customer who might not have considered buying accessories at the dealership until they were shown the possibilities during the initial vehicle purchase. They also capture those profits for the department.
While concerns over lost profits in the parts department are understandable, the numbers show accessories can bring additional money into the dealership—provided dealers actively promote them. No matter where the sale originates, the entire dealership benefits from this more proactive accessory sale mindset.
Stay tuned for the next Accessory Myth article in an upcoming edition of Fuel.
Originally appeared in the Fuel eNewsletter, published by Reynolds and Reynolds. (http://fuel.reyrey.com/)
April is National Donate Life Month- Make Sure You’re Registered!
In their first four home games, the Cincinnati Reds drew over 100,000 attendees to Great American Ball Park. Those are great crowds, but still not as many people as the number of patients on the national transplant waiting list! Over 115,000 men, women and children await lifesaving organ transplants.
April is National Donate Life Month and we are doing our part to encourage everyone in the Greater Cincinnati area to become an organ donor.
Becoming an organ donor is simple—registering will take you less than a minute! You can register your decision to be an organ, eye and tissue donor at RegisterMe.org or in the Medical ID tab of the iPhone Health App. Along with the online options, you can visit your local BMW and check a box saying “yes” I’d like to become an organ donor.
If you’re not medically available to become an organ donor, there are other ways to support this effort. Every National Donate Life Month there is a “Blue and Green Day” which will be held on Friday, April 13. On this day, our downtown BMW employees will be wearing Blue and Green and you should join in helping us show our support and raise awareness about registering to be an organ donor. Even if you’re not able to become an organ donor, you can still support the courageous men and women who are fighting for their lives on the waiting list.
Last month 58.7% of Ohioans said “yes” to organ, eye and tissue donation. Let’s make that percentage even bigger this month!
22 people die every day waiting for a transplant because the need outweighs the availability. Sign up to be a donor today—one person’s donation can save or heal up to 75 lives!
