GOSO Founder Adam Boalt met Eric Miltsch, Internet Director at Auction Direct USA, at the Automotive Social Media Summit in June and was blown away by many of his innovations in both the social media and automotive spaces.

Miltsch has been the Internet Director for just over three years. In this role he’s been a strong advocate for social media. Speaking from experience, introducing social media into the automotive industry is sometimes an uphill battle, but Miltsch has done some great things to prove social media’s relevance in the industry.

“From day 1, Auction Direct USA set out to create the most unique car shopping experience. We provide our guests with everything needed to ensure they drive away knowing they received the very best deal possible on their used car purchase,” Miltsch said.

He credits this philosophy and a strong honest presence with the success of their social media endeavors.

“Trust plays such a key role in our ability to connect with our customers both online and offline,” Miltsch continued.

Miltsch’s idea* that really stood out was the Auction Direct USA store in the Eastview Mall in New York. The innovation comes from the fact that Miltsch is selling cars from a store without any cars.

“The store was influenced by the open, engaging atmosphere of Apple’s retail locations. Customers can interact with our website and inventory via in-store touch screen kiosks, research workstations and even a touch screen store front window which creates a whole new meaning to “window shopping,” Miltsch said.

Sounds crazy right? Imagine going to a mall, not an auto mall, but an actual mall, with a car store, but again, there are no cars.

“The store gives shoppers more control as it creates a customized experience that matches their own style. The increased exposure to mall traffic lets us share our story with a larger portion of buyers at various points within the buying process,” Miltsch said.

It’s an impressive move that is paying off well for Auction Direct USA and Miltsch. I for one am looking forward to his next idea, which he assures me will be pretty exciting.

*CORRECTION: I misattributed the idea for the Eastview Mall store to Eric Miltsch, but as Miltsch noted in the comments the idea was actually that of the CEO & COO – John Iannone & Todd Hoagey.

We came across a blog today about an auto mall in Istanbul. The planned project will make it the largest auto dealership in the world. It’s called Autopia Europia. It’s two million square feet which will include 200 auto dealerships and most impressive of all is the test track on the roof. Check out the video below.

I just recently visited South Florida on business to meet with two automotive groups and educate them about using GOSO.  After a long day on the road discussing customer acquisition and retention strategies, I went up to visit my mother in West Palm Beach, FL.  To my surprise, the first thing she asked me to do was to help her buy a new car.  The first thing I asked her was, why don’t you trade your existing car in for a new one at the same dealership? (she was leasing a small luxury SUV)  She said that the dealership was rude and they said she was going to have to purchase two new tires before she returned the car on her 3 year lease.  All I could think about was how the dealership lost a sale over two tires and how easy it would have been to get her into the dealership to buy a new car.   The sale was lost and there was nothing I could do.

So we researched some new cars online and she decided that she thought that some of the new sporty wagons had more room than the small SUV’s.  After checking out a couple of different models, she made up her mind and we headed out to the dealership.  I try my hardest to be unbias in these situations since dealerships are my clients and I want to see them do well but they were so unorganized.  We waited at least 30 minutes before my mom impatiently said, let’s leave.  I told her that we had to give them the benefit of the doubt and to please be patient.

Somebody finally came over and helped out my mom.  Her credit score is just under 800, she wanted to put down $10k and finance the rest – basically A+ buyer.  She didn’t negotiate the price at all, she just didn’t want to deal with the old dealership and said, “as long as you return my old car to the other dealership and I don’t have to deal with them, I’ll be happy.”  It made me so disappointed to think that all my mom wanted was good customer service and nothing else from her old dealership.

As it turns out, we told the dealership to prepare all the paperwork and said we would pick up the car the next day.  When I got home that night, I checked out DealerRater.com, Yelp.com and a few other review websites and her new dealership had several negative reviews.  When I returned to the dealership the next day, I asked to speak with the sales manager.  I explained to him what I did and told him I wasn’t going to sell him anything, since this was his day to sell my mom.  (I know I could have used the opportunity to turn around and sell him GOSO, but I was more interested to see whether he would take my advice.)

In our conversation, I told him how excited my mom was about her new car.  I also showed him all the negative reviews about his dealership.  I explained that it was imperative to capitalize on my mom’s positive experience and make sure that she shared it online as well as with her friends.  I left it with him to initiate this free advice and in return I would show my mom how to post positive reviews online if he followed up with his promise.

Regretfully, there was no follow up.  I couldn’t believe it.  I emailed him and told him that he should use this positive experience to his advantage and he never responded.  My mom plays bridge with a pretty affluent group, he could have easily sold all her bridge friends a new car, but now he won’t.

The Harvard Business Review recently stated that “because companies can now interact directly with customers, they must radically reorganize to put
cultivating relationships ahead of building brands.”  No doubt.  “Companies have powerful technologies for understanding and interacting with customers, yet most still depend on mass media marketing to drive impersonal transactions.  To compete, companies must shift from pushing individual products to building long-term customer relationships.”

These two dealerships need to change their focus on short-term acquisition to a longer thought out acquisition and retention strategy.  The same study also said that dealership’s should “shift the focus from product profitability to customer profitability, as measured by metrics such as customer lifetime value and customer equity.”  I couldn’t agree anymore.

In the end, my mom is very happy to be driving her new car and sadly to say, two dealerships lost an opportunity to capitalize on her joy.

Businesses of all kinds utilize Twitter to update and engage followers. Now, Twitter is working on a feature that will make business tweets even more relevant. The new feature, “contributors,” is in the BETA test phase. It will allow multiple contributors from one account. As @Anamitra, a Twitter product team member says, this will make business to consumer tweets more personal.

What does this mean for a dealer?

If a dealership asks an employee to tweet on its behalf, that employee will be included in the tweet byline. So, employees can address tweets in their specific field.

The contributor feature is on of many in development for businesses at Twitter. Twitter is looking for feedback from a subset of users right now, but a full launch is expected.

We are happy to announce that our entry into the IMA competition, for the GOSO Website (entered November 06, 2009), under the category ‘Automobile’, has won the IMA Best in Class Award with an overall score of 492 of 500.

The Best in Class award is the highest honor bestowed by the Interactive Media Awards. It represents the very best in planning, execution and overall professionalism. In order to win this award level, your site had to successfully pass through our comprehensive judging process, achieving very high marks in each of our judging criteria – an achievement only a fraction of sites in the IMA competition earn each year.

The GOSO team is excited to begin our second round of the GOSO BETA program. The participants were reviewed based on interest and have been finalized; GOSO will bring on about 80 new dealers.

As we are in the first stages of the BETA program, dealers have received a mutual non-disclosure agreement. After the agreement is signed and returned, we will move on to the process of creating and designing social media accounts for our clients.

We would like to welcome our new group of participants to GOSO, we are looking forward to a successful program. Although we are not actively looking to add candidates, interested dealers can contact Liz Presson- Liz (at) goso (dot) com for third round BETA group consideration.

We’ve been hard at work for over a year developing this product and we’re very excited about the launch of GOSO today.  The automotive industry has been very closed for a long time and we’re going to change that starting now.

We plan on making it possible for any web designer, developer or agency to be able to build websites for dealers using our API.  We also plan on educating dealers on social media best practices while making social networking easy, fun and a huge revenue source.

Lastly, I want to thank everyone on my team that made this possible including Sichon Domrongchai, Daniel Beck, Tim Fox, Ryan Riley, Liz Presson, Daniel Dawley and Herb Pinder.  I also want to thank my great friend, client and colleague, Shawn Burst, for opening my eyes to an industry that needed much disruption.

So, I now present to you, the feature that most of you have continued to ask me about – the Social Dropbox and Communicate section. Cheers,

We’re here for you– GOSO has added an online help desk. So, no matter what your question is, the answer is only a click away. You can submit a request or select from our “Help & Support” forums and we will respond in one business day.

GOSO is proud to announce its partnership with Carfax, the most trusted provider of vehicle history information. GOSO will exhibit Carfax vehicle history information as a free, value-added feature to consumers.

GOSO currently has various partners that provide information via vin decoding, attributes and safety ratings. The partnership with Carfax will further enhance content-rich landing pages with Carfax positive highlights such as: ownership count, which helps dealers highlight their one-owner vehicles, no accidents, no frame/structural damage, no odometer rollback, no manufacturer recalls, and, if applicable, information on the Carfax buyback guarantee.  In addition, a full vehicle history report link will also be available for consumers searching a Carfax subscribing dealer.

Take a look at our demo! We’ve been hard at work and will release more information in the weeks to come.