Aftermarket Not Using Technology At Hand for Marketing

Using electronic resources to boost marketing will be front and centre during the first day of the 2006 Aftermarket eForum on Monday, July 17.
And according to the moderator of this track session, Dan Jondron, president, Advanced Digital Strategies, “eMarketing is an area of marketing that most companies have underutilized.”
As a result, Jondron says “these companies have a substantial opportunity to increase ROI with relatively little effort and cost. Every dollar and every click can be tracked for on-the-fly optimization and proof of concept.”
Jondron estimates that only 5 to 6 percent of the companies in the aftermarket are fully utilizing the benefits of eMarketing. The eMarketing Track will include four breakout sessions, including: optimizing your website to achieve results, efficient use of pay per click advertising, effective website traffic building, and email marketing.
Jondron says initial eMarketing covers these four topics. “From my experience and from the experience of other eMarketers that I work with, including folks from Google and Yahoo, it is clear that these four steps provide extremely high ROI with traffic increases and increased conversion of hundreds of percentage points over a relatively short time from of 12 to 24 months.”
Jondron says in the eMarketing world conversion is defined as “getting a website user to complete a specified task that the website owner considers a ‘win’.” He says conversion can have different outcomes whether it is a business-to-business website or a consumer focused one.
For example, Jondron explains, a conversion for a retailer might be an outright sale of a product or service. For a manufacturer, a conversion might be a request to become a dealer or a look up of a local retailer or installer.
Kicking off the eMarketing track will be Luanne Brown, eTool Developers, who will share the keys for success to make sure your website is ready and open for business. Brown points out that although an aftermarket company will spend many hours developing other marketing efforts, the website is often the poor stepchild, developed by junior marketing people or even IT staff, and then management wonders why it isn’t effective.
Following Brown’s presentation, Lon Bollenbacher, Yahoo! Search Marketing, will provide attendees with a step-by-step formula for implementing and managing a successful pay per click campaign. Bollenbacher is a former employee of Ford.
The topic of search engine optimization and website traffic building will be addressed by Jondron. His session will include a simple spreadsheet tool that allows eMarketers to identify important, frequently used search terms, information about how to include these terms in their search engine optimization and pay per click efforts, and how to measure their ongoing success and ROI.
Finally, Tom Moore of Digital Performance, Inc. will help attendees understand how companies can experience a very high rate of return from the proper utilization of email marketing.
Jondron says those who attend the eMarketing track will walk away with plenty of handouts, resources and ‘take home and use it’ information to achieve success.
The 2006 Aftermarket eForum will be held July 17-19, at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare in Chicago, Ill. The early bird registration deadline closes on Friday, June 16. The early-bird registration fee for AAIA, AIA of Canada, AWDA, MEMA, and SEMA members is $695 and $895 for non-member firms.