I’ve been covering the Toyota recall story lately and our consumer blog at www.toyotarecall.org has some very interesting comments from consumers on the Q&A page.

I would recommend that you scan some of the comments because they show the fear, confusion and anger that is building across America.

What Toyota dealers should be doing this week in their local media is a topic for a coming post. In the meantime….

While I was searching the phrase “Toyota Recall” in Google I saw that Chrysler was using this surge in search traffic to tell their safety and quality story. See the screen shot below:

Obviously Chrysler is trying to leverage the search traffic to drive their brand message and to drive consumers to their website.

Do you think this is a good strategy for Chrysler to pursue? Share you thoughts.

chrysler adwords toyota recall, toyota recall

Arbogast Conversion Vanshas selected the Pasch Consulting Group to assist their online marketing efforts in 2010. Arbogast is a leader and specialist in conversion vans and Dave Arbogast was the first to be coined the “Van Man”.

The Arbogast conversion van facility in Troy Ohio has grown over the years to make them one of the largest conversion van dealers in the United States. Since they deliver new and used Conversion Vans across the United States,  we have to create a national digital marketing campaign to reach their customer base.

We will be displaying Arbogast banner ads on our new national ad network which will create an additional stream of high quality consumer leads. When our ad network is completed in 2010, we will have over 400 websites in the largest metropolitan area targeting car and van buyers.

All clients that have chosen Pasch Consulting Group for their digital marketing strategies will benefit from our new national advertising network.

Conversion Van Dealers

Dave Arbogast is proud to offer a huge selection of conversion vans by Explorer Van Company. Explorer Van Companyhas been the leader in van conversions since day one. Both Dave Arbogast and Explorer have been close partners since the van company was created in 1980. Dave Arbogast was nicknamed the “Van Man” due to his success as a conversion van dealer.

Explorer Conversion Vans are practical for everyday use, reasonably priced, and of the highest quality. You will find that conversion vans on average are price lower than most SUV’s! It is transportation and luxurious comfort at its best! And Explorer Conversion Vans are custom vans, so you will have no problem finding one the suits your every need and desire.

Arbogast has many brands and models of conversion vans in addition the the Explorer line, click here to view their online inventory:

Arbogast Conversion Vans

Dave Arbogast Conversion Vans
3540 South Co. Road. 25A
Troy, OH 45373

http://www.conversionvansale.com

Sales: 1.866.975.3287
Service: 937.335.0068
Parts: 937.335.0068

conversion van dealer, conversion vans

Kim Depalma, CEO of Novel Promotional Marketing sent us an interesting article from her industry organization which could be a big hit at upcoming trade shows.  According to Kim:

Blame it on the swine flu but according to “The Advertising Specialty Institute” hand sanitizers are now one of the most popular branded items that companies are giving away to clients and employees.

Searches of the key words “hand sanitizers” by promotional products distributors via the Advertising Specialty Institute’s promotional products database jumped 439% for the period between October 2009 and October 2008.

Only searches for pens – which for years have been the best-selling branded product in the promotional products industry – were higher that period. In addition, searches for sanitizer products of all kinds jumped by triple digits this year.

Novel Promotional Marketing

Novel Promotional Marketing has consistently been on the consumer trend by using hand sanitizers as a promotion for trade shows. The style shown below will be marketed at this years NADA conference in Orlando, FL.

I ordered this design from Kim for the Automotive Marketing Boot Camp which is being held the day before the official start of the NADA Convention.

To order your personalized hand sanitizers call Kim at 732-859-0426

best promotional marketing items, best trade show giveaways, promotional marketing ideas

The Pasch Consulting Group has created a 2010 Digital Marketing Survey targeted for employees, managers and owners of car dealerships.   The 11 questions will only take a few minutes to complete and the results will be published on this blog.  We are interested to see how marketing budgets will be changing in 2010 as well as the awareness of important marketing tools at the owner, manager and ISM level.

Make Your Voice Count - Click Here For Survey

The initial data has been flowing in and the initial results are jaw dropping.  So, if you work at car dealership, we invite you to participate in the study.

With the 2010 NADA Convention less than 40 days away, the survey data will surely be a highlight of attendees and vendors when the data is published.  The initial data suggests that there are many large opportunities in 2010 for car dealers and vendors supporting the industry.

The initial survey data also speaks to a growing digital divide in the current organizational structure of US car dealers.   We are confident that the survey data will yield a number of follow-up surveys and discussions in the year ahead.

Click to participate today:  Take 2010 Digital Marketing Survey

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I am on my fourth ecommerce website with Volusion and all was going well until I discovered that if there is a bug in the Volusion infrastructure, your support needs and a timely solution gets flushed down the toilet. 

The first three websites we referred and coordinated with Volusion were less complex. The Volusion creative and technical support team did well on these tasks.  This experience was completely the opposite and a strong warning to anyone with time sensitive or mission critical ecommerce websites.   If you don’t need to be functional and can stand a few weeks of downtime, then Volusion will suffice.

But if you have a complex project, find a bug in the Volusion system, or need to conduct sales every day you may be screwed. Case in point, we were ready to go live with a Honda car parts website three weeks ago when we found that their platform ”search” control did not work on a list of items in a category listing page. 

We submitted a ticket, and had placed follow-up calls and every time we got the same unacceptable answer.  The summary was “We have submitted a ticket to programming and we have not heard back from them.”  This is a great answer when your client is screaming in your ear and wants to go live!

Volusion Website Support

So I decided to create an escalation support ticket to describe that my client, who wanted to capture some of the December sales traffic, was getting impatient. I needed an ETA on when their bug would be fixed; I was clear on the urgency.    I explained that we had done our part and now were being held back by a bug in the Volusion base product. 

So the technical support representative told me to send an email to Raymond Black, which I did.  I attempted to convey the urgency of my case and that two weeks had gone by without a resolution.  Here is the response to my escalation email that asked for a date that the bug would be fixed so I could advise my client when we could go live:

Hello Brian,

I have not yet been provided with any updates from our development team on this issue. All bug reports submitted to the development team are subject to review and prioritized by the Project Manager. The Project Manager then assigns the bug to a developer and an estimated time frame is supplied to the Project Manager by the developer. As soon as any updates are posted to the bug report, I will be notified and can provide those updates to you. Until such time, all I can counsel is patience until the issue is updated.

If you have any further questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us. Thank you for choosing Volusion!

Tells us how we’re doing: http://customercare.volusion.com/review

Raymond Black
Volusion Support
800-646-3517

Pissed Clients

Try explaining to your customer that has spent thousands of dollars in data formatting and setup that we can’t go live becuase the ecommerce platform you recommended has bugs.  Then try to explain that for the past two weeks we have not been able to get a clear timeline for the problem to get fixed.

This is so bad I had to hold back my full emotions on this post.  It seems that Volusion is treating their own bug with shameless low prioritization.  I just don’t get it.

volusion, volusion bugs, volusion complaints, volusion ecommerce, volusion websites