Hewlett Volkswagen

Background: A Ripe Market

Like the rest of the state, Georgetown, Texas, is truck country. But Georgetown is just north of Austin and not far from Dell’s headquarters in Round Rock – and therefore part of the most Internet-connected metropolitan area in the nation. Opening Hewlett VW in Georgetown in 2000 showed a great sense of timing and location: the tech-savvy population is hungry for VW’s stylish models. And, like typical VW customers, residents are primed for using the Internet to shop for cars.

Challenge 1: Simply Capitalizing

However, when Russell Blackstone, now Hewlett’s Sales Manager, arrived in 2002, the Internet department was struggling to tap the area’s potential. “Our process was primitive, our website wasn’t optimized … we simply didn’t understand Internet sales, and we were leaving a lot of money on the table,” he explained. Blackstone’s previous career in direct mail marketing and political campaigns, where he gained extensive experience working with customer and voter databases, made him the right guy to turn things around. Nonetheless, he was only one person, and there were only so many hours in the day.

Challenge 2: Too Little Time, Too Little Technical Expertise

Working hard – and smart - Blackstone did turn things around, re-building the Internet department and blending it with the dealership’s overall sales process in a way that improved both. Still, he felt there was much more to do. One enormous issue was the website. “I knew that keeping the website tuned and updated was important. But managing leads and appointments took up most of my time, and I hesitated to tackle all but the most basic changes,” he said.

Solution: ProCare

Blackstone had long resisted signing up for ProCare, Cobalt’s proactive website support service: he didn’t want to pay for something he felt should be part of the website package. But he finally bit the bullet in early 2006 – and everything changed, including his opinion.

“It’s true, I was skeptical. But now, when I consider how much ProCare does for us, and how quickly, I wish I had signed up a lot earlier,” said Blackstone.

Result: “It’s Like Having an In-House Website Expert”

Hewlett VW benefits from ProCare in many ways, according to Blackstone. Before ProCare, Hewlett got little mileage from its Web Specials page. Now, with ProCare’s help, the page is always updated, accurate, and a big driver of website traffic. “ProCare’s help here has been instrumental in reducing our inventory of harder-to-sell vehicles,” explained Blackstone. “With gas prices through the roof, we found ourselves with enough Touareg inventory (VW’s SUV) to last us 270 days. Nationwide, the VW dealer average is 180 days. We cut ours to 45 days in two months.”

One of Blackstone’s achievements when he first joined Hewlett was improving the website’s search engine rankings: it was already #1 on Google for most major keywords when the dealership became a ProCare customer. But even here ProCare has made a big contribution. “We already knew a lot about search engine optimization” he noted. “ProCare helped us take it to the next level. They identified and fixed a number of issues that hurt our placement on other search engines and limited our traffic.”

Before signing up, Blackstone thought of ProCare as technical support. Now he has a very different view: “ProCare goes way beyond support – it’s like having an in-house website expert. When I call for help with a specific problem, they often find a better solution.” He continued: “The accountability, level of service, and follow-through all have been tremendous. Now I’m free to strategize about larger Internet marketing and sales issues without getting bogged down working on the website.”