2014 – Personalizing Automotive Marketing in a Digital Age with Team Velocity’s David Boice

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1:05With us right now, it's David Boyce. David, you are the co-founder and CEO at Team Velocity. Your website is teamvelocitymarketing.com. David, it's great to have you. Thank you. Appreciate being here. Yeah. Well, give us an overview of your work. It looks like you do a lot of work in the automotive space. So, very eager to kind of see how you've impacted that space or that industry and helped it to continue to evolve. Well, our organization focuses on the automotive industry, and we work with tier one automotive manufacturers, about 23 of them. And we also work with lots of individual car dealerships and car dealership groups, and primarily in the area of technology and advertising technology.

1:49So anything to help them sell and service more cars and help their customers complete frictionless type transactions is really what the business is all about. Yeah. Without you, what were they doing? Well, it's a very fragmented industry. So what we've done is created a customer experience platform so that as a customer, if you went to buy a car from a dealership this weekend, you would probably end up interfacing with 14 or 15 different independent applications. and you'd be saying to yourself, this doesn't seem connected. The price that was on the Google was different than the price that was on the web banner, which was different than the price when I went to actually buy the car, which was totally different than when I went in to the dealership.

2:32And it's almost like I started over. The experiences that consumers have are often disconnected. We built a platform from the initial engagement all the way to a final transaction that is right now considered best in class. And so we've made it, you know, we think seamless. We're always working to make it better, of course, but that's the real benefit of the platform is it's a fully integrated one. It takes about 14 or 18 different technologies and bundles them together. Yeah. Well, I would imagine, I mean, again, I remember the early days, you know, when, you know, it was almost like it was almost like this secret hookup that you could go to the website of a dealership and get prices that might be lower than what you would see at the dealership.

3:21And then it was always confusing for whoever the rep. It was. It was a lot of disunity from a consumer standpoint. And now I can't imagine, maybe I'm sure you know, what percentage of shoppers have done some online research versus, you know, just rolling in, you know, to the lot. Going to do some shopping around. It's 99 % at this point. It's a major purchase. People are scheduling service online, much less buying a car. So we try to get most of the work done online before the consumer arrives to the showroom and have this kind of Apple-like experience where you pick up where you left off online.

4:08That is what consumers really love and even expect today. But the ecosystem that's been developed from a technology perspective in our space has been really developed over 25 years. I mean, automotive is a big space. And so that's why it's so fragmented and siloed. So a company that came out 20 years ago that did one thing well and 10 years ago and someone at another company did something well, but none of them integrate. None of them talk to each other, but yet they're both customer facing. So it's something that we've worked hard on for a long time. We had a pretty big vision that we thought would hit And it was all around just improving the customer's experience.

4:48And if you look at the companies that have done that and done it well, some are famous, like in Amazon. But even companies like Tesla and Carvana and Driveway, Rivian, they're doing some great stuff in this area. And we believe that our clients can benefit from that. Yeah. I would imagine there are some pretty cool AI-enabled technology that you're working with or seeing that is even going to improve this beyond what we've been used to. What excites you about the future over the next year or two? Well, AI is right up there at the top. Just before this call, I was on with our development team, the head of that, and he was showing me how AI, we're releasing this next week, it creates videos on cars with voices that sound like you and I.

5:46And in fact, our voices, as you know, can be cloned instantly by AI and it's indistinguishable now. And these videos were just going out and grabbing data off of our websites and putting together a 30 second video that looked like it was professionally developed. It's incredible. So there's all kinds of things that we're excited about. AI is certainly up there. We're also coming out with a CRM application because it's one thing to bring the customer all the way to the showroom, but oftentimes you have to follow up with that customer, right? And make sure that everything is all the way tied out.

6:24So we've got some big plans to continue to build the platform out. AI is at the center of those plans, though, because we are learning more and more about it. We use it in some very good ways today, some very basic ways. But the future, I think in the next 12 to 18 months, it's going to be able to do, at least for our business, for our clients, much more. Yeah. Yeah. So what would be some examples of folks that you've worked with. Obviously, I'm on your website and I see every major car manufacturer here. Are you working specifically just on the dealership and retail and service side? Both. Our clients, the way our industry works is you end up becoming certified by an OEM.

7:09In other words, in order to work with Toyota dealers and provide certain application technology, Toyota certifies you. And so you have to pass through that wicket. And that makes this industry very interesting because it's a barrier to entry that many people can't pass. They don't have the size or the capital to, or can meet the Toyota's requirements, which are significant. So the old days, you just work directly with the car dealer. Those days are gone. The manufacturers now have inserted themselves, which I think is probably been a good thing for our industry. And sometimes you work directly with the manufacturer, and sometimes you get certified by the manufacturer, if that makes sense.

7:51Then you end up working with their retailers. What are the trends that you are seeing on the marketing side of things? Like what's working right now in marketing? And is there anything that might still be happening that you're thinking not as effective, not as much bang for the buck as it used to be in the past. Like what, where are the trends right now? We see the trend in personalization. That is being able to provide consumers personalized online experiences. I mean, come on, companies like Starbucks are amazing. They know the cup of coffee you want and where you're going to get it and how you're going to pay for it.

8:33They just personalize the experiences so well. And that's a cup of coffee, but Amazon does it. you know, on much larger purchases. And they make it easy and predictive. They know what the customer wants before we do. And so there's a, the concept is the same in the car business. Think about it. If I asked you four or five questions right now, what are you currently driving? How did you pay for it? Do you service at the dealership? How many miles are on it? Did you lease or finance? I would be able to just right off the bat, probably predict the next car that you're able, that you probably might likely buy.

9:07Especially if you said, I drive a Ford F-150 and I've had four of them. I mean, that's easy. But believe it or not, in the car business, predictive analytics have not been used very much. Everyone kind of starts over. And so what we've done is, what we see working very well is to take customers like yourself and welcome you with, hi, Josh, here's your current vehicle and all the information and its value. And here's some vehicles we picked out for you that we think you might like. It's not like Amazon, right? People who have this car often buy this car. So we're excited about personalization. We've worked very hard on that.

9:43The things that probably aren't working as well as they used to, like in the old days, I would say some of these, you know, display advertising at the car dealer level, it might be fine for branding for an OEM. But if you're a car dealer and you're really trying to actually, you know, do something that can generate a significant result. That's a tough one to tie out. Email, believe it or not, is becoming so full of spam. And the companies that are out there are controlling that more and more. So in the old days, car dealers would just blast all their customers. You probably know this if you just get, you know, 30 emails a month from a car dealer.

10:25It just doesn't make sense. And consumers really are, I just think are open. So those are some mediums that we used to use a lot, and I'd say now we're much more.

10:42Yeah, David, and I don't know if you can hear me. I think we froze for just a second. So while you're unfreezing here, let me ask you a question, and I don't know if you can hear me right now. but I'm curious what the discovery process is. Like if let's say that, you know, I don't know what size dealerships you're typically working with, but what might be going on in their life right now? And what do those initial conversations typically sound like? Well, every size dealership we work with because dealerships in general are pretty big companies, right? I mean, even small dealerships will have 60 employees or so.

11:25And so generally, the discovery process for us is very simple. It's how many companies do you work with today to sell one car? And they'll typically list the companies out. Well, we work with this company A, B, C, D, E. On average, it's between nine and 14. So 9 of 14 different type companies that do little type things and that they have to stitch that together. So our conversation is simple. Would you like for us to go ahead and integrate all 14 of those applications with similar or better technology into one platform that's easier for your customers to digest and easier for your people to use?

12:09It's as simple as that. If the answer to that is yes, we often then will be able to save them money. but more importantly, improve the experience of both their customers and their employees. That's the name of the game for what we do. Yeah. And tell me a bit about Velocity itself, kind of where you come from and who's part of the organization. Who are the people involved? It's a wonderful group of people. I have the best business partners. We've been working together for about 30 years. We started right out together. This is probably, I don't know, the 15th, 16th, 17th business we've owned. And so we've been very fortunate that the primary partners in the space have remained the same and are all dear friends and close.

12:59We also have a wonderful management team that's been with us in many of these companies. So it's a little bit like a band. And we just keep putting the band back together because we love to play music together. It just happens to be technology. And we've all grown up in the technology era. So it's been a lot of fun to participate in that. The company itself has got about 450 employees in the U.S. offices in the Washington, D.C. area. We just opened up one in El Paso that we're really excited about. And, you know, right at the moment, the majority of the employees, we still are in a mobile environment.

13:36We do have our offices open. And we are opening up a support office, as I mentioned, in El Paso. But, yeah, that's a little bit of a broader review of the company. Wow. Your website is teamvelocitymarketing.com. To our friend that's been listening now, or maybe they know someone that, you know, is in the automotive space and they forwarded this episode. Now they've listened. Where does someone go from here? Like if they're curious if they can make some improvements on the kind of the customer personalization side, you know, just deeper, more rich engagements that are going to translate to more revenue.

14:13Where do they go from here? It's easy. Just go to teamvelocitymarketing.com or just Google Team Velocity. We'll be there. And so we're pretty well known in the industry. And again, because we're certified by, I think, 23 manufacturers. So within our ecosystem, people know who we are. But to learn more, I think that website does a really good job. There's a whole host of people, of course. We do webinars. We have videos up there. We're also constantly doing private demos on the platform to those that are interested. So a whole host of ways to learn more about the company. But I'd start at our website.

14:50Yeah. TeamVelocityMarketing.com. It's been a great conversation. Again, David Boyce, founder and CEO, co-founder and CEO at Team Velocity. David, thank you so much for joining us. Josh, I appreciate the time. Have a great day.

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