At the end of March Sprint Nextel named Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, as its new advertising agency as the mobile giant looks to reinvigorate subscriber sales and its slumbering stock. Not long after that on May 10th Mark Schweitzer, who led the marketing efforts of Sprint Corp. as it merged with Nextel, left the company.

It is not known if the new ad campaigns that lead with “LAND MOBILE REPLACEMENT SOLUTIONS” were part of Schweitzer’s plans before he left. Regardless, these campaigns signal that Nextel has blatantly signaled it’s intentions to go after LMR customers.

The campaign being run currently is a 2 page spread with a Motorola HT1250LS on one page and an i560 on the other both sitting atop power meters. The meter for the HT1250LS shows no power while the meter for the i560 is at the maximum level. The tag line above the i560 reads: “Sprint vs. LMR (We thought we’d put it in terms you could relate to.)”

If there was ever a time for the LMR Industry to stand up to Nextel’s current bashing campaign this is it.

To see one of these campaigns, reference the July issue of Mission Critical on pages 28 and 29.

Four great reasons to attend Enterprise Wireless 2007

1. Annual USMSS all-member meeting will be held on Thursday, October 25th
2. New this year – the “Invite your best customer” promotion – bring your enterprise customers & they get free access to all exhibits with an invitation from a USMSS member
3. Motorola Training Day – October 24th from 11:30AM-8PM, with an exclusive presentation on how you can protect customer records and your network security from William C. Boni, Corporate Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer for Motorola Information Protection Services. Also, updates on MSS Tiering, ETA certification, new product introductions and more. Only $50 registration includes lunch and cocktail reception. 
4. San Antonio in October! With average temps of 70-80 and a lot to see and do, bring the family and stay for the weekend.  Visit http://www.sanantoniocvb.com/ to plan your trip. 

Find out about the Special Dealer-Only Training Event on Wednesday, October 24th

View 2007 program details.

Spectrum Sale May Open Market
FCC Rules Could Be Boon for Technology Companies; Loosening Telecom's Grip

Last week the Wall Street Journal reported that a coming government auction of valuable radio spectrum could hand Google Inc. and other technology companies their first significant victory in a battle to loosen the grip held by telecom operators on the wireless and broadband markets.

Federal Communications Commission draft rules would set aside part of the available spectrum for creation of an "open" network free of the constraints that large telecom operators like AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. normally impose. The spectrum being auctioned is estimated to bring in $15 billion to the Treasury. The new open-access rules would apply to a slice that is big enough to create a nationwide network.

Google, a satellite-TV provider, or another new entrant could now be enticed to bid in the auction and enter the wireless market as a competitor to the large carriers. In a number of filings at the agency and in a letter late Monday, Google has argued that some spectrum should be set aside for an open network. EBay Inc.'s Skype has also weighed in with filings to back such rules.

Though Google has considered the idea of buying spectrum and outsourcing the building and operation of the network to a third party, according to one person familiar with the company's thinking, it remains unclear whether Google is ready to spend billions to build and operate a new wireless network. Another person familiar with the matter said that a direct bid by Google for spectrum is very unlikely at this point, because the Internet company views such a move as outside its core activities.

Google, Skype and others in the high-tech industry say large telecom firms stifle innovation by controlling which mobile devices, software and services subscribers can use and "locking" phones to a particular carrier. For example, AT&T has exclusive carriage of Apple Inc.'s iPhone. Those Internet companies have had difficulty bringing services such as free Web calling to the mobile-phone market, while handset makers like Nokia Corp. have had trouble bringing popular European phones to the U.S., where the telecom operators control what phones are used on their networks.

The telecom carriers say the draft rules for the auction are unnecessary and have been engineered to fit Google's business model -- and to scare off Verizon and AT&T from bidding for that slice of spectrum.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said in an interview that the draft rules would spur innovation by handset makers and other technology companies bringing out mobile phone products and services. He cited as an example Wi-Fi capable cellphones that have been slow to roll out in the U.S. "I think consumers would dramatically benefit from that kind of capability," he said.

Wall Street Journal
July 11, 2007; Page A2
By AMOL SHARMA and COREY BOLES

How many “Hits” a month does your
dealerships website get?

Just focusing on “hits” doesn’t tell you really anything and more importantly can’t help you improve website leads and sales either. When you analyze your website’s traffic reports benchmarks and metrics to focus on are average number of visitors per day and month, unique number of visitors per day and month, top pages, search strings, conversion rates, most active crawlers, keyword conversion,….all above and beyond just “Hits’.

But just for apples for apples comparison….log into your website’s Traffic Report. Be sure to set the parameters for one month (i.e. Start 5/01/2007 and End 5/31/2007). If you see that it’s around 300 to 400 Total Hits for an entire month be aware that we have clients that get that many hits in just one hour!

If your website is not getting literally thousands of hits per month you are wasting your time and money. We have dealers getting hundreds of thousands of “Hits” a month. Recently we compared one of our client’s websites against another website they have from one of our competitors. The Opt-In Wireless website generated 686 times more “Hits” than our competitor’s website. That’s not a typo – six hundred and eighty six times the number of “Hits”.

No Website Traffic = No Leads = No Sales 

Look beyond just “Hits”.

Search (organic or paid) is responsible for getting people to the front door. In fact 80% to 90% off all the traffic to your website comes from the search engines. If your website’s traffic report does not show data on which top search engine keywords which lead to sales and which are garbage then how can you plan for effective SEO and PPC keyword targeting and tracking? You simply can’t. Without detailed traffic reports, it’s like flying blind and the success of your website will be very limited at best.

Website Traffic Reports

With Opt-In Wireless, once your website is up and running, you'll want to understand how many people are visiting your dealership’s website, how they are finding your site, what pages they are viewing on your site, and more. This information will enable you to make strategic decisions about the content, design and marketing of your site.

All Opt-In Wireless websites, that we host, include a reporting and analysis website traffic reports to enable you to get an in-depth view of your online leads and sales progress.

The sole purpose of marketing is to get more people to buy more of your product or service, more often, for more money. That’s the only reason to spend a single nickel on it. In other words, marketing has got to work harder than ever.

And if it’s not working, kill it. Period.

Think of your dealership’s website as a sales rep. How long do you keep paying a DSR that isn’t generating leads and sales on a consistent basis? A few months? Definitely not years and you certainly would not give them a raise for poor performance would you?
 
Get the website your dealership needs that will provide leads and sales, contact us for more information.