Small Business Stories - Autobytel

Ivy Hartman: Welcome to Sbtv.com's coverage of the 2008 SEMA show in Las Vegas. I am Ivy Hartman and with me is Elliot Darvick with Autobytel. Elliot welcome to Small Business Television. Elliot Darvick: Hey! Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Ivy Hartman: Absolutely. Okay, well, let's clarify, what is Autobytel for our viewers who don't know? Elliot Darvick: Autobytel is a automotive Internet company and they also provide a lot of dealer marketing services so putting dealers in touch with their customers through the Internet. Ivy Hartman: Let's talk a little bit more about that. Elliot Darvick: Yes. Ivy Hartman: Talk about how that works exactly because Autobytel is one of the first in the industry to create something like this. Elliot Darvick: That's correct. Ivy Hartman: Isn't that's right. Elliot Darvick: Yes, absolutely. At the core of what Autobytel, the dealer side of the business is customers are going online, submitting information if they want to buy a Lexus, submit their information and then we use our technologies to send that information out to our dealer network, and then dealers could contact the person looking for the car. Ivy Hartman: What are you seeing as far as trends go, as car buying goes, research and the internet. I mean, you know - Elliot Darvick: Obviously, it's still the majority of people are going to the internet first to search for a car without a doubt as with all facts of consumer shopping. Ivy Hartman: Fabulous. Now the other component of Autobytel is myride.com. Talk about what myride.com is. Elliot Darvick: Well myride.com is our flagship consumer facing site. So if someone wants to research cars, they'd go to myride.com. They want to learn about the SEMA Auto Show, they want to learn about upcoming auto shows, watch videos on cars, interact with other car lovers. Myride.com is where they would do so. Ivy Hartman: It's just kind of a social networking site as well as an informational -- Elliot Darvick: It's actually a component of that, yes. Ivy Hartman: Talk about being out of the box thinking, of bringing in non-automotive entities so that you can draw more people into that world and really see the correlation between automotive industry and things like non-automotive industry like ESPN or things like that. Elliot Darvick: Yeah, we have a kind of couple of approaches to this. Certainly, we partner with other entities like ESPN. We power their automotive content. So if someone goes to the ESPN home page, they can see a small box at the bottom promoting Camaros at SEMA and they can check that out. We've also tried to think about in terms of when we develop our content, we are doing, we do something called Celebrity Car Parade, where it's kind of like its TMZ and Auto Blog had a baby. That's what it would be. So it's bringing up people who read a lot of celebrity content and not so much car content. That kind of melds the two. So we are trying just to figure out ways to reach different audiences. Ivy Hartman: Speaking of the audience being the small business, what do you with the small business industry with Autobytel or myride.com? Elliot Darvick: In terms of? Ivy Hartman: Are small business owners using it or is it the end consumer? How is that working? Elliot Darvick: Oh, I mean -- in the sense that if a small business has automotive needs they need to find something for their business, they can certainly utilize myride.com to research a pick-up truck or a van. So all that information is there. Our content is specifically tailored to someone in small business, but they could certainly utilize the site. Ivy Hartman: What's the value of being able to use myride.com? Elliot Darvick: It's very easy. It's hassle free. You can have a positive experience of setting a dealership. You don't have to take that step first, you can do it kind of do it in your comfort. There is no pressure when you are searching from home. So I say that's the biggest value. You are just on your own time. You can search for whatever car you are looking for. And again, with Autobytel's leads it's just very quick to find five different dealers in your area that will have something on their lot for you. Ivy Hartman: That's huge because we interviewed somebody earlier at the SEMA Show that pointed out to us that car dealers are having a very tough time in this economy. Something like one in five is closing, and having a resource like that really has adds a value for them. Elliot Darvick: That's exactly it, for a dealership. A lot of people said well aren't you hurting? Autobytel's in the dealer business, and I'd say dealers need this more than ever. They need to be as efficient with their money as possible, and having a system in place like our lead system allows them to connect to their consumer a lot better. I would think then, a local TV spot where you really can't measure what type of connection you are making with people or how much traffic that's bringing in, we can tell you exactly where every dollar went. Ivy Hartman: Fabulous. So nice to have you here, Elliot. Give us the contact information. Elliot Darvick: Yeah. Ivy Hartman: Myride.com. Elliot Darvick: Myride.com there it is. Ivy Hartman: Just check it out. It's super easy to use, very content -- full of that and very variety of things on myride.com. Thanks for being here Elliot. Elliot Darvick: Oh, it was a pleasure. Ivy Hartman: Absolutely. Is it relatively a new company? Elliot Darvick: Autobytel's been around since 95. Myride's been online for about a year and a half now. And check out our SEMA content, we have tons out there. It's all live, this week's myride.com. Ivy Hartman: Fabulous. Elliot here, and we are going to continue our coverage of fabulous things here at the SEMA show on sbtv.com where small business is our only business.