3 Ways the Automotive Industry Can Reach Mobile-First Consumers

Choosing to ignore the mobile consumer is not an option for brands that want to thrive in the modern landscape. Mobile now represents 65% of all digital media time according to a …

What Does a Connected Car Driver Expect from Their Dealership?

Vehicles are evolving to meet consistently increasing consumer demands for convenience, interactivity, and connectivity. In 2015, 15% of new vehicles were considered connected and by 2020 …

AUTOMOTIVE DIGEST BLOG

“TrueCar Seeks the “Truth” about Real Reason for Its Existence”

WHY TRUECAR IN THE FIRST PLACE?

TrueCar was founded on the premise that dealers were exploiting car shoppers on price.

TrueCar was to tell the “truth” about the “price” car shoppers would/should pay.

TrueCar was the great “White Knight” of car pricing for beleaguered car…

Not every dealership and buying experience is the same, so why should you settle for a homepage that is exactly like the rest? Having one that stands above the rest helps to ensure your name, brand, and business stand above the rest.

Reason number one: dealerships are everywhere. This means their websites are everywhere as well. You need to give…

Way too often we see dealerships handing over databases to vendors to facilitate a mass email campaign to an entire unfiltered list of customers. Vendors certainly have a stake in larger email campaigns since the odds that a dealer obtains business from the campaign increases - due to sheer numbers. A smart dealer will analyze their open rates and have tools set up to track…

On August 6, Google announced in a Google+ post that they were implementing a feature within Gmail that would automatically place “Unsubscribe” links to the top of any emails that include them. This has caused many email marketers to scramble and some are getting very nervous. While Gmail is the most popular email service in the world, if you are sending communications to…

Since its inception the car business has blamed the Internet for leading the new and used car pricing race to the bottom. The OEMs, dealers, and consumers have all had to make adjustments as pricing information has become more accessible and transparent.

The story of TrueCar (version 1) has been a testament to the growing lack of harmony between dealers and vendors on that front.

Yet, plenty of data supports the fact that consumers aren’t just looking for the cheapest…

Under normal circumstance, I do not like the types of social media strategies that try to can them into basic processes with time limits. Sure, it’s good to have guidelines, but I find that they’re normally too limiting to allow people to make the right decisions. This infographic is somewhat like that, but it’s design is just too cool in its…

This isn’t going to be a long post (I know a lot of mine have been too long, lately) but that doesn’t make it any less important. It’s short because the concept is simple. Unfortunately, many are missing out on this easy technique.

There are plenty of types of content that you can post on Facebook, but they invariably fall into one of two categories –…

So, you have a Facebook page for your business. You’re ready to tap into the most powerful social site in the world. You want to get fans, to get people to like your page and hear your messages, to communicate with them in a meaningful way and to help drive more business.

You…

The KBG. Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti. The Committee for State Security for the former Soviet Union was one of the most feared agencies in history. Thankfully, this post isn’t about them.

Here, we’re going to talk about a different type of KGB, the type that is plaguing social media on pages…

Everyone who plays in the Facebook page strategy game has their opinions about the types of content to post. Car dealers and vendors have tried different things over the years. Some have found success while others have let it fall off completely, dismissing it as unimportant or too time-consuming to mess with on a daily basis.

For those who are doing well or…

There’s a fine line between making social media useless by posting things that aren’t relevant for business and making it ineffective by having posts that are too promotional, thus killing the posts through “death by algorithm”. Done right, businesses have the ability to be interesting enough to make the algorithms like them while being relevant enough…

I was moderating a small panel at a conference about two and a half years ago that focused on Facebook fans. The two panelists represented the two different sides of Facebook promotion at the time: one focused on local quality fans and the other focused on bulk fans. After the debate, one might have called it a draw. That was over two years ago. Today,…

Written By: Russell Grant

One of the best things about my job is the fact that I get to talk to so many owners, GMs, dealers, sales managers and service directors about their dealership’s owner marketing strategy. Or, in some cases, need for one. That’s when I find my work the most rewarding, when I’m speaking with dealers who are ready to reap the benefits of developing and implementing a strong, sustainable owner marketing strategy.

Because remember, there are only three ways…

Facebook has been a promising venue through which to market a dealership ever since it reached a high level of popularity back in 2008. Back then, it was just breaking the hundred million user level and was showing signs that it would be able to be business-friendly in contrast to its rival MySpace. Now, it’s 10 times bigger and commands more time of humans than any other website.

The problem is that it’s not the…

Written By: Debbie Hemley

Twitter is a powerful social networking platform and one that has become a go-to choice for businesses of all sizes and industries.

In recent months, Burger King and Jeep’s Twitter accounts were hacked and became the subject of many articles and conversations, online…

Written By: Russell Grant

From speakers at NADA workshops to automotive manufacturers in trade publications to vendor product advertisements online, everyone is talking about how big data is changing the future of marketing in our industry. But most of the GMs I talk to aren’t nearly as concerned with the marketplace and the direction it’s taking, as they are with their business and where it’s going. They want to know two things—how can big data save me money and how can it sell more…

This article was written by: Russell Grant

From speakers at NADA workshops to automotive manufacturers in trade publications to vendor product advertisements online, everyone is talking about how big data is changing the future of marketing in our industry. But most of the GMs I talk to aren’t nearly as concerned with the marketplace and the direction it’s taking, as they are with their business and where it’s going. They want to know two things—how can big data save me money and how…

Every strategy needs a goal or else it’s just an aimless plan. We’ve covered the need to set Facebook marketing goals and described both the…