This is an important question because, we see individuals and companies asking for referrals all the time, from the gym to the hair salon; “refer and receive blah, blah, blah.” And to be honest, it simply does not motivate me. When you think about it, receiving a referral fee is typically not the first thing that comes to mind. I’m not saying ditch the “bird-dog”, I am just saying let’s dig a little deeper.

I don’t know anyone that makes a referral based on financial reward alone.…

Everyone knows word of mouth has gone the digital route. So it's important to have the publics' opinion there for everyone to see. Utilizing every other social media vehicle not only directly effects customers responses to spend money at your dealership, but studies have found not participating could lead them to…

Veteran auto industry business leader, digital strategist, and innovator joins rapidly growing business intelligence and performance improvement company

SALT LAKE CITY, UT – October 11, 2012 – Kevin Root has been named President and Chief Operating Officer of DrivingSales, the company announced today. Root joins the rapidly growing business intelligence and performance improvement company to further build…

The original article I had scheduled for today is titled, Tactics for Improving Employee Productivity. But as I was putting the finishing touches on the content, I said to myself, “Self, you’ve skipped an important step! You shouldn’t be presenting tactics until you’re sure that your readers understand the differences between strategies and tactics.”

It’s my understanding that “strategy” is derived from the ancient Greek word,…

Google’s Matt Cutts just recently announced an update for the Page Layout algorithm, which originally came out in January. This algorithm is designed to reward websites who place their content above their advertisements. In a tweet on the subject Matt Cutts mentioned that 0.7% of English language queries will be affected. This may seem like a small number but in reference to…

Site Retargeting with Facebook from Potratz on Vimeo.

Lost Sales and Declined Services Customers are in many Dealerships, the largest untapped source of additional revenue. And in most cases, the Sales has been lost because of a few words and not a few dollars.

Advisors…

I thought it might be a nice gesture to share what I think are three major mistakes made by dealers when buying direct mail.  

1st.  Buying for the budget.  Many dealerships buy just because they have budget left to spend.  This on it's own is not the problem.  The problem lies in the fact that normally when this is the case they will just buy any piece that has a current theme on it and expect it to win.  An example would be, right now November is coming up and dealers who…

Paul Potratz, founder and COO of Potratz Advertising, headquartered in Schenectady, NY, will be speaking Thursday, Oct. 11 at the Chrysler SEBC/SWBC S&P Business Conference in Orlando, FL.

Paul’s topic, “The 10 Step Process of Doubling Your R.O.’s with…

As the convergence of search and social continues to become a reality, it's important for dealers to understand that they need content on their websites that can be shared. People will not share inventory on Facebook. They won't tweet specials out to their followers. They won't click the Google +1 buttons on your…

Awhile back I wrote a blog on the rumors of a Facebook, “want” button and this rumor turned out to be true! While this new feature is still in beta testing and it’s not really a want button but a product page to collect all your favorite products that are then added to your timeline, I still think that this is the beginning of something pretty amazing.…

If you’re a local or regional business looking to advertise on the cheap, you probably use social media. Most everyone is on Facebook, but does your company have a Twitter? If not, you’re missing out on one of the most powerful and reliable social media…

There are plenty of tools out there that help people post the same piece of content across multiple networks. Sendible, Hootsuite, Buffer - all make posting easy and convenient. While they can be great time savers and allow heavy social media users the ability to scale properly and plan accordingly, they also create problems and do not always maximize exposure.

Facebook will "batch" images posted from the same tool when more than one is posted through it in a 24 hour period. This is a…

According to this recently published study by J.D. Power, 59% of auto shoppers with smartphones access dealership websites from the dealership. But why would a car shopper go to your website when they’re already in your store? Consumers today are more wary than ever of car sharks – and now they…

There's something to be learned from this Forbes article with the average dealership spending $2,610,000 on payroll in 2011.

Driver Connect Mobile App to be presented onstage during DrivingSales Executive Summit

DAYTONA BEACH, FL and SALT LAKE CITY, UT – October 9, 2012 – DMEautomotive’s Driver Connect, Mobile App has been named a finalist for the DrivingSales Innovation Cup Award for the Most Innovative Dealership Solution of…