De-Mystifying Your Consumer One Demographic at a Time

The modern dealership faces most of the same challenges of other brands in a competitive marketplace. And although it might sound daunting to figure out how to connect with every consumer, discovering your market is critical to helping your dealership market more effectively.  Knowledge isn’t just power,…

Article from October 2004, Ward's Dealer Business highlighting the Launch of the Car Sales Simulator

This post was written by NCM Institute instructor Fred O'Dwyer and was originally posted on the Up to Speed blog. 

Not too long ago as I was listening to someone talk about how fundamental clarity is in fueling growth in a…

“Ah, to come to the end of one’s life and realize one has never lived.” — Henry David Thoreau

Is life just happening to you or are you living it on purpose? Does your life and income depend upon the direction of the wind? Is it fate? Or will you pull it? You can decide what you want, add some character (doing something you committed to long…

If not you could be losing a significant amount of revenue and market share! Dealerships across the country lose hundreds of thousands of dollars a year because they are not operating at their full potential. If you can't honestly answer the above question with a resounding yes, then take…

When you think of sales, do you think of pejoratives such as pushy, sleazy and dishonest? Most people do.

Yet in “To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others,” Daniel H. Pink contends that most of us, regardless of job title or salary structure, are salespeople.…

I came upon this and thought it of interest.

Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/227389#ixzz2YqF6PPu3

Thoughts?

I have been in the car business for close to five years now, and I still find it horrifying when I hear customers talk about previous purchases and visits to Car Dealerships. For anyone to really make a go at a career in the car business, The first thing for them to understand is that service is still senior! People who are making or considering making a purchase that size still deserve a certain level of service. And by what I have heard, it is also a great way to differentiate yourself in…

Blogging is the engine that drives your digital marketing activities. It is the content generation that bolsters your SEO, the posts you share to your social media accounts, and the voice of your company on the internet. If you don't pay the proper amount of respect to your blog, you're going to suffer for it in the long run. A truly successful digital marketing…

A quick look at the current state of auto retailing would suggest that things are good. Tough times (and a couple of notable bankruptcies) have thinned dealer ranks. Although pressures are mounting, the manufacturers are still demonstrating discipline around production volumes. Most importantly, customers are returning to showrooms.

Add all factors together and the result is that volumes and margins on both new and pre-owned vehicles are strong. So strong, in fact, that many…

Written by: Thomas Bear

Realizing the dealer/general manager’s day is full of interruptions, if you could wave a magic wand and create the perfect day, what would you do during this day?

Which activities do you wish you did every day? Which activities are the top ten for you to do every day?  Here’s an exercise we use in our 20 Group meetings from time to time that might be helpful for you to realign your daily priorities.…

Content is the SEO method of choice in 2013. Spam and content spinning are way, way out, and original content that has value to the reader is in. It's not enough to just create the content though. Even if it's amazing and insightful, you still need to market your own content, at least a little bit, to get it off the ground. There are a lot of great ways to do this, and today we're…

Social media and search are again colliding, and for once, the news isn't about Google and Facebook. No, today's news is about the little brothers of search and social, the ones who aren't quite as successful but certainly give it there all. Let us here at Wikimotive tell you about it, and how it can affect your…

Let's forget for a moment that the overwhelming majority of SEO companies the average small business owner will encounter provide a service of no value whatsoever. Let's pretend that the majority of SEO providers are not outright scam artists. I'm only going to address the small percentage of us…

Over the past couple years, the pagination of content has become a popular tactic. For those of you who don't keep up with asinine marketing terms, pagination in this context just means spreading your content out over multiple pages. This is usually done to increase views and lower bounce rates, both of which are great things for the advertisers on your…

Adam Orth is one of the creative directors at Microsoft studios. He's not the top of the chain, but he IS important, and he should be aware that his words have weight. Unfortunately (for Microsoft and his own career) he performed a major faux pas on Twitter last night. Let's take a look at what he did and investigate how your …

In a world where content is next to cleanliness (and cleanliness is in fairly close proximity to godliness) it's fallen on a lot of digital marketers to start writing. For some of us, this hasn't been much of a chore. We delight in putting our thoughts down on the page and sending them out for (a very, very small portion of) the world to read. Other marketers aren't such big fans.…

Thor is a god, specifically, he's the thunder god, super specifically, he's the Norse god of thunder, storms, and beating the pulp out of things with his magic hammer, Mjolnir (just imagine I did the umlaut on the o). Thor is an unruly god, short on temper and long on power. When he approached, you never knew for sure if you were getting the clenched fist or the open palm (though smart money…

Are you familiar with Google snippets? Basically, they are the chunk of information you see under the title of search results. They usually include the URL, a date, history, and most important, a description. In the past, you've been able to define your own description in the metadata of your site, so you had control over what was displayed under your page in results. Now though,…