What are you anticipating from your car buyers this summer? Or do you only reflect back to the prior years production?

 As we all know, times and financial circumstances have changed much while car buyers are more educated and much more careful who they choose to place their trust and business with.…

ZMOT its everywhere seems like these days. With Google as the general session at Digital Dealer this year I thought I would talk about how we see the execution of ZMOT for dealers. Below are the slides from my presentation. I think these numbers will add up to a pattern if you look at the slides closely.

There is not ONE ZMOT in Automotive there are TWO

• People spend as much time consuming online media as they do off
• Targeting is getting better & faster online,…

Last Digital Dealer we explored the data behind SEO & PPC and where your efforts get the most bang for the buck.

At Digital Dealer 12 in Orlado April 3-5 will will explore the data behind ZMOT and how to execute it in your store to increase lead volume and most importantly Show Rate in the dealerhips.

Click Here to attend my Digital Dealer 12 Session "Marketing…

That kills a General Manager it’s what he doesn’t know!

Those words spoken to me by one of the smartest dealers I ever worked for, Jay Marks, have stayed with me since 1996. Same principal applies in every position of the dealership but particularly in marketing.

Let’s face it Marketing is quickly becoming a…

But you couldn’t be more wrong about microsites!

I have had a few dealers reach out to me lately on Microsites being a bad idea and even one of the largest industry providers asking me if dealers using them will be “Black Listed” by Google…REALLY?! 

In this video Matt Cutts from Google explains his OPINION on microsites and calls out a post by Vanessa Fox “Microsites A Bad Idea Most of the Time”.

 …

An interesting report from comScore and I think some premonitions for retail automotive.

1. Could FREE shipping break open real eCommerce for automotive? I think it is certainly a big hurdle right now logistically and monetarily. Taking away the monetary factor may go a long way toward opening this up. Of course there are still some logistics involved and there is the tactile factor. The need to touch and feel the vehicle is diminishing slowly and…

TrueCar has certainly stirred up a hornet’s nest with “Know the REAL Price”. To be fair they are not the only online lead generator that uses dealership transactional data in an effort to get between the customer and the dealership and get a piece of the car sale either through a pay for lead or pay for sale pricing model.

Both KBB and Edmunds use transactional data also, the difference… their billing model doesn’t require them to dial into your system so it doesn’t appear that they…

Some people have heard me say this in the past

“It’s not your website provider’s job to give you a working website. It’s their job to give you a functional one; it’s your job to make it work”

What does that mean…REALLY?

     • It’s Your Job – to know what keywords to rank for

     • It’s Your Job – to create good…

For those that use Google AdWords for your auto dealer website, this is big news.  After some testing in foreign markets, Google has announced that they are changing the algorithm used to determine the Quality Score of PPC ads to give landing page quality more weight.

According to Jonathan Alferness, director of product management on Google’s ad quality team, Google wants their advertisers to focus on relevance and “choose a landing…