So, you’ve recognized the value that social media and content marketing present for your business. You faithfully promote your Facebook page to your audience through your marketing efforts, e-mail signatures and website. You’ve enlisted employees or executives in your organization to start creating unique content for your blog or website and are seeking out content daily to…

As a dealership, you are constantly pulled in different directions regarding your customer experience – from your regional marketing association, corporate brand, or your internal marketing teams. If you’re also working with a marketing agency (or agencies), things can get complicated.

Your OEM provides you with sales and marketing materials that help you succeed, all with…

Communication and engagement go together like biscuits and gravy, like macaroni and cheese, like bacon and eggs.

 Most of the time, it’s pretty hard to have one without the other. (Who wants a dry biscuit anyway?) Now that everyone is hungry, it’s time to tak

e a look at the many ways communication is at work in your dealership and…

Remember the good old days when your Facebook audience actually saw the content you posted on your Facebook page? If you’re a social media person, you’ll know what a rush it was to see your content engaged with. As the likes, comments and shares piled up on a piece of content, a sense of satisfaction swept over you for a job well done. Then Facebook intervened…

One of the key metrics to look at when gauging the health of your Facebook page is the “People Engaged” metric. This tells you how many of your pages’ fans are interacting with you, as well as those that are interacting but are not fans of your page. The higher that percentage, the more organic reach your posts will achieve. You obviously want people talking about your…

One of the things dealers constantly have to battle with is the consumer trust factor. Historically, some auto dealerships have kept information away from consumers. So, as is human nature, consumers then thought these dealers had something to hide.

To add to this issue of trust, in many dense markets, dealers participate in a fierce race to the bottom --…

Today's market dictates that to succeed as a dealer, you have to create a great customer experience. You have to provide value and give the customer a reason to come back. A great customer experience is now one of the strongest value propositions any dealership can use to increase customer loyalty and retention.

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In today’s fast-paced world, new technology is constantly being developed that provides auto dealers with new and innovative ways to connect with customers. The days of index cards and Outlook as a CRM are long gone. Now we have robust technology that makes it a simple process to connect with customers on many levels, including e-mail, text, chat, video and social…

All dealerships get leads that originate from the Internet. Not all dealers, however, are equal when it comes to how they handle these leads. Ever wonder why some dealers are able to close Internet leads at 12+ percent, while others struggle to reach 6 percent? The reason has everything to do with how these leads are handled – from speed of reply to the content in the reply…

Customers increasingly expect businesses to have a social media presence. The key however, is to not just have a presence, but to then use that presence to interact with customers. When customers engage with you, it’s important to give them an indication that you are, in fact, listening. Of course, to accomplish this, you must be paying attention in the first place. If you…

If you’re in business, I’m sure you’ve been introduced to the concept of content marketing. Experts have advised businesses to produce content for quite some time now for search engine optimization, branding, lead generation and engagement, to name just a few of the many reasons.

Content marketing can be powerful, if done properly. It is more than simply…

In yet another move by LinkedIn to create a more engaging user experience, the company has decided to penalize any users of the InMail feature that send mail that is irrelevant to the recipient. As LinkedIn cannot read the messages, it had to formulate a way to determine which messages are more likely irrelevant – namely those which receive no replies. LinkedIn used to offer…

Answers to your burning questions about Facebook’s big changes—and what you can do next 

With a single blog post, Facebook sent tremors through the marketing community in mid-November. The cause? A forthright admission that “new volume and content controls for promotional posts” will significantly decrease the distribution of this type of…

Question: How much money is sitting in your Dealership Management System (DMS) right now?

Well, let’s break it down. The average-sized dealership has tens of thousands of customer names in its DMS. Since each name represents a customer—either sales or service—whose ownership of their current vehicle will ultimately come to an end, they make great prospects…

A name without an email address is a wasted opportunity. For every 10,000 contacts pulled from dealership management systems, on average only 3,000 have deliverable email addresses. This means that most dealers are unable to send emails to 70 percent of their past, current and potential customers.

That's money left on the table, folks. Email is probably your…

In the past, a business could increase per post reach on Facebook simply by creating unique and engaging quality content. That has now changed and, for the most part, ads are the only real posts creating any significant reach. Organic posts on Facebook pages have seen reach drop into the 1-2 percent range, down from 12+ just 2 short years ago.  Since Facebook’s IPO, and the…

When businesses ponder how to increase their presence on search engines, they typically turn to SEO strategies. Content marketing has always been a large part of any SEO strategy. It’s a given that the more fresh, relevant and unique content you produce, the better chance your online properties will have of showing in search engine results. According to an…

Clearwater, FL--October 21st, 2014--AutoLoop LLC, a leading developer of sales-generation and customer-retention software for auto dealers, today announced the addition of Sean Donovan as Sales Representative for western North America. Donovan brings nearly 20 years of automotive marketing, technology, and analytics experience to the team, and his new position…

In 1991, a 5’2” 125-pound cowboy stared into the face of Wolfman Skoal. a young 2,000-pound bull with a bad reputation. So bad, in fact, that a $500 bounty existed for any rider that could tame the beast and ride a full 8 seconds. Wade Leslie accepted the challenge. As he mounted the bull in preparation for his ride, the bull promptly lay down in the pen. He considered…

I know. It's a buzzword. It's impossible to keep track of number of times experts in the car business have used the word "engagement" when describing how to get more customers. Engage on social. Engage on search. Engage on YouTube. Engage on your website. It's a mess but it's still important to be engaged with potential customers.

On the other hand, it's even…