Virtual Reality 

The car-shopping journey has become primarily virtual. Consumers now do most of their research online and learn about dealerships via the internet, and in turn, 70% of the buyer journey is complete before shoppers even…

Based on recent J.D. Power Automotive research, this year, the automotive industry is going to retail over 14,070,000 vehicle units, which is the second best retail sales performance ever.

However, this rate of growth, though positive, is slowing. This year, retail growth will be 510K vehicle units over last year, versus over 710K units of growth last…

Comprehensive digital marketing solution offers new tools to measure marketing effectiveness

Chapel Hill, N.C., October 5, 2015 – 3 Birds Marketing has launched its all-new 3 Birds ME digital solution, the industry’s first all-in-one solution to show the results of each marketing component and reveal extra opportunities, at Digital…

Defining and Attracting Your Mobile Consumer

More people in the world own smartphones than toothbrushes, so if your dealership isn’t already taking notice of the impact mobile marketing has on today’s shoppers, it’s time to sharpen the focus and zero…

Use What You Have

Finding your target market is a key part of a successful marketing strategy. Whether you want to highlight new inventory, promote an event, grow your service department’s customer base, or simply boost business, defining your ideal audience is key.

It’s easy to be generic when marketing because the hope is always to…

Earning Hispanic Consumer Trust Through Communication and Empowerment

Think about the brands that reach you and catch your attention, whether television ads, ink and paper, or online.  How do they speak to you?  How do they approach you as a consumer?  Chances are, your favorite products are delivered to you courtesy of companies that have taken considerable time…

It may be a simple truth, but it's a valuable one. Tom Peters reminds us not to stoop so low as to badmouth the competition. …

Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of Used Car Market from Black Book. And by springtime, not just because the calendar says we have reached that point in the year, but after talking with a couple of industry folks in Detroit, the DC area and even from…

There’s a proverbial saying that when it comes to the car business, “There is no tomorrow,” which means your best opportunity to make a sale is the customer seated in front of you, right now. I remember my first month in the business, I literally had a notebook full of names and notes of customers who promised me they would be back-15 years later,…

Google seems to be everywhere lately, especially with their introduction of +1 and Google Plus.  Many people have so many different aspects of their life integrated into the search engine (email, social network, search engine, calendar, document management, etc) that sometimes it is hard to remember how we ever got along without it.

Most estimates put…

Five years ago Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, sent out the first tweet launching a new form of communication that became a revolution in 140 characters or less. This year, Twitter posted a blog reporting that it only takes about one week for users to send 1 billion tweets and last February an average of 460,000 accounts were opened per day. In the automotive industry, we should all ask ourselves, are we utilizing the fundamentals of Twitter to best engage current and potential buyers on…