Things have changed considerably with the state of marketing measurement and we wanted to know how dealers are adapting to new measurement tools like Multi-Touch Attribution. So, in April 2017, we decided to ask and surveyed approximately 120 dealers for our State of Automotive…

Every business wants to be the market leader and have success. Yet to do so, many have the mindset that it is necessary to spend more money. “Buy a Super Bowl ad,” they say. “Spend hundreds of thousands on TV and radio.” The trick to getting big isn’t always about trying to reach…

In the great wide world of online, display ads are everywhere. Top of the page, right, left, bottom – and, sometimes even popping up and floating in your face. Many consumers find these ads intrusive, especially when they are irrelevant. So, they simply ignore them – or, stop visiting the sites on which they appear

In fact, consumers have become so annoyed with…

The title of this blog post originated from a thought-provoking interview with Chad Mitchell, senior director of digital communications at Walmart. In the interview he lays out a philosophy that every industry – especially automotive – should embrace. The main point he makes is that…

Dealers have leveraged paid search for years – and some spend significant budgets on it. However, whether they do it by themselves, or work with a vendor, I find many misunderstand some of the strategies, analytics and the method to the madness that is paid search.

I’d like to explain a few things and share some best practices I have learned over the years about how…

Is data your best friend or your worst enemy?

Why do I ask? Well, if you work in a dealership, chances are good that you either review or are responsible for creating reports on a regular basis. For principals and managers, reports reveal important information such as how many units your dealership has sold this month, how many customer-pay ROs you've…

There is a lot of talk going on about car dealership turnover. It seems that everyone has an opinion about it but not a whole lot of solutions. I am going to do some "REAL TALK" in this post because it is time that the sugar coating stops. I have spent a great deal of time between consulting dealers and working for dealers on a case by case basis over the…

In B2B marketing, there’s no scarcity of brand messages from vendors to dealers. Increasingly, those messages now tend to market how the vendor’s products and services help dealers create a better customer experience, rather than focus on the products or services themselves. But is that a good thing? Certainly dealers now recognize that customer experience is…

Tools to Increase Your Business Aren’t Worth Much Without Follow-up and Training

The recent NADA Convention is over. As always, there was plenty of information to gain and a lot of shiny objects being displayed. Dealers and major executives were out with their checkbooks looking for ways to increase their business in 2015. There were countless…

Written by AutoSuccess on 09 December 2014.

[This is part 6 in the “What’s the Big Deal With Data Anyways?” series. Click here to read part 5]

The whole goal of this series is to help dealers understand that there is no need to be afraid of your data. It is one of the…

Diligence. That’s it. There is no skill required, no tool necessary, no special knowledge to get you leads through social media. If you are diligent, you will succeed. Of course, there are tools, techniques, skills, and special knowledge that can make it a whole lot easier and more successful. Even with these, you still need diligence.

The tools are out there.…

Social media campaigns for auto dealers should be designed to deliver performance and ROI for dealerships and dealer groups. Not all campaigns should be evaluated the same, nor should the same metrics be used. In order to track the success of a campaign, dealers should set objectives upfront to help identify key performance indicators.

First, dealers should determine what their campaign sets out to…

“Maintain a 6 to 1 ratio of C/P RO count to total vehicle sales” says Don Reed, CEO of DealerPro Training Solutions.

That sounds simple enough. If you are currently selling 100 New and Used a month, then that pencils out to 600 Customer Pay Repair Orders per Month, not including Warranty and Internal. It’s the CP RO count we are after.

So, you just realized that your RO count is low, right? What are you going to do about it? If you are thinking that you need a big production…