Our industry does a lot with gimmicks. You’d be hard pressed to drive through an auto mall or other area dense with dealerships and not see balloons, giant inflatable gorillas or wavy tube men. On nice days, we attempt to lure shoppers in with hot dogs and sodas. We incentivize test drives. We offer televisions, iPads and Playstations with purchase. There’s always a gimmick…

Social media has many advantages in today’s digital world. And, leveraging these social media accounts and platforms through employees enables your dealership to reach local customers through the networks of these employees.

Many salespeople use social media to promote themselves and increase awareness of their dealership, so as to attract customers and…

An undeniable shift is happening in our industry. One that will change how we operate forever. It’s all about delivering on the customer experience with a true online buying process. AutoNation saw it. And, Carvana, Beepi and other start-ups are gaining traction. In addition, other vendors within our industry have built platforms that allow dealers to facilitate this type of…

It’s been a week now since the seventh installment in the Star Wars franchise hit theaters, breaking all box office records along its way. I’m sure that there is much more money in Disney’s future. That’s the ending of this story. Now for the beginning...

Think about the many months leading up to the release of the latest movie. About how much Star Wars we…

If you haven’t heard, it’s getting harder for businesses to reach their audiences on Facebook unless they’re willing to spend some money. Estimates are that the average reach for a company post on its Facebook page is around 2-6 percent organically. There are only two ways to increase that. First, by paying for Facebook ads. And secondly, through interaction…

In the past, consumers were limited in their options when they had any sort of complaint or service issue with a particular business. Those options, however, have progressed and today’s consumers have moved on from phone calls and e-mails to air their complaints. They now turn to review sites and social media in an effort to get businesses to rectify a perceived…

Today, most people have the perception that marketing is intrusive, right? Pop ups, banner ads, commercials, e-mail campaigns and junk mail are routinely considered annoying. Well, if this is what you think, you could be wrong. In fact, according to…

Today, social media platforms - Facebook, in particular - offer in-depth analytics and data that dealers can use to market to car buyers. Dealers who understand how to use and leverage Facebook ads frequently see wildly successful campaigns for very little spend. On the other hand, there are many dealers who place much less confidence in sales attribution when…

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…

Last year, Twitter partnered with the data firm Datalogix to study Twitter’s influence on sales transactions in the car industry. Twitter provided Datalogix with all the data they had about brand, dealership and consumer Twitter accounts. Datalogix then paired actual vehicle purchases by cross-referencing the Twitter data with data from Polk.…

Dealers struggle all of the time trying to find value in social media marketing - Facebook in particular, and hesitate when deciding whether Facebook (or social media marketing in general) is worth their time, effort or money.

Perhaps it’s because they don’t see direct results? They may be looking for a straight line…

An interesting study has been going on for the last 6 month over at Twitter. As it was increasingly seeing users use the platform for brand interactions, the company decided to see just how much of an impact those interactions had. Users were identified that had at some point interacted with a brand’s Twitter account for customer service and 14,000 were…

Think about the last time you scrolled through your Facebook newsfeed, Twitter account or Instagram feed. How long did you spend on each post? My guess is probably less than a second. Most people don’t spend a lot of time analyzing and reading every post that infiltrates their newsfeed from their networks. A typical user will scroll through and, when something…

In today’s fast-paced world, it’s hard for businesses to cut through the noise. Consumers are bombarded with advertising messages across all mediums from companies that claim they, or their product, is the best. Generally, these messages go in one ear and out the other.

So, how do you get the attention of today’s message-fatigued…

In this highly regulated industry, there has been some recent debate as to if dealership salespeople should be allowed to establish and control their own personal branding.

In the past, personal branding by salespeople was geographically restricted, simply because the technology didn’t exist to go much further. Salespeople would find strategic places to…

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…

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…

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…

Facebook has once again tweaked it’s algorithm in a way that further decreases the reach of posts by Facebook Pages. After steadily decreasing organic reach to 2 percent or less, and forcing companies with Facebook pages to spend money to reach their fans, Facebook has now decided to prioritize content posted by a user’s friends and family, (i.e.: their network) over those…

Social media can be somewhat of a battlefield, and, to some degree, companies are being attacked from all sides. On the one side, there’s a battle being waged with social media platforms as they attempt to monetize themselves by reducing the organic reach in an effort to make businesses pay for exposure. On the other side, companies fight for eyeballs with the content they pay for posting. 

However, the content that most social media users really care about is user-generated content.…