Recently, I provided five tips to expand your Google Places profile. Now, let’s go beyond the informational part of the profile and discover ways that you can use Google Places, similar to a social network, to drive customer interaction, promote reviews and drive online word of mouth for your dealership. To differentiate your dealership, take [...]

Most auto dealers have heard time and again how important Google Places is to search results and that they should have a profile on the site. However, entering your contact information and leaving the rest up to the search giant can be a mistake costing you potential customers. In the U.S., 90 percent of mobile [...]

With the harsh change in weather in parts of the country, dealers may see some decline in traffic to their dealerships. Luckily for dealers, online showrooms have zero traffic jams (we won’t discuss potential site performance issues right now), and it doesn’t snow there either. Recently, the news media announced that this year’s Cyber Monday [...]

When Borrell Associates reported that online advertising passed newspaper advertising for dealers in 2009, the entire lead generation process made a permanent shift. No longer strolling in through the front doors, dealership prospects now overwhelmingly research and pass through several phases of the shopping process without ever setting foot in a dealership. Borrell Associates’ 2011 [...]

So much time is spent on the promise and potential of social networks and how they fit into a dealer’s business and communications plan. However, many dealers need to review and expand their original online customer hub – the dealer website. If customers are not spending any length of time on a dealer’s site, except [...]

In a previous post, I asked if you were ready for the mobile consumer. Now, it’s time to figure out how and where you’ll connect with mobile and tablet consumers, because many are already here and many, many more are on the way. Research and consulting firm Chadwick Martin Bailey recently surveyed consumers about what [...]

In my last post, I talked about how many dealers start Facebook pages but not everyone maintains them or has success. Well-known consumer brands can gain a large following quickly and easily with minimal effort. However, for others, building a base of fans and potential customers takes some time and effort, just as it takes [...]

More than 500 million active users spend more than 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook, according to the most recent statistics from the social network. Dealerships flock to Facebook pages but the results vary widely. Consider these scenarios: Over the top: Some dealers want to quickly add a high number of fans to its [...]

It’s no longer status quo to post photos of vehicles with detailed descriptions on your website. Now, consumers not just want – but expect – video, too. And, video not only satisfies the expectation of website visitors, it also helps attract them when search engine optimization techniques are employed. According to Nielsen, online video usage [...]

Smartphones, tablet devices and mobile devices are altering consumer habits at an unprecedented rate. After paying hundreds of millions of dollars for Flip, Cisco recently announced it is shuttering the product. Why? Because consumers can get video, camera and online access with mobile devices, most of which do all of these functions wrapped up into [...]

Most auto dealers hear repeatedly that they should be focusing on search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM). Maybe they’ve tried paid search in the past and weren’t able to connect to a concrete return on investment or relied on another source to optimize their website for natural search. It’s time to take [...]

Most auto dealers would agree that there’s no such thing as too many leads. However, many dealers are leaving money on the table by ignoring search engine marketing. Search engine marketing, or paid search, is most often executed through the use of Google AdWords. If your dealership is not using paid search as part of [...]