What’s your ultimate goal in running a search engine marketing campaign for your car dealership? To get more clicks on your ads? To lower your cost per click and get the most for your money? To get more conversions when people fill out forms to get a quote? All of these things work step by step closer to your ultimate goal: to sell more cars. That’s what it comes down to.

An…

"I work for a small dealership in the middle of Iowa, and I’ve found that on our tight budget, craigslist and EBay Local ads are by far the best free online tools we use. Craigslist is very easy to use, and the return rate is incredible. I can post all of our used inventory (40 used cars on average) in about an hour. The day and few days after I do these postings, our sales phone calls sky rocket. EBay local listings are also free and to me are just as effective as auctions. All auctions do…

This is a portion of an article titled Why the Automotive Industry is Shifting to New Media.

The iPad and smartphone world has empowered consumers with the ability to never be without…

The vast majority of dissatisfied customers who threaten to call an attorney never do. For the few that follow through, the results can be devastating. While it’s true that many customers’ complaints have little or no merit, there can be a real danger if the wrong plaintiff’s attorney gets involved.

You may be thinking “we have lawyers of our own and insurance for that sort of thing, so bring it on”. Well, here’s the problem: many lawsuits that stem from seemingly…

Today is the last day for voting, so if you haven't put your votes in yet, please take a few minutes to do so today. If you vote for providers in 5 or more categories, you'll be entered in a drawing for an iPad.

www.surveymonkey.com/s/2011DCASM

Thank you for voting, Dealers! We could not report the Dealers'…

“But, I don’t want to offend anyone.”

Those are the most common words when I tell clients that they can express their opinions on social media, even on their business pages. It seems that being neutral on everything is the way of this politically correct world and that social media is no…

In marketing for auto dealers around the country, we spend time analyzing their competition to see how they’re doing with everything from social media marketing to website lead management. In order to beat your competition out in sales, your dealership needs to take the time to look at what competitors are doing. Here are a few quick tips to analyze…

If anyone is still using stock photos on their websites, I would recommend you stop right now.  Get out there and take your own pictures; better yet, take them in front of your store to build instant credibility.  Also, make sure you have a good camera; a good one should be able to support 100 photos per car.  An easy way to take these pictures is to set up three spots; one for small, medium and large cars.  Then put dots around each spot.  So anyone can take these pictures just by walking…

After spending the last few days at the NADA Convention in San Francisco it was evident that while consumer spending remains cautious, vendors and exhibitors are positively optimistic about doing business in 2011.

And, as always, 'San Fran' didn't disappoint: cool cars, sensational weather and...the opportunity to pick-up on the Superbowl vibe, which as the whole world knows by now was won by the Green Bay Packers who thumped the Pittsburg Steelers 31 to 25.

Another highlight…

One on One’s Anybody??

With the upcoming NCAA basketball tournament just around the corner, I could not help myself with a little basketball jargon, “A little One on One anybody?”

 Of course 10 years ago I would have been talking about taking someone on in…

This weekend, I was comparing website analytics for 2010 vs 2009 for one of our dealers, which got me to thinking about how 2009 compared to 2010. Before I knew it, I was digging into analytics for 2008 and 2007.

Limiting myself to just one dealer's analytics could taint my findings with the improvement of the website, lead generation, SEO, SEM, etc. So to ensure the most accurate…