Last Wednesday a marketing employee from New Media Strategies, Chrysler’s former marketing company, mistook the Chrysler Twitter account for his personal account and posted on the Chrysler Twitter page, ““I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to drive.” Between “to” and “drive” was an unfortunate word. The impact was felt immediately when followers began to retweet the post. Chrysler quickly responded by posting “Our apologies-our account was…

The Calgary auto show I visited last week probably has the same format as other auto shows across the country.  It provides a great opportunity for manufacturers to strut their stuff - lots of glitz, some glamour and plenty of consumer interest.  After all, this is one of the few events where consumers pay for the privilege of being qualified and sold to.

I’m not…

By now, most automotive professionals are aware of the need to crack down on hiring practices in their dealerships-the mirror-fogging test just won’t cut it anymore. The question of course is how to do this. Below, the experts at ADP Digital Marketing shares four best practices for vetting potential employees.

Four Tough Hiring Practices to Employ in Your Dealership Today…

Do you have a social media strategy for your dealership? Maybe you’ve met with your marketing department or your management team to discuss how you should go about posting to Facebook or Twitter. The discussions and the opinions can be endless- who should post, how often, what to post and what time of day and on and on and on.

Unfortunately, during all this planning and strategizing we often forget the key to…

If you have ever been to a farm, one thing that stands out are these zigzagging baths that seem to randomly crisscross the pastures, these are cow paths. These cow paths are created by cows, which are creatures of habit and when one cow starts to walk across the pasture, the second one follows and the third and soon the rest of the heard follow. After a short while, the cows have created a crooked path, a well worn route from point A to B. Often their destination is to fulfill their basic…

What is a Car-Guy?

     When my, then girlfriend, now wife Bernadette and I announced to our families that we were going to get married it was met with let’s call it muted approval (concern and disapproval really).  First off, we were thousands of miles away from either of our kin, stationed on the island of Guam.  Secondly, we were young, 19 and 21.  Finally, we hadn’t known each other very long (I proposed on our second date!).  We had met in…

As smartphones grow in popularity, advertisers are turning to location-based marketing applications like Foursquare to engage consumers. At Potratz, we have implemented location-based campaigns on social sites for multiple clients to encourage users to check in on their phones. Here are a couple examples:

Steve White VW Audi offers $15 off parts/service when people check in

The Bill Rapp Superstore offers a $10 NYS Inspection and car wash for every…

Most dealerships reduce their overall expense in ways that make complete sense.  They utilize vendors for pin striping, dent repair, small paint repair, even detailing departments.  Why would you pay the expensive overhead to employ full time people that provide "part time" results?  Yet everyday, dealerships keep paying a ridiculous amount per year for warranty administrators...

 Reposted:

The old joke about two bulls on a hill goes something like this. There are two bulls on a hill, an old one and a young one. The young bull says “Hey dad, lets run down the hill and get one of those cows.” The old bull replies, “no son.” “Let’s walk down the hill and get them all.” The moral, in the punchline of this joke, is supposed to be about the…

The 7 Habits of Largely Ineffective Salespeople

     It is with my sincerest apologies to Stephen Covey that I write these words.  As I review his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and consider the simplicity of most of its contents my mind goes to the insanity of our industry.  I trust you will receive this in the spirit in which it is intended.

     The 7 Habits of Largely Ineffective Salespeople is a compilation of vast…

Creating an opt-in email list is as foreign to the auto industry as driving on the left side of the road but there is a place for it and in this post I'm going to share with you both the why and the how. On your dealer site the end goal is to turn surfers into leads, to get some sort of contact information whether it be an email address, a phone…

You know for last few months I have been hearing a lot about leadership in our industry, about education and how there needs to be more of both, I ABSOLUTELY AGREE!

I met up with Bill Playford at SWSXi (South By Southwest Interactive) for those not familiar with the acronym. We talked about this very thing. I found myself getting very excited…

IMPORTANT: You MUST enter "DE" in the Dealership/Company field in order…

As of February 2011, YouTube has 490 million unique visitors per month worldwide. The average YouTube user visits the site 14 times per month, spending an average of 25 minutes on the site each time. And these numbers are only for the YouTube website itself and don’t include all those embedded YouTube videos that are all over the place, in blogs, viewed on smartphones, etc.

We know that YouTube can be an important medium to increase SEO, to share content and to receive feedback…

If your dealership is looking for one of the most cost effective tools on the market at helping you sell additional vehicles each month, just click on the below link.  Many dealers sell 5, 10, even 20 or more additional cars per month after implementing our technology.  At a cost of $299 per month, it offers one of the biggest bangs for the buck in the industry.

http://www.squidoo.com/sellmorecars

Hi DealerElite members!

Some exciting news and updates about the 10th Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition!

We've added some great new speakers and confirmed a bunch more! Check out our speakers page for all the details!

We're particularly excited about adding Jimmy Vee and Travis…

Philip Zelinger, the President of Ad Agency Online L.L.C. and host of an automotive advertising resource portal http://AdAgencyOnline.Net, reviewed a new auto industry social networking club…