Facebook and Apple are two of the most influential companies on the internet today, but they’ve never really worked well together. The fault falls mostly on Facebook. Their mobile application has been notoriously buggy and all the functionality it promised was never truly delivered. When Apple released iOS 5, everyone thought Facebook integration would be one of the main…

The time for transparency has arrived.  There are no more secrets online, and consumers know that filtered and manipulated dealer reviews only confirm that a dealer is not being candid on their website. 

At Carfollks.com we enable good dealers to leverage "the truth" in their marketing to create powerful connections with customers to establish real…

I’m a diehard internet guy.  If anyone ever wondered where my prejudices lie this should clear it up.

I was the Internet Director at a metro import store.  The department was responsible for 70% of the new and used car sales utilizing 30% of the sales force and 20% of the budget. 

Looking at NADA Data from 2011, the percentage of our advertising budget was actually pretty low:…

Mathematically and certainly, the BeBack Fight is dead.  JD Power shows us in the graph below that the average dealerships visited by vehicle shoppers dropped from 4.1 in 2005 to 1.3 in 2010.  Don’t expect 2012 to raise that number.

Why does this “kill” the BeBack fight?  First, logically, it at least kills it as we’ve known it.  If a person left the dealership in…

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CONTACT:  Maureen Condon

Dealer Communications

508-801-8283

mcondon@dealer-communications.com

Regional Director of sales for ActivEngage  Discusses Live Chat: What Auto Dealers  Need to Know to Get…

Breaking through at your Breaking Point

It is something we’ve all faced in life and will face again…a “Strategic Inflection Point”. Whether personally or in your career or business this is something anyone who strives for excellence or who desires to grow as an…

Social media marketing is a time-consuming endeavor, and not all of us are hip to the language of tweets and likes. But that’s okay – you can find young professionals who are already devoted to social media – and they’ll often work for free! I’m talking of course about interns, a magical breed of ambitious,…

"If you can't paint by number, you are probably not called to redecorate the Sistine Chapel."

 

Don't live a life of frustration by insisting on doing what God has not gifted you to do. If you love baseball but can't hit, throw or catch better than most everyone else... Study the game, evaluate its strategy and become a coach, equipment manager or team sponsor. Fulfill your destiny by either "doing" what you love or "enabling…

Running contests on social media is a risky proposition. It has to be just the right idea, and it has to be handled just the right way. Today, I want to take a look at one recent contest that has completely taken over marketing using…

After reading Mike Myers' excellent post AutoCon Summary and FREE Presentation Download, I thought DealerElite members would like to have access to as many of the AutoCon presentations as possible, so here's my contribution:…

 What is the difference between a championship team and just a pretty good team? Most experts, coaches, managers, and leaders alike will agree that the difference is this little attribute called dedication. Show me a championship team and I will show you a group of individuals who were dedicated far beyond what statistics, or polls, or even there competition were prepared for.

  Tim Tebow said in his recent book, "Hard work beats talent when talent doesnt work hard". No truer…

19 years old, walking down Huron Street in Ann Arbor, Michigan, 2,100 miles from home, I watched the wad of chewing gum I had just spit out arc into the street; and realized that my momma had lied to me.  As a littler shaver she told me toalways spit my gum into the street to “strengthen the tires of the cars that run over it”.  For well over a decade I…

I’m sure you’ve heard this theme over and over: the automotive retail world we work in today is in continual flux, requiring continual adaptation and an unprecedented acceptance of change. At the beginning of each of our NCM Instituteclasses, we ask the attending dealership executives and department managers, “What is your biggest single challenge?” Although it may not quite come out of their mouths this way, the answer we…

J.C. Penny once said, show me an executive with no ambition, goal, or plan of action and I'll show you a stock boy.  But, show me a stock boy who has ambition, desire, goals, and a plan and I'll show you a success story.

Do you have a specific daily plan of action to reach the top?  PLAN YOU DAY AND WORK THE PLAN.

 …

Twitter has a new profile format. Unfortunately, most of the manufacturers haven't taken full advantage of it yet. Don't make their mistake.

Ford is one of the only ones that has already changed their's. It's not great - they picked an image that made reading the text a challenge - but at least they have something up. The same is not true for Toyota or many…

I was visiting a dealership, yesterday, and observed the interaction between a young internet salesman and one of the New Car Managers.  The young ISM had received a request for quote, on a new vehicle, and had approached the desk for help.  The Manager's response was, "Just get 'em in".   When the young ISM started to speak, he was cut off with another chorus of "Just get em in".  With nothing but an email address, I'm sure he responded with something like, "price…

If you aren’t too keen on search engine optimization, I’m here to help you whether you’re going to SEO your website yourself or outsource it. First thing's first, you must always have a strategy.

Pre-Plan

Search engines consider a number of factors when determining how to index. For example, the way the pages of your site…

On the TODAY show earlier this week Twitter SEO, Dick Costolo made a live appearance to announce updates to the Twitter experience. The changes will affect the look and feel of profiles both on Twitter.com and on their mobile apps for iPad, iPhone, and Android. Twitter users will now have the option of a header-photo not unlike what you have on your Facebook profile. You…