Today, Facebook is launching a deals program similar to those on sites like Groupon and Living Social, testing offers in five major cities across the U.S. These deals will include major discounts and exclusive offers for tickets, passes, and more. People can then share it by “liking” to potentially get greater discounts if friends buy into an offer. Although this program is still in a test stage, once released in all areas it will have great potential for…

Many dealers are hesitant to let their salespeople use Facebook because they expect employees to waste too much time chatting with their friends, playing Farmville, etc. This concern is understandable when you want your salespeople to be on the floor selling, following up to leads over email and phone, and making the most of their time. But you can’t ignore the fact that the majority of your potential leads are using Facebook and it is a legitimate tool for…

Simply having a business page on Facebook is no longer enough to run a successful automotive marketing campaign on Facebook. With a number of companies and brands joining the bandwagon, Facebook has become a saturated market and unless you understand how the market behaves, you might be get lost amid all the noise.

Similarly, filling up your fans’ walls with advertorial posts will be useless unless you’re…

Although the iPhone app was intended to let users stay connected with their Facebook friends while on the go, auto dealers can also take advantage of this technology to make their automotive mobile marketing campaigns more interactive and more in-tune with the social media. With the release of Facebook for iPhone’s newest version (version 3.4), one added feature is particularly useful for business owners: the ability to check-in at actual events.

Checking-In to…

Print classified ads are one of the main tools auto dealers use to advertise their vehicles and service but as more and more people are turning to the internet for information, online classifieds are significantly and steadily outperforming newspapers and periodicals in providing ad spaces and lead generation.

Craigslist alone, as an established leader among local online classifieds, boasts over 20 billion page views each month, besting online retail giant Amazon and multimedia empire…

Five years ago Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, sent out the first tweet launching a new form of communication that became a revolution in 140 characters or less. This year, Twitter posted a blog reporting that it only takes about one week for users to send 1 billion tweets and last February an average of 460,000 accounts were opened per day. In the automotive industry, we should all ask ourselves, are we utilizing the fundamentals of Twitter to best engage current and potential buyers on…

What items stand out the most to you in search results? Often pictures and especially video will initially draw your attention more than plain text results. Videos posted to sites like YouTube show up especially well in search listings. Auto dealerships need to take advantage of this free exposure by creating videos of walkarounds, customer testimonials, test…

In today's Potratz online workshop, Dan talked about ways to enhance the look and features of your auto dealership's Facebook business page. One way to give a page a true "custom" feel is to add custom tabs with branded images, content, etc. In our experience with automotive advertising on social media, we find that the more customized the page, the more people like…

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…

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…

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…

Ideally, an auto dealership should be running a pay-per-click campaign through Google AdWords, but what if you just don't have the staff or the time to manage an AdWords campaign? Google now offers a simplified option called Google Boost through Google Places in which you can basically "set it and forget it." Unfortunately, this platform is only available in certain markets but…

Ever get that sinking feeling that your auto dealership's website looks just like every other dealership's site? You're not alone--just look at every other dealership using some generic provider for their site. A website refresh is going to take a substantial amount of time and development, but if you can edit the text content, there are some things you can do now to help your website rank higher in search and keep your visitors on the pages.

Here are four simple tips for writing…

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…