Paul Potratz's Blog (437)

Revolutionary Social Media

Social media has been featured a lot lately in the headlines but not as we might have suspected, either as an advertising tool or because a celebrity reveled some shocking personal information. No instead it is being credited with helping spread freedom of speech and creating revolution.

Recent events in Egypt have proved without a shadow of a doubt that social media reaches far beyond entertainment and advertising. In the past traditional media was the only way to infuse public… Continue

Added by Paul Potratz on February 17, 2011 at 5:00pm — No Comments

Grading Your Dealership’s Competition

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…

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Added by Paul Potratz on February 14, 2011 at 2:35pm — No Comments

New News on Newspapers

Warren Buffet recently announced he is leaving the board for the Washington Post Co. after almost a 40 year run. On another note Rupert Murdoch's News Corp just launched the first i-pad only newspaper last week which it plans to charge 99 cents per week or $40 per year to read. There has also been talk that the New York Times, the most visited news publication on the internet, will also start charging for it's on-line paper.

Dealers and agencies both know traditional newspapers have… Continue

Added by Paul Potratz on February 10, 2011 at 2:30pm — No Comments

Promoting Your Service Department with Location Based Marketing

Service department marketing is something that often falls by the wayside in most dealership's and dealer group's marketing campaigns. However, with today's location based marketing applications and social media networks it's easier than ever to give your back end of the dealership the attention it needs. Here are a few quick ways you can utilize these new media elements:

1. Set Up Facebook Places and Deals for your Dealership Business Page - We've just actually completed a webinar on… Continue

Added by Paul Potratz on February 9, 2011 at 3:53pm — No Comments

The Time is Here, and It is Growing at Mach Speeds

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…

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Added by Paul Potratz on February 8, 2011 at 3:00pm — No Comments

Engage Mobile Users with Your Dealership's TV Ads

While watching your dealership's TV ads, people with smartphones are probably using their phones and more than likely are online. In fact, according to a recent article by Engadget, a study by Nielsen and Yahoo! found that 86% of mobile internet users are browsing on their phones while watching TV, whether using mobile apps, browsing the internet, accessing social networks like Facebook or Twitter, or…

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Added by Paul Potratz on February 7, 2011 at 2:16pm — No Comments

Potratz Welcomes Jordan Wolfe as Senior Graphic Designer

Potratz, a full service automotive advertising agency is pleased to welcome Jordan Wolfe to its team as Senior Graphic Designer to help take auto dealer clients to a new level. With over 12 years in advertising, Jordan prides himself on the unique path where his career has taken him.

He has worked in the sign industry, trade show…

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Added by Paul Potratz on February 7, 2011 at 11:34am — No Comments

Measuring Social Media Campaigns for Auto Dealers

Social media campaigns for auto dealers should be designed to deliver performance and ROI for dealerships and dealer groups. Not all campaigns should be evaluated the same, nor should the same metrics be used. In order to track the success of a campaign, dealers should set objectives upfront to help identify key performance indicators.

First, dealers should determine what their campaign sets out to…

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Added by Paul Potratz on February 4, 2011 at 11:28am — No Comments

As Superbowl Spots Near, It's Time to Extend Your TV Conversation

As the Super Bowl draws near, the creativity of television campaigns are at its yearly high. In every workplace across America, Monday's water cooler talk will be dominated by the commercial spots that run during the nation's biggest event. Extending a brand's conversation past that :30 second TV spot is a big challenge that most dealerships and dealer groups struggle with when they decide to run a television campaign. Now more than ever, your dealership can utilize new media to provide an… Continue

Added by Paul Potratz on February 2, 2011 at 12:39pm — No Comments

Snowed In? It's the Perfect Automotive Marketing Opportunity!

This week’s snowstorm is affecting dealerships across the country as they plan to deal with the weather: getting ready to dig out the lot and preparing for fewer customers to come in. But bad weather can be the perfect opportunity to send out a special offer. Your auto dealership’s marketing campaign needs to connect…

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Added by Paul Potratz on February 1, 2011 at 2:15pm — 2 Comments

Customize Your Location-Based Marketing To Fit Your Dealership

Location based marketing within your social networks and applications provide your dealership an excellent opportunity to promote itself and your service department. With geo-based apps gaining an enormous amount of headway, it's important that your dealership use them to help promote your various marketing campaigns and departments.

Location based networks like Foursquare, Gowalla, and SCVNGR are great avenues to achieve these types of promotions. Let's start with Foursquare and… Continue

Added by Paul Potratz on January 27, 2011 at 2:06pm — No Comments

Potratz Welcomes Justine Cervenka

Potratz is pleased to welcome Justine Cervenka, an experienced advertising professional who has joined the team as Media Director. Originally from Cobleskill, she has returned to New York after working for multiple agencies in Arizona since 1992.

Justine has handled accounts for a variety of industries, including retail, healthcare, travel, and education. She also… Continue

Added by Paul Potratz on January 25, 2011 at 2:53pm — No Comments

QR Codes are Here to Stay-Is Your Dealership Using Them?

Utilize QR Codes to Drive Leads to Your Car Dealership

If you keep up with the latest digital trends, you know about QR codes. They're similar to bar codes (only with a 2-dimensional pattern) and can be scanned by any smartphone with a QR reader. Once someone scans a QR code, he sees a coupon, special website, video, or whatever the advertiser chooses to use. The opportunities for…

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Added by Paul Potratz on January 24, 2011 at 3:36pm — No Comments

Running an Ethical PPC Campaign for Your Dealership

Recently, we were searching one of our dealership clients (Bill Rapp Superstore) in Google and found that a competitor, Nemith Nissan, is bidding on their dealership's name in search. So when we typed in "Bill Rapp Nissan," a pay-per-click ad showed up saying "Bill Rapp Nissan-we beat their price." Further investigation showed that…

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Added by Paul Potratz on January 19, 2011 at 2:13pm — 2 Comments

Event Planning to Drive Traffic to Your Dealership

Overwhelmed with the prospect of planning an event at your car dealership? You know that you want to get people from your community to come out. But you're not sure about how you'll go about all the work involved in organizing everything from finding food vendors to sending out fliers.

That's when you should sit down and figure out…

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Added by Paul Potratz on January 17, 2011 at 1:56pm — No Comments

Drive Conversions with Your Dealership's Facebook Business Page

You can increase leads and conversions through your dealership's Facebook business page. However, you need to take an approach different from hard-sell methods you may have used in the past with traditional advertising. Social media marketing is all about building relationships with your…

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Added by Paul Potratz on January 14, 2011 at 5:32pm — No Comments

Increase Open Rates for Your Automotive Email Marketing Campaigns

The shotgun approach to automotive email marketing is the best way for your dealership’s message to end up being marked as spam. Working with our dealers we have found that targeting email messages to customer based on their specific vehicle models tend to have higher open rates than those blanketed approaches do. Below are three ways your…

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Added by Paul Potratz on January 13, 2011 at 11:43am — No Comments

Buick's Social Media Scavenger Hunt

Want to see an example of an automaker getting on board with social media marketing? Buick is striving to appeal to the social media generation with its latest promotion, Quest for the Keys, integrating location-based social sites like Foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook Places as well as Twitter and a custom Facebook application. This promotion involves a scavenger hunt in major cities around the US in which people use social sites to find clues to win money or even a new Buick. They can also…

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Added by Paul Potratz on January 10, 2011 at 4:00pm — No Comments

Marketing your Dealership's Service Center

How much of your dealership’s advertising budget goes into promoting your Service Department? Often times it seems that Car Dealers put so much time into getting the Front End ready for Lights, Camera and Action that the Back End gets neglected. Promoting your Service and Parts Center as well as the Body Shop is a healthy way to keep Car Buyers coming into your Service Bay even after their warranty is up.

Consider the age of the average vehicle on the road in your market. All of…

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Added by Paul Potratz on January 7, 2011 at 10:28am — No Comments

Track Your Auto Dealership's Facebook Following

Ever wonder how many people really see what you post on your car dealership's Facebook page? Facebook recently added features to its Insights for business pages, offering new opportunities to see how people are connecting with pages.

Now, you can see how many people saw a post or interacted with it by…