There has been a question that has popped up over the years ever since the rise of the internet as a valid marketing venue for car dealers. Should dealerships and vendors teach automotive industry people about marketing or should they teach marketing professionals about the car business?

I've seen both concepts work and I've seen them both fail. The answer…

There's a disturbing trend I'm seeing in the automotive industry when I visit websites. Perhaps it's been like this for a while and I simply took my eye off the chat ball. When I see chat windows that instantly prompt for the customer's contact information, it makes me cry a little inside.

This isn't what chat is supposed to be about. I'd love to have that…

I was talking to an internet manager yesterday about their marketing when I brought up Hook Logic. His challenge was that he only gets credit for leads, so while he definitely wanted to help the dealership with our SEO and social media products, he wasn't crazy about the concept of increasing more showroom visitors that did not fill out lead forms or call…

It's easy for us to take the high road and call it abysmal to utilize the strategy demonstrated below. We would never do it to two dealers, let alone dozens. We also understand the need to make a solution scalable for the sake of profits as we have worked for companies that need to scale to serve hundreds or thousands of dealers. With that said, it is still atrocious…

Over the last couple of months, I've been researching reputation management companies in and out of the automotive industry. On one hand, I found a couple of shining stars that stood out from the competition. On the other hand, they were only the best but were still missing the boat when it comes to the true potential of what reputation "management" should…

Every year around this time, dealerships find themselves making decisions about how to move forward with their marketing. The NADA Convention is often a starting point for the decision-making process; whether you go or not, the post-NADA whirlwind is a great time to grab the latest and greatest from the various vendors around the industry.

It's not just for…

Dealer Authority, an automotive digital marketing firm, named Tyson Madliger as its first chief executive officer. He will be joining JD Rucker who founded the company in November, 2013.

Orange County, CA (PRWEB) January 15,…

Thanks to social media, the leaders of companies are often much more exposed than ever before. Not everybody uses social media regularly, especially business leaders who are too busy, too out of touch, or both. Those who are active on social media while running a company need to be sure their profile picture portrays the proper image.

Originally, I…

When I first started in digital marketing back in 2006, I had a dream of helping people take over the internet realm for their particular niche. At the time, I had 4 automotive clients and with the thought that content and links were so powerful for SEO while social media was the future, I pictured a product where my clients were blogging several times a week and…

I would love to tell you that this is breaking information, the type of news that you absolutely must hear in order to succeed in 2014, and that if you don't heed my advice your dealership will probably crumble in the earthquake of financial ruin by mid-March, but I just can't say that. This is a subtle post. It's a reminder of things that you should know, but just…

This is an industry that has no shortage of vendors. There are more choices amongst those supplying dealerships with websites than several other major industries combined. It's competitive out there, which is a great thing for dealers. Unfortunately, it can also be confusing. Who is really delivering the goods and who is peddling smoke and mirrors?

It's a…

One of the most amazing parts of my job is spending time reading, watching, and testing the practices of others. It's conceivable that the true secret to my success over the years has less to do with creativity and more to do with listening and deciphering. You have to listen to the channels like Google and Facebook. You have to listen to your customers. You have to…

Let’s keep this one short and sweet. If you run a business, you fall into one of four categories:

1. Those who are using social media and seeing mixed or minimal results
2. Those who have used social media in the past and stopped because they saw mixed or minimal results
3. Those who have never really bought into social media
4. Those who…

If you've participated in automotive internet marketing for long enough, you've very likely heard the concept that "content is King." It was in play back in the days when I started researching search engine optimization all those years ago and it never really stopped. There was a dirty little secret that few of us in the SEO community ever mentioned, but it's been…

The excitement has been building for a little while now and we're finally here. 2013 was awesome for many of us on all three sides of the ball - dealers, vendors, and OEMs - and 2014 is trending towards being even better for many. On the other hand, the dangers popping up in many marketing disciplines are also casting some doubts on the future of a good chunk of the…

To paraphrase the immortal movie icon, Ferris Bueller, "The Internet moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

That seems to be the case with many digital marketing practices, particularly in the realm of advertising versus marketing. Oddly enough, it wasn't too long ago that I was preaching the reverse;…

Online reputation has been a hot topic for a couple of years now. As solutions continue to emerge and the business of reputation management as a service expands, there's a dangerous trend that should be addressed.

Reputation management isn't about sending an email. It's not about filtering results by checking their sentiment first before directing them to the…

The biggest news of automotive M&A came at the end of the year as Dealertrack has agreed to acquire Dealer.com. Following their…

As I've said on many occasions, there are only a handful of social media websites that you need to focus on at your dealership. Despite claims that you need to be on dozens of them, the real ones that are making an impact today and in the near future are Facebook, Google+, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest with Instagram, Foursquare, Tumblr, and LinkedIn sitting comfortably in…

I was going through the profiles of some businesses that I follow on social media when I noticed something that was highly discouraging. Some had statements on their Twitter pages that read something to the effect of “a retweet does not mean we endorse it.” On Facebook, there were disclaimers added to the about section that read “liked, commented on, or shared content does…