Thought I would start a poll to see who takes their own photos versus paying a 3rd party provider to do it.

In these tough economic times I would think more and more dealerships would take their own photos to cut costs.

Anyone have any tips on how to better take your own photos?

Do you work out of both tools at the same time (bi-manual input system )? If YES, I'm curious as to why you still have two separate tools in this day and age?

If NO, how long have you been off of ILM and solely using just CRM?

So, your dealership has spent a ton of dough implementing Argis. To install, $10,000 and $3,000 +/- monthly. Your techs are finally on board and following the rules. Your advisors are putting forth the effort and some customers are buying. Time to move on to the next big ticket aid to selling more.

Wrong! Look at the database you're growing. The car is back in the customer's garage and you know what it needs. It seems, this is as far as it goes. What about follow-up? What about scraping every last penny out of the pipe you've spent a fortune on? This is a opportunity, not a lost sale!

With whatever upselling tools you invest in, make sure you're prepared to complete the course. Everyone says it but, who is doing it?

Are your advisors following up? Should they? Or, would a better use of their time, and talent, be spent face to face with customers on the drive? If you work the program, your advisors won't have time to call to get customers in because they'll have one customer after another all day long in front of them. So, who's going to do the follow-up on your Argis/MPI?

Not Internet Sales. They exist to sell cars. They exist to feed the salespeople on your lot the qualified buyers they need to sell to all day long.

If advisors are to service what salespeople are to sales then what's the service equivalent of the Internet Sales Department?

And.... discuss!

When you buy third party leads, will you accept them if all you get is an email address?

First Name: Not Required
Last Name: Not Required
Email Address: REQUIRED
Phone Number: Not Required

Vehicle of Interest: Not Required

I use DealerTrack's Finance App. system on my site. F&I leads go right into the DealerTrack backend.

Looking at the last 4 years, about 18 months ago, My Finance Leads counts began trending down.. WAY down.

Do you use DealerTrack? Do you have a history of Finanace form traffic stats?

Here's a 30 day sample of Finance Apps:

How are your Finance apps doing?

I've been receiving more and more requests from dealers that are receiving compliance issues on their Paid Search and Organic SEO. The premise is that a dealer is not allowed to "target" locations outside of their AOI.

For SEM it includes limiting the geo-targeting to your AOI, and for SEO it includes removing any literal mentions of areas outside your AOI.

My questions is this:
If a dealer can buy a TV spot or a Radio spot that covers their major Metro, then why can't they do the same with their Search Engine Marketing? Because it's more transparent? Or am I missing something here?

Who's benefiting here? Surely not the consumer.

...ok that was two questions.

I'm curious as to how many DealerRefresh dealers are working with a BDC of some sort. I'd also like to make this a thread where BDC questions are asked and answered.

I personally think a BDC is a necessity in dealer groups with 3 or more stores.

Given that people spend more time on FaceBook than on Google, a trend that is growing – how valuable would it be if customers posted reviews onto their personal Facebook wall?



Reviews wouldn’t be seen publically, but their influence would be higher as they would have the same influence as a personal referral.

I realized that I'm logging into facebook every couple of days instead of a few times a day. In speaking with Jeff he said his facebook usage has also dwindled. Are you still using facebook like you used to?

I'm not talking about business. I'm asking about YOUR personal usage.

Greetings,

I need help with a bogus website riding on our SEO listings in google, yahoo,bing etc..Do a search via the big 3 using www.woodybuttschevy.com. Click on the number 2 listing which looks like this
woodybuttschevy - woodybuttschevy.com - byron, GA Business


woodybuttschevy Corp locates in 909 cochran dr; byron,GA 31008,Domain is woodybuttschevy.com, we can find it in zip code 31008 business or GA business.
www.qxiu.com/GA/52529-woodybuttschevy.htm - Cached

Here are the problems.

1. Open the page and anti virus software detects Virus Generic JS.
2. Most of the information on the site is not from Woody Butts. There are 3 numbers listed. One is correct. The email woodybuttschevy does not work. The address is another city about 40 miles from our location.
3. Tried listing site with qxiu but said site is already listed. Tried signing up with company and after submit receive pade does not exist.
4. Site says qxiu is out of China with a China phone #. Emailed with no result.
5. Called local and 800 #'s and get an answering machine.
6. Our "Site" has had over 200 visitors on the qxiu site. One link does take the customer to our site. another link takes them to hotfrog.com

How do I get the listings removed from the search engines. Hate to see our customers getting virus warnings and being redirected to a wrong phone # and address?

All help is appreciated!

Brian Thompson
Woody Butts Chevy Cochran GA

Do you have an iPad? It was super-cool when it came out, but you can't put it in your pocket and it dosent have a keyboard, so... How often do you use it?

It always amazed me how difficult it was for my coworkers to rarely get their paper work right when selling a car. Sure, I could understand not getting a stip together because they don't happen all that often, but to forget a trade appraisal form, the credit application, or a signed privacy act notice - these kind of things always shocked me.

What are some of the common paper work problems you have seen?

"Blogs" are still the hype, though it seems as if we have been talking about them forever here on DealerRefresh.

Should dealers be blogging?

My question for the community is IF you have a dealership blog, what is your main reason for the blog?

OR for some, what WAS your main purpose for your dealership blog?

You have to choose one of the 2 in the survey!

1. SEO to drive traffic to your dealer website

Or

2. To build transparency between your dealer and consumer

If it's 49% transparency 51% SEO, then your answer would be number 1.

Yeah, we know there are benefits to both but let's be honest..what is/was your true driver for even taking the time and resources to have a blog?

Another question to toss out there. Is your blog part of your dealer website or is it hosted with a completely separate domain and what do you believe are the pros ad cons of each?

Not sure how many people are using Google's Webmaster Tools for your dealership websites, but with the amount of information they just released on Top Search Queries, now's the time if you were holding out!

You can now see more detailed information for each query including the number of impressions that query got, how many times your link was clicked on out of those impressions and what position it was in, in the SERPs when it was clicked on. Amazing amount of information, really.

A couple of big things to note:

After position 3, the chance of someone clicking on your link go basically to 0 in relation to the CTR of position 1, 2 and 3.

Google was rumored to bounce around sites for certain keywords for testing who performed best, and this seems to confirm that rumor. What's even more interesting is the impact of placing first for a keyword/phrase as opposed to second. For our site, it looks like they took the phrase "dealership reviews" and gave us the top two SERP links (perhaps one was a supplemental?). For a given time period, we had 210 impressions in the top spot and 210 impressions in the second spot. The first spot received 140 clicks and the second spot received < 10.

It also shows which of your pages you were ranking for and which pages the user clicked on through too.

Unbelievably useful data. So useful, I'm amazed they released this.

Chip-

A few weeks ago I turned a Mac Mini into my home entertainment hub and discovered the wonderful world of TV broadcasting through things like Hulu, Boxee, and Plex. In fact, I am enjoying streaming my TV shows so much that I am considering canceling Cable (huge savings for me).

This has got me thinking a lot about the future of television. Right now it is the king of traditional advertising, but I am starting to think its days are numbered. What do you guys think?

By the way, here is my Mac Mini project: Mac Mini as Home Entertainment Hub Photographic Expeditions of Alex Snyder if you need further clarification of what the future could be.

Who did you use to build your website? A small independent agency or a larger templated solution like Dealer.com or dealercarsearch.com? If you were picking a new vendor now, what would you look for?

I've got about 25-30 vehicles in inventory and do not have a website now.

Dealers - has facebook sourced you any extra car deals?


Vendors - I respectfully ask that you DO NOT answer the poll in regards to whether you have sourced any business for your product off facebook, but I welcome you to answer on behalf of any of your clients who are not participating on DealerRefresh.

I just got back from a Dealer.com visit and when I visit they ask me to spend some time with their Account Management/Support team for some Q/A time. The biggest question I was asked was "should dealers be on facebook" and I not only gave my opinion, but promised I would write a DealerRefresh Blog article that they (anyone) could use as a reference for dealers who ask if they should start a facebook account or fan page. I don't want to only include my own experiences though, so I'm asking for your help first.

I would also like to see any opinions or best practices you may have for doing business on facebook. Vendors - this is something you can talk about in regards to how you've faired on sourcing clients from facebook for your non-driveable product.

Are you using your CRM company's provided lead address? Are your leads being sent to leads@crmcompanyname.yourname.com?

Maybe you should rethink this setup... Dealership lead routing procedure for CRM and ILM

How do people go about pricing vehicles online and what works / what doesn't?

Right now the main issue for dealers is most likely going to be their already depleted inventory getting even smaller.

This leaves us with a VERY limited amount of vehicles to show customers.

My standard answer to the question "How many do you have?" is "How many do you NEED??"

They have ALWAYS said "One". But these customers, for whatever reason, need to know you have more on your lot than just one.

Do you delete the cars as you sell off two of your last three?

OR do you leave them in place to get the leads and hopefully sell what you have as well as have that name on file for when you DO have the cars you need in place?

My own thought is; As long as I have ONE that they can see and test drive, regardless of the trim level, I want them to come in to see me - especially if I can swap or order something for them.

What do you think?

Just curious as to who is leading the automotive accounting world for the DealerRefresh Community?

Just curious to see what the favored social media powers are being utilized to help market your dealership.

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Advertising Services and Solicitation

We recognize the need for a vendor to offer a solution to any user who is struggling with something. There are tactful ways to do this so that you are not in violation of the forum rules. If you need help constructing a post or thread that does not violate the DealerRefresh rules, feel free to ask me for assistance. Moderators have discretion in determining what is a helpful posting and what is purely a solicitation. Please respect their decisions.

Here is a simple way to look at it: Before you post, ask yourself if your post is being made solely for Promotional Reasons. If so, don't post.

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