Digital

Outsource to In-House - Part Four

Glynn Rodean - Up to this point in the outsource-to-in-house-BDC transition, the bulk of the in-house preparation has been planning, along with some training. While the entire transition can take up to a ...

Your Vendor Agreements

Dave Keller - ... dealers use many third-party vendors which have DMS access for downloading information to their software to furnish dealers with add-on products and/or reports. Maybe it is time to inventory all these programs to find out if you are still utilizing them and if ...

Properly Allocate Your Internet Marketing Dollars

Jason Ezell - As dealer Web sites grew in number, popularity and robustness, Web space got crowded—especially on search engines. The solution for more visibility amidst the crowd was to buy your way in front of competitors to position yourself closest to the shopping audience. It’s the ultimate auction with no ceiling on pricing, and the more you spend the ...

CRM in Service and in Sales

Harlene Doane - As consumers shy away from purchasing new and pre-owned vehicles during this difficult economic cycle, customer relationship management efforts should be solidly focused on service opportunities. From any 100 customers who purchased a vehicle, from a retail dealer, data base management system information indicates about 30 of those customers are ...

How Employee F&I Fraud Can Come Home to Roost

Thomas B. Hudson - So, your dealership’s employee dummies-up a credit application with bogus income information in order to get the bank to buy the deal, enabling the employee to earn his commission. No one else at the dealership is aware of the fraud. Then, the employee’s acts are discovered ...

Eighteen Internet Marketing Tips

Howard Polirer - The goal of automotive Internet marketing is not to sell cars online; it’s to get potential customers to see your car, click on your car, come in to your store and ultimately purchase the vehicle. To get consumers to move through this process, your online presentation must create value ..

Subaru Dealer Anchors CRM in Store Culture

Many people relate CRM to customer follow-up. While follow-up is an integral part of CRM, some believe managing your customer relationships long before the sale is just as crucial. At Anchor Subaru and Anchor Pre-Owned, customer relationship management (CRM) begins as soon as a potential customer ...

Search Engine Reputation Management

Jim Rucker - How often do you search Google and the other search engines for your dealership name? Weekly? Monthly? Rarely? You should be doing it often. Your potential customers do. It's actually the most important ...

Mining for Precious Profits

Many dealers dig into reports that spell out how many units each salesperson sold, how many ROs the service department has written and how many ancillary products the F&I office has sold. As informative as the data in those reports are, they are all history reports and don’t do much to drive more traffic or sales. Today, many dealers are digging through their ...

Riverside Hits the Tech Ground Running

For the three Dagenais brothers, one of the biggest challenges they faced while negotiating to buy out the local Ford store in Escanaba, Mich., involved keeping their pledge of strict confidentiality. In a Midwestern town like Escanaba, that commitment required ...

Put Your Money Where Eyeballs Are

Jason Ezell - Although OEM sites are still the most visited by online shoppers, third-party sites are no longer the second most visited sites. For the first time, dealership Web sites are the second most visited Web sites by online car shoppers! A reported 60 percent of these shoppers went to the ...

Five Sources to Drive Traffic to Your Web Site

Jim Rucker - The scope of the automotive industry has changed over the last several months. Web sites are becoming more functional, offering the quality that consumers demand when trying to research vehicles online. They're not all perfect, but for the most part, they offer inventory, credit applications and other ...

Mobile Marketing Today

Todd Swickard - The hype is building about mobile marketing and how it will affect automotive in 2009. Early adopters are pushing text messaging and mobile Web advertising. Those who sell mobile marketing services say it’s the future of CRM. After all...

The Misdiagnosed Dealer Plague

David Keller - I have talked to many banks in the past few months, and guess what? They don’t seem to be in the business of loaning money anymore. Seems strange, as they should have a hard time making a profit if they pay depositors and...

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