Acacia Grant – DealerOn

Google’s Panda Update Hits Press Release Effectiveness

Acacia Grant — Thu, 10 Jul 2014 01:01:41 +0000

Many small businesses, including car dealerships, use press releases as a way to add to their search engine optimization. In fact, 3 years ago, DealerOn even recommended dealerships use a press release strategy. However, with Google’s recent algorithm changes, press release sites no longer have the search engine benefits they once did, unless and until they are able to fix...

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Google Helps Your Dealership “Settle the (Quality) Score”

Acacia Grant — Thu, 03 Jul 2014 22:54:37 +0000

Google Adwords is probably one of your dealership’s biggest and most important online marketing investments. Even if your dealership has hired an agency to manage your investment, you should spend 15 minutes to read the information Google just put out on Quality Score. Quality Score (QS) can be one of the more confusing aspects of Google’s Adwords algorithm, but its...

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How to Build Trust With Service Customers From the Start

Acacia Grant — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 21:36:59 +0000

The fixed operations department in the average dealership generates over 50% of a typical dealer’s gross profit, according to NADA. Since this is where you make most of your money, it’s important that you do everything you can to turn each and every visitor to your service lanes into loyal, return customers. While your fixed ops staff may have a...

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Have Google Check Your Mobile Site for Speed & Usability

Acacia Grant — Wed, 21 May 2014 21:45:12 +0000

Google’s announcement yesterday about the launch of their new PageSpeed Insights’ User Experience rules is really driving home the importance of usability and site speed on your mobile website. They’ve previously discussed how important the speed at which your website loads (both desktop and mobile) is to their algorithm – site speed can impact the ranking of a website on...

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The Difference a Combination Can Make

Acacia Grant — Wed, 30 Apr 2014 17:45:39 +0000

In the seven years I’ve been in the automotive industry, I’ve noticed that much of the thinking tends to be segmented – Internet Dept vs. Showroom, New vs. Used, Sales vs. Service. A lot of times, this way of thinking rolls over to the advertising and marketing your dealership does, including that of your vendors – Paid vs. Organic, Digital...

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Help Stop Stolen Content From Outranking Your Dealership Website

Acacia Grant — Wed, 23 Apr 2014 19:35:15 +0000

It’s a pretty common practice for people to Google their own name. Sometimes out of curiosity, but sometimes to help ensure your name (or your dealership’s name) isn’t showing up on webpages you don’t want it to. You Google your dealership name to help ensure it appears where you want it to (and doesn’t where you don’t), but do you...

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Don’t Neglect This Basic SEO Factor

Acacia Grant — Mon, 21 Apr 2014 20:38:09 +0000

There are thousands of things to manage in each and every dealership, including your dealer website. So much attention is devoted to leads, conversion rate, vehicle detail pages, etc., that sometimes it’s easy to forget one of the most basic SEO factors for your website – the speed at which it loads. According to KISSmetrics, 47% of consumers expect a...

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Using Google Analytics to Understand Your Mobile Traffic

Acacia Grant — Tue, 15 Apr 2014 21:53:58 +0000

As of March 2014, the average car dealer website gets more traffic from mobile devices (including laptops) than from desktop computers. Many of the dealers that we work with have no idea how their traffic breaks down between desktop, laptop, tablet, and phone. They are used to visiting their dealership’s website on a desktop computer at the dealership or from...

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Clearing Up the Responsive vs. Adaptive Debate

Acacia Grant — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 19:42:23 +0000

Everyone is telling you that your dealership website NEEDS to be responsive…but what does that really mean? Responsive web design means that the same URL and HTML are passed to each website visitor, regardless of what device they are using to view that website. This is different from adaptive web design which first detects which device is accessing the website,...

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NADA 2014 Recap – A DealerOn Perspective

Acacia Grant — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 02:10:37 +0000

The National Automobile Dealers Association convention came back to New Orleans this year. NOLA never disappoints with its memorable blend of unique culture, food and music. If you’ve never attended the NADA convention you might be overwhelmed by the size difference when compared to smaller events. NADA is the “Big Show” and anybody and everybody in the automotive space shows...

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DealerOn at Digital Dealer in Orlando

Acacia Grant — Fri, 06 May 2011 20:33:20 +0000

DealerOn’s team had a great time and a fantastic experience at Digital Dealer in Orlando! We had a chance to talk and socialize with current and potential clients, show off what the company has been working on, and of course, have much more fun than should be allowed. While we didn’t take nearly as many pictures as we meant to,...

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New Technology Makes DealerOn Car Dealer Websites 10 Times Faster

Acacia Grant — Fri, 06 May 2011 20:07:53 +0000

Almost a year and a half ago, Google announced that their search algorithm would begin to include car dealer website load times. This meant that auto dealerships with slow loading sites would not only lose potential leads from website traffic that “bounced”, but also risked hurting their search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. DealerOn originally built their website platform with this...

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Dealership Relevant Keywords

Acacia Grant — Sun, 01 May 2011 23:07:52 +0000

While using Google’s AdWords Keyword tool is a good place to start when you are trying to come up with a keyword list for your dealership online marketing, a lot of people start there, which means your competitors could have a very similar keyword list as your dealership. To help you stay a step ahead, I want to highlight some...

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DealerOn Digital Dealer 2011

Acacia Grant — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 12:09:10 +0000

DealerOn is on the road this week at the Digital Dealer Conference in Orlando, FL. We are excited to talk with dealers in person not only about the great things we’re doing that can help them increase sales and profit, but also to understand the new challenges they’re facing in 2011. One way that we’ll be helping dealers make more...

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Nissan Certified Website Provider

Acacia Grant — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 12:07:37 +0000

I am so excited to announce that DealerOn has been selected as a Certified Dealer Website Provider for Nissan North America (NNA). This certification lets Nissan and Infiniti dealers who use DealerOn’s website and mobile platform know that their sites are NNA compliant and meet NNA’s high standards for performance. In the first quarter 2011, NNA began evaluating the leading...

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Automotive Domain Mastery and Ownership

Acacia Grant — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 12:07:03 +0000

Since DealerOn’s core service is our website product, we work with hundreds of dealers’ domains every day, and consider ourselves fairly expert in this area. Dealers and their IT people may not always have much experience in this area– for most online companies, the only time you need to worry about your domain is when you register or renew it,...

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DealerOn Does Napa

Acacia Grant — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 12:05:08 +0000

While in San Francisco for NADA earlier this month, DealerOn took the opportunity to treat some of our partners, colleagues, customers, and friends in the dealership community on a daylong excursion to the Napa Wine Valley. We had an opportunity to enjoy world-class reserve wines straight from the barrel at the Cakebread and Frank Family wineries. In between we squeezed...

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DealerOn HTML5 Compliancy

Acacia Grant — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 12:03:50 +0000

Over the past few weeks, we’ve had a few of our auto dealer website clients have asked what we are doing to keep up with the advances with HTML 5. Since it seems to be a topic of concern for multiple dealers, I wanted to share what DealerOn is working on. First, most people that are asking about HTML 5...

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Automotive Domain Extensions

Acacia Grant — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 12:02:42 +0000

True to its nature, the Internet is changing again. 2012 should see the emergence of new domain suffixes like .eco, .love, and .god. And of course, this isn’t without some controversy. This will open a ton of possible domains, which could either make the Internet more intuitive (you’d know what type of site you were going to if it have...

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Google Places Listing Deduplication

Acacia Grant — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 12:01:52 +0000

Have you ever gone to add your auto dealer website to Google Places only to find someone else has already claimed and verified it? We run into this from time to time while setting up listings, and recently found this information on what to do. First, make sure no one in your dealership has already taken the initiative to set...

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New Social Media Features and Layout

Acacia Grant — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 11:59:19 +0000

If you are an admin for your dealership’s Facebook Page, you should have received an email regarding an exciting update about the new layout and features available for your Facebook Business Page. Now, your dealership’s Facebook Page will resemble a personal profile, and allows you to interact through Facebook as your dealership. Here is an overview of what is changing:...

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How Google Works

Acacia Grant — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 09:40:50 +0000

Ever wondered how Google’s search engine works? This cool info-graphic is definitely worth taking a look at. While it doesn’t give away the things Google uses to rank sites, it does lend some insight into how the search engine delivers the websites you search for. How Google Works Infographic by the Pay Per Click Blog

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Facebook Changes Promotion Restrictions

Acacia Grant — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 09:41:40 +0000

Since many of our social media car dealerships use contests on Facebook as a way of gathering more “likes” for their page, I wanted to help keep you up to date on the changes Facebook is making regarding contests on their platform. In the past, any auto dealership looking to run a promotion (“sweepstakes, contest, competition, or other similar offering”)...

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How Google Instant Search Could Change SEO

Acacia Grant — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 09:47:05 +0000

As I’m sure most people have heard, Google came out with a new feature yesterday that they’re calling Instant Search. Since the announcement has been all over the Internet, I thought I’d try to explain what Instant Search does and how it can help your car dealer website. Google’s Instant Search resembles their auto-suggest feature, where potential search terms are...

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Your Auto Dealership and Facebook’s Community Pages

Acacia Grant — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 09:51:12 +0000

Facebook Community pages have been a “new” feature for about four months, yet many people and businesses don’t know much about them. Essentially, Facebook uses Community Pages to gather information from across their platform, creating a sort of wiki of information, even including information from Wikipedia when appropriate. According to the social network, “Community Pages are meant to be the...

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Facebook’s “Like” Button Added to Inventory Pages

Acacia Grant — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 09:53:16 +0000

I wanted to let our dealership website customers know about a new feature designed to increase interaction on your inventory pages. Dealers now have the option to allow their car dealer website visitors to “Like” a particular vehicle, sending the information to their Facebook account. When your dealership customers click the “Like” button, the page title, URL, thumbnail gallery of...

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Auto Dealer Websites Need a Mobile Version. Period.

Acacia Grant — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 09:59:05 +0000

Auto dealer websites need to have a separate, mobile version of their site, plain and simple. Here’s why: Over 73 million people were mobile web users in 2009, a number that is expected to almost double by 2013. According to a study by Neilson, mobile Internet usage is increasing by 30% each year. Google has a separate search engine index...

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Auto Dealership Viral Video Tips

Acacia Grant — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 10:00:43 +0000

Everyone wants the videos they make to go viral, meaning they get spread around the Internet, sent from friend to friend. Viral videos can give your auto dealership a huge increase in brand awareness and buzz, huge marketing benefits and an increase in car dealer website traffic with little cost. One recent example that was ALL over Twitter and the...

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Search Engine Optimization for Google’s Caffeine Update

Acacia Grant — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 10:01:50 +0000

Now that Google’s search engine update, Caffeine, is live everywhere, a lot of people have questions about how it will impact search engine results, and more specifically, what car dealers can do to better optimize for this update. I wanted to answer both questions, so let’s start with how Caffeine will impact search engine optimization in general. Caffeine is an...

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Internal Linking Helps With Car Dealer Search Engine Optimization

Acacia Grant — Fri, 28 May 2010 10:03:19 +0000

Search engine optimization can be a complicated process, especially since Google is rumored to use over 200 factors when determining how high (or low) your car dealership website ranks on their result pages. While most people attribute successful SEO to things like keywords, meta tags, and external links, some SEO vendors forget about the importance of internal linking. Internal linking...

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Ways Around Facebook Landing Tab Changes for Auto Dealers

Acacia Grant — Mon, 24 May 2010 10:06:33 +0000

I wrote on Friday about the changes Facebook has made to their landing tab capabilities for non-authenticated businesses, and today I want to let our auto dealer customers know a couple of ways to get around this blow to small business social media and Facebook’s marketing capabilities. Just to make things clear, your car dealership page will still be able...

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Facebook Changes Rules for Landing Tabs

Acacia Grant — Fri, 21 May 2010 10:11:33 +0000

Looks like Facebook isn’t just pulling the privacy rug out from under its many users, it’s also changing the way small businesses, including most auto dealerships, can use the social media platform. Previously, Facebook allowed all business pages to create a customized landing tab that visitors would see when visiting your auto dealer’s page. Facebook has announced that now only...

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Car Dealer Websites Need to Embrace Blended Search SEO

Acacia Grant — Wed, 19 May 2010 10:16:08 +0000

Have you noticed that when you use Google or other search engines the results page is showing different types of media, like video, images, local info, and web search, all on one page? This is being referred to as blended search, and it is showing up more and more on search engine result pages. Blended search gives your auto dealer...

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Google Blended Search

Acacia Grant — Fri, 14 May 2010 21:22:00 +0000

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Google Browser Size Tool

Acacia Grant — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 21:27:13 +0000

It can be easy for ISM’s to forget that not everyone has the fastest Internet connections or the biggest monitors when looking at their auto dealer website. In order to maximize the power of your dealership website’s calls to action, inventory links, and specials, try using the Google Browser Size tool. This webtool allows you to enter the URL of...

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Your Social Media Followers More Likely to Buy

Acacia Grant — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 21:44:04 +0000

It seems like everyone is telling auto dealers that they NEED to have a social media presence; if they don’t, they are only missing out on sales and exposure. Well, according to a recent study from the market research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies, “they” are right. Over 1500 consumers were surveyed, and the majority said they...

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Search Engine Optimization with your Website Vendor

Acacia Grant — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:51:32 +0000

Auto dealer search engine optimization is one of the most important things when it comes to the success of your car dealership website. Without it, most of your potential car buyers wouldn’t be able to find your site online. This is why your dealership website vendor needs to be well-versed in SEO, and be able to educate their dealership clients....

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Managing Your PPC

Acacia Grant — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:42:24 +0000

Last week I wrote about ways auto dealerships looking to have their pay-per-click ad campaign managed by a vendor can find the best partner that best fits their goals. I realize that not every auto dealership will decide to go that route, so I’ve found some tips for car dealers looking to manage their own PPC accounts. You have to...

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Find the Right PPC Provider for You

Acacia Grant — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:57:30 +0000

Car dealers that use pay-per-click advertising for their dealership website often turn to a managed service. If your car dealership is ready to turn your PPC campaign over, or you’re just looking to get started with PPC, here are some things you should look for when determining which car dealer PPC manager is best for your dealership. It’s so important...

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DealerOn Does NADA 2010

Acacia Grant — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:05:39 +0000

With the NADA Convention and Expo just around the corner, I wanted to let everyone know the plans DealerOn has for the upcoming weekend in Orlando. We’ll be arriving around noon on Saturday, February 13, and headed back to the cold temperatures of the Washington DC area on Monday, February 15. During that time, Jeff, Amir, Ali, and Chris will...

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Google Pagerank Incorporates Twitter Presence

Acacia Grant — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 23:04:26 +0000

Not all auto dealers use Twitter as part of their online marketing campaigns. For those that do or those that are considering it, it’s important to know what criteria Google uses when ranking tweets now that the search engine giant is beginning to integrate real-time search results. According to Amit Singhal, a Google “Fellow,” Google will take into consideration not...

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Happy New Year 2010

Acacia Grant — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 03:16:16 +0000

Happy New Year from DealerOn! On behalf of everyone that works at DealerOn, I’d like to give a sincere thank you to all of our auto dealer website customers and online interactive marketing partners. Our business is only successful when yours is, and working together is the only way we can both achieve our goals. 2009 has been a difficult...

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Dealer Website Page Load Time

Acacia Grant — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 03:14:23 +0000

Most auto dealerships have already realized that when their car dealer website takes too long to load, a lot of web users will click off and find what they are looking for on a different car dealership’s website. Just in case the potential loss in sales hasn’t been incentive enough to ensure your dealer site loads quickly, Matt Cutts of...

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Google Local Business Best Practices

Acacia Grant — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 03:10:25 +0000

Google has recently updated their Local Business listings guidelines in their efforts to further discourage any spam or inappropriate use of their Local Business listing service. The new guidelines are listed here. If your car dealer website provider or your Internet department has already listed your dealer website in the Google local listings, then you should probably double check to...

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Trust with PPC Advertising

Acacia Grant — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:13:21 +0000

I recently found an interesting, informal study about search engine advertising (PPC) done by a self-proclaimed “marketing technologist” and wanted to share some of the results with you. The entire study is available by clicking here. What really caught my notice was the question: “When you avoid the ads for a particular search, what are the reasons why?” Over 40%...

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PPC Campaign Views

Acacia Grant — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 03:09:23 +0000

According to the Google AdWords blog, Google will now show its AdWords users the number of searchers that saw your pay-per-click (PPC) ad, didn’t click on it, but bought from your dealership within 30 days. Google calls these “View-through Conversions.” This new reporting can be helpful when determining your return on investment (ROI) for your PPC ad campaigns. By combining...

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Quality Score Targeting Keywords

Acacia Grant — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 03:07:19 +0000

Google’s Quality Score play a big role in determining how much your dealership pays for your pay per click (PPC) ad campaign and the location of your ad on the search results page. The higher the Quality Score, the less your dealership has to pay for the same location on the results page. Since Quality Score is determined by the...

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Google Bid Simulator

Acacia Grant — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 03:04:59 +0000

Given the complexity involved with running a dealership’s pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaign, Google is trying to make the self-management of PPC campaigns as easy as possible with the introduction of their bid simulator. Existing Google AdWords users will be able to use the new bid simulator to see the potential difference in clicks compared to a higher or lower maximum...

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Dealer Incentives Program – Cash For Clunkers

Acacia Grant — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 02:59:47 +0000

The Cash for Clunkers program seems to be a success, despite the criticism that the program continues to get. Some would-be buyers complain that their older cars don’t qualify as “clunkers” and environmentalists have said that the program isn’t really lowering the United States’ dependence on oil or pollution. Yet this doesn’t seem to be slowing the success of the...

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Increasing Dealer Website Conversion

Acacia Grant — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 02:38:19 +0000

On Tuesday, I wrote about how website design, content, navigation, and technical problems can affect your auto dealership website conversion rate. Your online marketing efforts can also affect the rate at which traffic on your car dealer website converts into leads. Here’s how: Keyword Selection (SEO & PPC): People who use search engines expect to find websites that are related...

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Dealership PPC Campaigns

Acacia Grant — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 02:58:19 +0000

Almost every auto dealer that tries running a search engine marketing campaign (PPC) on their own ends up making a mistake or two. Heck, even the PPC veterans make a mistake from time to time. While occasionally trying something that ends up not being as effective as thought is understandable, some errors happen far too often. Here is a list...

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Dealer Website Conversion Factors

Acacia Grant — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 02:36:46 +0000

The conversion rate of a dealership’s website is the most commonly used metric to measure the success of a website’s success at generating leads. Conversion rates are usually expressed as the percentage of traffic that submits a lead to your website. Obviously, the higher the conversion rate, the better it is for your auto dealership. Most analytics tools calculate conversion...

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Google Local Search

Acacia Grant — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 02:54:39 +0000

Google has done a great job making their search results better and more effective for the car buyers that use their search engine, especially when it comes to local search. As it stands now, those who search Google for a term like “Ford dealership” or “used Nissan dealer” will see local results for these terms, even if a city isn’t...

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Dealership Banner Advertising

Acacia Grant — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 02:46:29 +0000

Marketing, both online and traditional, is only effective if the intended audience actually pays attention to your message. It’s also important that your marketing be effective at persuading consumers to purchase from your dealership. If your marketing efforts aren’t seen by consumers and have an effect on them, you might as well be throwing that money away. Internet banner advertising...

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Generating Referrals and Effective Followup

Acacia Grant — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 02:39:11 +0000

Everyone wants referrals, but a lot of salespeople are reluctant to ask for them. It can be off-putting to some customers, and there seems to be a sense that if a referral comes without having to ask for it, it is more “deserved.” There is nothing wrong with asking for a referral from customers that are satisfied after doing business...

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Dealership Demographic Targeting

Acacia Grant — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 02:32:01 +0000

Knowing how different groups of people use the Internet can help your auto dealership effectively target your online marketing and earn more sales. When you take the time to segment and understand your market, it becomes easier for your dealership to send the right message to the right people at the right time, resulting in more sales for your dealership....

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Tracking Keywords and Website Analytics

Acacia Grant — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 02:24:26 +0000

When optimizing your dealership website for search engines, finding the most effective keywords to focus on is often the most difficult aspect (and one of the most important) of your SEO efforts. With average search terms getting longer and longer, and 20-25% of the search terms Google sees are unique (never used before), it is getting more and more difficult...

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How to Increase Car Dealer Referrals

Acacia Grant — Wed, 27 May 2009 02:22:24 +0000

Every sales person I have ever met is always looking for referrals. Referrals tend to come with a level of built-in trust, which especially in the auto industry, can make it much easier for you to sell them their next car. The struggle comes in knowing how to get your existing customers and salespeople (referral sources) to recognize potential referrals....

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Dealership Long-Tail SEO Searches

Acacia Grant — Fri, 22 May 2009 02:21:25 +0000

A recent study by Comscore finds that the “average” search term entered into Google continues to get longer and longer. As it stands, the average search term contains just over 3 words, and this increase in the length of search terms doesn’t appear to be slowing. This makes search engine optimization (SEO) even more important than ever for your auto...

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Car Dealer Radio Advertising

Acacia Grant — Fri, 15 May 2009 02:18:02 +0000

Radio advertising has just been dealt another blow–even Google can’t find a way to track ad spend. A few years back, Google decided to try to automate radio advertising much as they do Internet advertising (PPC). However, even the King of Analytics couldn’t figure out how to effectively track the success of radio ad campaigns. According to the Wall Street...

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Google PPC Quality Score

Acacia Grant — Tue, 05 May 2009 02:12:48 +0000

Google assigns (and continually tweaks) Quality Scores to the websites and landing pages used by customers who purchase ads on their search results pages. Quality Scores are a frequent topic of conversation in the search engine marketing circle, but are they really that important? The short answer is definitively YES! Quality Scores affect how much you pay per click as...

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Google Profiles takes advantage of Identity Searches

Acacia Grant — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 10:42:35 +0000

When you meet someone new and you want to find out more information about them, what do you do? If you’re like a lot of people, you’ll head straight to Google and search for their name. I would bet that a large number of potential customers perform an Internet search on your dealership after they’ve decided to purchase from you. ...

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Reputation Management using Social Media

Acacia Grant — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:39:21 +0000

Social media just seems to keep growing and growing in popularity. Websites like Twitter and Facebook are continuing to see an increase in both users and businesses that use these websites to market their business. Unfortunately, with this increase in marketing use comes an increase in imposters. More and more user accounts are being set up claiming to be the...

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Online Automotive Marketing – Patience is a Virtue

Acacia Grant — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 10:32:25 +0000

As an auto sales person, you want to see the results of your selling efforts as soon as possible. As a business person, you want to see the financial benefits of any money you spend as soon as you spend it. Business and sales tend to be focused on the here and now, and rightly so. Especially during this lull...

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Automotive Government Rescue

Acacia Grant — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 10:17:40 +0000

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-on-the-American-Automotive-Industry-3/30/09/ I’m sure a lot of our readers watched, listened to, or have read the speech given by President Obama, especially if you sell GM or Chrysler. He spoke very strongly about the government’s lack of desire to run an auto company. The President also made it very clear that “We cannot, and must not, and we will not let...

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Automotive Blogging – How To

Acacia Grant — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:11:53 +0000

I wrote a post last week about the search engine optimization (SEO) stats your dealership needs to track, and wanted to expand a bit. Your dealership website needs to allow you to track more than just SEO statistics. The 6 things your dealership website provider needs to measure are: Traffic—this should include all sources like organic, paid (PPC), OEM, referring...

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Customer Satisfaction in a Down Economy

Acacia Grant — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 10:05:26 +0000

Every dealership is after the (often) illusive repeat customers. With people buying less often, earning the loyalty of the customers you do sell to can pay off. Once you’ve earned the business of repeat customers, the next step is to turn them into evangelists—those who recommend your dealership and ultimately send more sales into your showroom. These types of customers...

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Dealership Grammar

Acacia Grant — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 09:59:26 +0000

There are always classes in school that make you wonder, “When will I ever need to know this?” For me, that class was English. Have you ever needed to know when to use a past participle, or what a homonym is? Neither have I…but the more I write and get involved online (conducting business via email, writing this blog, participating...

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Dealership Closings – Can Your Website Compete?

Acacia Grant — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 09:50:04 +0000

While I was at the NADA Convention in New Orleans this past weekend, the biggest news I heard was the announcement by General Motors (GM) that they plan to close 400 dealerships yearly until 2012. According to Left Lane News, the company hasn’t decided what will determine which dealerships will be shut down, but “the automaker will base its decision...

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Dealership Lead Nurturing

Acacia Grant — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 09:44:59 +0000

According to the 2008 Cobalt Automotive eShopper Experience Study, the “traditional” dealership gives up on a lead after three days, no longer actively pursuing them as an in-market buyer. This just doesn’t make sense, considering that J.D. Powers reports in their 2008 New Autoshopper.com Study that those in market for a new vehicle begin using the Internet to research their...

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Dealer Website Lynch Pin?

Acacia Grant — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 09:40:50 +0000

We’ve all heard the estimates about how many dealerships are going to be closing within the next year–NADA estimates that another 1000 dealerships will close in 2009 alone. Of course this is a scary fact, but there are things that you can do to prevent your dealership from being one of them. One of the first items is making sure...

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Automotive Blogging

Acacia Grant — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:07:27 +0000

Just like you, I’m always trying to do what I do better. I’ve recently been reading The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil for a bit of a “back to basics” blogging lesson. I came across a few good reminders, and wanted to share some with you. Blogs are used for so many different purposes, but here are some of...

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