By Brian Pasch

This week, Automotive News posted a story, written by David Barkholz and Amy Wilson, covering AutoNation's decision to reduce their dependance on third party classified websites and lead providers.

This is an interesting public statement since AutoNation had previously owned AutoUSA for a number a years, which generated exclusive 3rd party leads for their dealer network. Excess leads generated by AutoUSA were sold on the…

A fascinating article in Forbes shared a concept that is increasingly winning over customers. In the article, the author described what he termed “anticipatory customer service” as “a customer experience that manages to serve even the unexpressed wishes and needs of your customers through the use of technology and automation.”

People are busy. A gesture such as an emailed service reminder that a customer can view when they have time in their hectic schedule, is certainly appreciated by many. However, Anticipatory Customer Service takes this to another level. Depending on the circumstances and the customer preferences, not only would you…

Processes save lives. It’s true. It is especially true when you are lying in a hospital bed with a doctor and a nurse talking to you about how their processes will save your life…which was where I found myself in the not too distant past.

Actually, I found it rather odd that I was being talked to about processes. Usually, I was the one explaining why a process, when properly implemented, would save a customer’s life. (Not to mention the dealership’s life.)

So, there I lay. “We are going to check your vitals every 2 hours until you have made some progress.” That seemed reasonable to me. I might have needed a little extra monitoring to get well. It made total sense.

In our business,…

Science rules in digital marketing.

Social media is a place of vanity. Those of us who use social media often get to see flattering images of just about everything - people, places, food, cars, whatever. Have you ever seen a picture of a friend posted as their new profile picture and thought, "Wow, that's a good picture of them."

One might believe that the same holds true for automotive ads. On websites, it has been widely accepted that real pictures of inventory work better than stock photos, but on social media we have access to the gorgeous pictures that are supplied by the OEMs. Will pretty advertising pictures outperform pictures of live inventory on ads that are sending traffic to the vehicle details pages and search results pages?

We have done a ton of A/B testing…

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The Massachusetts State Automobile Dealers Association (MSADA) is Partnering with the Internet Sales 20 Group 6 - September 22-24, 2014 - Boston,…

The recently released J.D. Power 2014 U.S. Customer Service Index Study produced some interesting, and very promising, results.

The report concluded that customer satisfaction with dealer service has increased across the board with overall CSI increasing from an average score of 846 to 855 in luxury brands, and from 789 to 797 in mass-market brands.

The study noted some especially impactful trends when it came to customers that have complimentary or prepaid maintenance programs.

In mass-market brands, where complimentary maintenance programs are less common, the study found that buyers of…

By Brian Pasch

The responsibilities of an Automotive Digital Marketing Manager will vary from dealership to dealership. Regardless of the size of your company you work for, your future employer must outline the responsibilities of your job so that a clear job description is created.

Without a clear job description, it will be difficult for you to actively participate in your annual performance review.

If a detailed job description is not presented, offer to create one based on the questions provided below.

15 Questions To Ask Before Accepting The…

Welcome to Women’s Wednesday!

Dealers who “get it” know that the key distinction in optimizing sales to women is having exceptional sales advisors who offer exceptional service. But what does that really look like?

Women tell us directly through our car dealer review platform what works for them when interacting with a sales agent.  Below are their top 5 reasons for buying a car from them: 

1. Trust  52.3%
2. Being Respectful  52.1%
3. Likeable  47.8%
4. Knowledgeable…

With any new product and marketplace there’s a learning curve and we’ve recently gained more knowledge about what it takes to manage the “art” of posting to eBay classifieds. We want to share the Top 5 Best Practices we’ve learned over the last few weeks with you:

1.)  New eBay accounts require some “Seasoning” similar to the historical craigslist landscape.

      a.)  It’s best to start posting with 5 ads a day and work up to 25 or you may risk burning

            your account.

2.)  Dealers with similar inventory need to ensure there is a sufficient vehicle description with enough unique content to differentiate each ad from anther. We’ve found some issues with dealers who have very similar inventory and unfortunately, our system can’t always trick eBay into thinking the ads are unique so they may…