8th Digital Dealer Conference Set for April 20 - 22, 2010 in Orlando, FL

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Mike Roscoe and Cliff Banks of Dealer Communications, Inc. have announced that the 8th Digital Dealer Conference will be in Orlando Florida starting on April 20 and going through April 22, 2010. Additional information and details will be posted continuously between now and then on the official Digital Dealer Conference website.
You can visit the website at: Digital Dealer Conference

The 7th Digital Dealer Conference and Exhibition was recently completed and ran from Sunday November 1 through Tuesday November 3, 2009 in Nashville. Despite the lengthy recession of 2008-2009 the 7th Digital Dealer Conference was attended by over 600 automotive digital marketing professionals, with over 500 dealerships represented by the actual attendees at Digital Dealer #7....

When looking at the final digital dealer conference sign ins from Nashville, there were over 800 people who picked up there badges at the Digital Dealer Conference registration desk. The math tells us that there were over 200 suppliers and various associated personnel at the event. With a Supplier/Dealer ratio of 1/4 the Digital Dealer Conference is one of the least supplier-to-dealer heavy conferences of the year... NADA is characterized by more suppliers than dealers, and I saw that the J. D. Power Automotive Internet Roundtable was decidedly NOT a dealers-in-the-majority crowd.

Digital Dealer Orlando Conference

As long as we can convince Roscoe and Banks to give me a speaking slot again, I am eagerly anticipating a great conference in Orlando. By then we will have much more to report on in regards to Automotive Social Marketing and Reputation Management for Car Dealers.

I recommend that we all agree to set the Twitter hash tag for Digital Dealer 8 in Orlando as #DD8 and avoid some of the confusion that seemed to happen at Digital Dealer 7... You can follow all the latest activities on the ADM Professional Community at http://Twitter.com/ADMcommunity and my own personal Twitter account, which has no automation is at http://Twitter.com/RalphPaglia

I want to personally thank those of you who attended my General Session on Tuesday at 8:30 AM during the 7th Digital Dealer Conference... It meant so much to me and to Gilbert Ancira and Elizabeth Barrera that so many people showed up, and I was simply amazed! Beyond all the hype and theory being thrown around about Social Media Marketing and dealers using social networking and UGC sites to promote themselves, there are those of us, like Gilbert, Ernesto and April Ancira, as well as over 200 of their employees, as well as myself and the ADP Digital Marketing team that works so hard at all this stuff I throw at them, who live the actual day to day "working it" of social marketing... When Gilbert, Elizabeth and I went to lunch after Tuesday's session and the enormous response we all received from the hundreds of people who attended the session, all we could talk about was how much we felt like all our hard work had been recognized by our peers... And, that there was so much more we want to do!

I love it when a plan comes together and we not only sell a bunch more cars and trucks, but we also have MORE fun doing it! When I first started selling cars it was the people and the fun that played such a major role in getting me hooked on the car business... Sure, we all like making money, and we certainly would not discount the importance of the Golden Rule, but when it comes to social marketing, the relationships happen first, then the cars get sold... And somehow, all that fun and happy customers generate a lot more gross.... Remember Gross?!?!

SSSssshhhhhh.... Don't tell anyone, but the "Secret Sauce" in social marketing and reputation management is an extra amount of gross profit added in! Happy customers who look forward to coming into your dealership and buying cars from people they already know, with the purchase process taking less time and generating less stress, while producing higher CSI and more profits PVR...

Is it complicated? Not really, we use technology to simplify the processes.

Is it hard work? Yup, damn straight it takes some time and effort.

Are there any guarantees? Only that some day you and I will both be dead.

Will we sell more cars? Well... Do people generally tend to like you when they get to know you? If the answer is yes, then you will sell more cars. If the answer is no, then you need to go become a computer programmer. Classes start next week at ITT Technical.

Do I need to be really good with computers? Nope, but you will need to be able to use a phone and a keyboard to tell stories...

Every ten years or so, the car business seems to evolve, and that's when it starts to get more interesting, and a lot more fun!

I learned a lot at Digital Dealer 7 and am looking forward to seeing our ADM Professional Community members at the 2nd Annual ADM Member Reception on the evening of April 20, 2009 after the conference activities are done for day 1.

8th Digital Dealer Conference in Orlando