I've been seeing a lot of posts lately about upcoming fall conferences and events. These posts are typically not altruistic. They're written by people with vested interests in specific events, whether that's because they're a speaker or they're the host. Now it's our turn. For people interested in learning and are considering attending one of these events and aren't sure which to attend, I've created a graphic comparison of the three events specifically being held in October 2011 that may assist people in deciding which event to attend. In the interest of full disclosure, I work for Dealer Communications who own and put on the Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition. Previously, I was worked for DrivingSales who put on the DrivingSales Executive Summit. While some of the attendance numbers may not be exact, they're not far off. These numbers were based on multiple sources that actually attended these events. With the exce...

Happy Valentine's Day from everyone at DrivingSales!

This article started as an investigation into a company providing services to the automotive industry, Review Boost. I didn't know much about the company, only that it had received some negative press and accusations of gaming online reviews. In fact, it even had a local San Antonio television station, KSAT, run a news segment regarding a dealership who used their services. There have been blog articles written questioning the authenticity of the reviews as well as articles written in both Automotive News and F&I Magazine. The importance of reputation management has been increasingly on dealers' minds, being, from the dealers I spoke with and interviewed for DrivingSalesTV, the hot topic of this year's NADA convention. The FTC is cracking down on companies engaging in posting misleading reviews, legislators are pushing for stricter laws regarding this practice, legal advisors are reporting that a company exposes themselves to legal risks by engaging in this act...

Join us on DrivingSalesTV.com for the live stream of the keynotes from the Digital Marketing Strategies Conference LIVE from Napa, CA. Below is the broadcast schedule:   Wed 8:00 – 9:00 General Session I – Creating A Digital Marketing Strategy for 2011 (Brian Pasch) 3:00 – 4:00 General Session II – Integrated Marketing Strategies for 2011 (Sean Wolfington) Thurs 8:00 – 9:00 General Session III – Integrating Online Digital Marketing Education (Jared Hamilton) 3:00 – 4:00 General Session IV – The Evolution of Social Media Strategies for 2011 (JD Rucker)  ...

DrivingSales presents the Digital Marketing Strategies Conference Live Twitter Feed new TWTR.Widget({ version: 2, type: 'search', search: '#DMSC', interval: 6000, title: 'Digital Marketing Strategies Conference', subject: 'Live Twitter Feed', width: 500, height: 800, theme: { shell: { background: '#8ec1da', color: '#ffffff' }, tweets: { background: '#ffffff', color: '#444444', links: '#1985b5' } }, features: { scrollbar: false, loop: true, live: true, hashtags: true, timestamp: true, avatars: true, toptweets: true, behavior: 'default' } }).render().start(); ...

Yesterday, a good friend of mine, Joe Webb, President of DealerKnows Consulting, posted a news article on his Facebook wall that got all sorts of comments from his friends. In summary, the article involved a car dealership in Chicago who, on the day after their loss to the Green Bay Packers in the NFC Championship game, fired a salesperson for wearing to work, and refusing to remove, a Green Bay Packers tie. Article: Packer Backer fired for wearing Green Bay Tie Most of the discussion centered around whether it was legal to fire this employee for refusing to remove the tie. Some of it questioned this salesperson's right to wear it. Was the employer justified in firing him? Did the employee have the right to wear it at work?  What do you think? ...

Hot topics and discussions from DrivingSales - Week of 1/17 through 1/23/2011 Joe Webb introduces us to Beauford Beauregard, Car Sales Comedian from the South - LINK Members respond to an article in Automotive News - "AutoTrader Should Be Paying Us" - LINK Over 25 comments from people discussing "Running an Ethical PPC Campaign" - LINK The conversation is still going strong regarding The CarDoll with over 40 comments - LINK  The CarDoll responds with a message for her fans with a video - LINK Glenn Pasch says you should "Embrace your Online Reputation - LINK ...

I don't know about everyone else but it seems to me that GM's decision to create more jobs in Mexico is absolutely bad business. Without the U.S. taxpayer, GM may not have a business at this point. This seems like a complete snub to Americans, who, last I heard, needed jobs. As of December 2010, the national unemployment rate was 9.1%.  It may be cheaper to have factories in Mexico and employ Mexicans. Being of Hispanic origin, I have nothing against Mexicans. The United States still owns about a third of General Motors and is the largest shareholder. What are your thoughts on this matter? Does GM have any obligation to the taxpayers? Should the United States government intervene - which is its right as a shareholder? [This post is in response to this article from 1/20/2011] ...

Here are the winners of the Vendor Ratings contest! $100 Amazon Gift Card - Sonja Griesbach, Internet Sales Manager at Woody's Automotive in Chillicothe, MO $100 Amazon Gift Card - Andrew Rice, General Manager at Courtenay Toyota in Courtenay, BC Apple iPad - Carey Buck, Internet Manager at Faulkner BMW in Lancaster, PA Thank you to everyone who participated in the contest and from everyone here at DrivingSales - Happy New Year! ...

Charlie Vogelheim welcomes everyone to the 2010 DrivingSales Executive Summit and introduces Jared Hamilton, founder and CEO of DrivingSales, for his keynote speech.



Jared Hamilton, founder and CEO of DrivingSales, continues his keynote speech at the 2010 DrivingSales Executive Summit.




Jared Hamilton, founder and CEO of DrivingSales, concludes his keynote speech at the 2010 DrivingSales Executive Summit.

With today's announcement of the iPhone coming to Verizon, you have to analyze the mobile market and wonder if it's time to embrace mobile marketing (if you haven't already).  The facts are that 85% (264 million) of the US population (307 million) has a cell phone.    Smartphones accounted for about 30% of all phones as of Oct. 2010 but that number is projected to overtake non-smartphones in 2011 per Nielsen. That would take the number of smartphone users to 132 million across all cell networks - almost 1/2 the population of the U.S. Android and iPhone users account for about 1/2 the total number of smartphones in use but the iPhone accounts for 65% of AT&T smartphone subscribers. I'm expecting that the chances that the percentage of Verizon smartphone users who have an iPhone will approach, if not eclipse, the percentage that AT&T has. Assuming this holds true, the iPhone will end up accounting for 86 million smartphones with the ...

A new sales training service will be available soon that we wanted your opinion on.  This is a REAL, subscription based service that will be solicited to dealerships. From what we understand, it will offer a short, sales training video on a daily basis for your salespeople to learn from. We have yet to see a finished "training" video so we can't comment on content.  Is this how our industry wants to be known? Does this fuel controversy? Further stereotypes?  Would you subscribe to this? If you did, would it present any issues with your female employees? Let us know what you think! If you want to see more "teaser videos", you can visit the CarDoll YouTube channel, their Facebook page, or their website.  ...

In analyzing the "Top Social Brands of 2010" list put out by Vitrue, you may notice a trend. (Keep in mind that this is a list compiled that includes every brand in existence and their social media presence and activity. That's huge.) The automotive manufacturers have stepped up their social media game. Vitrue "analyz(es) online conversations on a daily basis across social networks blogs, micro-blogs, photo and video sharing sites using the Vitrue Social Media Index (SMI)." A full 17% of the list is from the transportation industry. Ford was the highest ranked automotive industry representative at #11 followed closely by Mercedes (#12) and BMW (#13). General Motors scored the highest increased ranking (amongst automotive manufacturers and 2nd highest increase overall) jumping 31% from #85 to #54 over last year. All of the OEMs showed an increase in their social media branding and presence except for Ferrari (-1%), Toyota (-2%), Porsche (-2%)...

  Researching solutions for your dealership can be a time-consuming process. At DrivingSales, we offer the industry’s only vendor ratings system designed to assist dealers in selecting solutions for their dealerships. The annual DrivingSales Vendor Rating Awards are given out annually at the NADA convention. These awards are YOUR awards. YOU decide who wins. Help us insure that the awards go to deserving companies that truly offer outstanding and effective solutions to their dealer clients. We want your reviews – good and bad – but most importantly, honest. Here is a sample of some category leaders. Are these rankings accurate in your opinion?   Websites Dealer eProcess Nexteppe Dealer.com New Car Leads: Dealix Autobytel AutoUSA Cars.com  Used Car Leads: AutoTrader Dealix Cars.com DMS: Reynolds Dealertrack  Inventory Pricing: VAuto De...

First, I want to thank you for being a member of the DrivingSales community. As the Director of Community and Dealer Services, part of my responsibilities include increasing participation, assisting in making the website easier to use and enhancing the value of the content to the user. I'd like to get some feedback from both dealer and vendor members as to how DrivingSales can improve your experience on our site. Are there any features that you'd like to see added? Are there any features that you experience frustration with? What types of content do you like to read the most? Is there additional topics you'd like to see covered? What can we do to enhance your sense of community within DrivingSales? I'm excited to be a part of DrivingSales and I look forward to assisting in the growth of the community. Your feedback is welcomed and appreciated.  Please either comment to this post and/or e-mail me your concerns at arnold@drivingsales.com Thanks ag...

I have just been informed through a very reliable source that Autotrader has officially acquired HomeNet Automotive.

(EDIT: Below is copy from this morning's official press-release.)

ATLANTA and WEST CHESTER, Pa., Dec. 1, 2010 -- AutoTrader.com, the Internet's ultimate automotive marketplace and consumer information website, has agreed to purchase HomeNet Automotive, a leading provider of online inventory management and merchandising solutions.

The purchase is expected to close by the end of the year.

The addition of HomeNet to the AutoTrader.com family of companies and brands provides AutoTrader.com with a best-in-class inventory management solution for the thousands of auto dealers who use AutoTrader.com to present their inventory of new, used and certified pre-owned (CPO) vehicles to online vehicle shoppers.

Founded in 1996, HomeNet's proprietary "Get. Edit. Deliver" technology has helped thousands of automotive dealers nationwi

Last night, the popular consumer shopping website Groupon announced the implementation of Groupon Stores. For those unfamiliar with Groupon, here is the skinny: Groupon offers customers discounts on products and services in which Groupon has negotiated with the business for discounts based on an agreed upon number of people accepting the offer. They offer 1 deal per day, per city and then market this deal to the members in that market. They currently have over 33 million subscribers. Groupon collects a 50% commission on sales from the business for each offer BUT, since they only offered one deal per day, the exposure was fantastic since everybody saw it. It didn't get "lost in the crowd". It was still a VERY steep cost but the advantage businesses have found from utilizing Groupon in their marketing efforts is from attracting NEW customers and focusing on customer retention. With the launch of Groupon Stores, businesses can set up their own Groupon distributi...

Facebook announced yesterday that it will now be providing deeper analytics to all Facebook Page administrators. These analytics have existed but were only available to Facebook Pages with over 10,000 friends. While not "groundbreaking" or anything, what the new analytics will provide is a snapshot of your content's activity on a PER POST basis. Previously the only information available was an overview of all post activity (rather than each comment).  The new analytics will show you how many "impressions" your content has received as well as a percentage of impressions to feedback. Impressions, in this case, does NOT mean how many unique people SAW your post/content. What it means in the Facebook world is how many times Facebook chose to "serve" your content into users' News Feed. (See image)   How is this helpful? This information will allow you to "fine-tune", if you will, your content posts to maximize "p...

Well, we may have just found out why Google reviews and place pages have been acting crazy for the last few months (reviews disappearing and re-appearing, etc.) Mashable announced that Google unwrapped it's own new location-based service named "Hotspot" tonight. "With Hotpot, users will be encouraged to rate and review businesses directly from their Google-linked profile. Users’ ratings and reviews are tracked with a counter at the top of each profile, and likes and dislikes are remembered and used in Google’s recommendation engine." I have yet to play with it but from the description - easy to use, simplistic, easy to write reviews - it seems like something non-techy people might get in to or, at the very least, utilize when researching businesses - need a place to eat? - while on the go. Whether the "average" person leaves a bunch of reviews is moot, in my opinion. Reviews will be left in the same manner that they have been on ...

There's a big hullabaloo going on right now about Facebook wanting business owners to merge their new "Places" page with their "Fan" page. The Facebook system is even prompting administrators to do this when you go to "claim" your Facebook Place page so that you can start serving up "deals". At the moment, the general consensus is that you should NOT merge the two but rather keep them as separate pages for the time being and administer them each separately.  Why? The merge basically migrates your "fans" over to the Places page and makes that your fan page. The design of the Places page is poor in that it detracts from the ease at which your fans can communicate with you. It is much more difficult to interact on the Places page than on your fan page. You also lose the ability to have custom landing tabs with the new Places page. All those nice graphic messages you had created.... gone. You will end up with a page with ...

I blogged about this here on DrivingSales on Oct 6th, and according to this article from ABC News, Google is now rolling out the "Instant Previews" search feature over the next couple of days. This is the quote from this article that stands out and reinforces my views on this game-changing Google feature that I blogged about: "The "Instant Previews" feature announced Tuesday is meant to help people bypass websites that are either irrelevant or simply too visually cluttered for their tastes. It works for Google Web searches, as well as searches for news, video and local businesses." All I can say is that you better know what people are seeing in the preview of your website very quickly after this comes back. Now, instead of bouncing from your website, they'll just never have to go there. I'm still unsure how flash-based websites will translate into a "preview". It "could" be that it just shows as black IF it is a live ...

Have you ever wondered who the fans of your Facebook page are? If you subscribe to Hootsuite, they've just released a feature that gives you a pretty comprehensive report about your Facebook fan page. They call it "Facebook Insights" and any Hootsuite user that has admin access to their Facebook page can add it to their Hootsuite account and it will show them the following:   New fans to your Page Demographics including: region, age, gender Amount of Page comments Number of “likes” New discussions Number of new wall posts You’ll also see historical comparisons to see which way your pages are trending. And, like other stats in HootSuite, you can create a printable report to share with your colleagues, clients and executives. This is definitely valuable information and more comprehensive than the Facebook analytics offered within Facebook itself. Here's a screenshot of a report: There is more to the rep...

I don't want to make this a long "what-it-is" sort of article because there are an amazing number of those available. Here's a link to the best one, in my opinion - The New Facebook Groups: All You Need To Know (Watch the little 2-minute video on that page for an easy introduction.) Now before I get into the reasons WHY you should participate, go NOW and secure the vanity e-mail address for your company name, group, club, whatever.. some people cannot get there via the normal path as it's not completely rolled-out to everyone BUT there is a direct link that will allow you to get there. - Facebook Groups  Go create your group, then, once you've created it, in the top right corner, click "Edit Group". Kind of in the middle of the box, there will be an option to create a group e-mail address. Get yours. Just trust me on this. I'll get around to explaining what it means and why you want it. Alright...

  According to this article , Google is testing out full-page website previews within search. This will have HUGE ramifications for dealer's website traffic when considering non-branded search traffic.   Why?   Well, right now, a consumer has to click on your organic link and go to your website to see if what they are actually looking for is there. These clicks obviously represent traffic on your website.   If and when this full-page preview function of Google search goes live, the consumer will no longer have to actually go onto your website to see if the content they are looking for is present.     Here's an example screenshot:   That's huge. What would a consumer see if they could preview your website before actually visiting it?    Would what they see actually make them want to visit your website?   How will flash-based items and...