Yes, you read that right – there’s a car dealership in Chicago that’s offering FREE cars if the Packers get shut out by the Bears this Sunday. For any vehicle sold from December 16th through this Friday, Sawicki Motors will rebate 100% of the purchase price if the Chicago Bears shut out the Green Bay Packers on Christmas Day. They’re limiting the payout to the first $1 million worth of vehicles sold during that period, but it’s still a potentially costly bet. Sawicki Motors averages about 35-40 sales a month, with an average price of $22,000. the most expensive car on their lot is an Escalade listed at $76,000. If you really look at the numbers, though, it’s clear that there’s not much risk for Sawicki to make the offer. The Packers have the best offense in the NFL with an average of 34.3 points per game, and there have only been 4 shutouts in the 224 NFL games played this season. “Bears fans mostly have been laughing about it be...

  Craigslist is one of the most important weapons in an auto dealer’s arsenal. The most successful dealers know that there’s simply no better free source for leads in the industry. Unfortunately, because it’s free, the level of competition is almost unbelievable. To make things even more difficult, you’re not just fighting to stand out from other dealers, you have to play be the rules to avoid being ghosted by Craigslist. This whitepaper was originally created for our Elite Dealers, but now we’re making it available to everyone – the information and tips are just too useful to keep to ourselves. Boost your results and bring in more leads Our whitepaper shares inside information about Craigslist – why it started, how it’s run, and why it’s so hard to work with. We also share several tips on how to avoid “ghosting” and how to post the correct way. If you’re not posting on Craigslist yet, this whitepap...

  Google’s recent Freshness Update is designed to give more weight to “fresh” website content on certain queries. Google has always rewarded fresh content, but last month’s update has given freshness even more emphasis in its ranking algorithm. Google has been pretty clear about which searches will rely heavily on fresh content. For example: Recent events or hot topics – Example search: “NBA lockout” or “Occupy Oakland” Regularly recurring events – Example search: “NFL scores” or “Dancing with the Stars” Frequent updates – Example search: “Subaru Impreza reviews” or “best slr cameras” Did that last one get your attention? This has huge implications for the auto industry. In their own blog posts explaining the way their Freshness Update has changed their search results, they’re using an example from the auto industry. Every year, new cars mod...

Our exclusive eBay Motors Whitepaper shares inside information about eBay Motors and shows you exactly what to do to be successful on the automotive industry’s most trafficked website. Competition on eBay is fierce, so you need to be sure that your dealership stands out from your competitors. We share detailed tips on how to create the perfect auction listing, including how to create the optimal title, which pictures you should include, and how you should write your description.   We also cover the various auction types and share successful pricing strategies. Did you realize that eBay phone calls should be handled in a completely different manner than normal inbound calls? We’ll teach you exactly what to say to eBay callers, and we’ll walk you through the steps you should take to close every eBay deal. Here’s what’s included in our eBay Motors Whitepaper: eBay Motors company information and statistics Vehicle Photos Vehicle Vi...

  Reputation Management has been getting a lot of buzz lately, especially with Google’s recent updates that use ratings to influence placement in the search results. Good reviews can boost your placement, and bad reviews can lower you – but beyond the technical points, it’s common knowledge that online reviews have an effect on your business. A recent study by Cone shows just how much reviews can help or hinder your dealership. A mind-blowing 4 out of 5 consumers have changed their mind about a purchase based solely on negative information they found online! That’s 80% of your potential customers who will decide NOT to buy from you because they found negative reviews about your dealership online. It goes both ways though – the study also showed that 87% of consumers said that a positive review actually confirmed their decision to purchase. Another interesting stat – 59% reported that they are more likely to research a purchase online b...

Craigslist has been an incredible source of leads and revenue for car dealers, but doing business with the site hasn’t come without peril.  There are a multitude of posting issues: over-posting, posting too quickly, listings get flagged, accounts get banned, certain computers get blocked, entire dealerships get banned from posting… and the list goes on and on. The bottom line is that Craigslist was not created for commercialization, but instead as a community service – so they have absolutely no desire to cater to businesses using their website. So how do you conduct regular business on Craigslist?  I’ve unpacked the top ten Frequently Asked Questions about Craigslist from our dealers to help you make Craigslist a successful part of your marketing efforts (and ideally, drastically increase your sales). 1. How come I can post from home, but not from my dealership? Craigslist has either blocked your IP address or you MAC address.  An IP Add...

When you’re writing content for the pages of your car dealer website, choosing words that appeal to your potential customers might seem like the most important thing to do. Instead of using words that tend to have a less than positive connotation, like “used cars”, most dealers opt for more attractive-sounding words like “pre-owned cars”. While writing content that appeals to your customers is important, it’s absolutely vital to write content that includes keywords that will help your site show up higher in search engines and bring you more visitors. After all, what’s the point of writing appealing content for an audience that doesn’t exist? Keywords on your car dealer website play a huge role in how your site ranks in search results; the correct use of keywords can help to drive lots of traffic to your site from search engines. However, choosing keywords based on what you think your target audience searches for, or what you think &ld...

There was a big splash in the automotive news world last week when we saw the first auto dealership Groupon offer. Twitter and blogs were all abuzz with industry experts, vendors, and dealers debating the deal, and offering opinions about whether it would work or not.  Now the deal has expired, and the minimum number of Groupon vouchers weren’t purchased, so the deal is null and void. Of course, everyone is now jumping on the “here’s why it didn’t work” bandwagon… There’s a great post by Arnold Tijerina over at dealer-magazine.com called “Why the first car dealership Groupon failed” – give it a read, he’s got a few great points… To summarize, he says the deal didn’t have value for the customer because customers EXPECT to negotiate with the dealer and bring the price down by at least $500 – so why would a Groupon be necessary?  Also, the dealer probably didn’t handle the Groupon c...

The three largest search engines, Google, Yahoo, and Bing, all outline ways for web pages to rank well in their search results; however, they do not disclose the algorithms they use to rank web pages. As a result, the degree of influence that different factors have on rankings is much contested by SEO experts. In a recent study conducted by SEOmoz, the importance of several on-page factors were rated by 72 SEO experts and then ranked based on the level of consensus/contention. The following ranking of factors is derived from this report, listed in descending order of importance. Below each factor, an explanation of its core concepts is provided. Keyword use anywhere in the title tag. A keyword or key phrase is a word or phrase that a user enters into a search engine. A title tag is the meta tag of web pages that determines what text appears at the top of Internet browsers. EXAMPLE: “Lone Star Cars – Used Cars and Used Trucks in Dallas, Texas” K...

Other vendors think we're crazy for giving this info away for free... but we think it's basic information that every dealer should know. The US auto dealer market is fiercely competitive... so we've put this checklist together to help your dealership succeed! Our free Internet Marketing Checklist is full of tips and action items that you can use to help make yourself a better digital marketer. It's clearly written and easy to follow, so you can implement the tips without having to spend a ton of time on them. It's broken up into several sections, so you can implement the different sections as time allows. Here's what's inside: On-page Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your dealer website - We'll walk you through several elements that you can update yourself (without relying on your provider to make the changes) that can have a positive effect on your rankings in the search engines. Mobile Dealer Website - 88% of US mobile phone users...

We work with multiple dealer groups, and they all have their own preferences on how inventory and leads are routed.  Some have 2 OEM flags under 1 roof and share a DMS, others have multiple rooftops and 1 pre-owned lot with each running their own DMS, and some even have multiple pre-owned lots with one OEM rooftop.  The point is that the multiple rooftop configurations of dealer groups have no end. Just recently, we brought on a new franchise OEM dealer group that had 2 OEM rooftops and 1 pre-owned rooftop.  Simple enough, right?  Here was the rub:  The pre-owned lot was 40 miles away from the OEM rooftops, they had 1 dealer group website that only displayed phone number and contacts for the new car stores, and all new car and pre-owned car leads went to the new car sales reps!  You see where this is going… New car sales reps were selling the pre-owned vehicles on a lot 40 miles away to leads that came through the dealership’s website.&n...

(written by AutoRevo CEO Chad Polk) Invest in mobile and be ready for your shoppers If you haven’t yet heard of the 3-screen lifestyle, you’ll soon become very aware of it.  It’s the ever-growing lifestyle of consumers with a TV, Computer, and now s Smartphone.  Modern marketers are finding creative ways to reach these consumers who are riding the growing wave of always on instant availability.  Recent research finds that U.S. mobile Internet users are engaging in shopping-related activities at a rate that exceeds desktop usage. Any way you look at mobile, it is transforming the way your customers shop and interact with your dealership.  Dealerships that are not investing in mobile shopping technology are at risk of getting left behind.  The good news for mobile initiative dealers is that mobile-optimized websites can raise engagement as much as 85%. This isn’t meant to scare anyone.  Mobile websites are just another marke...

(written by Chad Polk, AutoRevo CEO - published in AutoSuccess Magazine, April 2011) Even with all the talk of mobile dealer websites, most dealers today are content to “just have one”. That’s like back in 1995 when a dealer would say “Yeah, I’ve got a website” (not to mention it only supported Internet Explorer ). Are you really content to “just have one”, when according to Google, mobile searches have grown 500% from 2008 to 2010? Another study closer to our industry, run in October 2010 by Brand Anywhere and Luth Research, stated that 88% of US mobile phone users are more likely to buy from an auto dealer who has a mobile website. Did we get your attention yet? So what should you look for when evaluating your mobile website and provider? 10 Questions to Evaluate your Mobile Dealer Website 1. Does your mobile website support all Smartphone browsers, not just iPhones? The top 3 (Apple, Android, and Blackberry) represent 92% of ...

You may have heard back in April that Google announced a new signal in their search ranking algorithms: site speed.  Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests. Google even conducted an experiment that intentionally slowed down search results speed incrementally which resulted in reduced number of searches by users.  Jake Brutlag from Google’s Web Search Infrastructure team stated, “Our experiments demonstrate that slowing down the search results page by 100 to 400 milliseconds has a measurable impact on the number of searches per user.”  Imagine slowing your dealer website down by seconds and what impact that would have on inventory searches on your website. Google is so obsessed with speed that they now factor it into search rankings!  So as your dealership’s Internet marketing provider, we knew we had to respond. Here to tell you all about what AutoRevo has done to dramatically improve speed is Matt Shannon,...

At AutoRevo, we take SEO very seriously and have continued to improve this offering to our clients. Here are some of the SEO highlights of our recent dealer websites mini-release: Users and search engines reward your website for intelligent, readable URLs.  For users, they can read the words in your URLs.  Search engines can determine the relevance to the users search.  AutoRevo has implemented a smart URL technology to so that each vehicle URL has Year-Make-Model-Trim-City-State-Zip. As part of our smart URLs technology, we have added city, state, and even zip code to each vehicles URL.  In April 2010, Google actually changed their Google Business Center to Google Places.  According to Google, 20 percent of all searches are related to location.  Since comScore reports that 14.3 billion searches were conducted through Google in March, this means nearly 3 billion Google search queries contained local terms. For each vehicle ad on yo...

One of the important features of our latest release of PowerSites 2.0 is 301 redirects. Now you ask “What in the world is a 301 redirect?” A 301 Redirect causes a browser or search spider to go to another location permanently. For example if you go to http://TexasMotorCars.com it redirects you to http://www.TexasMotorCars.com. You may have also heard Google use the phrase canonical URLs. Canonicalization is the process of picking the best url when there are several choices, and it usually refers to home pages. Examples: www.texasmotorcars.com texasmotorcars.com www.texasmotorcars.com/home.aspx texasmotorcars.com/index.aspx Why is this so important? The search engines see TexasMotorCars.com and www.TexasMotorCars.com as two (2) separate domains (or separate references). Therefore your backlinks and other link bait you have on the internet would be split between 2 domains, according to Google – which ultimately affects your ranking on the Search Engine Resul...

With more people than ever using the Internet to research and even purchase vehicles, your dealer website can make or break your business. Your website is almost always a customer’s first impression of your dealership – so it’s absolutely critical to have a well-designed, easy to navigate dealer website. From independents to large franchises and dealer groups, AutoRevo PowerSites will let you stand out from the sea of competitors on the Internet. Every website is custom-designed to fit the personality and feel of your dealership, so every site looks different – no templates or cookie-cutter sites here. Most importantly, every site includes advanced search architecture, boosted SEO performance, and easy-to-navigate page layouts… all ensuring that customers can quickly navigate through your site to find the vehicle that they’re looking for. For more information about AutoRevo PowerSites, call a Dealer Consultant today at 888-311-7386 or vis...

Show me the CARFAX….at the auction.

Time and time again we’ve seen hoards of dealers crawling the auction lanes on their cell phones to get a vehicle history report check on cars. Not only does it take 2 people to accomplish this (1 at the auction and 1 back at the office), but more importantly it puts your dealership at a disadvantage not being fully informed of a cars history prior to bidding without a VHR.

AutoRevo and CARFAX are here to change just that. To highlight the situation I’ve compared Old School vs. New School. Check it out.

Old School:

You’re a dealer standing at the auction in a lane looking over a car 5 minutes before it runs. You make some frantic and stressful calls back to the office (not to mention they didn’t answer the first 2 times you called) providing a VIN to your partner on the other end of the phone. By the end of the call you have repeated the VIN 3 times just to find out this car does not have a clean CARFAX record. Now you have nume...