In a recent blog post of mine, I highlighted some research done on mobile ads and if it is worth a dealership to spend money on it. Today, I am here to tell you why you should have a mobile site for your dealership (if you don’t already). Some 12.6% of total website traffic was generated via mobile device in the fourth quarter of 2011, up 102% from the 6.3% recorded a year earlier, according to the Walker Sands Quarterly Web Traffic Report.  Additionally, according to AD:60, having a mobile site is a must and they have compiled an infographic that lists 10 Reasons Why You Need a Mobile Site. “The list should obliterate any reasons against putting mobile at the top of your digital must-haves,” Alex Matjanec said, partner and CMO of AD:60.

So here are the top 10 Reasons you need a mobile site:

1. 8% of all digital traffic comes from smartphones and tablets

2. Most mobile phones in America will be smartphones by the end of 2012

   3.    More and more users are making purchases on their phones

4. The proportion of mobile-only users is even higher in developing countries

5. Mobile commerce is growing fast

6. Smartphone users cover a wide range of demographics

7. Couch Commerce is rising

8. Smartphone users have a higher than average income

9. Mobile sites are important for both physical and digital stores

10. Your normal site is not  thumb friendly!

Still not interested? Well, mobile search queries already account for roughly 15% of all Google search volume across categories, according to Google.
So what are you waiting for? By creating experiences that connect, convert, and engage your audiences you will be sure to attract your tech savvy shoppers as well as provide better services to existing customers. Therefore, in saying that, set up a user-friendly mobile website ASAP! Thumbs are the new fingers!

In a recent blog post of mine, I highlighted some research done on mobile ads and if it is worth a dealership to spend money on it. Today, I am here to tell you why you should have a mobile site for your dealership (if you don’t already). Some 12.6% of total website traffic was generated via mobile device in the fourth quarter of 2011, up 102% from the 6.3% recorded a year earlier, according to the Walker Sands Quarterly Web Traffic Report.  Additionally, according to AD:60, having a mobile site is a must and they have compiled an infographic that lists 10 Reasons Why You Need a Mobile Site. “The list should obliterate any reasons against putting mobile at the top of your digital must-haves,” Alex Matjanec said, partner and CMO of AD:60.

So here are the top 10 Reasons you need a mobile site:

1. 8% of all digital traffic comes from smartphones and tablets

2. Most mobile phones in America will be smartphones by the end of 2012

   3.    More and more users are making purchases on their phones

4. The proportion of mobile-only users is even higher in developing countries

5. Mobile commerce is growing fast

6. Smartphone users cover a wide range of demographics

7. Couch Commerce is rising

8. Smartphone users have a higher than average income

9. Mobile sites are important for both physical and digital stores

10. Your normal site is not  thumb friendly!

Still not interested? Well, mobile search queries already account for roughly 15% of all Google search volume across categories, according to Google.
So what are you waiting for? By creating experiences that connect, convert, and engage your audiences you will be sure to attract your tech savvy shoppers as well as provide better services to existing customers. Therefore, in saying that, set up a user-friendly mobile website ASAP! Thumbs are the new fingers!

Before I decide to make a purchase on any big ticket item,  I search the company’s name in Google and see the rating  the business received. I also read a couple of the customer reviews. I, like most shoppers, am turned off by bad reviews. Shoppers are using the Web now, more than ever to research and review companies.

Which rating service should dealerships pay most attention to? Google and here’s why:

I googled a local dealership here in Orlando, and the first rating I see is that of Google 22/30 which is great! Notice their Dealerrater.com (4.5 rating) review is ranked in the Google search below Yelp (1.5 rating)  and Autotrader. If you did this exercise for any dealership, you would find the results would be about the same.

So, how can you boost your star/rating power and in turn, gain more traffic to your dealership and potentially increase sales?

Communicate for engagement:

• Solicit reviews from customers within 48 hours of working with them.
  • By creating and implementing a feedback program, you initiate a conversation with your customers, helping them to become truly involved in your brand.
• Talk with disgruntled customers to solve problems in a timely manner, just don’t ignore them.
  • If one of your customers has a poor experience with your dealership and decides to go with your competition, there is little point in contacting that customer three months later.
  • Crisis management and customer service are examples of priority responses. Countering negative comments and reinforcing the positive will only grow in importance.
  • Look at the positive: a complaint is free intel—much cheaper than the research you pay outside vendors to conduct.

Understand Google Rating as well as other rating services:

• Google accepts only internally generated reviews, not those forwarded to them by other websites. It’s important for dealerships to direct customers to Google through links on their website.
• Google, since the purchase of Zagat, has gone from rating business with stars to scoring customer reviews on a 30 point scale. Here is the new scoring guide:

My point?Better reviews could mean more sales for your dealership! You can also ask specific follow-up questions in addition to having customers fill out a Google or DealerRater review. Doing this, can help create solutions for customer issues that will improve your business and keep future customers from having the same concern. By following these suggestions, you should be able to get a 5 star or 30/30 rating in no time!

What do you think? Are Google reviews vital to the success of your brand? Or does your dealership focus on another rating platform? Do you have any suggestions to improve your Google rating?

Before I decide to make a purchase on any big ticket item,  I search the company’s name in Google and see the rating  the business received. I also read a couple of the customer reviews. I, like most shoppers, am turned off by bad reviews. Shoppers are using the Web now, more than ever to research and review companies.

Which rating service should dealerships pay most attention to? Google and here’s why:

I googled a local dealership here in Orlando, and the first rating I see is that of Google 22/30 which is great! Notice their Dealerrater.com (4.5 rating) review is ranked in the Google search below Yelp (1.5 rating)  and Autotrader. If you did this exercise for any dealership, you would find the results would be about the same.

So, how can you boost your star/rating power and in turn, gain more traffic to your dealership and potentially increase sales?

Communicate for engagement:

• Solicit reviews from customers within 48 hours of working with them.
  • By creating and implementing a feedback program, you initiate a conversation with your customers, helping them to become truly involved in your brand.
• Talk with disgruntled customers to solve problems in a timely manner, just don’t ignore them.
  • If one of your customers has a poor experience with your dealership and decides to go with your competition, there is little point in contacting that customer three months later.
  • Crisis management and customer service are examples of priority responses. Countering negative comments and reinforcing the positive will only grow in importance.
  • Look at the positive: a complaint is free intel—much cheaper than the research you pay outside vendors to conduct.

Understand Google Rating as well as other rating services:

• Google accepts only internally generated reviews, not those forwarded to them by other websites. It’s important for dealerships to direct customers to Google through links on their website.
• Google, since the purchase of Zagat, has gone from rating business with stars to scoring customer reviews on a 30 point scale. Here is the new scoring guide:

My point?Better reviews could mean more sales for your dealership! You can also ask specific follow-up questions in addition to having customers fill out a Google or DealerRater review. Doing this, can help create solutions for customer issues that will improve your business and keep future customers from having the same concern. By following these suggestions, you should be able to get a 5 star or 30/30 rating in no time!

What do you think? Are Google reviews vital to the success of your brand? Or does your dealership focus on another rating platform? Do you have any suggestions to improve your Google rating?

After watching this 60 Minutes bit on The Age of Millennials, I thought to myself- oh great, apparently we are the doom of civilization. Being born in the 80’s lumped me into the Generation Y category, but I felt insulted when we were described as narcissistic praise-hounds that didn’t know how to cope with reality (and losing). We are apparently the Go Nowhere Generation, that would rather be on Facebook than get their drivers licenses and move out of state.

Just as Mad Men’s Jaguar episode doesn’t represent the automotive industry and where it is today, I’m here to say that this 12 minute segment doesn’t represent ALL of my generation. I agree with some things that were mentioned in this video, such as we do have it easier than our parents. My father for example, had to hitchhike in order to go to his college classes (took him about 2 hours to get to school) and he did this up until his Masters in Biology. I don’t think anyone would ever do such a thing nowadays.

Here’s a thought:
What this video and article failed to mention are the demographics behind the kids moving back in with their parents. If they are part of a collective culture, (Hispanic, Asian, etc.) this is seen as a norm. My mother would tell me that the girl wouldn’t move out of the house until they were married. I laughed at that statement, saying that wasn’t possibly true, but whenever my mother tells her friends that I bought my own condo and already moved out, they simply reply with, “Tan joven!” (so young).

But let’s get back to this “Go Nowhere Generation” label and disprove it (on my part at least):

When I turned 15, the first thing I did was get my permit. By 16, I had a part time job, a credit card (as per my father’s advice), was on the high school soccer team, and took AP classes. While in highschool I received  a scholarship for school, and continued working throughout my whole college career. In my senior year of college, I had an internship at a non-profit, a part time job, and I went to school full time. I graduated debt free with no student loans.

Does that sound lazy? I didn’t want to move out of state because I grew up moving every 3-4 years and was tired of it. While in the process of buying my condo, lenders believed that I didn’t have good credit because I was so “young”. “Oh wow, you have great credit and you’re so young!” they would say. Is 24 too young to have good credit?

My point?
Don’t discredit me because I’m young and don’t discredit your young consumers either. We aren’t all going nowhere and we aren’t all glued to our cell phones and tablets. We do like to stop and smell the roses, and we notice there is a world outside of the Internet. So, as I’ve mentioned before in previous blogs, each customer is unique and you shouldn’t lump us all into a collective pot and treat us all the same.

What do YOU think? Is Gen Y the doom of civilization? 

After watching this 60 Minutes bit on The Age of Millennials, I thought to myself- oh great, apparently we are the doom of civilization. Being born in the 80’s lumped me into the Generation Y category, but I felt insulted when we were described as narcissistic praise-hounds that didn’t know how to cope with reality (and losing). We are apparently the Go Nowhere Generation, that would rather be on Facebook than get their drivers licenses and move out of state.

Just as Mad Men’s Jaguar episode doesn’t represent the automotive industry and where it is today, I’m here to say that this 12 minute segment doesn’t represent ALL of my generation. I agree with some things that were mentioned in this video, such as we do have it easier than our parents. My father for example, had to hitchhike in order to go to his college classes (took him about 2 hours to get to school) and he did this up until his Masters in Biology. I don’t think anyone would ever do such a thing nowadays.

Here’s a thought:
What this video and article failed to mention are the demographics behind the kids moving back in with their parents. If they are part of a collective culture, (Hispanic, Asian, etc.) this is seen as a norm. My mother would tell me that the girl wouldn’t move out of the house until they were married. I laughed at that statement, saying that wasn’t possibly true, but whenever my mother tells her friends that I bought my own condo and already moved out, they simply reply with, “Tan joven!” (so young).

But let’s get back to this “Go Nowhere Generation” label and disprove it (on my part at least):

When I turned 15, the first thing I did was get my permit. By 16, I had a part time job, a credit card (as per my father’s advice), was on the high school soccer team, and took AP classes. While in highschool I received  a scholarship for school, and continued working throughout my whole college career. In my senior year of college, I had an internship at a non-profit, a part time job, and I went to school full time. I graduated debt free with no student loans.

Does that sound lazy? I didn’t want to move out of state because I grew up moving every 3-4 years and was tired of it. While in the process of buying my condo, lenders believed that I didn’t have good credit because I was so “young”. “Oh wow, you have great credit and you’re so young!” they would say. Is 24 too young to have good credit?

My point?
Don’t discredit me because I’m young and don’t discredit your young consumers either. We aren’t all going nowhere and we aren’t all glued to our cell phones and tablets. We do like to stop and smell the roses, and we notice there is a world outside of the Internet. So, as I’ve mentioned before in previous blogs, each customer is unique and you shouldn’t lump us all into a collective pot and treat us all the same.

What do YOU think? Is Gen Y the doom of civilization? 

As a Social Media Specialist, I’ve been asked many times before what is it that I do and how I do it. I simply reply, I write, because social media is far too complex to describe in one sitting. New sites are popping up everyday, like Bo.lt, a website that is supposed to be better than Pinterest (crazy, right?), and new trends are always rising. Which means it is my sole purpose to research industry trends and analyze current social business data available to better understand what is working in the social media world and what isn’t. However, some companies fail to understand the importance of a social strategy and thus implementing social media tactics is not a priority. To those companies, I say, good luck!

Social business is important today, despite what you might think, and it is expected to be more important in the future, according to a report by the MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte: 18% of global executives say social business (defined as activities that use social media, social software, and social networks to enable more efficient, effective, and mutually useful connections among people, information, and assets) is important to their organization today, and 63% say social business will be important in three years:

According to this report, Execs say social software is helping their companies meet various challenges and cite the following as "important" or "somewhat important" benefits of social software:

• Managing customer relationships: 80%
• Innovating for competitive differentiation: 74%
• Acquiring and retaining employees: 65%
• Responding to new competitive threats: 62%
• Growing revenue: 61%

ActivEngage uses such programs as: Hootsuite, Hubspot, and Bitly, to track the success of Tweets, Pins, and Facebook posts. Here is a little more about these sites and why we use them:

HootSuiteis a social media management system for businesses and organizations to collaboratively execute campaigns across multiple social networks from one secure, web-based dashboard.

Hubspotis an  all-in-one marketing software that helps us with email management, lead nurturing, keyword analysis, marketing automation, and competitor tracking.

Bitly is an easy way to share and customize links on the web. What’s great about Bitly is that you can also track how many clicks your link has and from which country your link is getting the most clicks.

Now implementing a social business campaign takes dedication and vision, here you can see how to implement it:

The key to any successful campaign is strong leadership and a clear vision:

This means you must have a thorough plan of action spelled out before beginning any social media efforts and also have clear goals for each campaign. Otherwise, you are just shooting bullets at random targets without any direction at what target to shoot at. Strong leadership support and oversight of your social media strategy not only fuels creativity but also allows for the entire business to be on the same page in understanding the importance of such a strategy. It is very hard to sell a vehicle to an interested Facebook user if your Sales team does not find these types of leads to be a priority.

Clearly, social media isn’t going away and more consumers are turning to different platforms to reach out to companies to make a connection and voice their concerns. So before you think that blogging, Tweeting, and making your daily rounds on social media isn’t that important, think again. Don't be like the unicorns that missed the boat, social business is here to stay.

As a Social Media Specialist, I’ve been asked many times before what is it that I do and how I do it. I simply reply, I write, because social media is far too complex to describe in one sitting. New sites are popping up everyday, like Bo.lt, a website that is supposed to be better than Pinterest (crazy, right?), and new trends are always rising. Which means it is my sole purpose to research industry trends and analyze current social business data available to better understand what is working in the social media world and what isn’t. However, some companies fail to understand the importance of a social strategy and thus implementing social media tactics is not a priority. To those companies, I say, good luck!

Social business is important today, despite what you might think, and it is expected to be more important in the future, according to a report by the MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte: 18% of global executives say social business (defined as activities that use social media, social software, and social networks to enable more efficient, effective, and mutually useful connections among people, information, and assets) is important to their organization today, and 63% say social business will be important in three years:

According to this report, Execs say social software is helping their companies meet various challenges and cite the following as "important" or "somewhat important" benefits of social software:

• Managing customer relationships: 80%
• Innovating for competitive differentiation: 74%
• Acquiring and retaining employees: 65%
• Responding to new competitive threats: 62%
• Growing revenue: 61%

ActivEngage uses such programs as: Hootsuite, Hubspot, and Bitly, to track the success of Tweets, Pins, and Facebook posts. Here is a little more about these sites and why we use them:

HootSuiteis a social media management system for businesses and organizations to collaboratively execute campaigns across multiple social networks from one secure, web-based dashboard.

Hubspotis an  all-in-one marketing software that helps us with email management, lead nurturing, keyword analysis, marketing automation, and competitor tracking.

Bitly is an easy way to share and customize links on the web. What’s great about Bitly is that you can also track how many clicks your link has and from which country your link is getting the most clicks.

Now implementing a social business campaign takes dedication and vision, here you can see how to implement it:

The key to any successful campaign is strong leadership and a clear vision:

This means you must have a thorough plan of action spelled out before beginning any social media efforts and also have clear goals for each campaign. Otherwise, you are just shooting bullets at random targets without any direction at what target to shoot at. Strong leadership support and oversight of your social media strategy not only fuels creativity but also allows for the entire business to be on the same page in understanding the importance of such a strategy. It is very hard to sell a vehicle to an interested Facebook user if your Sales team does not find these types of leads to be a priority.

Clearly, social media isn’t going away and more consumers are turning to different platforms to reach out to companies to make a connection and voice their concerns. So before you think that blogging, Tweeting, and making your daily rounds on social media isn’t that important, think again. Don't be like the unicorns that missed the boat, social business is here to stay.

Sales leads come in many different forms, yet few sales reps adjust their sales follow-up process to sync with the latest intelligence available about those leads. If not careful, they could be turning qualified sales leads into "not interested" responses or even worse, turn them off to their competitors.

According to Al Davidson, founder of Strategic Sales & Marketing, these are the top 3 ways that sales reps kill their sales leads:

• Failing to gather up-to-date business intelligence. A customer's pain points can evolve during the nurturing process. And in the rush to set appointments and close deals, sales reps might not ask the questions needed to suggest relevant solutions for current problems such as, the customer being concerned about mpg, hands free technology, or 3rd row seating.

• Putting the customer on the defensive. Don't put words in your prospect's mouth—for instance, starting out with, "I understand that you are in the market for a new vehicle,” is kind of redundant. Isn’t that why your prospect is there? Instead, begin with an open-ended question based on something you already know about this customer: "I understand you are looking for a Ford F-150, were you partial to any features?”

• Asking about budget too quickly. When this question comes too early in the conversation, a customer tends to feel that you're more concerned about your commission than their interest in a vehicle. Instead, of asking up front for the prospect's budget, talk about costs and benefits. Show them how one model is more fuel efficient than another, how the park assist feature will help them, or even how the hands free technology is a great safety feature.

If you understand the questions a consumer asks during the buying process and analyze each question to find out what the customer really needs (Ex: asking about low mpg does not mean the customer wants to buy a hybrid vehicle) , your answers and follow up with the consumer can be more helpful to them. Avoid the mistakes mentioned above and you should see an increase in sales (and sales leads), customer retention, and brand loyalty.

Sales leads come in many different forms, yet few sales reps adjust their sales follow-up process to sync with the latest intelligence available about those leads. If not careful, they could be turning qualified sales leads into "not interested" responses or even worse, turn them off to their competitors.

According to Al Davidson, founder of Strategic Sales & Marketing, these are the top 3 ways that sales reps kill their sales leads:

• Failing to gather up-to-date business intelligence. A customer's pain points can evolve during the nurturing process. And in the rush to set appointments and close deals, sales reps might not ask the questions needed to suggest relevant solutions for current problems such as, the customer being concerned about mpg, hands free technology, or 3rd row seating.

• Putting the customer on the defensive. Don't put words in your prospect's mouth—for instance, starting out with, "I understand that you are in the market for a new vehicle,” is kind of redundant. Isn’t that why your prospect is there? Instead, begin with an open-ended question based on something you already know about this customer: "I understand you are looking for a Ford F-150, were you partial to any features?”

• Asking about budget too quickly. When this question comes too early in the conversation, a customer tends to feel that you're more concerned about your commission than their interest in a vehicle. Instead, of asking up front for the prospect's budget, talk about costs and benefits. Show them how one model is more fuel efficient than another, how the park assist feature will help them, or even how the hands free technology is a great safety feature.

If you understand the questions a consumer asks during the buying process and analyze each question to find out what the customer really needs (Ex: asking about low mpg does not mean the customer wants to buy a hybrid vehicle) , your answers and follow up with the consumer can be more helpful to them. Avoid the mistakes mentioned above and you should see an increase in sales (and sales leads), customer retention, and brand loyalty.