We recently found out that we have been named Dealer Rater Dealer of the year for the Hyundai and the Genesis brand! 

We put a ton of effort in protecting the dealerships reputation and generally just trying to help our customers. This effort comes from the top down! If anything its actually weighted  heavier at the top. Every Monday morning we go through each one of the reviews from the previous week. This puts a lot of emphasis on the importance of the reviews. Our salespeople really push our customers to do these. They actually keep with their profiles and the reviews that they get on the site. 

This is something that we are extremely proud of at the dealership 

 Digital marketing sure has changed a lot in the last few years......I can remember when we would really watch your click though rates.....Obviously there a lot more platforms that you can use today in digital marketing. But what are the main kpi's that you are watching now? Most of our marketing efforts are in pad search or on social platforms.....So we are starting to look more and more at REAL engagement. On fb we are trying to get more conversations started than just likes. Same with our google my business page. 

Happy New years to everyone! I started an ongoing blog about the progress of our construction a few months ago. Man we are getting close and all of the stuff is starting to come together......

We are now starting to make sure the furniture that is coming is right....trying to figure out what will play on the tv's and all kinds of other stuff....We are very excited though. 

From a marketing standpoint we are starting to get the word out about the move.....Check out one of the latest videos that we made.....https://www.allenturnerhyundai.com/ServiceApptForm

So we still advertise our inventory on a few third party websites . Mainly car gurus and auto trader. We put a ton of effort in to our online merchandising. We try to make sure that our pictures good and we also put a lot of effort in to our descriptions as well . We use vauto for all of this. We noticed a few month ago that the search algorithm  on auto trader had changed.....what we were told us that we needed to make sure that the options were checked properly in v auto. We have put that in place and it works well......However my dilemma is that the different sites are giving relevancy to different things. So are we going to have to g in to the backend tool of each 3rd party site to fix this?

Both of our Our dealerships have always been somewhat active in our local community. We do lots of things at the stores that raise money for local charities. At one of our stores we do a yearly drive that raises money for a local food pantry. Each employee has the chance to put money in to an account and the owner will match it at the end of the year. At the other store we use the same concept but the funds are give to a local toys for tots program.  We have given them several large checks throughout the years.

 We also participate in a lot of community events that are away from the dealerships. We participate in a lot of charity 5ks , Cancer awareness events and a world of other types. We do make sure that anything that we sponsor we are able to have someone at the event.

 We feel that our efforts have been a success. This is however extremely hard to measure! Our Facebook audience has grown a lot and I can tell you of several people that we have sold cars too that we met at an event.

 This a link to a landing page that we created to hilite some of the  events that our Hyundai store has been involved with.

http://www.allenturnerhyundai.com/Community-Involvement

This is one to the chevy page

https://www.allenturnerchevrolet.com/Community-Involvement

For years we have been trying to dive in to doing our own videos for training, communicatin with employees and assisting local charities etc. 

We finally have secures all of the equipment (almost) that we need to start our own in house studio. Our plans are to use this for various purposes at the dealership. They are:

1. We are starting a new training program that every employee at the dealership will be required to participate in. We will be filming quite a few of training content in our new studio. It will mostly be cuts that we can share with everyone at the store.....such as our mission statement.safety videos and a bunch of other stuff. 

2. We are also planning to use this to interview employees. 

3. I can also see filming talks with local charities etc. 

The possibilities for this our endless. We are excite about this new venture at the dealrship. Please feel free to post any ideas for this project

We have a hyundai store in Pensacola fl.We also have a preowned dealership  about a block down the road. We have always had our service department located at the hyundai store. Within the last year or so we have opened up a service department at the pre owned building. At first we were mainly doing internal work at that store. We are now at a point where we need to start putting more customer pay work in to that store. So we are attempting to get everyone that buys a car out of that sore to come back to that store for the first oil change that we give them . We are also calling people from the bdc department that havent been in in a while. Do you guys have any ideas on anything else that i can do to help this struggling department?

 We have a Hyundai and a Chevrolet Store. Both of them are on different sites. We have had on line buying tools on them for quite some time. They are used by the consumer a very small amount. The one on the Hyundai site is a cdk tool called connected store. The one on the Chevrolet site is called shop click and drive. 

 We dont really push any marketing to these tools. We just kind of rely on people to see them when they are on the websites. The tools are also mediocre at best. I have looked at a bunch of other tools that are "nicer and easier to use for the client". The best one I have seen is Online shopper from Dealer Inspire....Roadster also seems to work well.

So my question for the community is should I try marketing more to get people there for that online buying reason or try to get better tools....or do you think that the consumer is just not ready for this?

 The driving sales Presidents club is coming up soon!  I strongly urge any of you that are able to go. I have been to it the last three years in a row! While it is geared towards dealer principals I have walked away from each of them with a ton of practical work knowledge. The conference always has the most cutting edge information. This last year I learned a ton about hiring and retaining employees. 

 In years past the marketing tips that I learned were great! They helped me to be a lot more effective In my job at the dealership that I was at. I have no doubt that we were able to sell more cars because of it. Here is the link to my blog about last years conference. https://www.drivingsales.com/mark-rask/manage/blog/post/edit/313832....Check it out and go learn a lot!

I  have been reading a lot lately about the future of the auto industry in regards to artificial intelligence. What i am finding is that there is a whole lot of vague information out there about this subject. With all of the voice activated devices that are now available where will that leave us? At home last night I tried searching for various auto dealers and service centers on my amazon echo. I got a real mixed bag of results. Unless I was very name specific the results that I got back were all over the place. At one point I was directed to a service center six hours away! It will be interesting to see the road that this takes us down in regard to paid and local search!