When it comes to used car sales, trust is critical. We all know the reputation that used car dealers have—whether fairly or not—as being shady or dishonest. While that stigma is starting to fade, the fact remains that, before you can sell anyone a car, you have to win their trust.

The Internet complicates things. It’s never been easier for buyers to do an online search and quickly assess your dealership’s reputation—and the information they find will determine whether or not they ultimately give you their business.

Managing Your Dealership’s Online Reputation

For example, if a buyer Googles your dealership and finds online five-star reviews from previous customers, that can instill trust—and send foot traffic to your showroom. But if that Google search reveals customer complaints and bad reviews, you may lose business to your competitors. In fact, it’s almost certain.

That’s what makes it so vital for your dealership to be actively engaged in managing its online reputation—but how? While you can’t always control what people write about you on the Internet, you can actively court positive reviews, while also working to build trust through thought leadership.

Filling the Web with Positive Listings

First, it’s important to realize that, if you want Google searches to reveal positive information about your dealership, it’s up to you to create that positive information. Here are a few basic strategies:

• Make sure you have a strong dealership website that provides good, helpful information to buyers; use local SEO strategies to help your page rank.
• Start a blog, providing valuable information about the used car buying process—financing guides, how-tos, maintenance suggestions, etc. This is a great way to build trust and cultivate a positive reputation!
• It may also be worthwhile to generate positive media mentions; for example, if your dealership gets involved with a local charity or non-profit, send out a press release to let people know.

What About Online Reviews?

Online reviews, posted to sites like Google, Yelp, and Facebook can also be make-or-break for your dealership’s online reputation. Some rules of thumb:

• Always monitor your reviews, and be in the know about what people are saying about your brand.
• If you receive positive reviews, take a minute to offer a word of thanks. That kind of engagement goes a long way!
• If you see negative reviews, offer customer service. It’s vital not to get angry, or at least not to show it in public; instead, ask how you can make things right.
• Ideally, your dealership will have someone assigned to review management on a daily basis.
• You should also be active in seeking out reviews. Ask your satisfied buyers to leave you their feedback!

The bottom line? Your dealership’s reputation is one of its most precious resources. As you seek to uphold yours, be active in managing reviews, creating positive content, and engaging with your buyers. Learn more about auto dealership marketing by calling Get My Auto today!

Your dealership website serves a number of purposes. Hopefully it ranks well, and helps your dealership be discovered by interested buyers—but if that’s all your site is doing, then it’s falling short. Remember that your dealership website is the first impression most buyers will have of your business. As such, it’s vital that it be user-friendly—welcoming, helpful, and service-oriented.

Easier said than done? Not necessarily. Here are five tips to ensure that your auto dealership website always puts the buyer first.

How to Make a Buyer-Friendly Dealership Website

Remember: You’re There to Serve

First and foremost, remember that your website is part of your customer service outreach—and that a good website is one that offers real help and assistance to the end user.

There are plenty of ways to offer customer service through your website—via phone and email links, live chat, FAQ pages, and more. The important thing is helping buyers feel like they can always receive the service they need, without any hassle.

Provide Useful Tools

Another step to consider? Add some tools to your website, empowering buyers to make more informed purchasing decisions.

Just as one example, some dealerships offer budgeting tools and calculators on their websites, allowing users to estimate how much their payments will be and how much car they can actually afford. Tools like these go a long way toward showing buyers that you’re a trusted resource.

Highlight Sales, Specials, and Discounts

Remember that a lot of the buyers who come to your
website will be looking for the latest deals. Help them out; make it easy for website visitors to locate money-saving options.

This could be as simple as creating a landing page where you highlight your latest inventory, or cars you currently have on sale.

Focus on Ease of Navigation

It’s also important that your website have a fluid, intuitive navigation structure. Basically, buyers should always find it easy to retrieve the information they’re after.

Be thoughtful in the page hierarchy of your website and organize all your content in a logical way. Having different sections for different kinds of vehicles—for example, a category page for trucks, another one for minivans, etc.—is one good solution.

Enrich Your Site with Great Content

A final tip: Remember that your site isn’t just about closing the sale. It’s also about earning trust. One way to do that is to offer free, valuable information that can help your buyers—similar to what we said before, about including useful tools.

And there are a lot of ways you can add enriching, informative content to your site. Just a couple of options include a blog and embedded videos, where you weigh in on topics related to used car purchasing, financing, maintenance, etc.

Is Your Website Doing What It Should?

You won’t have too many opportunities to wow potential buyers with your amazing customer service—so seize every chance you get. One way to do so is to build a website that puts service first. We can help. Reach out to the automotive marketing experts at Get My Auto today and ask us for a website consultation!

Cash flow is the lifeblood of any independent auto dealership—and as such, dealers simply can’t afford to have aging inventory that languishes on their lot. Inventory needs to be sold in a minimum of 90 days—and at some dealerships, the standard is closer to 45 days. Once a car passes that threshold, it becomes a liability. This makes it imperative for a dealer to have plans in place to address slow-moving inventory, and ultimately to turn it into cash some way or another.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind as you try to put such a plan in place at your dealership.

Hold a Sale

The most obvious way to move older inventory is to discount the price—creating a demand by improving the value, and promoting the sale heavily through your online marketing channels. Of course, this will eat into your profit margins, but again, aging inventory eventually becomes a financial liability—so it’s best to cut your losses.

And there are different types of sales you might consider:

– A clearance sale simply allows you to flush out all your excess inventory; you might even plan for a couple of clearance sales each year.
– A flash sale hinges on FOMO—the fear of missing out; create a small window for discounts, and instill in your buyers a sense of urgency.
– Item-specific sales—for instance, sales on pickups—might let you more precisely target your intended buyers.

Market Differently

Instead of holding a sale—or perhaps in addition to—you might try to sell older cars through different channels. A highly targeted Facebook Ads campaign is one example. And, if you haven’t listed it on Craigslist, that can be a great way to get some new eyeballs on the vehicle in question. Of course, Get My Auto’s Craigslist Wizard app can be helpful here.

Don’t Let Your Inventory Get Dated to Begin With

Finally, it’s glib to say that you should just avoid aging inventory in the first place—yet there’s an element of truth here: As you purchase inventory with your floor plan credit line, it’s imperative to be judicious, and not to buy more than you can realistically expect to sell. And it’s also important to have firm guidelines in place to move inventory within a certain timeframe—say, 90 days—before it’s essentially written off as a loss.

Strategy and sound marketing are both integral here—and if you need help with either, our team can help. Get My Auto is a marketing company that works exclusively with independent auto dealers, and we know how to move the sales needle on your behalf. Reach out to our team today to learn more.

Social media in general (and Facebook in particular) can be an invaluable outreach tool for used car dealerships. Powerful though it may be, it’s by no means foolproof. Social media marketing only works when there is a right strategy in place, and many used car dealerships frankly don’t have one.

Indeed, there are a number of ways in which used car dealerships go off the rails with their social media. Here are some of the most common pitfalls—all of which, of course, we’d urge you to avoid.

Avoiding Social Media Failures at Your Orange County Dealership

Neglecting the two most important social marketing tools available to dealerships. In our estimation, there are two social media marketing tools that no dealership should neglect—Facebook Ads, and Craigslist. If you’re not incorporating both into your online strategy, you’re simply not getting the most out of digital marketing.

Bombarding your followers with promotional posts. Your social media presence should educate, entice, and engage. What it shouldn’t do is irritate or frustrate your followers with a constant stream of promotional posts. Sharing one picture a day of your latest inventory is fine; one picture every hour is overkill.

Going off topic. Social media users come to you for information about used cars, and they expect you to be an authority on the subject. As such, all your posts should pertain to car ownership in some way. A post about the latest Netflix show, or about last night’s big sporting event, simply doesn’t help your dealership.

Copying your manufacturer’s posts. Your local Toyota dealership won’t stand out if the only thing you do on Facebook is copy and paste content from the corporate Toyota page. It’s vital that you provide your content with its own identity, its own point of view.

Not learning enough about Facebook Ads options. We don’t mean to beat a dead horse, but really: You must use Facebook Ads, and you must school yourself in all the options for targeting, bidding, etc. When used correctly, this can be an incredibly efficient advertising platform, and it can have a real, bottom-line impact for your dealership.

Assuming that social media is a waste of time. The main complaint we hear from used car dealerships in Orange County is that social media just doesn’t sell cars—but actually, it can be a powerful way to build and maintain an audience of paying customers. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!

Social Media Marketing for Your Used Car Dealership

These errors can all be grim in their effect, but they are also easy enough to avoid—if you know what you’re doing. And if you don’t, seek help from the pros. Get My Auto provides social media marketing for used car dealerships exclusively, and we’d love to talk with you about the results we can achieve on your behalf. Reach out to Get My Auto today!

Today’s auto sales landscape is a volatile, often unpredictable one—and independent dealerships face many challenges as they seek to capture and convert leads.

Some of these obstacles are the expected ones—hurdles that stem from the competition, or from changes to the economy itself. Other hurdles, though, stem from the increased digitization of the auto sales process. Simply put, many dealerships struggle to find the most cost-effective ways to generate, capture, and convert their sales leads.

Digitization is a Double-Edged Sword

Of course, there are many ways in which this digitization has made lead capturing more attainable—but then again, it’s also made the sales cycle longer and more complicated. Certainly, buyers love all the websites and apps that allow them to research cars before they arrive at the showroom; from the dealership’s vantage point, though, these resources muddy the waters considerably.

The bottom line for dealers is that nurturing leads has never been more important than it is today—so how can dealerships do it effectively?

Tips for Lead Management

The short answer is for dealerships to invest in lead management—ensuring they have the right processes and procedures in place to capture the leads that come in and then to guide those leads to the bottom of the sales funnel.

Here are a few of the lead management tips we can offer:

1. Have an automated lead tracking system in place. Make sure you’re automatically recording the leads that come in as well as the follow-up, ensuring that none of these leads are lost or forgotten about.
2. Use lead information to maintain a prospect database. Regularly update it and use it to guide future marketing endeavors.
3. Invest in customer service training for your sales representatives. And in particular, make sure potential customers are getting the highest possible level of friendly, personalized service.
4. Make lead follow-up a top priority. Ensure that each lead receives a personal follow-up as quickly as possible—ideally within a few minutes.
5. Ensure your CRM is synced with all online lead generation platforms. In particular, you’ll want to make sure it’s populated with any leads you receive through your Craigslist ads. This is something the Get My Auto Craigslist Wizard is good for.

Don’t Be Haphazard About Lead Management

The bottom line: You’ll only effectively capture and convert leads if you have the right systems in place. As such, building a strong lead management protocol is one of the best things you can do to grow your dealership.

It’s also something we can help with. This is our bread and butter, and we have both the experience and the software solutions you need to make your dealership more profitable. Start moving the sales needle today. Reach out to the team at Get My Auto.

For auto dealerships, all search—all marketing—is local. That much is evident from a recent Dealer Marketing report, which notes that, in 2017, auto dealers and manufacturers spent more than $12.06 billion on local advertising.

Why Local Search Matters for Your Dealership

Why the big push for local? Simple: There are more than 16,700 new vehicle dealerships in the U.S. alone, to say nothing of used car dealerships—which means that, for your dealership to succeed, it has to stand out from the competition. And it’s especially important to outshine the local competition, winning the attention of qualified buyers in your immediate area.

According to the article, “59 percent of car buyers spend time online researching, trying to find the best deals, promotions, and incentives. Once they find the car they like, more than half of consumers will visit a dealership to test drive the vehicle and purchase in-store.”

In other words, establishing online visibility is the key to getting appointments set and driving foot traffic to your showroom. “Just think,” Dealer Marketing notes. “If a prospective customer can’t find your business via an online local search, how are they going to find you in 2018? Or worse, what if they get frustrated and choose to test drive—and likely purchase—somewhere else?”

Strategies for Boosting Local Search Visibility

But what practical steps can independent auto dealerships take to boost their own local search standing? Here are some basics:

• Make sure you include your contact information on every page of your website. Specifically, include your NAP information—name, address, and phone number. The latter should include your local area code. Display this information consistently across your website.
• Include some geographically specific keywords in your content, where appropriate; for example, if your dealership is in San Diego, California, you might include the city name somewhere in your meta description and naturally work it into your body content.
• Try to get plenty of consumer reviews! Reviews on Facebook, Yelp, and especially Google can boost your search standings.
• Also seek out citations from local directories or blogs. Even getting a link from the nearby Better Business Bureau or Chamber of Commerce can boost your rankings.
• Invest in high-quality content that will educate and inform your readers—keeping them on your website for longer. A business blog can be especially beneficial. Rich content, such as video, can also help.

Is Local Search Your Marketing Priority?

We’ll say it again: For used car dealerships, all search is local. Being easily discoverable among your local buyers—that’s the whole ball game. And it’s a lofty goal—but not an unattainable one.

To talk with our automotive marketing experts about boosting your local search standing, reach out to us today. Get My Auto is here to make your dealership more competitive, and that starts with local search. Contact us today to schedule a consultation.

Facebook Ads is a complicated animal—a machine whose parts and systems must be firing on all cylinders, working in tandem, to produce the kinds of results you want on behalf of your dealership.

On a purely technical level, there are a lot of considerations to keep in mind—considerations about budgeting, about ad optimization, about image selection, and more. With that said, there’s a strong creative component, too—a need to create content that is engaging and valuable to your human readers.

That leaves some room for trial and error, and for ongoing discovery. To guide you in that process, we’ve got just a few basic tips and techniques to offer here—some strategies to help you keep your Facebook Ads campaign on the straight and narrow.

Best Approaches for Facebook Ads Marketing

Always be honest and up front. Your ads should deliver on the promise you make in your headline and in the ad content itself. If you advertise a coupon for $500 off, that’s what people should get when they click your ad. And if you advertise used Kia Optimas, the ad should connect to a page about Kia Optimas.

Target your audience narrowly. The Facebook Ads platform offers you many ways to narrow your audience—and we recommend as much precision and specificity as possible. The narrower you target, the fewer wasted clicks you’ll have! Use buyer personas to guide you.

Write headlines that draw attention. Our best advice? Convey value. Show your potential customers and clients what’s in it for them.

Choose compelling images. Some general recommendations here: Smiling faces are great for selling products. Bright, vibrant colors can also help. And make sure you pick imagesthat are high-quality—nothing warped, distorted, or blurry.

Test everything. There’s really no part of your Facebook Ads campaign—from the headlines to the images to the targeting—that you can’t tweak, track, and test. Always be working to make your ads better, to learn what works and what doesn’t!

Make good landing pages. Ideally, your ads will lead buyers to a landing page you’ve made specifically to welcome them, and to lay out the promises you made in the ad itself.

Don’t bid too little. Remember that you’re in an auction with other dealerships—and if you bid too low, your ads simply won’t get displayed.

Don’t forget about remarketing! If you haven’t created a Facebook Pixel to follow up with your website visitors, you need to. It’s one of the most potent features that Facebook Ads offers.

Use Facebook to build organic reach. In addition to paid ads, you should also be doing some content marketing through your dealership’s Facebook page. That’s critical for fostering trust.

Get Help with Facebook Ads

One more thought: Invest in some true expertise and guidance. That’s what Get My Autocan provide. Reach out to us today, and let’s talk about Facebook marketing. We’d love to tell you more about what we can do to help!

Dealership owners always want their website to look sleek, flashy, and professional—but at the end of the day, the way your site looks isn’t really what’s important. What’s important is the way your site performs. Simply put, an effective website is one that gets you conversions—and for dealers, that means a website that gets buyers calling and making appointments.
How can you make sure your website is doing its job? How can you be certain that it’s functional, not just pretty to look at? Here are four simple tips to make your website a true conversion generator.

Include a Call to Action on Every Page

You can’t simply trust that people will do what you want them to do. You need to spell it out for them. You need to provide a written invitation.

End each page of your website with a strong call to action. Some tips:

– Always include strong verbs—discover, explore, etc.
– Only provide one option. Ask your buyers to call you or email you, but not both.
– Stress value and benefits. Make it clear what they get out of this—a low-pressure consultation with a knowledgeable sales pro, for instance.

Don’t Forget Your Contact Information

It’s wise to include your dealership’s name, address, and phone number on every page of your website. There are several reasons for this. For example, it helps improve local SEO rankings.
It also makes it easy for interested buyers to reach out to you—especially those who are viewing your site from a mobile device. If someone wants to make an appointment, it’s important that you provide them with an easy way to do so. Consistent contact information helps.

Consider Lead Generation Forms

Another way you can make your website work for you is to add a lead generation form. Allow viewers to sign up for email updates or even for a small discount code, in exchange for their name, email address, and phone number.
This, of course, puts the onus on your sales team to make follow-up calls and get those appointments set—but if they’re up to the task, lead gen forms can be useful.

Use the Get My Auto KISS Platform

Finally, keep an eye on the Get My Auto website—because within the next couple of months we’ll be releasing our website creating platform, geared specifically toward used car dealers. The platform—called KISS (Keep It Simple Sites)—makes it easy for you to build a dealership website that actually gets results. In fact, we offer responsive websites that are guaranteed to increase your conversions.
Get My Auto is a marketing company that works exclusively with independent used car dealerships. Our mission is to make you more efficient in selling cars. To learn more about the KISS platform, or any of our other dealer-centered marketing technologies, reach out to the Get My Auto team today.

One of the core functions of the independent auto sales rep is to follow up with leads. When you receive information from an interested buyer—via your website, a social media platform, or even a Craigslist post—it’s vital to make a follow-up call as quickly as possible. How you handle that follow-up call could ultimately make or break this sales opportunity.
In this post, we’ll outline 10 guidelines for making each sales follow-up call count.

How to Make Sales Follow-Up Calls More Effective

1. Pre-plan your calls. Even if you just spend a couple of minutes collecting your thoughts and mapping out some basic points, preparation is key. Don’t make follow-up calls that aren’t pre-planned.
2. Know your objective. Why are you calling this person? To collect information? To instill in them a sense of urgency in visiting your dealership? Always know your goal before making a call.
3. Be up-front. Start each phone conversation by stating the reason for your call. Let your lead know exactly why you’re ringing them up.
4. Gather information. Remember, you don’t sell cars over the phone—you sell appointments. And one of the best ways to get to an appointment is to be vigilant in collecting information—as much information as possible!
5. Remember, you’re not just selling cars. You’re selling your dealership. Always make sure you offer a couple of reasons for your lead to consider your brand over the competition.
6. If you leave a voice mail… make sure you keep it brief, but also emphasize a couple of key reasons why the person should call you back.
7. Be personal. Use the customer’s name throughout your call.
8. Don’t talk the whole time. Instead, ask questions and listen. Remember, a big reason for calling is to gather information. You can’t do that if you’re running your mouth the whole time, dominating the conversation.
9. Don’t leave people on hold. Even if you have to gather information on the fly, try not to leave anyone on hold for more than half a minute. The last thing you want is for a lead to hang up on you because you keep them waiting too long!
10. Always move the conversation toward an appointment. Nudge your lead toward coming down to the dealership to talk some more. Ask, “Can you come in now, or later?”

Learn to Ace Your Phone Follow-Ups

And here’s a bonus tip: When you use Get My Auto’s new BDC Genius program, you can learn exactly how to manage phone conversations in order to increase sales. We invite you to try this new offering today!
And, if you have any lingering concerns about how to capture leads and convert them into sales—whether by phone or otherwise—reach out to our automotive marketing pros directly. Contact Get My Auto now to learn more!

Should your dealership be focusing more on the sale of accessories? There’s certainly an argument to be made for it. Consider some of these figures, from a recent Auto Newsarticle:

– Auto accessories generate more than $40 billion each year.
– The profit margins for auto accessories average around 50 percent.
– Half of all vehicle buyers say they want to accessorize their new car as soon as they buy it.

There’s obviously plenty of reason to consider offering accessories to your buyers. The question is, how can you make your accessory sales efforts successful?

Which Accessories Sell the Most?

A good start is deciding on exactly which accessories you’re going to sell. There are plenty of options, and some are more popular than others. According to Auto News, the 10 bestselling auto accessories include:

1. Floor mats
2. Window tinting
3. Vehicle protection products
4. Factory exterior products—i.e. splash guards
5. Alarms and vehicle recovery products
6. Body side molding
7. Step bars
8. Factory interior products—i.e. cargo nets
9. Wheel accessories
10. Trailer hitches

If you’re looking to get into the vehicle accessories business, you might consider starting with some of the items on this list.

Effectively Selling Vehicle Accessories

The next step is to develop an accessories sales strategy. Some tips and best practices include:

– Get your whole team involved. You should have your auto sales people trying to upsell and cross-sell accessories, but more than that, you should have installation experts available to field any technical questions; their inclusion in the process can boost consumer confidence considerably.
– Incentivize your employees. An important addition to the last point: Your employees may need some incentives to learn about new accessories, and to do their part in promoting them. Again, everyone in your dealership should be included here—not just the people who work in sales.
– Emphasize the convenience of buying accessories on the front end. Some buyers may feel like it’s better to wait and buy accessories down the road. One thing you can do is drive home how much easier it is to just buy them now and have them installed at the dealership—minimizing cost and hassle down the road.
– Keep track of which accessories sell. Some of the accessories you offer your customers may sell better than others. Make sure you keep track of that information, which can help you hone in on the products you offer in the future.
– Place someone in charge of accessory sales. You may not have it in the budget to hire an accessories manager, but you can task someone on your sales team with being the accessories supervisor and point person.

Ultimately, accessories can help you expand your dealership’s profit center. To learn more about effective sales and marketing for your used car business, reach out to the experts at Get My Auto. We’re always here to talk with you about ways to move your sales needle!