How often have you heard a customer say, “I just don’t like the look of it” They are not sure what exactly turns them off from this vehicle despite all the amazing features it has that they want.  People’s taste change in automotive style with the ease of the wind blowing so it can be very difficult for a dealership sometimes to draw people in that may not like the “look” of the vehicle on their lot.

Imagine the year 1908 and the Ford Model T has just come out. People’s reaction was all across the spectrum. Now look at today’s “modern” cars and check out the car doors for a moment. The rear doors are higher than the front doors and the windows are shorter in comparison to the door skins. Yes, this decreases the height of the rear windows and thus decreases the viewing area for the driver but it makes the cars look “faster” and sleek. Now do a comparison to the two cars – Model T and Today. Amazing how the heart of the car is still visible – the vehicle is merely a way to transport you from point a to point b in comfort and style. Your sales staff should align themselves with the customer and be sure to focus on attributes that are important to the customer find ways to make the “look” transform in the eyes of the customer into something they love rather than find fault in. Remember what Henry Ford said “Don’t find fault, find a remedy.”  Cars are exciting fun modes of transportation allow drivers the chance to be in control.

When designing new automotive marketing strategies think back to the beginning of the automotive industry. People are sometimes reluctant to change but with the right attitude any marketing campaign can take hold.

Are you looking for a knowledgeable team that is ready and willing to evolve with your dealership and automotive marketing campaign, visit this page to see more information and contact us now.

Volkswagen Dealership located in the Carolinas is seeking a qualified and motivated candidate to fill the position of automotive sales manager. Candidate must have extensive successful experience running a Volkswagen Store as well as possess team building and leadership skills. Ideal candidate will be able to seize Volkswagen momentum to grow business.

This is a long-range career opportunity with generous compensation, flexible schedule and full benefits package. There are unlimited opportunities for the right candidate.

Desired Qualities:

• Driven to meet and exceed sales goals
• Strong leadership and team building skills
• Ability to build relationships and motivate others
• Professional appearance and outgoing personality
• Verifiable references, clean background and valid driver’s license

Compensation Potential: Start at $120K to $150K

Send your resume and cover letter to Volkswagen.Sales.Manager@gmail.com

Where Google Wave and Google Buzz fell short before, Google+ presents a new take on social media and looks to prevail.  One of the things going in Google’s favor is the familiar site design.  Does the below picture look similar to you at all?  Notice how Mark Zuckerberg’s profile is laid out in a similar fashion to Facebook

Bing has recently taken a social approach by using Facebook relationships to endorse search results and are advertising it big time with their “Bing and Decide” campaign.   Maybe you have seen those commercials with friends talking about how they know each other and what particular sushi house they prefer.  Are you starting to see how this is making the review process easier and easier for businesses?

By integrating social media data with search engines, your dealership could actively use your social fan base to promote and endorse your company.  With Google+ social media and search engines seems to mend the seam more completely than ever before.   Here are three essential features you may find helpful for your dealership.

1. Sparks - Sparks allow you to follow specific topics of interest, such as: Automotive, Dealership, Marketing, Social Media, Search Engine.  Sparks essentially function similarly to Facebook Likes.
2. Circles - Where Facebook and Twitter make it difficult to fragment groups of friends, Google+ and Circles use an algorithm to focus conversations.  Now your social life, professional life and family life can easily be fragmented and not exhaust one another.
3. Hangouts - Google+’s Hangouts takes video conferencing to the next level by allowing users the opportunity to video chat with groups of friends.  This feature has even pushed Facebook to start negotiations with Skype to integrate a similar feature within their own website.

Google has now launched its latest venture, Google Offers, its entrance into the world of online deals. Sites like Groupon and LivingSocial have seen incredible success with offers that people buy into and then invite their friends via social media, and Google is now providing some competition. Dealers seeking fresh automotive marketing ideas can look to a tool like this to market service discounts, gain branding visibility, and collect new return customers.

People can sign up to receive daily deal offers from local businesses such as restaurants and hair salons. These offers will be for discounts of 50% or more off of goods and services, which people claim by paying through Google Checkout and printing out a receipt to bring to the business.

Auto dealerships have seen success reaching new customers through sites like Groupon. A discounted oil change or car wash is a great low-cost way to start and bring in new people to the dealership who in turn may keep coming back or even eventually buy a car.

Though currently only available in select markets, Google Offers will expand to other locations as it is tested and developed further. You can see the present locations and subscribe to find out when it will be available in your area here.

You’ve probably noticed the little magnifying glass next to Google search results. When you click it, you see a preview of what the site looks like. Google has recently added this preview feature to paid search results as well, letting people get a glimpse of your page before even clicking the link. What are the implications of this new feature for automotive advertising search campaigns?



First, this makes the quality of the landing page all the more important. Before, people would have to click an ad to even see your site. Now, they can see it before even clicking, making it all the more necessary to have well-designed graphics and a clean, appealing look.

Second, the page needs to be specific to what people are searching for. If they are searching for a 2011 Nissan Sentra and can see that they are going specifically to a page about the Sentra, they will be more likely to click the ad. If they are just going to the main dealership page which has 10 different brands listed, people will not be as likely to click since they are not going straight to the vehicle being searched for.



Finally, be aware that Flash, Java, or other web platforms may not show up in your site preview and instead show as just an empty white space. Check your pages in the preview to make sure that graphics do indeed show up.

Today, Facebook is launching a deals program similar to those on sites like Groupon and Living Social, testing offers in five major cities across the U.S. These deals will include major discounts and exclusive offers for tickets, passes, and more. People can then share it by “liking” to potentially get greater discounts if friends buy into an offer. Although this program is still in a test stage, once released in all areas it will have great potential for automotive advertising on social media.

Facebook’s new deals program takes social sharing of deals to a new level. Groupon and LivingSocial offers come through email and do encourage people to share these socially for the deal to be activated or become free. Facebook’s program will start with the deal showing up in a “deals” section when people log on and also showing up in friend feeds when someone likes an offer.

When the new deals program comes out for everyone, auto dealers can take advantage of it to offer specials for people to buy into. Service specials provide the best offers to use for this, marketing your fixed operations to drive in people who might not be ready to buy a new vehicle. You can give a discount to drive people into your dealership and drive up your branding. For example, a $10 oil change would be an appealing offer.

People will “Like” the offer and then share it with their friends, ultimately reaching thousands of people around your area. The potential for your dealership to promote itself in social media greatly increases with this new deals program.

Many dealers are hesitant to let their salespeople use Facebook because they expect employees to waste too much time chatting with their friends, playing Farmville, etc. This concern is understandable when you want your salespeople to be on the floor selling, following up to leads over email and phone, and making the most of their time. But you can’t ignore the fact that the majority of your potential leads are using Facebook and it is a legitimate tool for automotive advertising.

Instead of banning Facebook, there is a better way that still gives your salespeople full potential to connect with leads. At Potratz, we encourage the dealerships we work with to ask their employees to sign a social media policy, agreeing not to play games, chat (except for with customers), view videos unrelated to the dealership or vehicles, etc. Also, dealership servers let internet managers monitor employees’ usage, so managers can warn those who are wasting time on Facebook instead of doing work-related activities.

Also, be sure to have employees post on your dealership’s main Facebook business page instead of setting up their own. They should post from their own personal profiles, but should not set up their own business pages for themselves for people to “like.”

Facebook sometimes will merge pages with similar names, so if someone created a page for “Smithtown Ford” and a Joe at the dealership created another business page for “Joe at Smithtown Ford,” Facebook could merge those pages and cause your dealership to lose content that requires a hassle to get back (this is not hypothetical and did happen to one of our clients!). Of course, keeping everything focused around the main page keeps the most “likes” on the page and the most attention focused toward that one page for the dealership as well.

If you’re hesitant to let your salespeople use Facebook, sit down and write up a social media policy and give them access. You’ll see your leads go up as they are able to connect with customers on a more personal level.

Technology is advancing at the speed of light, so much so that the most life-changing innovations of the 21st century have been from this segment. Its effect has been felt on every aspect of society, but perhaps one area where the impact of this technology can be really be seen and felt is in automotive marketing.

Digital automotive marketing is turning the dealers’ world around to a new form of communication. Effective marketing is no longer about who can afford to run a full spread ad on newspapers, or buy a prime spot on national television. Technology has changed the way people interact with car dealerships as well as consumer spending habits at large.

Not so long ago, the war for marketing supremacy was fought over the internet. Firms spent millions of dollars on SEO marketing campaigns. Those that read and heeded the signs of change early enough were able to edge out the competition. However, the battle front has shifted again, and dealers who still imagine that owning a website that ranks highly in search engines is enough to reel in customers are in for a rude shock.

Digital marketing is now targeting mobile phone users. According to various statistics, newspaper sales have been on a steady decline, so placing an ad on the papers will only reach so many readers. While you might reach more people by placing the ad on television or radio, these two traditional forms have advertising have nothing on modern digital advertising methods. Facebook and Google ads might still be more effective than “traditional” media, but mobile phone advertising is the new buzz word.

At Potratz, we keep on top of the latest digital trends to keep your dealership above the competition. Join us Wednesday, April 20, for a free short webinar discussing how you can take advantage of these trends to sell more cars. Click here to sign up now.

Simply having a business page on Facebook is no longer enough to run a successful automotive marketing campaign on Facebook. With a number of companies and brands joining the bandwagon, Facebook has become a saturated market and unless you understand how the market behaves, you might be get lost amid all the noise.

Similarly, filling up your fans’ walls with advertorial posts will be useless unless you’re receiving a significant amount of responses—in the form of “likes” and “comments”, and high click-through rates for the links that you posted.

Here are some guidelines to improve your posts and be more successful in advertising your automotive dealership on Facebook:

Your Post
Your post is the primary metrics that measures how effective your Facebook marketing drive is. Your main objective is that your call to Action is not only catches the attention of your fans, but also to engages them. If your posts are not eliciting some action from your fans, then they may not be doing as much as they could be doing for your auto dealership. Posts that commonly do well have the following characteristics:

1. They must be short and simple. Posts containing 80 characters or less are said to have 27% higher engagement rates than longer posts.
2. They must be clear and direct. Although creative come-ons can sometimes work to your advantage, it’s still much better to go straight to the point of your message.
3. They must solicit a response and engage the reader. Asking questions is the easy way to do this. But ask ‘yes or no’ and ‘who-what-where-when’ type of questions rather than ‘why’ because they are always a lot easier to answer than questions that ask why.
4. They must be relevant and interesting. Social media is often about trends, so it’s important that your posts should not only be about selling or promoting your dealership but also about up-to-date news in the automotive industry; things people will find interesting
5. They must be transparent. If you’re going to post links, try to use the original URL. Many people are wary about clicking shortened URLs, such bitly and tinyurl because they do not know where it will take them, especially with the increasing amount of Facebook viruses out there.

Your Timing
A report released by Buddy Media analyzing Facebook Page activities over a two-week period, shows that timing plays a crucial role in the post’s engagement rate. The key thing here is to post when people are more engaged in Facebook than anything else. Suffice to say, non-office hours are the best times of the day and weekends are the best days of the week to post.

The report also indicates that posts during non-office hours receive 20% more responses than those made during office hours. For the automotive industry, Sunday posts have higher engagement rates than any day of the week.

Your Strategy
Automotive marketing on a community-based medium such as Facebook involves a healthy and continuous interaction between you (the dealership) and your followers (your current and potential customers). You need be an active part of the community rather than appear like an automated system that churns out posts regarding your inventory on a regular basis. You need to identify when your fans are using Facebook and connect to them when they are more responsive to your posts.

Although the iPhone app was intended to let users stay connected with their Facebook friends while on the go, auto dealers can also take advantage of this technology to make their automotive mobile marketing campaigns more interactive and more in-tune with the social media. With the release of Facebook for iPhone’s newest version (version 3.4), one added feature is particularly useful for business owners: the ability to check-in at actual events.

Checking-In to Events

Along with bug fixes and other new features, Facebook for iPhone now allows users to check-in to events, rather than just locations as was previously the case. To check-in, users must first accept the invitation by saying “Yes” to the RSVP then they must also be present at the same time and venue that is indicated in the event invitation. Once they are checked-in, users can see the other guests who are also at the event. For example, now a user can check in at XYZ Dealership’s “Car Show For Charity” event; and by doing so spread the word to all their friends that not only are they at XYZ Dealership, but also that there is an event going on, and the user is there.

Organize Automotive Marketing Events
Event check-in can bring auto advertising to a whole new level by utilizing connectability and social interaction to connect to your potential customers and promote your dealership. You can easily organize an event- sales, car-related, or philanthropy- send out invitations on Facebook and dcreate a buzz leading up to it as people accept invitations as well as the day of the event as those same people check in to the event.

Also, with  Facebook for iPhone, you can plan activities throughout the event and post them to engage your guests, encourage audience participation and create a call to action to a checked in users network. You can also keep tabs on how the event is being perceived by seeing what people are saying on Facebook, running opinion polls or surveys and obtaining real time responses, and interacting directly with attendees