Craigslist recently announced that posting ads to the RV and Motorcycle categories will now require a listing fee of $5/ad. If you rely heavily on Craigslist to drive traffic to your RV or Motorcycle dealership, you may be looking at ways to avoid paying that listing fee.
Read MoreTopics: Featured, Craigslist, Blog, RVs, Motorcycles
In the automotive, powersports and marine industries, social media has experienced a rocky existence. On one hand, the promise of massive exposure has been intriguing and spawned entire companies to focus strictly on social media. On the other hand, the return on investment has been a challenge to demonstrate, let alone believe in through proper KPI measurement standards.
Which is it? Is social media good or is it simply too hard to demonstrate a return on investment? In many ways, the answer to both questions is yes, which is why we're so pleased about the performance of our own social media product.
Read MoreData is everything online. Consumers love more information. They will spend a great deal of time researching a computer or getting more information about an appliance they're considering. In the automotive industry, the love of data is even more pronounced.
Why, then, do most dealers leave some of the most important information off of their inventory listings? On some of the third-party sites, the reason is easy to see. They simply won't take in as much information as the dealership wants to give or that the consumer wants to see. They are often limited to the basics - photo, price, miles, VIN, phone number. Sometimes, these listings don't even allow for a map to the dealership.
Read MoreTime. It always seems like we never have enough. In fact, some recognize that it's actually more important when it comes to managing sales and marketing processes to help drive sales.
Between the OEMs, vendors, data providers, and analytics companies, most dealerships are given access to at least a half-dozen dashboards. Who has time to log into them all? Even if we did have time, it can be a data overload. How does all of that data translate into something useful where we could either look at the big picture or just components of the data gathered?
Read MoreIn the past, we've discussed the importance of pictures in your online inventory listings. That hasn't changed, but it's important that we make sure we don't take away from the other important component of your listings: the descriptions.
A picture might say a thousand words, but the details you can put into the descriptions of your vehicles have a big impact on your ability to move those units. Sites like Craigslist and eBay Motors offer plenty of room to be as descriptive as you want, so use that space to its fullest potential.
Read MoreThe evolution of automotive social media has been an amazing thing to behold over the years. We've all seen strategies come and go. Some worked. Some didn't. Today, we have the luxury of having narrowed down the strategies that have proven to be effective today and that should continue to be effective in the near future.
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