Websites, SEO, SEM, Display, Social, Marketing

A Ford dealership in upstate New York seeks advice on reallocating budget from print advertising to digital marketing, specifically asking whether to prioritize PPC/SEM services. Responses diverge between immediate tactics (PPC for quick ROI, enhanced vehicle photography, inventory listings on major sites) and longer-term strategies (SEO, video marketing, blog content), with most recommending PPC first to demonstrate quick wins from the reallocated budget.

Dealers are increasingly hiring dedicated digital marketing managers, but the thread reveals that **buy-in from ownership and management is the primary obstacle to success**—more critical than technical challenges like SEM optimization or reporting. Multiple respondents emphasize that digital marketing managers need autonomy over budget and strategy decisions, plus organizational trust to experiment and prove ROI, which dealership leadership often struggles to grant when significant money is at stake.

Google is actively shutting down major guest post networks as part of a broader effort to eliminate low-quality backlinks, and the original poster warns dealers to audit their link profiles for potentially harmful links from guest posts, foreign sites, or low-authority domains. The key takeaway is that automotive professionals using SEO services should proactively disavow bad links using Google's Disavow tool to protect their site rankings from Google's penalties.

Google Places is consolidating duplicate business listings and no longer allows multiple authorized owners per location, causing some dealer listings to become inactive if identified as duplicates. Users discuss how to handle this change, particularly for dealerships with complicated listing histories due to relocations or name changes. The key takeaway is that dealers need to audit their Google Places listings for duplicates and consolidate them to maintain visibility in local search results.

A dealership is evaluating chat providers and considering adding video to their chat offering, concerned that typed conversations are taking too long with their BDC team. The discussion reveals a tension between efficiency and engagement: while video might streamline communication, industry experts caution that customers use chat specifically to avoid real-time conversation and expect quick information access, making 24/7 availability more critical than adding video features.

A dealer inquired about Dealer Speed Leads, a Craigslist posting tool, asking whether other professionals had experience with it and how it handles Craigslist's paywall system. The thread received minimal engagement with no substantive responses—one reply confirmed unfamiliarity with the tool, and another suggested consulting an expert user rather than providing direct information. The key takeaway is that Dealer Speed Leads appears to be an obscure or little-known solution with no reported user base among DealerRefresh community members.

Several automotive industry professionals are coordinating attendance for the Dealer Think Tank event in Chicago on May 15, with confirmed attendees including Jeff Kershner and Jessica Ruth, while others like Jason are considering making the trip despite the distance. The thread serves as an informal poll and encouragement for colleagues to attend the marketing-focused conference, with participants actively recruiting each other to participate.

Several automotive industry professionals announced their attendance at the Digital Dealer conference in Atlantic City in May and expressed interest in meeting up in person. The conversation revealed genuine enthusiasm for connecting with fellow DealerRefresh community members, with attendees planning to socialize and enjoy the experience together. The thread demonstrates the value community members place on transitioning online relationships into face-to-face networking at industry events.

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Shawn Ryder asks whether automated multi-channel marketing is emerging in the automotive industry, seeking dealer feedback on adoption and implementation. Anthony D'Amico responds with a concrete example of an existing automated system that allows dealers to quickly build targeted campaigns by selecting audiences (current vehicle owners filtered by brand/year/model), creative templates, and incentives, with approved creative delivered within 24 hours. The thread suggests that automated marketing solutions are already available to dealers, contrary to the perception that they're only coming soon.

Dealers are increasingly using fake reviews on sites like DealerRater, Edmunds, and Yelp to mask poor reputations, a practice enabled by a growing "reputation management" industry that charges fees to post fraudulent positive reviews. While some contributors acknowledge this is common and difficult to police, others argue it's detectable through IP address tracking and site algorithms, and that legitimate dealers can generate authentic reviews by delivering excellent service and actively requesting customer feedback. The thread reveals a fundamental tension in the industry: dealers facing reputation challenges are tempted by unethical shortcuts, but experts warn that fake reviews carry serious legal risks and ultimately indicate deeper business problems.

Dealers discuss the frustration of spending excessive time with vendor tech support staff who lack product knowledge—sometimes requiring dealers to explain features, write code, or provide step-by-step instructions themselves. While some suggest workarounds like building relationships with knowledgeable account reps or bringing services in-house, the thread identifies a systemic issue: low vendor fees ($700-800/month) don't support hiring skilled support staff, leaving tech-savvy dealers essentially training their own vendors instead of receiving support.

Rick Buffkin asks about converting relative image and link paths to absolute paths in Dreamweaver, hoping for a built-in setting or checkbox rather than manual search-and-replace. Karen Ann explains there's no automatic solution but suggests using "Links relative to Site Root" combined with find-and-replace, while Jason Petkov recommends abandoning Dreamweaver altogether in favor of modern tools like Sublime Text and local server environments like WAMP.

A multi-brand dealer group debates whether to maintain one consolidated Facebook page or create separate brand-specific pages, with concerns about reach, relevance, and customer confusion. The consensus from experienced practitioners favors keeping a unified page per location (rather than per brand) to cross-promote events and content while reducing customer confusion and management burden. The key insight is that success depends less on the structural choice and more on having realistic staffing capacity to maintain whatever strategy is chosen.

Dealers debated the best chat solution for dealership websites, with the primary concern being whether an inline chat box (Facebook-style, persistent across page browsing) provides better user experience than traditional pop-up windows that get hidden behind other browser windows. While participants acknowledged that chat quality and staff expertise matter most, there was consensus that the ideal solution requires both a seamless, non-intrusive user interface AND a knowledgeable automotive-focused chat team—a combination rarely found in current auto-retail chat offerings.

The thread discusses Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)—rebranded by the original poster as "OSCO"—arguing it deserves far more attention than SEO and SEM in automotive digital marketing, since high traffic means nothing without effective site conversion. Participants debate how to properly define and measure conversions (leads, phone calls, form submissions, VDP views), noting that dealers often inconsistently track these metrics across different channels and platforms. The key insight is that while SEO and SEM generate traffic easily discussed in simple metrics, the industry undervalues the harder but more critical work of optimizing what happens once visitors land on a dealer's site.

The thread explores how automotive dealers could create highly personalized websites that dynamically change based on customer behavior (location, search terms, VDP views, etc.), with Sean Woodruff asking technical questions about triggers and implementation. Responses reveal skepticism about the concept's effectiveness: while behavioral personalization is technically feasible using JavaScript and cookies, multiple participants question whether dealers can actually predict customer preferences better than customers themselves, and note that auto-buying decisions are too complex and variable to reliably influence through dynamic content. The consensus leans toward treating personalization cautiously rather than as a silver bullet, with one participant suggesting starting with a niche approach instead.

DealerRater and J.D. Power announced a partnership that will allow customers completing J.D. Power surveys to post reviews directly to DealerRater, consolidating customer feedback from both sources into a single analytics platform for dealers. While some community members raised concerns about consumer fatigue from duplicate review submissions and intellectual property questions, DealerRater representatives argued that the integration won't require additional consumer effort and that reviews and surveys serve different purposes in understanding customer behavior.

Drew Ament presents data from three large metro dealers showing significant increases in Vehicle Detail Page (VDP) views per new car shopper after implementing professional photography of their entire new car inventory, with one dealer seeing VDP/NCS ratios jump from 0.83 to 1.04 by November. Community members validate these findings with their own observations that photographed vehicles generate higher-quality leads focused on scheduling test drives rather than requesting additional photos. The consensus conclusion is that investing in professional new car photography is worthwhile for improving engagement metrics and floor traffic, though phone call volume remained relatively flat.

A new salesman asks for help understanding basic lead performance metrics and benchmarks after discussions with his Internet Director. Respondents provide varying perspectives: while some share specific benchmarks (35% lead-to-show, 18% closing rates), the consensus is that dealerships should develop their own metrics based on lead sources, inventory mix, and dealership-specific variables rather than relying solely on industry standards. The thread also touches on tracking inconsistencies across dealerships and briefly questions whether separate internet departments are necessary or counterproductive.

The thread announces a partnership between DealerRater and J.D. Power, which will combine DealerRater's online dealership reviews with J.D. Power's survey-based customer satisfaction data in a single platform. The key insight is that dealers will gain a unified view of their online reputation and customer feedback side by side, giving them a more comprehensive picture of customer sentiment. The original poster frames this as a significant milestone for DealerRater and the broader automotive industry.

Sharko identifies the five terms that appear in the "People talk about..." section of Google+ business pages and Google Maps listings, seeking to understand their origin and how to control them. CarlAutofusion reveals that these terms are algorithmically generated by Google based on frequently occurring words in customer reviews, meaning dealerships cannot directly edit them but can influence them indirectly through review content.

Blake Arbogast seeks a window sticker application for his Buick GMC dealership website, and the discussion reveals that GM no longer provides window stickers online (unlike Ford and Chrysler), making the feature unavailable unless dealers use a third-party solution like Cobalt's platform. Rick Buffkin indicates he's developing a custom GM window sticker application and notes that most website providers cannot pull official stickers from GM, though Cobalt users can access them—but this creates challenges with inventory synchronization and pricing consistency across multiple sites.