So one thing I love about sites like this is that we can all exchange ideas/info/best practices without stepping on each others toes. I have befriended a few Internet Managers around town, but no one wants to exchange ideas since it might potentially make them lose a sale/customer.
So that being said what are you guys doing that might be something new that not many people have heard of yet, or that is just a little creative thinking/marketing.
We don't do anything to out of the ordinary...website (of course), cars.com, SEO, SEM (smaller budget, but we are a smaller dealership), 3rd party leads (OEM new leads only through GM), local automotive websites. Thats about it for us...I am trying to get "lean and mean" with my allotted marketing dollars and cancelling what isn't giving me a good ROI, and get some new stuff going to ring in the new year with.
Even though I have been resisting, as I am not quite convinced that the time the social media stuff (Facebook, blog, youtube, twitter) takes up is worth the ROI I am going to go ahead and start a FB fan page for us, resurrect our 3 year old blog, and be more active on our youtube page. I still don't see the point in twitter for personal or business reasons and am convinced that its just a flash in the pan that won't be here in <3 years.
Social media aside, I am looking at starting an account with Gumiyo to get into the text messaging game, and honestly thats about all I am thinking now. We really need to get our new car sales up, but it is so much easier to find help selling used rather than new. Buying 3rd party leads from GM has been an absolute waste of time and money...in the 9 months we have been buying them we average 40 leads/month and have sold 1 car off of it! It is very rare I get a returned email/phone call, and alot of times when I do it is just to say, "quit calling me" or "please take me off of your email list". In other words I am done buying 3rd party leads.
So guys I ask you, what has been working for your internet dept. for new and used car sales?
So that being said what are you guys doing that might be something new that not many people have heard of yet, or that is just a little creative thinking/marketing.
We don't do anything to out of the ordinary...website (of course), cars.com, SEO, SEM (smaller budget, but we are a smaller dealership), 3rd party leads (OEM new leads only through GM), local automotive websites. Thats about it for us...I am trying to get "lean and mean" with my allotted marketing dollars and cancelling what isn't giving me a good ROI, and get some new stuff going to ring in the new year with.
Even though I have been resisting, as I am not quite convinced that the time the social media stuff (Facebook, blog, youtube, twitter) takes up is worth the ROI I am going to go ahead and start a FB fan page for us, resurrect our 3 year old blog, and be more active on our youtube page. I still don't see the point in twitter for personal or business reasons and am convinced that its just a flash in the pan that won't be here in <3 years.
Social media aside, I am looking at starting an account with Gumiyo to get into the text messaging game, and honestly thats about all I am thinking now. We really need to get our new car sales up, but it is so much easier to find help selling used rather than new. Buying 3rd party leads from GM has been an absolute waste of time and money...in the 9 months we have been buying them we average 40 leads/month and have sold 1 car off of it! It is very rare I get a returned email/phone call, and alot of times when I do it is just to say, "quit calling me" or "please take me off of your email list". In other words I am done buying 3rd party leads.
So guys I ask you, what has been working for your internet dept. for new and used car sales?
