The Dealer Impact Blog

Video Generation System: New & Improved

Video is an excellent lead source. Placing videos on third-party web sites creates a virtual sales force that drives traffic back to your dealership. 

To simplify the process of making and distributing videos, Dealer Impact offers the Video Generation System (VGS), which automatically produces inventory-specific videos and integrates them into a dealer’s website. VGS uses a flash player to create a mini portable web site for each vehicle, complete with video, audio, photos, features, options, and pricing. 

And now VGS is even better, with the addition of several recent upgrades: 

Carfax Integration: Participating CarFax dealerships can now add reports using special banners that appear across the top of VGS videos. Users can click the banners to view vehicle-specific information.

Sliding Presentation: VGS can now highlight an array of inventory at once using a rolling filmstrip. Users simply click on any vehicle in the slider to watch a video.

Starburst Callouts: A bold graphic can be added to the corner of any video to highlight specific features about the vehicle or to advertise a special promotion.

As always, VGS presentations can be quickly added to any website and can be easily exported to blogs, forums, YouTube, or nearly any third-party site that accepts video. 

If you’re ready to test drive VGS and its new features, visit http://www.dealerimpact.com/vgs or call a sales rep at 877-334-9638.

Recession-Proof Advertising

The weak economy has dealerships making difficult decisions about spending. While it may sound sensible to cut the marketing budget, advertising is actually more crucial when times are tough.

Down-market advertising is useful in generating new business. Equally important, however, is its affect on public perception. Not advertising during a recession can signal to consumers that your business is struggling, according to a recent Ad-ology Research study. If they don’t trust you’ll be in business a year from now, they’re less likely to buy.

Marketing your business is also the only way to stand apart from the competition. People are willing to drive up to an hour to find a car, which greatly expands the marketplace. And even if you are the only car lot for hours, consumers now have plenty of choices thanks to the Internet.

Before slashing your advertising dollars, discover how Dealer Impact can help you stand out from the crowd with our range of affordable advertising options. Learn more by calling a sales rep at 877-334-9638.

Become a Fan of Facebook

Although Facebook started as college networking site, it has become an important business tool with the potential to reach a gigantic audience. Just how big is Facebook’s reach? According to new statistics, the social media site has 325 million users—and that number is growing at a staggering rate.

Facebook is gaining nearly 25 million users each month. That’s like adding the entire population of New Orleans every single day. With such market saturation, there is no doubt your current and potential clients are already using Facebook. And you should be too. A business fan page allows for free advertising, generates buzz when fans promote your business to their friends, and provides a forum for customer feedback.

If your dealership isn’t yet on Facebook, now is the time to get started. Dealer Impact can do the work for you with The Factor x10, a social network marketing program that’s available as a stand-alone application for any web site. With The Factor x10, you can:

• Display inventory using photo slideshows and embedded videos

• Deliver content via plug-in RSS feeds

• Boost your website’s search engine optimization

• Capture leads that you can turn into sales

Learn more about The Factor x10 on our web site or by calling a sales representative at 877-334-9638.

Less is More

When it comes to cars, buyers want all the bells and whistles. When it comes to websites, however, less is more. Unfortunately, many dealerships pack their pages with too much stuff and too little substance.

The most effective dealer sites focus on the two elements customers say are most important—inventory and specials. Sites that add too much more can look cluttered, causing viewers to lose concentration and go elsewhere.

Ready to see if your site makes the grade? Try this challenge: Look at it from a customer’s point of view. What is the first thing you see? Is it easy to navigate from one page to the next? Can you quickly locate inventory and specials? Are there places for your eye to rest? If you find it difficult to evaluate your site objectively, ask a focus group of actual customers to answer these questions for you.

Use yourself or customer evaluation to clean up your site with an eye toward simplification. Then, stop tinkering. After all, your job isn’t web design; your job is converting web traffic into real sales.

1 Billion Served ..And Counting

Don’t think viral videos are worth the investment? You may change your mind after hearing the recent news that YouTube has surpassed 1 billion views a day. That’s 11,574 views per second! These amazing numbers prove what Dealer Impact has long believed—people love videos. Now it’s time for dealerships to fall in love, too.

Done well, video is a low-cost, high-reward marketing tool. For very little time and money, you can create hundreds of videos to distribute on thousands of websites to be viewed by millions of potential customers.

Producing videos is easy using Dealer Impact’s Video Generation System (VGS). The automated system combines photos and audio with CarFax information and pricing to create inventory-specific videos. The clips can be distributed to sites like YouTube and Cars.com, creating mini-websites for your dealership that drive traffic back to you.

Posting a video on YouTube doesn’t mean 1 billion people will find your website. Ignoring the phenomenon, however, guarantees they won’t. To learn more about integrating VGS into your website or blog, visit http://www.dealerimpact.com/vgs.

Celebrating 10 Years in Business

Long before many car dealerships had even heard of the World Wide Web, Dealer Impact was building web sites for businesses. We opened our doors in 1999, working at wobbly card tables and relying on slow-as-snails dial-up Internet service.

Despite the humble surroundings, Dealer Impact created the auto industry’s first tool for publishing inventory online. This innovative technology allowed dealerships to put photos and complete vehicle information online, without knowledge of complicated coding.

Today, we offer the most comprehensive product line in the industry and work with dealers all over the country. While we may have grown a lot in 10 years, some things about us will never change.

We got our start because we listened to dealers’ concerns and worked with them to solve their problems. Dealer Impact remains committed to providing amazing customer service and to being innovative in how we help our clients succeed. For many dealers, that means using our complete iDeal Marketing System. Others pick and choose products and adapt them to their current processes or websites.

We are so proud of what we have created in the last 10 years that we’re giving our products away as an anniversary gift to you. To learn more about our risk-free, 60-day “Drive Before You Buy” promotion, go to http://www.dealerimpact.com. This offer expires on October 31, 2009.

Hybrid Marketing?

With $4.00 gas putting a slow down on the automotive business, and the economy in general, auto manufacturers are clamoring to develop and build hybrids and other energy efficient vehicles.

Amid all this, you’re still trying to run a dealership. Chances are, you’ve had to make cutbacks across the board. And even if you’ve had to cutback marketing, that doesn’t mean you want to cutback the number of customers walking through the door.

So that raises the question: What are the most energy- and cost-efficient marketing strategies you can employ? Mass marketing is certainly out. You’ll have to go direct… very targeted. And get creative… chase after a new audience or trying a medium no one else is using. What would you do if you had to reach the same number of customers on one-fifth the budget? What can you do that costs nothing at all? The dealerships that use a downturn to get stronger and wrestle away market share are the ones that will dominate the next age of automotive retailing.

What are you doing to make the most of your marketing dollars?

D. Jones
Marketing Strategist/Creative Consultant
SmackDabble, LLC