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Shawn Ryder

Shawn Ryder has over fifteen years in the automotive industry. Having worked with a training company in the early 2000s for a number of years, focusing on manufacturers and dealer groups. I then transitioned an automated digital marketing company for a couple of years focusing specifically on automotive dealerships. At that point decided best to work in a dealership for real experience, so I worked at a dealership selling vehicles for two years to understand the retail world. For the last three years has worked with dealers on digital marketing and growing traffic, leads and sales for the retail dealership.

Buying Rental Car

Buying a Used Rental Car

Automotive Industry

We’ve all had to, probably, at some point, rent a car. What’s nice about renting a car is that you can figure out the size you want, the price you want to pay, and the mileage. But very rarely do people think about purchasing a rented car for their own.

During the pandemic, though, that’s changed. More people are looking to have their own transportation, not share with others, and they’re looking to used cars to fit the bill. To do that, salespeople have had to expand the market for used cars and turn to the rental market.

What’s nice about rental cars for sale is that there are literally hundreds of types that might be out there. And in general, rental cars are well taken care of. That’s because rental car companies don’t have any interest in renting a car that’s dirty or banged up. What else do you need to know? This graphic explains it.

Automotive SEO

Automotive SEO Tips To Use For Your Dealership

Automotive Marketing, Local SEO, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Social Media

Automotive SEO Tips

Does your dealership website not have the traffic you expect? It’s possible that your website lacks search engine optimization, which refers to a collection of strategies to improve your dealership visibility on web searches for words related to your vehicle makes, models, and service.

The best automotive websites out there grow organically in popularity, in the sense that their recognition is grass-roots and not necessarily always purchased through pay per click like Google. You can find out how you can also work to grow your site organically by implementing some great search engine optimization tips (SEO).

Search Engine Results

You will need to make your automotive website pop up in the Google search results. Build a really solid website and use search engine optimization to have it discovered. If other local dealerships in your market haven’t done as well, you will stand out like a shining star from the crowd.

Treating your Automotive SEO efforts like homework is a great way to achieve in the highly competitive field of automotive digital marketing. This means you should be approaching the trafficking of your site like the completion of an educational term paper. You need to do your keyword research, build a synopsis, bullet the important points, and run down the dealership checklist to refine the process.

Try several different keywords when you are working to rank higher in all search engines. Search engines will “read” the metatags and help you appear in a wider variety of searches that are conducted.

Monitor Traffic Results

One sure way to increase traffic to your dealership website is to check the traffic statistics for the most popular search engine keywords that are currently bringing visitors to your dealership. Use those search words as subjects for your next few blog post content, as they represent trending topics with proven interest to your visitors.

Search engines track the average visit length to websites and use that information as part of the ranking algorithm. Abundant useful content is the key to keeping visitors on your website longer, which results in a higher page rank and more new and repeat visitors to your website.

Local Business Directories

Take advantage of free local business directories and related sites. Enter your dealership’s information into any or all of the free local business directories out there – locally is best but national ones will be helpful as well. This will make your website slightly easier to be stumbled upon during web searches by potential customers.

Google My Business

Google My Business - Automotive SEOClaim your Google My Business location to maximize search engine optimization! That is for websites that are designed to map out locations for dealerships with a local presence. Search engines will bring up sites local to a customer’s IP address when they are searching for a physical dealership location. By claiming your site on these pages you can control your brand and make customers more likely to visit your website and ultimately your physical dealership location.

Content is Key

Keep your website content fresh. While having lots of content is essential, it has to be current and up to date. The search engines track how frequently your site is updated and this has an effect on your rank in the freshness category. Any form of change on the site, whether it’s a new article or automotive blog post, will help to boost your rank.

Search engines like Google and Bing are constantly evolving in terms of how they find information on the web. Consequently, you will have to change your dealership site and pages to correspond with the changes that are occurring in search engine technology if you want to stay on the cutting edge of Search Engine Optimization for your dealership.

Patience is Important

When it comes to search engine optimization, you also need to be patient. Dealers are not going to see immediate jumps in traffic simply because they worked on optimizing their site yesterday. It can take several months to see a significant result from your search engine optimization process as it is being conducted. Especially if you are a new dealership, or have recently started updating the website.

You might work hard changing things around and not see an instant reward with those adjustments. Don’t get discouraged during the process. Just keep at it and you will eventually see the results of growing traffic to your website.

Check out the Competition

Grab any information your competitors give you and use it to your advantage as well. Sometimes, competing dealership websites will give you exact information about their targeted keywords objectives. There are some common ways to find this information out. One is to look in the META tag of the dealership’s homepage. Additionally, on some pages with articles and blogs, some or all of the keywords will be in bold. Spend some time reviewing competition sites and if they are doing well in their strategy monitor closely but if they aren’t doing a lot it should be easier to grow your own exposure in search results.

Linking to Lists

Linking to lists is very popular for dealership websites and can help your search engine optimization. You can find a lot of articles that are written as a top 10 list or top 100 list of tips or small facts. If possible, present well – written content with relevant content composed as lists with numbers, not bullets, such as “10 ways to buy a new SUV for your family.”

Keywords on the Website

Automotive SEO Keywords

Place your keywords in unexpected places on your web site. Obviously, you are using pictures, advertisements, graphics, or other forms of media where the coding is unseen, include your keywords in there somewhere – like in the alt tags for images. Doing this gives you an upper hand because you are not bombarding your readers with it, but it is still seen by search engines like Google.

You may also wish to include the keywords within the title of site pages. Your title is your websites first handshake with the various search engines, so make it very relevant and friendly. By having a more generic word in the title, searchers who aren’t aware of your company’s name will still visit your website to find the vehicles or services they are looking for.

Inbound Link Strategy

Set up a strategy for getting inbound links to your website from relevant, highly-ranked websites. Of course, everyone’s goal is to find a way for Wikipedia, the most highly ranked site of all, to send us its link juice. Your goal should be to find other websites who’s topic matches your dealership to provide you with their Page Rank boosting links.

Build a great series of appropriate backlinks on your automotive site. Have your keyword phrases be in the all titles of those links for sure. Make sure that these links are related to your own content, otherwise, they could possibly work against you. Using backlinks is a great way to bring in traffic from various areas and other web sites to visit your site.

Building a steady volume of backlinks is critical to all internet marketers, but it is important to know that all backlinks to your site are not equal. Google assigns page rank scores to all websites as part of its ranking process algorithm. Your goal should be to attract backlinks from websites that have a page rank that is at least equal to your own, but preferably higher obviously. Higher page rank signifies higher status in the eyes of the search engine results and the fact they are linking back to you, can raise your own status in search rankings. Which leads to more traffic and in turn more leads – with sales generated.

Make it a Daily Routine

A great way to improve search engine optimization is to work on it as part of your daily routine, in the same way, you would check your emails. This is because SEO techniques are not static, as search engines evolve continually and rapidly, and what worked yesterday might not work today or tomorrow moving forward.

Focus on Images Too

When looking to ramp up the dealership profile, don’t forget that image names count in search results – quite heavily, in fact. Be sure to give the names of the images that searchers will easily find. If you’re writing about a particular vehicle model, be sure to include keywords for that product in the image name itself, so that the image will pop up in a Google image search result.

Blogging and Content

Add a blog to your website in order to maintain the freshness of your dealership content and to target specific long-tail keywords, both of which will increase your page rank within Google. You can also place links to and from blog posts on other areas of your site to refresh the content on pages that are not typically updated – like the manufacturer content that is provided automatically.

Writing unique content is an overlooked SEO strategy. The Internet is filled with free information on many websites. The best way for your content to get attention is by using information that is either very specific on a vehicle for example or not widely published. This will give your site a competitive edge over those using stale and widely published information that is on every other dealership site.

Knowing which search engines and keywords are used by a target audience is very important when utilizing search engine optimization.

Highlight Industry News

To get an immediate increase in traffic pay attention to the industry and manufacturer news. If you cover a soon to be searched topic (or new vehicle model) before other sites do, most search engine algorithms will place your link at the top. To get the latest scoops you can follow people relevant to the industry on Twitter and set up notifications from Google to get emails when something relevant shows up about the new model being launched.

Social Media

Get involved in social media heavily. Posting links to your website content on some of these sites can get you multiple responses that can add to your audience base. It’s a great way to draw in new leads and customers!

Monitor Ranking

You should always monitor the ranking of your page using programs such as the Google Console and Analytics. You should also always know what location the people visiting your website are from. Check this information on a consistent basis so that you can alter your targeting strategies if required at all. Once a month is suggested for a dealership – let experts regularly oversee, monitor but don’t obsess over it every day.

Improve Dealership Traffic

Search Engine Optimization is not a big mystery, and there is nothing unethical about conducting it. Every dealership owner who wants to increase his or her website’s traffic (i.e., every automotive dealer owner) should be willing to take steps to improve search engine rankings.

Using the tips we went over here will help increase the popularity of your website over time.

If you want to increase the traffic to your dealership website by making it more visible on search engines, remember these tips and you will have more visitors, leads, and ultimately sales!

Automotive Social Media

The importance of weekend posting

Automotive Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

Here we are on a Sunday in January and even though it’s cold and dreary it’s still key to make sure that you’re posting content on the weekend.

Obviously from Monday to Friday dealers focus on ensuring that there’s content built and shared on all social media platforms. However, we need to keep in mind that there is still social media on the weekend and it is key to ensure a consistent message.

At the dealership level on a Saturday there are one focus sales. This is obviously the main objective for the dealership on a regular basis however Saturday is always focused on moving the metal but when you look outside the dealership most people have the weekend off and are either buying a car or going to get groceries or spending time at home. With that, they obviously have more downtime and their social scrolling. So it’s a great time to ensure that your message image offers etc is in front of them at all times.

So even if you can’t be in front of the computer to do a post it is a great idea to have something scheduled that can go out and ensure that a picture or even something as simple as a weekend offer is shared with the world each and every day of the week.

If you need help with ideas, content, and the scheduling of these posts feel free to reach out anytime I’m here to help and work with dealers every day of every week.

Local Dealership SEO

Importance of focus on Local SEO

Automotive Marketing, Automotive Industry, Search Engine Optimization, SEO

What is Local SEO Important?

When it comes to the automotive industry and Local SEO it is imperative that you know the basics and makes sure that you’re following them on a consistent basis.

SEO is always key driving business and opportunities to your website on a consistent basis however when it comes to the local market obviously that’s where the dealership needs to focus.

For example, if you’re a dealer in a market and you have a competitive similar manufacturer close to you then you need to ensure that you are doing a better job on Google my business than that competition.

While focusing on backlinks, keywords long-tail keywords, and more are important obviously from your perspective you want to do better than a competition down the road.

Google My Business

That is why when it comes to your website Google my business social media and other platforms you need to ensure that you mention your local area on a regular basis. So if you are going to sponsor an athlete in the area make sure that you have that content on your website and anything relevant obviously going on social media.

People will search based on the area that they’re in when looking for a new vehicle obviously. There are circumstances where they will travel but that is the minority rather than the majority of people that are in the market for vehicles.

So moving forward you need to look at ways to improve your Google my business account with strong reviews a number of photographs of the dealership’s regular posting on Google and building content on your website that reflects your local market.

Bringing traffic in from multiple locations is great but obviously, when looking at the data you want most traffic to come from your local market so focus on growing keywords that relate with the market you’re located.

Because people will search on the phrase is like dealers near me or dealers near a city close to me and so on so you want to make sure that content relates to those areas.

Another great thing obviously is making sure that you’re in directories that have your address and dealership name matching the website and all of the locations that can be found.

there are ways that I work with dealers to ensure this is done through content, social media, adding the address to a number of directories, and so much more.

Automotive Email Marketing

Making email a staple in your automotive marketing

Automotive Industry, Automotive Marketing, Email Marketing

2021 Automotive Email Marketing

As we enter 2021 all dealers are now looking for ways to ensure that they are consistently sending their message out to all their leads and current customers.

One thing that’s often overlooked with the new days of social and SEO and PPC and Google my business is the fact that email marketing still works.

Multiple Email Department Sends

I working with a dealer now and we set the objective of four email campaigns on a monthly basis. These would include new car sales, used car sales, service department, and even a detail deparment email blast.

Since we know that each season brings oil changes, tire rotations, spring specials, and regular routine maintenance we can almost schedule 50% of the email send months in advance.

This allows us to say in March that we want to do a tire savings event and schedule the promotion the marketing and the message now. Should things change between now and then then we can certainly adjust however as history shows late March and early April is when people start to look at getting new tires for their vehicle conducting maintenance to get it ready and obviously look at trading in their current vehicle for something new.

Not Fancy But Consistent

While doing email blasts isn’t fancy or edgy or the newest hot commodity it is a great staple in every dealership’s business. Having done one recently for a dealer and achieving a open rate of over 23% and a click-through rate that showed how many people went to the website the results were pretty good.

When you factor in that you can do a lot of tracking when it comes to emails the benefits versus the cost are pretty obvious. For example if you wanted to send an email to a service customers and let them know about the newest synthetic oil and have something on the website that you can send them to it allows for tracking and who went when and how they interacted with the website.

Conclusion

So as we talked about previously consistency is the key it’s a great time to sit down come up with some ideas for all departments at this time and get ready to schedule your blasts for some of the year and plan to see each for future business.

The importance of consistency

The Importance of Consistency

Social Media, Automotive Industry, Automotive Marketing 1

How important is consistency?

When it comes to making sure that you are sharing information with your followers your friends and others that may have interest in your dealership the key to the entire process is simple it’s consistency.

When I decided to make the venture into doing social media for automotive dealers the reason was that I was following many and realized that while sometimes they would do some posts it was pretty sporadic.

A lot of dealers have a tendency to go on bursts of time when they would post content regularly. For example, if there was the event of a certain sale happening they’d want to promote that obviously. But once the sale was over they wouldn’t post again for a long time.

Dealership Delivery Pictures

Some dealers have a great process for posting delivery pictures. I think this is great however it kind of loses effectiveness after a while if that’s all it’s being posted. Some dealers said I talked to have mixed emotions on the posting of deliveries. They feel that it can be great to show somebody that’s getting it their new vehicle and obviously if it can be shared by that customer it brings a heck of a lot of value. There are others that feel that it kind of dilutes the importance of the sale because of it kind of shows that they are only in it for the ultimate goal of selling a vehicle.

Social Media Consistency

Social Media

However, the entire key to post on social media is consistency. This means ensuring you have a variety of content to share which can include many things. There are great sources of material from the manufacturer which can include visuals that you can personalize and obviously the monthly incentive should be there as well. Do the delivery pictures as much as possible as well as any unique things that may occur at the dealership.

Pay Attention to Audience

It depends on the audience, some of the biggest and most engaging posts that I’ve done have been things that have been a little bit off the board. For example, with one manufacturer we did a post that referenced the fact that people name their cars. so we gave a couple of example names and asked people what they name their car. The results of the feedback were phenomenal people had lots of fun with it and even included pictures of their vehicle and commented on other vehicle names and had a lot of fun. However again the key is making sure that the audience fits the message. This type of post of naming a vehicle I wouldn’t do on all makes and all models of the manufacturer.

Dealership Team Members Involvement

Another way to help with consistency is to simply get involvement from the dealership team. Now, this can sometimes be a challenge in that people may not want information on social media. But sometimes there are individuals that are happy to shine a spotlight on themselves and are open to the idea of doing a biography of themselves and how it benefits the dealership. I’ve actually had a dealer ask me how we can get the team at the dealership to actually follow their social media so their own members weren’t engaged with the content of the dealership they work at. We decided to highlight the actual individuals at the dealership and share some of their history in the business and highlight their achievements. This led to not only team members following the page and their social media but actually sharing it with their own friends and family as a way to promote both themselves and ultimately the dealership.

These are just a few ideas of ways that can help with some consistency on a regular basis for posting. I’m sure there are many other ways that can help ensure that there are a consistent message and brand building happening for your dealership.

Conclusion

There are ways to ensure that there are consistency and creativity occurring for the messages you are putting out you can have somebody at the dealership that oversees the process or you can hire an outside agency to help. But the key is that there is a daily objective of at least a post and planning ahead as much as possible for any future events, holidays, or special activities.

Email Marketing

Discover Some Useful Email Marketing Techniques And Ideas

Automotive Marketing, Email Marketing

Do you want to engage in an effective email marketing campaign, but don’t know where to start? When it comes to email marketing, there are many things you have available to you that can help build your business as well as your communication with customers. Read on to find tips and tricks to help you build a creative email marketing campaign.

Never send out emails that are unsolicited. If you are emailing people who don’t wish to be on your mailing list, they will most likely delete your emails. This will ruin your reputation, cause many ISPs to block your emails, and you might even end up on an Internet spam blacklist.

Don’t over use words like “Buy now!” ” marketing approach. It is considered spammy and could cost you your good image. Build a strong relationship with your customers to ensure they respect you and what you sell. Your customers will be thankful for this, and there’s a good chance they’ll make a purchase.

In order to make customers excited about your emails, try giving special discounts or promotions through newsletters. When you send these kinds of newsletters, not only will your readers enjoy participating, they might refer their friends. As a matter of fact, referral programs are great ways to grow your email base at the same time you are growing your customer base.

Try using different techniques when you are email marketing. You will find a lot of helpful books or websites. Classes and workshops may be available locally as well, and it would be beneficial for you to attend some of these.

Practice consistency. Always make use of the same company color and logo in your email. The font that you select should be easy to read. People will begin to recognize the emails that you send and look for them. Familiarity is vital to the success of any business, and that also greatly applies to email marketing.

Avoid using a lot of graphics in your e-mails. Quite a few email reading programs available block graphics, making it possible that many of your intended readers can’t read the email properly. Also, your emails may end up in the spam folder if they contain too many graphics.

Find out what it is like to receive spam, so that you do learn what mistakes you should not make in your own campaigns. Get a free email address, post your new email address in various places on the Internet, and it won’t be long before your inbox is jammed with spam. Make note of why these messages aren’t effective and use that knowledge to make sure you’re not spamming people in the same manner. Ensuring your emails look nothing like spam will boost their effectiveness.

Remember that more and more people are now using a smartphone or another type of mobile device to view emails. These devices have lower resolutions compared to computer monitors, giving you less space to use. Learn the constraints associated with small displays, and see to it that your emails can be read on phone-sized screens.

Email marketing will fail unless you give your customers an incentive to read it. Subscribers will be more likely to execute a particular action if they feel as though there is something in it for them. For example, clicking on a link and making a purchase could award them free shopping.

Try using some sort of call to action within your emails. You have to tell your customers exactly what you want them to do. If you have links, make them obvious and include the instructions on how they should be used. These sections can be repeated by just including them within the very top and bottom portions of your emails.

Perhaps an obvious, but nevertheless critical, email marketing tip is to verify the accuracy of all email addresses. There’s no point in spending a lot of time sending new messages to addresses on your list after they bounce. It just wastes time!

Try and make all of your messages sound personal when you send out mass amounts of emails marketing. Customers are more positive to these kinds of messages than impersonal or bland ones. You could have the CEO or president of your company sign their name at the bottom of the email to help your message make a better impression on your audience.

It is important to only target people who have agreed to be contacted with your email marketing campaign. Padding your list with subscribers who have not directly opted into receiving your email marketing can build ill will towards you by both the email owner and your potential clients. Some email providers view these actions as spam and may terminate your service.

When you are in the developmental stages of your email marketing strategy, it is important to remember you’re working on building your reputation. Put in the effort necessary to ensure that you target the customer base you want to reach. It’s important to keep in mind that the reputation of your business is at stake. Make business choices while remembering that.

Conduct thorough testing to see how your email marketing messages look across various platforms. When you are happy with the design on your computer, use email clients, all applicable browsers and operating systems to test it out. A message in Hotmail may look entirely different from a message opened in Gmail.

Your email marketing messages need to grab readers’ attention. This may take you some time and some experimentation. Do not hesitate to get rid of a strategy or practice if its results do not satisfy you. Even if your plan is working, continue searching for new strategies online and from other sources.

Many business owners want to use email marketing, but more than a few are not sure how to go about it. Utilizing marketing strategies available through the Internet, particularly email marketing, can help grow the success of a business. The article you have just read can help you create an email marketing campaign that works for your business.

Social Media Marketing

Get Your Dealership Buzzing Using Social Media Marketing

Automotive Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

It is crucial for dealerships to find an online audience. That can be done in a number of ways, including article marketing, SEO, and other marketing methods. Social media marketing is so popular that most new dealerships, and even a lot of existing ones, are quickly going online to use these strategies. With common sense and the following advice, social media marketing can help your company grow and thrive.

You need to have a current and relevant blog. If you’re having a promotion or a sale, make sure to post it to your blog. Also post updates containing information about vital news, such as changes in your operating hours, closings, and new locations opening up. – don’t forget to add them to your blog.

Be careful if you are considering using a marketing company for social media. There are a large number of firms that simply seek to defraud and prey on dealership owners who do not have experience with internet marketing. The companies utilize thousands of fake Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube accounts, which they create using proxy servers and automated registration bots. Your advertisement is then is rarely seen by a real person despite the view count and a large amount of money you have paid the social media marketing company.

Be sure to link all of your social media sites to one another for the best results. Readers should be able to “Like” you on FB, find your YouTube videos or follow your Twitter feed. Your Twitter profile should contain your Facebook and blog URL. When you create links between all your different social media profiles, you increase traffic.

Have a plan in place before you start a social media campaign. You need to decide on who will keep up the pages, what kind of layout is best and the amount of time that needs to be invested. As with any other campaign, you should set a timeline. Stay dedicated and continue to refine your plan.

Make your site more social media-friendly with comments, ratings and favorite lists. Giving people an option to rate things on their own will help you gain credibility.

Always give your site visitors a way to subscribe to you so they may follow you on sites like Twitter and Facebook. Many individuals use Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin on a regular basis, meaning that you can use these sites as a valuable way of promoting your dealership. Just provide easy access to your daily posts and your consumers will easily be able to stay up to date on your products and dealership.

If you need help doing social media marketing, don’t be embarrassed or afraid to ask. This market is large and many designers and consultants can create a website and social media strategy that works for you. You might have to throw down a little bit of money, but this is an investment that will pay off in the long run.

For social media profiles, it is a good idea to have both a button for the RSS feed of updates and prominent buttons to click to link to your dealership website. Make sure this appears on your website, blog, emails and signature when you leave comments. You might also link every social profile to each other and ask people to join you on multiple sites.

Facebook makes it fairly simple for followers of you to share what you post. Comments will appear on that person’s news feed so all of their friends see it. Encourage people to participate and engage with each other.

Use tools related to Twitter such as Tweepi or Twellow. When you use these tools, you can hone in on a target audience. Twitter, like Facebook, takes care of its advertisers, so you can find a lot of help by simply using the tools the site provides. You should come up with lists of consumers to target, in hopes that someday they will sign up to receive your updates.

Your blog posts can be viewable from your LinkedIn page when you use its blog feed application. You can post an article, and it will appear as LinkedIn updated. This will help you save time and you should get more exposure by reaching out both to a blogging community and to your LinkedIn friends at the same time.

Your profiles can draw customers to your online store. Tell your customers about your current promotions, or new locations. Let them be able to print coupons. Let them also have access that they can get that are reserved only to Facebook friends. Make it worth their while to add you as a Facebook friend.

Post links to your company blog on all your social media accounts every time you make a new post. This will link to your followers in the social media that there is new and interesting content available for them to read about.

Consider the benefits of giveaway promotions through social media. There’s nothing like free products to get people coming to your dealership’s social media pages in droves. Simply decide on the freebie, then go to some of the popular freebie social media profiles and post a link to where customers can get the freebie.

Find experts in your niche, interview them and post those videos on YouTube in order to impress your customers with your social media marketing efforts. These videos will pull in interested viewers, and they will begin to associate your name with the experts you interview. This authenticity only helps you sell your products and services within your niche.

If you use Facebook as a marketing tool for your dealership, make sure that the things you share are relevant and interesting. Your followers will be content with just a few quality posts a day, so don’t overdo it. Pass on items that you think are interesting, exciting, or engaging for your customers. Choose information that is relevant and interesting. Avoid meaningless quizzes and surveys about irrelevant topics that mean nothing to customers.

It might be a little time consuming to start, but when you have started, it is not a lot of work. dealershipes all over the globe have learned how social media can impact their online presence. Are you ready to do the same? It just takes some commitment and some help from experienced people.

Social Media Marketing

Check Out These Social Media Marketing Ideas

Automotive Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

Contrary to popular belief, social media has existed for a decent length of time. Not only are they great to communicate with friends and family, but they are also powerful marketing tools. The opportunity to spread your company message on the Internet will always be growing and improving; however, you should still adhere to some basic ideals.

Let your existing customers know about your social media sites. Your customers can then join your pages; this allows them to expose their friends to it. This form of advertising is free and accessible to a broad range of people. In addition, it will more than likely be taken more seriously than a paid ad would be, since it will be viewed as an endorsement of your product or service.

Make sure to update all of your social networking sites regularly. Your customers may expect regular updates. If you don’t provide these, you may find yourself losing customers. Dedicate a few days out of the week for updates.

To really increase your follower base on social media sites, you need to go beyond just selling products. Link to external stories, articles, and other content that is related to your particular niche or industry. You can run contests, post pictures and ask questions. Find ways to get your followers engaged and involved. Instead of focusing on product placement, focus on product engagement. People should be able to identify with your brand and consider it as a part of their daily lives.

You need to add links to all social media sites you have profiles on to every webpage, social media site, and email communication that you make. At a minimum, these buttons should appear on your company site, your blog, and email and forum signatures. Also, link between profiles for maximum exposure.

Sprinkle your tweets with the names of people you know to be influential in the field. Make sure you write their usernames behind the @ symbol. This will bring your post to their attention. If you make an interesting point, they may well respond to you or re-tweet your post.

Create vibrant titles for your YouTube or network videos. The title must be inclusive of relevant keywords for your particular niche. You’ll have more views if your audience thinks your videos are useful and if those videos come up with relevant keywords.

Have your blog posts show directly on your LinkedIn page thanks to the blog feed application. Simply put up your article and it will show up as LinkedIn-updated. That way, you can make the most of your time and generate maximum exposure because you will have communicated to your blog audience as well as your LinkedIn contacts simultaneously.

Understand that people like hearing what you have to say about them when you are promoting yourself on the web. A suggestion from one customer will likely reflect the feelings of many other customers. You should always show that you are interested in their opinions.

Social media marketing success takes time so be patient. It can take considerable time to gain a network of loyal followers. That is when the real positives of social network marketing come through. This can take up to a year or more. Once you have this following, you will be able to develop more creative strategies to market to these customers.

Keeping things simple may be the best way to convey information through social media. Messages should be short enough to ensure that boredom is not possible; you want to make sure that visitors want to share your information with others. You can also careful image placement to keep text to a minimum.

Take a look at your Twitter feed and figure out which posting times produce the most responses and re-tweets. Once you identify any patterns, adjust the time you send your tweets. If your message service is automated, you can have your account sent tweets when your followers are usually logged onto their twitter accounts.

Subscribe to the feeds of your followers. You don’t want your customers or friends have the feeling that you are more elitist than them. Forging two-way social media links tells customers and potential customers that the company they’re paying attention to appreciates that attention. To follow someone back on Twitter should be pretty simple and only requires a few seconds. This gives something back to the customer.

Comment on other social media bloggers’ posts frequently. Social media marketing, after all, is about being social and talking to others. You can easily do this by talking to others that blog in your niche. Doing this will quickly increase the number of social connections you make.

You should always talk up your friends using social media blogs and profiles. This is strange, but people like seeing social credentials prior to interacting with you. Blog about your friends on Facebook, or your number of Twitter followers. Link to your other social media profiles, also.

Try focusing your campaign on popular social outlets. Try to focus on popular websites like Google Plus, Twitter and Facebook. You can tailor your campaigns to your customer base if you focus on the resources they use most. This will help you attract customers and get more sales.

It is vital that you put up a good headline when you post. You want to have a catchy headline so that your reader gets interested. Creating a great headline will keep them on the page longer, increasing the chances for a sale. Make sure you think about what the headline will be.

If you want people to respond to your marketing, you must attempt humor when appropriate and possible. Whenever someone finds something funny, they are much more likely to share their find with friends. This is an easy way to gain word-of-mouth.

Carve out your own place in the social media world. You might have a lot of people competiting with you, but if you stay on top of new content you will get the traffic. If you use this article’s tips, you’re sure to be successful. Social media campaigns can be a great asset and a wonderful opportunity to increase revenue.

Email Marketing

Email Marketing Doesn’t Have To Be Tricky

Automotive Marketing, Digital Marketing, Email Marketing

hose that are new to email marketing may be unfamiliar with the etiquette involved. Professional email marketing is important if you wish to retain customer satisfaction. Read on to learn some strategies for email marketing.

Test the different formats of emails. Keeping your most vital information near the top is important in any layout you try. Yet be sure that you always try out different formats so that you know which ones you get the most responses from. When you find your formula for success, stick with it. This will allow your subscribers to become more familiar with the kind of content in your emails, and also how to obtain more information when they need to.

The importance of branding your dealership extends all the way down to your email marketing efforts. For this reason, it is important to create a template that incorporates your logo, and consistent formatting throughout all your marketing materials. This will make you instantly recognizable to your readers.

Always include an unsubscribe link in your emails. Put your link to unsubscribe in a place that is easily visible and be sure it is a part of every email. It is important that users feel like they are not committed to your emails.

Encourage your customers to buy from you by offering rewards in your emails. They are far more likely to conduct dealership with you when you offer them a very appealing reason to do so. For example, you could provide customers who click through to your site with a code to receive free shipping on certain orders.

Try to secure at least the first name of individuals during the process. This is good so that when you send out emails you can address it to them, which gives things a more personal touch. This will cause your emails to appear personal, and therefore not like spam, which will appeal to the reader.

Only send customers emails that contain information they can use. Do not bore or overwhelm them with strong sales tactics. You can include solutions to problems that commonly come up, new ways to use your products, or special deals in each email you send out.

Be sure that you provide people with a way to opt out of your email marketing newsletters. Email messages do take time to delete if people don’t want them and they may not appreciate having to do that. Being considered a spammer is very bad for business, and you can be blacklisted from certain websites.

Remember, as you develop email marketing campaigns, you are working towards building a solid reputation. Don’t cut any corners, target the wrong customers or use any misleading tactics. The reputation of your dealership rests on every contact with your customers, even by email.

On the subscription form for your mailing list, inform potential customers of what kinds of messages you plan to send. Provide them with information about exactly what their emails will contain, and how often you will send them. That way, your subscribers will be well aware of the content they will receive, and the frequency.

Create a sales list that is extremely targeted to groups of people. The best way to do this is to get your best clientele to help add their friends and contacts to your company’s mailing list. If your list is exclusive, it will seem more professional and command more respect.

Send a nice note on your subscribers’ birthdays. Include a field for customers to opt in so they can receive a birthday wish. Consider including a discount or coupon with birthday greetings to help your customers feel valued and special.

If your company already has a certain brand associated with it, be sure the emails utilize that branding. Use the identical color scheme already in play, and include your company logo with each and every message you send out. If your prior business and marketing efforts have built you a trustworthy reputation, feel free to make use of it by tying your new email to your recognizable brand.

Use Alt tags if your emails contain images. The text in these tags will replace the images that fail to load, or are prevented from loading by the email client. Make sure that the tags contain information relevant to the image so the customer knows what the image is of. Apply these to your links, as well.

Take advantage of holiday spending to develop promotions during these peak retail times. Plan for these opportunities well in advance. Develop email campaigns that center around important holidays like Easter and Christmas. You can also add extra marketing campaigns during slow periods of the year to boost sales.

Always ask explicit permission before you send email to anyone. If you’re like most people, you get penny stock and mortgage emails daily, and block them with a spam filter. Sending email without permission can be detrimental to your dealership. Start off with a good relationship by only sending out email that your customers have requested.

Ask for permission before you email potential customers. If you email uninterested individuals, you may receive spam complaints. Also, a lot of people will not want to get your emails and it may even prevent them from getting them. You might even be penalized by your providers if you are labelled as a spammer.

Know what your competition is doing with their own email marketing campaigns. Obtain an email address specifically for this purpose, and sign up for their lists, using it. You can keep your campaign a step ahead of theirs by knowing what their strategies and promotions look like. Try to see what is missing in their campaigns and develop it in your own. Offer promotions based off of what they are doing.

Using good email protocol with your marketing techniques will help you make more sales. If you don’t treat your customers well, they will quickly opt out of receiving emails from your dealership. If you want happy, satisfied customers who look forward to receiving emails from you, take note of the advice provided here.

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