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Keep battling on and try not to beat yourself up to much......everyone I speak to.....dealers, finance reps, warranty rep etc are saying its dead. I have 2 large car supermarkets near me and one did 1 at the weekend and the other 3 - the salesman even started prospecting!! We're quite too and it gives me time to tidy up the showroom a bit, changed some tattyish looking spec card holders, re-cleaned a few. re-photo'd them, and changed the adverts a little and we did a couple at the weekend and one yesterday. We are a small 20-25 car indoor unit but try and really push the benefits of buying from us - cherry pick the best stock, every car serviced and MOT'd, 6 month warranty with car, warranty inspected, personally test driven by us to check everything works no squeaks or rattles etc, if you have a issue you come and speak to us and not get passed around departments and managers like in a dealer/supermarket etc etc

Max we enjoy great success with Facebook advertising, most of which is done with boosted posts, one of the main things is the eye catching pictures that you MUST use, take alook at what we do on our Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/jimreidvehicles , you also have to be available to reply quickly and put up with some really stupid questions but if you persist then it will pay off Quite happy to share what we have learned Jim

I've been using facebook seriously for around 6 months and get mixed results but on the whole sell 3 or 4 cars on month from it. The customers in the whole seem to be under 35 years of age but the likes and shares do help spread your brand, and finance seems to be a big seller on facebook for me. From my website stats I can see a spike every time I boost one of my facebook posts so facebookers aren't just viewing the add and disappearing. You do get a lot of bizarre questions and hopeful daydreamers hoping to swap some old banger with big wheels and a spoiler for a nice bit of prime stock but a polite decline and a few minutes throwing messages back and forth and no harm is done. One mistake I did make was just advertising car after car and you'd get a few likes from a boosted post but the new likes seemed to then disappear, so I started mixing it up with a bit of motoring news, sports news, iPhone hints and tips, funny videos (although be careful because what I may laugh at is somebody else's worst insult - my women driver video didn't go down too well with certain females, even though it was really taking the p155 out of lane hogging male drivers) etc and be prepared to spend a bit of time with it. I think its slowly slowly with facebook because its rare you'll post a car at the exact time somebody is looking for one but its all about awareness and building a brand an a audience as already has been said.

I've only just been starting to get into FB but I've no doubt that it works and is providing decent leads. I'm averaging a car a month off it which doesn't sound a lot but in some cases, it's a car a month that I would not have sold had I not been on it. For example, I had a decent spec 7 seater in last week, put it on my usual platforms (not AT) and also did a FB boost as per usual at £20. Now I'm on the North Wales coast and I've been targeting either side of me. On this one though I played about with the target audience (and this is something I need to speak to Jim about) and went further south to include the town of Wrexham (home to to the greatest football team the world has ever seen) and hey presto. Next day, a woman walks in to see said car, it's exactly what she has been looking for some time. On the test drive she remarked how she's been looking for this type of car for a while and how she saw it on her FB feed. Whether or not she would have seen the car on other platforms is debatable but to be honest it's san fairy ann. £3 pounds worth of FB advertising and boom, nuff said. Now tales like this are clearly not the norm, but it's an example of just what can happen for very little money, mixed in with some time and effort, and as always, a sprinkle of luck.

I have recently started some facebook advertising again after a break from it for around 1 year. I previously tried boosting posts that i had linked to my facebook page but really got no response so felt it was a waste of time and money. After hearing positive things on this forum from other dealers regarding facebook i was wondering if they could pass on some tips as to how they are making it work? Are you paying to boost posts? or are you promoting website / local business etc at cost? maybe you are manually posting adverts in local groups, i have tried this but seems very time consuming maybe i am missing something. What form of advertising on facebook seems to get the best results for you?

It is a bit of trial and error, but doing a bit of research and thinking about what ages groups have interest wise but it's very fulfilling when you get it spot on agree 100%

I wouldn't be asking this question but fixing my clients high end BMW!

May sound harsh but a BMW X5 40d must be £25k worth of car. Would anyone on here be happy if their £25k investment was leaking oil after a couple of months?? My advise would be get it sorted and send the customer away happy. I'm guessing maybe it's an 10 hour job, if you have a workshop it's a few days work if not I'm guess you will be paying a trade rate. No one likes a £600 bill on a car that is sold but if it gets to court expect a far larger bill then that. Keep the customer onside and he may chip in a bit. We all sell cars in the attempt to make money but we do have a legal obligation to our customers too, it's what sets us aside from the cowboys who give the trade a bad name.

Jack, why not get it fully prepped, looking the dogs b******s then get fresh 'arty' style pictures taken, use a filter like Instagram, and get it on the Social Media platforms. Facebook advert could cost you as little as £30 to get in in front of 20k local potential customers, have along think about how you will describe it but don't look desperate. Get some pictures on Instagram and Twitter too and start treating it like a new car into stock rather than something you feel is a like having a noose around your neck, a change of attitude towards a car works amazingly well, don't ignore the car, have it at the front of the pitch and talk positively about it. Failing that, mark it as sold for a week, sod's law dictates that you will get more people asking it if it has a sold label on it, it certainly works like that once you have genuinely sold it! All the best, you better get it sold soon, I'm fed up valuing it for you! Just kidding! Jim

To a lot of people a two seat diesel roadster was a bit of a crazy idea in the first place, but with fuel prices and road tax as the main determining factor (as well as company car tax) they still managed to find homes. Now fuel is a lot cheaper, petrol CO2 emissions and economy figures are improving, and we've had 'dieselgate' is the market experiencing a major shift away from this kind of vehicle? Will diesel 'sports cars' become as undesirable as a petrol powered Peugeot 407 or VW Passat was ten years ago?

We find ones with nav sell quickly but ones without still sell. It's got the 18" wheels and you really need the black edition 19's. RNS-E can be retrofitted. I would take all the crap out of the advert and take some new pictures. Our z4 sold today, I could do with another 2.