Velicular

The radio show was interesting and may be it is about time that dealers did have a community or body that worked for their benefit. Car dealers have had 2 hills to climb for a long time. First is the publics image of car dealers perpetrated via television series and films. The second one being that car dealers earn thousands from deals they do. This second hill is where so many businesses have jumped on the bandwagon and charge dealers a small fortune for their services no matter how good or poor this might be. AT is just one of the businesses who has tried to evolve with changes in the market place. Could it be that some of the businesses operating could make it easier for dealers to operate by just pushing out the boat a little and giving that bit more. Why is it that most of the big places to advertise make it so hard for dealers to upload stock etc. Are they trying to show that they earn their money because of complexity involved to do a simple task. If you stop for a moment and think that you can upload any video comment or photograph to Facebook within seconds to your account, but at this present time as a dealer you have to use a 3rd party application to upload your information to AT, RAC, etc. Wouldn't it be easier for them to just allow you access to your account and then you can change information as and when you please rather than having to wait 30 minutes for changes to take affect. The only benefit I see to why these companies do listings via feeds the way they do is to keep down bandwidth usage and reduce over all costs. I could be totally out in left field with that statement also. It would be good for some of the mainstream publications that dealers use to comment as to why they do it the way they do. Is there any way they can make it easier for the dealer?

I have to say as an auctioneer it is not easy just the slam the hammer down. You have a duty to realise the best price for an item for the seller. Also if you do not charge buyers commission which I strongly disagree with you are earning all your money form the seller. Thus you want to achieve the best price so you get more pay. I know most auctions now have fixed fees for entrance and sale which is wrong in a lot of ways. The car auction game in the US is a scam in some ways. That is why I started working on a solution for car dealers. I am back in the UK now and am trying to finish off my idea. Just like to say as an auctioneer it is bad when you look at a car of what ever you are selling and think I can get x number of pounds for that and you open the bid and not a soul bids. Then you have to work backwards until some one bites. That is nearly as bad as waiting for the hammer to fall.

I do think over all the comments on this thread have been quite lamb over all.

Do any of you feel that it is wrong that AT will not allow you to upload stock directly from your own private website (Independently hosted) to your AT account? In the USA you can install an API to upload stock form your own website to your AT account. Seems here in the UK they want to force dealers to use their website offering.

No I think the biggest problem is people cant believe they have had the wool pulled over their eyes for so long!

Lots of great info for any one who was paying attention. Engaging and presented well. Looking forward to your next airing.

I think ewe are expecting too much.

Sounds and looks great. Cant wait to see the first episode.

Strange it does not work. Works under profile but not on posts. I will report it to support. Thank you for noticing that.

If you are having such troubles may be it is possible it is something you are doing with your Facebook interaction and marketing that is not quite as it should be or the person you have doing your social media work does not know what they are doing. Facebook is a tool, nothing more nothing less and you have to know how to use the tool the correct way in order to benefit the most from it. Here is what really you should be doing with Facebook to maximise your results and not obtain the bad results you have been witnessing. Have a lead generation landing page that is used. If you offer something of value to people then they will sign up with you. When I say sign up I am wanting 2 things from visitors. Fist I want a like from them and 2nd I want their name and contact information. This way they give me social credibility and I build my sales funnel. If you use Ads. It is no use trying to advertise on Facebook if no one is clicking on your ads. If no one is clicking on your add then you can be sure your ad is not appealing to people or your are trying to target the wrong people. You have to be very careful with any form of CPC, CPM, CPA or CPL advertising. You need to make sure you are running split tests and logging every change you make until you create the perfect ad teat gives maximum ROI. Traffic. If you are not getting enough traffic than your time is a complete waste. You are either getting traffic through your advertising or as I prefer organic traffic. Organic traffic is far the best as you have already started to build a relationship with the visitor. The way to build traffic is through social interaction. This of it this way, Facebook and other social media platforms are similar to you going out with your friends. You are going out to enjoy yourself not be sold anything. If one of your mates was a insurance sales person and all night was trying to sell you a life policy you would get pretty sick and soon refuse to go out with them any more. So the same applies on social media don't do it! Interact and be human. Sales Funnel. Sit down and ask your self what you want to accomplish with your marketing. Most of us are too quick to say well I want to sell a few extra cars each month. Have you ever thought about building your brand awareness? That few extra cars a month could seem pail in comparison to what can happen if you spent some time building your brand awareness with the public using social media. Obviously there is a lot more detailed information in the middle of each of these points but you get the general point I am trying to make. Embrace social media it is not going away any time soon. If you don't embrace it and utilize it your competitor will.

No just a video! lmao

Can I have a copy too please?

A trend that is growing in the USA is to have huge warehouses full of cars and do nothing other than internet sales. I visited a company in Colorado that is now one of the largest dealers in the USA with a huge turn over. Sorry I cant name them. As they say we always follow the god old USA! This is one trend I hope we do not follow in. Reports show that internet marketing for businesses is growing exponentially. This is resulting in more sales for those that follow the rules of engagement. On the other hand internet sales for products are actually down. It would seem that people as a whole like instant gratification and they can not get this from buying a product from the internet and waiting for it to be delivered. People still like to touch, see and smell what they are purchasing. Internet marketing helps businesses push the customer in the right direction of the product they want to buy and who to buy it from. A business that learns how to brand their business to the public and not sell to them is one that will rise above the competition. As for walk in's or drive by's (Not the shooting kind) I would say they are still a huge factor in sales for any business. No one can stop them selves from looking at a product that is well displayed and sharp to look at. It is like driving down the road and trying not to notice the beautiful looking young lady or handsome man in some peoples cases walking down the road. We all see them we just do not want to admit it to anyone. (Well not or significant other anyway) Marketing on the internet is a tool for businesses as used to be the Yellow pages and Thompsons Local etc. It is just a little more advanced and has a million times the power over the predecessors as we can now interact with our customers before ever meeting them. A good adage to remember is first impressions count. Also how many of you on here reading this have ever thought about threads (Blogs etc) around the internet where people can place comments about your business for others to read. Do you interact with these pages? Is the information being publicised good or bad? As I started out saying the internet is a wonderful tool for marketing and it has a huge ability for customers whom we interact with to have their say. It used to be that it took a life time to build a businesses good reputation. If you had a customer who complained and told some or all of their friends about their grievance you lost a few customers. Today the same person can post all over the internet and destroy your business without you knowing about it at all. So remember not to only market on the net but to also police your business too.

Wow lots of info to digest on this thread. Might have been easier to ask which vehicles people liked to sell and why.

My Ex!

Well you could hang on to it for 20 years and every time you see a similar make and model run it off the road so as the amount of production units on the road decreases and the value of the ones remaining increases. This only works if you have not got a Delorean!

May be its a wolf in sheep's clothing!

Presentation is everything. As video comes more and more prevalent dealers who ignore this media will be left behind. Why not embrace video and give your customers what they want interaction. After all you can now make a video of a car in under ten minutes. As umesh already knows it can make you the sale before you have even met the customer.

Guys, you need to be registering your own domains and renting web space from companies like THC servers and Hostgators. You need a C class web hosting package or you will never compete on the web in search engines. If you have your site on the same server as everyone else like Autotrader puts them then you can not compete in the serps. You need your own IP address for Google, Bing etc to take you as an individual business and start to rank you.

Facebook is a great platform to interact with followers of friends as they like to call them. You need to think of some innovative ways to have friends share posts form your Facebook page. Its a numbers game in many ways. if you have ten friends who all share a post with their ten friends and they share it with their ten friends. You just reached 1000 new people who might just come back and friend you. Never post anything political or religious. This is the fastest way to lose customers. or Facebook likes.

e-mail marketing is not a hit and miss tool if used correctly. The money as they say is in the list. This applies to any business no matter how small or large. I have worked with one man bands and huge corps that employ thousands of people. If you build a list and market to it they will buy from you time and time again. What you have to do is give something for something. If you want to collect peoples e-mail addresses that visit your web site it is no good just asking for them to give it to you, they wont, you have to give them something that they perceive to be of value. I know this sounds a little bit out in left field but it works and your potential customers will see you as the right person to help them as you have already given them something of value for free. They are thousands of reasons you would contact potential customers and old customers to keep your name in front of them. Typically it takes around 7 e-mails to get a customer to part with their hard earned cash and give it to you. I hope this helps.