This will allow you to enter prices on these fields when you book/price the inventory and decide different strategies for the CL postings.

Notes about multiple prices in advertising:

In WA you must sell a vehicle for the lowest advertised price, so this tool wasn’t made with the intention of running a multi pricing advertising and get the dealer in trouble.

There are several things that can be done and for what this tool was set up.

First of all, the tool will allow you to run a slightly different price, for example just a $1 difference, in different areas and therefore give you a crude but valid tracking ability. By the same token, those of you that use multiple people to post, or use us plus one of your sales guys, etc, can do the same. Run different prices, one team prices ending on a $10,993 and another’s on $10,992 for example. I don’t think a $1 difference in price will get anyone in trouble.

My goal for this was to give dealers the ability to run smarter campaigns and be able to post in the best possible areas.

Secondly but not less important, this will allow dealers to also post some cars without a price and not having to delete the price every time they post the car (with the certain consequence sooner or later to have a miss-price).

Running a car with a price and then with no price is not against the “lowest price advertised” policy as one of them has no price.

You can read below more about Craig’s List strategies and why running some cars with no prices.

While social media (SM) will not offer a direct sale of a vehicle to the dealer it is clearly becoming a part of how the community wants to know about you and your business. Customers will use SM to check your past actions and interaction with customers and decide whether you are a candidate to do business with them.

The product is relinquished to a second role and the merchant–the qualities of the merchant it is–becomes the main subject.

Interesting enough dealers have already been doing SM for years: You sponsor little leagues, joined the BBB, the chamber of commerce, help the fire department, etc and it all resulted in a wood board somewhere lost in a wall at the dealer. You also try to get your cars as ready as possible and to fix any little nuisances that may occur after a sale. You do that because it has always been one of the keys for business longevity.

SM is the name we use to putting together your social involvement, your customer care, and your actions in one package that defines who you are into your Internet profile.

There are multiple pieces in SM that you must consider.

Twitter: I don’t see Twitter more than a useful tool that can be for the most part automated to help the dealer with SEO. In less than one month we were able to push Hyundai of Everett into Goggles’ second page. Twitter may play a key role on SEO just like a blog, as tweets about your business compound over time the sheer amount of key words and back links may position it at the top of the searches. Start building a Twitter, however simple may be, as soon as possible.

Facebook:I think there is no doubt that FB will play a major role in the way communications and customers get information about products (it already does) but the key is going to be how to build it right so it becomes a positive experience rather than a problem for the business.

The communication must be short and informative in nature. Constant messages about a new car or a $2 discount on an oil change will lose appeal pretty quick. I strongly believe that 1 to 2 a week postings with either detailed information on a vehicle (the vehicle itself, extra info, link to a video, etc) or dealer updates suffices. A second option is to add news and articles about the make on top of the local ones (new vehicles, involvement like for example Ford’s Warriors in Pink) has no limit to what can be added. These are news that appeal to your make’s buyer and that have a bigger message that your business while keeping your customers connected to you.

Having the inventory on Facebook seems to be pretty important. It indexes in Goggle pretty well.

I do like about FB that it can be tied to a blog and the information moved between them making each posting twice as effective.

Blog: The least talked most important piece of social media.

Blogs have been around for a long time, but until now people didn’t spend this much time checking consumer generated data. A blog also ties into Facebook and Twitter, so what you write in your blog goes into the other 2 sites and viceversa.

What I like about the blog is that it compounds over time, it grows and grows, page after page, with key words and links, all related to your business. Everything gets logged and everything gets indexed. Furthermore the blog allows you to be creative with things beyond the regular car biz message, as an example we added the Warriors in Pink charity work to Sound Ford’s blog as well as a paypal link to one of the foundations that they work with.

Aggressive social media: The way many dealers took an approach to search engine marketing (SEM) has resulted in, no results. SEM was focused as something you do to get into other dealer’s market by using their key words and names so offensive and defensive strategies had to be applied. The result was a WWI trench war: You spend $2000 attacking my key words then I spend $2000 defending my key words.

Unless your competitor was sleeping in the clouds there is no clear way to get an advantage.

I see social media taking the same course, perhaps even deeper. I was asked by a dealer how is that we could do social media for them and at the same time for a dealer of the same make in the same area.

The answer is that social media is not about you against the other dealer, it is 100% about you. Is about your relationship with the community, is about how your past actions may reflect on how you will act towards me and the business that I may decide to do with you.

Social media will work or not work for a dealer regardless of what other dealer does but on how he focuses his energy on it. Because of this, reputation management is so associated with social media (and not just content management). You will have a hard time faking who you are, specially with so many people being able to write back, but you can manage it and make the best out of it.

That is how we see Social Media at PGI.

If you share our vision, please email us with any questions about Social Media here or check us out at www.pgisocial.com.

Please answer here or just go to PGI’s web site and the poll will be on the right corner.

Yago’s comment:

Robin Hood is coming up in May so I’m thinking to repeat last years movie event (which turned pretty good).

Most likelly we will do Kirkland or Alderwood as both places are pretty central (I know, we have to do one in the South afterwards).

You are also welcome to link/fan your dealer’s facebook page to ours.

How to attend? email Bayani and he will email you a link to the meeting and an access code.

Why if I can’t attend? We still have Danielle, Dan, Yago, Dennis in the field and Bayani or Jim over the phone. The PC meetings are designed for dealers to ask questions and resolve practical problems in a group.

We will hold this mettings in a weekely basis so if you miss one you can attend the next one.