Automotive Social Media Reputation Management
Friday, October 10, 2014
Monday, October 6, 2014
Join Me at The Sales Management Super Conference in Atlanta
Time: November 11, 2014 at 8am to November 13, 2014 at 12:30pm
Location: Atlanta Buckhead Marriott Hotel and Conference Center
Organized By: James A. Ziegler
Automotive Event Description:
COMING TO ATLANTA IN NOVEMBER
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Jim and Debbie Ziegler are bringing it Home....
ARE YOU SATISFIED WITH YOUR SALES AND GROSSES?
Sales Management Super Conference II
In today's highly competitive market, Jim Ziegler asks automobile dealers and managers four simple questions...
"Are your grosses high enough?"
"Is your sales volume high enough?"
"Are you struggling to gain an edge on your competition?"
"If you're already doing a great job, can you do even better?"
Jim and Debbie Ziegler have become legendary in the automobile industry for producing high-quality educational events, conferences and seminars for dealers, managers and manufacturer executives. Hundreds of thousands of dealers, managers and manufacturer executives have attended Jim Ziegler workshops and seminars. Jim and Debbie have produced 15 Internet Battle Plan Conferences attended by thousands with results people in the industry are raving about.
Automotive Sales Management Super Conference II will be held in Atlanta, GA, November 11-13 at the beautiful Buckhead Marriott.
The name Jim Ziegler has become synonymous with high sustained dealership profits and super-performance.
This event is like nothing else you ever experienced; because very few are qualified to pull it off. Dealers and Managers attend this event and your numbers will soar.
Jim Ziegler, The Alpha Dawg himself, will be on stage with four sessions on Professional Sales Management, including his famous "How to Work a Car Deal" session.
This conference incorporates every aspect of variable operations management including experts on Internet Sales, Used Cars, Pre-owned Certified Sales, Managing the Sales Team, Hiring – Firing – Training and Promoting, Super Performance Project Management and Appointments, Website Conversion Techniques, Advertising, as well as CRM best practices and modern desking.
As always, Dealer Principals, Manufacturer Executives and Association Executives attend at No Charge, regardless of whether you bring your managers.
See more details and RSVP on Automotive Digital Marketing ProCom:http://www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com/events/event/show?id=1970539%3AEvent%3A556357&xgi=2s1iQKEWrHMaN1&xg_source=msg_invite_eventAbout Automotive Digital Marketing ProComADMPC is a Network for Car Dealers, Automotive Marketing, Advertising and Management Pros sharing Digital Strategies and Execution Tactics.
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Monday, September 29, 2014
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Dealer Marketing Magazine: Who Invented Online Car Shopping, And in What Year?
12 Great Events in Automotive History
For my automotive sales article this month, I thought that taking a little quiz might make for a nice 10-minute or so break from the routine .
As we're talking about cars, dealers, and dealership business software here, I'm keeping that theme going for this quiz, which I'm calling "12 Great Events in Automotive History." Some readers may have to ponder their answers for a while. Others who've been selling or servicing vehicles for a long time may know most of the answers from memory—or from the study of automotive history.
There's no monetary reward for taking the quiz, of course, except the value you'll take away and find useful for filling lulls in conversation now and then. Write your answers on a separate sheet of paper, then look at the answers provided at the bottom of the page: Don't cheat!
I trust my research provides the right results; if you have something different, let me know. Either way, my hope is the few minutes spent to take this quiz will bring you some fun distraction and a smile.
Ready? Here we go (answers below):
- In what year did NADA introduce the NADA Official Used Car Guide?
- Which American make marketed the first front-wheel drive vehicle?
- What year did airbags first appear in vehicles sold in the U.S.?
- Who challenged consumers, "If you can find a better car, buy it."
- Upon what chassis platform was the original Mustang built?
- What current popular brand has its roots in WWII?
- Which upscale domestic once used V-12 power?
- When did the Third Brake Light law take effect?
- What company "invented" the dealer management system?
- Who "invented" online car shopping and in what year?
- What year did Dealer Marketing Magazine release its first issue?
- What company pioneered data mining and developed the opportunity selling strategy that helps more than 2,600 dealerships sell an additional 5 to 100 or more vehicles each per month to existing customers?
Answers: 1) 1922; 2) Cord 810, in the '30s; 3) Oldsmobile Toronado, '73; 4) Lee Iacocca, Chrysler Corporation, introduction of the K-car; 5) Ford Falcon; 6) Jeep 7) Lincoln, in its Zephyr model, 1936-1948; 8) 1986; 9) The Reynolds and Reynolds Company;
10) Ralph Paglia in 1988 using Bulletin Board Systems and Compuserve ISP while GM at Kearny Mesa VW and then Bob Lewis VW, San Diego, commercialized by Autobytel, in 1995;
11) In 2002, with the cover feature, The Top Booths for You to See in New Orleans at NADA 2002; and 11) AutoAlert, 2002.
Boyd Warner is CEO of AutoAlert®, Inc. (www.autoalert.com), the most advanced lead generation solution available on the market today. Contact him at boyd@autoalert.com
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
7 Times You'll Kick Yourself for Not Learning HTML
by Ginny Soskey
In the same vein, knowing HTML is like making sure you're fully prepared for a vacation. You may not end up using it every single day, but the times you do end up using it, you are so grateful that you had the foresight to figure it out. Knowing HTML can save you hours of frustration, precious time with your design team, or even money dealing with an external contractor.
HTML has always been nice-to-have knowledge, but it's becoming more than nice-to-have for the marketer trying to save a buck. (And that sounds like every marketer I've met.)
In fact, there are a bunch of situations I've caught myself in in which handy HTML knowledge saved the day ... and thus, this post was born. If you're not quite convinced that you'd benefit from knowing basic HTML, keep reading. Here are seven* scenarios you might find yourself in that can be fixed with just a bit of HTML know-how.
1) When Formatting in Your Blog Post/Email/Landing Page Goes Awry
Sometimes, I swear my content has a life of its own -- and a mean streak. That blog post that I worked on all day will suddenly have images with funky spacing, no text wrapping, and outrageous sizing, and, of course, all looks okay in my WYSIWG editor. Luckily, with some HTML knowledge, I can dig into the post to remove and tweak code that is causing the problem.
HTML Pro Tip: If you find a bunch of funky tags you want to remove, copy the raw code and paste it into a raw text editor. Then, choose the Find and Replace option -- you can search for offending snippets of code and leave the "replace" box blank. Once you're done, you can paste it back into your HTML editor, and poof! De-bugged formatting.
2) When You Paste a Blog Post Into Your CMS From Word or Google Docs
Lots of people don't know that writing a blog post in a typical word processing program -- like Word or Google Docs -- and then copying it into your CMS will give you lots of HTML headaches. Sometimes, when you do that, your CMS will add extra snippets of code to your piece that will mess up formatting.
With some HTML knowledge and the pro tip above, you can easily remove any offending snippets when transferring content from Word or Google Docs to your CMS.
3) When You Need to Tweak an Email Template
I'm going to take a wild guess that you don't want every email you send to look exactly the same. While sending consistent emails is a great thing most of the time, there will be specific campaigns you're going to want to customize emails for. This could be as simple as right-aligning your images instead of left-aligning them or changing up the color of your text to stand out in your subscribers' inboxes.
With HTML knowledge, though, you can make these changes yourself, instead of relying on an in-house designer or hired development shop. Seriously, it's empowering to make the changes yourself and move on to more pressing marketing matters.
4) When You Need to Make Your Content Easy to Read
One of your top concerns when creating content is to make it easy for people to consume. This means using formatting (bold, italics, headers, colors, etc.) to make your content scannable and digestible. And while most WYSIWG editors will let you easily apply those formatting options to your content without touching code, not all will. So take control of the way your content looks by souping it up with some <b> and <h2> tags.
5) When You Need to Make Your Content Easy to Use
With long-form content especially, you need to make it easy for people to find the content they want. An easy way to do that? Use HTML to create internal links. See them in action in our glossary of website optimization terms -- isn't it easy to jump to the letter you need? This is an easy hack to do yourself, if you know HTML.
6) When You're Embedding Content on Your Website From Other Sites
One way to easily spruce up your blog posts is to use embedded content -- you know, posts from your social media accounts that can supplement your blog content. We're talking embedded YouTube videos, tweets, Facebook posts, Pinterest boards, and SlideShare presentations.
If you know HTML, you'll know how to embed content in the first place, not to mention troubleshoot any issues if the content isn't appearing correctly. It's been a lifesaver more than once for me!
7) When You're Pitching Guest Posts
Almost every guest post we receive in a Word or Google Docs format. And while that's a great way to judge whether we'll accept the post or not, once we've accepted the post, those formats are time-consuming to format in our CMS (because of the reasons mentioned in bullet point #2).
To save your new guest post editor time, attach a Word and an HTML plain text document to your guest post pitches. Trust me -- they'll be grateful, and maybe want to invite you back to post more often.
*Bonus Scenario: When Your Internet Goes Out and You Want to Save Your Team Time
Okay, I know I said that there would only be seven scenarios in this post, but I couldn't help but include this little tidbit. This isn't something you'll run into maybe ever, but this happened to me last week so I had to share.
My internet went out the afternoon I was on deadline for the next morning's 8 a.m. slot (yeah, we're a pretty agile team) and all of a sudden, it happened: MY INTERNET WAS GONE. Cue panic attack ... until I remembered that I could write the post -- and format it with the correct HTML snippets -- in my computer's text editor to save my teammates time.
And that's the story of how HTML saved my life and the post I was working on. I wouldn't recommend doing this every time you blog, but it can come in handy when you're in a pinch and you know what you're doing.
So really, think about learning HTML as one of your New Year's resolutions. It could be something that ends up saving the day on that random day in June when you need to make one little formatting tweak.
When has knowing HTML come in handy? Share your stories with us in the comments!
Written by Ginny Soskey
Ginny Soskey is a Staff Writer for HubSpot's inbound marketing blog, where she loves to create written and multimedia content day in and day out. Say hey to her on Twitter @gsosk.
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[Sent from Ralph's iPad]
Ralph Paglia
President
Automotive Media Partners, LLC
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