YouTube turns five this month and to celebrate, Google (which owns the site) announced that the video-sharing site just exceeded 2 billion views a day for the first time. That’s nearly double the prime-time audience of the three major U.S. broadcast networks combined.

The YouTube player is embedded across tens of millions of websites (including ours and probably yours) and the average person spends 15 minutes a day on YouTube. Blue-chip companies understand the power of viral marketing (94 of Advertising Age’s 100 top advertisers run campaigns on YouTube) but even small auto dealerships can benefit.

Selling cars to younger buyers takes tech savvy (a basic web site and an ad in the phone book aren’t enough). To reach the new virtual tire kickers, dealers need to create inventory videos and distribute them on sites like YouTube.

In addition to engaging young buyers, utilizing social media sites is like making dozens of mini-websites that create a virtual trail of breadcrumbs that lead users to your dealership. YouTube has proven itself to be a low-cost, high-reward marketing tool (made even simpler with Dealer Impact’s social media network). Get started, or get left behind.

With new social media sites popping up left and right, it’s easy to dismiss most of them as passing fads. One you may not want to ignore, however, is Foursquare. The year-old site already boasts 1 million users and plenty of buzz.

Foursquare is one of several new location-based networking sites that use GPS technology to allow smartphone users to “check in” at various locations. The idea is to encourage people to explore their cities, meet up with friends, and share tips and secrets about area businesses and attractions.

Businesses are quickly discovering the marketing benefits of geo-sites like Foursquare and its main competitor Gowalla. Auto-repair shops and coffeehouses offer specials or freebies to visitors who check-in first or most frequently. McDonalds will be the first to take advantage of Facebook’s new location-based status updates, which begin later this month.

Setting your dealership up as a Foursquare venue is simple (and is included in Dealer Impact’s social media network program) and the marketing possibilities are endless. Don’t miss the chance to engage your increasingly mobile customers using these increasingly popular technologies.

Dealerships often spend hours taking video and photos of all the cars on their lot and then uploading the footage and images for the web. Their work could be cut in half, however, if they utilized new video-to-picture products.

These programs automatically turn a vehicle video into hundreds of still images, eliminating the need for a separate photo shoot. After uploading the footage, the system slices it into still images giving the dealer hundreds of high-quality photos in a matter of seconds.

Dealer Impact recently added a free video-to-picture feature to its Video Generation System (VGS), an Internet marketing system that allows auto dealers to create inventory-specific video advertisements.

Customers using the program now have both video and photos automatically integrated into their websites and distributed to third parties, such as YouTube, Cars.com, and other online classifieds.

To learn more about VGS or the new video-picture feature, call 877-334-9638 or visit www.dealerimpact.com/vgs/.

In today’s high-tech world, marketing requires more creativity than a basic ad in the telephone book or a big billboard on the highway. To compete in the modern landscape, businesses need to go where consumers are—online.

Internet marketing is essential and the most effective avenue of reaching customers online is Facebook. The social media site is too powerful to ignore with statistics like these:

—It is now the second-most visited web site in the U.S. after Google

—With 400 million users, it is the most popular social network in the world

—100 million people use Facebook on their mobile devices every month

—There are 5.3 billion fans of nearly 3 million Facebook fan pages

—A recent study found that Facebook pages create more loyal customers

Tapping into the vast Facebook network is easy with Dealer Impact’s new Facebook Inventory App, a dynamic program specifically designed to integrate with Facebook’s interface. The innovative program functions like a second web site for a dealership. The app helps dealers display current inventory on a Facebook fan page, generate and capture qualified leads, and much more.

To see an example of our Facebook Inventory App visit www.facebook.com/karlchevrolet

To learn more about Facebook Inventory App and how you can use it to boost sales, contact Dealer Impact at 877-334-9638.

To help auto dealers tap into the expanding mobile web market, Dealer Impact has created a phone-friendly interface that provides shoppers with on-the-go information.

Dealer Impact can now optimize a dealership’s web site for use on iPhone, Blackberry, Android, or Palm Pre. There are many benefits of these mobile web sites, including:

• They look and function like the apps that smart-phone users are accustomed to. When a person types the dealer’s web address into a mobile browser, the technology automatically recognizes the phone and converts the site to a phone-friendly interface.

• Car buyers do not need to download anything or pay to use the service.

• They are simplified and load quickly, allowing customers to navigate the site to find inventory, specials, and other information in seconds.

• Clickable contact information allows a user to immediately call the dealership or pull up a map with driving directions.

To stay ahead of the competition in the expanding mobile market, add phone-friendly features to your site today. Learn more by contacting Dealer Impact at 877/334-9638.

With more than 10 years of experience designing web sites specifically for auto dealerships, Dealer Impact knows how to drive online traffic. Unsure whether your site meets our best practices? Here are three basic rules for a well-designed web site:

1. Less is More

Websites are for the user, not the designer. Adding a lot of bells and whistles to a site is meaningless if the user can’t find what he/she wants. Keep your site clean and simple, with the most important information front and center. Customers don’t want to jump around a site to find current inventory or dig through several layers to locate contact information, specials and inventory.

2. Search-Engine Friendly

Clean, uncluttered sites not only appeal to users, they are more likely to be indexed by the major search engines (sites that use Flash design can’t be read well by search-engine spiders). If you want users to find you first, be sure to incorporate common SEO (search engine optimization) elements, including tags, keywords, fresh content, and shortened URLs for optimized inventory links.

3. Support Systems

Attracting customers to your web site takes more than good design. You must be ubiquitous on the Internet, with multiple points of presence. To do this, build a trail of breadcrumbs that leads back to your site using such tools as satellite videos, blogs, Youtube, Facebook, and other social media

Every web site Dealer Impact designs follows these best-practice principles. If you are interested in having us create or improve your dealership’s site, call our sales reps at 877-334-9638.

Experts predict that by next year the majority of mobile phones in the U.S. will be smart phones. That means that more consumers than ever will have on-demand access to the Internet. Despite this expanding market, most auto dealers don’t yet have mobile web sites. Here are the top three reasons they should:

1. The future is now

The statistics on mobile web use are astounding. One-fifth of Americans already access the mobile web everyday. In less than a decade, half of all web searches will happen from a mobile device. The mobile generation is already here and it includes your customers.

2. A regular site isn’t enough

Traditional web sites are designed for people surfing from the comfort of home using a full-size computer. Mobile users are on-the-go and limited by small screens; they are looking for specific information and they want it quickly. To satisfy these users, dealers need simplified sites designed specifically for the smart phone platform.

3. The competition is already there

Picture this scenario: A consumer is driving around looking for a new car. As he drives by dealers’ lots, he uses his smart phone to search inventories before deciding where to stop. If your site isn’t optimized for mobile web, he’s likely to move on to the next lot. Can you afford to lose out?

Video is an excellent lead source. Placing videos on third-party web sites creates a virtual sales force that drives traffic back to your dealership. 

To simplify the process of making and distributing videos, Dealer Impact offers the Video Generation System (VGS), which automatically produces inventory-specific videos and integrates them into a dealer’s website. VGS uses a flash player to create a mini portable web site for each vehicle, complete with video, audio, photos, features, options, and pricing. 

And now VGS is even better, with the addition of several recent upgrades: 

Carfax Integration: Participating CarFax dealerships can now add reports using special banners that appear across the top of VGS videos. Users can click the banners to view vehicle-specific information.

              

 

 

 

 

 

Sliding Presentation: VGS can now highlight an array of inventory at once using a rolling filmstrip. Users simply click on any vehicle in the slider to watch a video.

            

 

 

 

 

 

 

Starburst Callouts: A bold graphic can be added to the corner of any video to highlight specific features about the vehicle or to advertise a special promotion.

            

 

 

 

 

 

 

As always, VGS presentations can be quickly added to any website and can be easily exported to blogs, forums, YouTube, or nearly any third-party site that accepts video. 

If you’re ready to test drive VGS and its new features, visit http://www.dealerimpact.com/vgs or call a sales rep at 877-334-9638.

The weak economy has dealerships making difficult decisions about spending. While it may sound sensible to cut the marketing budget, advertising is actually more crucial when times are tough.

Down-market advertising is useful in generating new business. Equally important, however, is its affect on public perception. Not advertising during a recession can signal to consumers that your business is struggling, according to a recent Ad-ology Research study. If they don’t trust you’ll be in business a year from now, they’re less likely to buy.

Marketing your business is also the only way to stand apart from the competition. People are willing to drive up to an hour to find a car, which greatly expands the marketplace. And even if you are the only car lot for hours, consumers now have plenty of choices thanks to the Internet.

Before slashing your advertising dollars, discover how Dealer Impact can help you stand out from the crowd with our range of affordable advertising options. Learn more by calling a sales rep at 877-334-9638.