Check Out The Full Story On Park Automall
For a while now I’ve been blogging about the Social Networking Tools developed by Showroom Logic. This week Bay News 9 in Tampa picked up the story about Park Automall and how they use websites like Twitter & Facebook to sell cars.
Showroom was very excited about this because it put their tools on the Tampa media. Of course Bay News 9 did chop the news story up a little. Dave Ingold talked about how he uses our automatic Twitter and Facebook updates to update all of his followers on Twitter and Facebook.Each time a new vehicle is added to their inventory Showroom Logic’s system automatically sends a Twitter Tweet and a Facebook update that included a direct link to the actual vehicle page.
What they didn’t say is the fact that these tools were developed by a little known company called Showroom Logic which is based out of Lakeland Florida. Park Automall is the first used car dealer to take full advantage of our tools. Is it working? Absolutely! Dave Ingold says that since March, 20% of sales have come from Facebook and Twitter.
We like the way Dave approaches social networking. Besides his automatic updates, he still logs on to each and send out his own personal tweets. He does it with style and he doesn’t bore us with “I just ate lunch” tweets. Dave Ingold has mastered social networking.
How has Dave succeeded where others have failed? “Dave fully understands the process of success on the internet. It doesn’t happen overnight. It takes months of steady work to reap the benefits. He also has the absence of improper franchise training that is given to major car dealers. There is no question in my mind that Park Automall will own the Tampa used car market.”, says Mike Annable; co-founder of Showroom Logic. Mike also adds that “Dave Ingold is also lucky enough to have the support of Park Automall’s owner, Fred Najjar. He understands it as well.”
Be sure to click the picture to see the full story.
After my brief career as an internet director for a car dealership with 3 rooftops, my only conclusion was the fact that the entire internet presence of the car industry was in shambles. Car Dealers are totally vendor dependent, spending thousands of dollars a month in internet advertising. I don’t want to point fingers as far as who is to blame, but I am forced to blame General Motors for the failure of many of their franchises. It doesn’t look to me like the other car companies are doing much better either.
Why do I blame General Motors?
- Certified Internet Sales Manager Training: Each internet sales manager for any GM dealer must take an online course to become certified. During this training GM encourages dealers to only hire salespeople, not internet savvy people. They go on to explain that “internet sales managers can be trained to be savvy.” If that is the case, who will train them? It would make sense to me if it was a small dealership with only a few dozen vehicles. However, if the dealership has multiple rooftops there is no questions a professional should be hired.
- Hiring a “Suit”: This one kind of branches out from reason one. This is a name I coined for the car dealership that hires a man or woman in a suit to run their internet department. The internet sales manager course creates this position for multiple rooftop dealerships. He or she spends all day in meetings and getting wined and dined by vendors, and eventually pays each to do his or hers job. My advice? Remove the suit and put on Khaki Shorts and a T-Shirt (stay behind the scenes). Have your dealership buy a decent digital camera and fire the company that comes out once a week and takes photos of the vehicle. Why would you want your inventory to only be updated every week? If you do it yourself you can update your inventory daily, and it would save your dealership some money you could use for other avenues. As you add each vehicle, write a brief unique description of it in the comment section. You will find that you will personally know your entire inventory. Then, spend at least an hour every day obtaining backlinks for Auto Related Blogs. Simply read a blog post and make a comment on it with a link to your dealers website. Actually, I could go on and one here, so bookmark this page and come back later. I will do an entire blog post about this later.
- GM Seminars: I was excited to attend my first seminar in Orlando that was put on by General Motors. I figured I would have the opportunity to learn something new. As soon as I walked in the door I noticed AutoTrader and Cars.com had a table set up, each with a smiling face behind it. My excitement quickly turned to bitterness after learning the speakers were AutoTrader and Cars.com. These are vendors, why would I want their advise? Not once did they offer advise on what else to do besides advertise with them. I urge GM to hire an outside SEO Professional for their next conference. Car Dealers need to learn what else they can do to make their own websites rank better. The number one thing you can do for your dealership is to obtain backlinks.
So this brings me to Park Automall in Pinellas Park Florida (near Tampa). Dave Ingold is their internet director and I’ve seen his face all over the social networking scene. He is doing all of the right things, and he is constantly wanting to learn more. Dave has the benefit of being self taught, without being tainted by GM conferences and GM online training. Why? Park Automall is not a franchise, they sell late model used cars and trucks. He took it upon himself to learn, and he is putting Park Automall all over the map. It’s called branding, and it seems to be working.
I met with Dave and the owner of Park Automall (Fred Najjar) last week. Currently they are advertising in all the right places. They advertise on AutoTrader, Cars.com and just about every other company out their. They now have their final tool in place. We set them up with their exclusive Used Cars Tampa website, which eventually will give them the edge in Organic Search Results in the Tampa area.
This is what Patrick Bennett & I did for them:
- They now target the Tampa Market with our SEO Friendly website: http://www.tampa-used-cars.com . This site is 2 weeks old, but when it kicks in they will have a strong hold on the Tampa Bay Used Car Market. Although we have a shared Tampa Site: http://www.tampa.used-cars-fl.com, this website is their own with only their inventory on it.
Private 3rd Party Site
- They have their own blog connected to the site. You wouldn’t believe the amount of traffic a properly formatted Wordpress blog can bring to your website. We make one blog post a week for them, and they are free to post as many articles as they want themselves. You can see Park Automall’s Blog here:
Park Automall Blog
- We have them listed in a total of 4 different websites:
www.used-cars-fl.com
tampa-used-cars.com
tampa.used-cars-fl.com
clearwater.used-cars-fl.com
- We automated their Twitter. Every time a new vehicle appears in Park Automall’s inventory we automatically send out a tweet with a direct link to the actual used car or truck listing. They are still free to make as many manual tweets as they wish. Patrick even went one step further. If a new vehicle rolls in at 3:00AM it will be put on hold until the next morning. We also space the tweets out. If Park Automall adds 30 cars their Twitter followers don’t want to see 30 tweets in a row, so we’ll space it out every 20 minutes or so until all inventory is added.
Park Automall Twitter (Click To View)
- Automatic Facebook Updates. Thanks to our RSS Feeds, we automatically update Park Automall’s Inventory to their Facebook Account, which in turn notifies all of their “friends”. It includes a direct link from their status page, and a photo will be added to their notes section.
FaceBook Updates
- Exclusive Car Chaser: We have this tool on all of our shared websites, but Park Automall get’s their very own. Go ahead and try it out on one of our shared sites. Click here, then click “car chaser” and fill in the blanks. You will then see how the notifications come.
Car Chaser. Try It Out!
- Backlinks To Your Own Dealer Website: As I mentioned above, it is very important to have as many backlinks (links pointing to your website from other websites) as possible to your dealer website. The strongest possible backlink you can get is from a “relevant” website. We provide a backlink from each vehicle you have on our website, so if you have 150 cars you will get 150 backlinks (because of your main page on our site). Park automall will get over 450 backlinks because they’re on 3 different sites. After 90 days, dealers in good standing will have the nofollow tag removed whick will flow pagerank juice to your main website. This will help your main website get more organic traffic because you will get links from an “authority” website. If you know how to check pagerank you must see this. Our dealer Page for Lash Auto Sales In Lakeland Florida has a pagerank of 3. Want to see something even better? This actual car listing has a pagerank of 2: Used Cadillac Lakeland.
- Everything Else. I could go on and on, but a true professional will see the value of our SEO friendly used car dealer listings, including our url’s loaded with the correct keywords. This week we also will be announcing Park Automall in a press release written by Lakeland’s own Lorrie Walker. Next week, we will be doing a massive viral campaign. It’s not easy to describe what exactly that is, but when it’s all said and done I will do another blog post on it, and explain the benefits.
