A good friend of mine forwarded me a letter that he received from Autotrader.com’s attorney, Benjamin Karpf T: 202-776-2641 C: Redacted Upon Request (bkarpf@dowlohnes.com), a take down notice for unauthorized use and unfair competition and …

Car dealers understand that they need to use the Internet to market themselves, some are doing a very good job, others are getting their wings and some will buy just about anything, because they have …

Automotive digital marketing, online best practices, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, micro sites, landing pages, CRM, ILM, SEO, PPC, websites, process, conversion ratios, email templates, social media, social networking, dealer ratings, click to call, online chat, online classifieds, twitter, linkedin, plaxo, leads, online merchandising, pop ups, pop unders, text advertising, banner advertising, online directories, blogging, squidoo, consumer generated content, have you got lost yet?

These sites do bring value to the dealership in a small way if they can encourage positive reviews and can provide some extra entries on the search engines when people search for your dealership name or brand and market area.

As an Internet Sales Manager my job is to market the dealership online, however most of my readers know that I also gear a lot of my marketing materials online to brand myself in addition to the dealership.

My budget for the next 30 days is only $3000.00 and here is how I am spending it: Secondary Finance Leads – $1050.

When I first started this blog I did a dissertation about the leaks in online classifieds and the more I look around at the different automotive affiliate programs and what others are doing with personal blogs used as lead generation tools it is time to revisit leaks again.

What that tells me is I need to sell those leads and target different longtail keywords or get in the automotive lead business I love my current situation and am grateful for the opportunity.

If you don’t know what a leak in online advertising is let me give you a short primer. If they are going to continue to place other offers on our listings whether it is for Netflix or competitive dealers they need to restructure pricing where we pay only per lead/call or completely remove these leaks from their site.