While the eastern coast continues to feel the residual effects of Joaquin, I find myself fortunate enough to be in sunny and warm Las Vegas for the 19th Annual Digital Dealer conference. There are few events each year that bring together the multitude of dealers, manufacturer representatives, automotive marketers and industry experts like Digital Dealer. I can’t help but to be excited to see so many people from our industry coming together with one common goal—to gain knowledge and information about the future of our business.
This year will also be the first time that I have not attended this conference from the dealer perspective; instead, I’ll be representing Reunion Marketing at our first Digital Dealer together as a new company. Over the last few years, it seems that more dealers are becoming serious about understanding the digital realm of marketing, and I expect that more and more will be sitting in on the intermediate and advanced sessions.
I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to speak and interact with more dealers from around the country than ever before and based off of their cumulative questions and concerns, and below are a few subjects many dealers are exploring for this year’s conference.
- Responsive technology—Is your website built on a fully responsive platform? After all, more than 50% of automotive shopping traffic coming from smartphones and tablets. Talk with the different website vendors or digital marketing agencies at the conference and get them to analyze your site.
- SEO & Content Marketing—Learn about it, understand it, and know how it can affect your website traffic. You can have the most badass website in your market, but if your SEO is lacking the right architecture and content, you are basically driving a Ferrari in just first gear only.
- Data, data, data—Learn how vendors and dealers across the industry are using your website and CRM data to make effective, strategic decisions for your marketing plan.
- Make some new friends—Different dealers, different markets. Find out what is working for people in your shoes around the country. A BDC strategy or email response strategy that is working in someone else’s market may work for you too (and it’s probably better than what your competition is doing).
- Shop around—Digital Dealer is one of the few times per year where you can physically see your current vendor partners standing next to their competition. So often we get stuck using the same companies for years at a time despite knowing there is better out there. Be the person in your group or shakes things up and brings in someone new, your Dealer Principal or GM may be very glad you did one day.
All of us at Reunion Marketing are excited to make some new connections, meet new people who are ready to get serious in digital marketing, and, of course, see all of our friends and automotive family!