The internet has completely changed the ballgame for dealerships. Nowadays, getting people through the doors often requires getting them on the website first. That in itself can be a feat. Taking it to the next step and convincing those website visitors to buy a car from you increases the difficulty factor even more.
However, with the right approach to the website content, you can accomplish both in one fell swoop.
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As we speed through the second quarter of 2019, we’re reminded of where DealerFire was during this exact same time a decade ago. At that time, we had just begun extending our reach into the automotive vertical and had finally stopped creating websites for gas stations, clothing boutiques, and chocolatiers (no, seriously, this was a thing). In fact, it was our budding relationship with Toyota that ultimately tipped the scales on our development. In early 2009, we received our first-ever OEM certification with Toyota and haven’t looked back. Since then, we’ve accumulated 16 OEM website and digital advertising certifications and will re-launch the Toyota program (along with Lexus) over the next few weeks. It’s an exciting time at DealerFire, and we want to ensure we always remember where we started and our first OEM partnership.
We have a lot to talk about in this month’s edition of Spark Notes. We had some great feature releases and some partnership announcements. We’ve also announced dates for our upcoming 2019 User Summit, the first time we’ve held the event since 2016. Read on to get the scoop on all things DealerFire in May.
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Each month, we host an internal #allhands meeting to announce some of our most impactful enhancements over the past four weeks. While we’re really good at making sure our employees know what’s going on with the DealerFire products, we haven’t been so good at making sure our customers are informed. This is why we’re starting Spark Notes – a monthly email newsletter that dives deep into our product enhancements from the previous month. As well as a brief snapshot into the upcoming initiatives that we’re really excited about.
Does the initialism GMB mean anything to your dealership?
If not, you’re going to want to investigate. GMB refers to Google My Business, the information listing that is offered up by Google from information you provide about your business. If you aren’t interacting with it weekly – or worse, haven’t even claimed it – you’re going to want to make that happen quickly.
So why exactly is GMB so important for dealerships? There are many reasons.
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2011. That was the year that DealerFire earned its first OEM certification for websites with Toyota Motor Company. Back then, OEM certifications were still being fleshed out, with many requirements in various forms of completion, as well as web services, integrations, and compliance. Toyota really jumped on the opportunity though, developing great processes to ensure vendor success. It was especially important to us, as we were a small, scrappy web development company that had no OEM relationships up until that point. We had something to prove, and Toyota gave us an amazing opportunity to show what we had been working on for almost a decade.
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Now that the dust from NADA San Francisco has settled, it’s onto the spring automotive digital gauntlet – starting with Digital Dealer 26 in Orlando. While DealerFire has always had a nice booth presence at the show, we’re especially excited to announce that we’ll also be sponsoring a featured speaking presentation!