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Why are Instant Articles beneficial? Facebook provides a guide to Instant Article configuration so that you can use their content management system.

• Instant Articles are 10x faster than traditional mobile web articles
• They’re read 20% more often 
• Clients are 70% less likely to leave the article once they’re there.

Watch this week's Hard Facts now for more info!



Website: http://www.ppadv.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/PotratzAdvert...
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Potratz
Instagram: @Potratz

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Are you capitalizing on your blog?

Make sure your utilizing your blog to the fullest extent! On this week’s Hard FactsSamantha explains how your blog can not only boost traffic to your website, but also creates demand for your products and services! Watch this week’s Hard Facts to learn about some things you should know before hitting the publish button on your blog that will drastically effect its reach and performance.

Website: http://www.ppadv.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/PotratzAdvertising
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Potratz
Instagram: @Potratz
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Are New Opportunities a Distraction?

Will new opportunities set you apart from the competition or will they be a distraction? In order for you to stay relevant and grow in your industry, you can't remain stagnant.

In this week’s Think Tank Tuesday, I tell a personal story about a serial entrepreneur that you might want to hear. Watch now for more info.

Comment below for future Think Tank Tuesday ideas!

Website: http://www.ppadv.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/PotratzAdvertising
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Potratz
Instagram: @PotratzAdv
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http://dealersynergy.com/Dealer-Video-Production 856-546-2440 

Here is another example of a "Value Package Proposition"  or "Why Buy From Us" video that the Dealer Synergy Video Production Team created for #AtlanticHonda part of the Atlantic Auto Group in #NewYork. Let me know what you think. If you have any question about a "Why Buy From Us" message or video, please ask away! 

Toni Anne is the eCommerce Director of the Atlantic Auto Group, a 1.1 Billion Dollar Dealer Group based in Long Island New York. She was recently the COVER Story for Auto Dealer Daily (Monthly) Magazine for December 2015.

Check out that Cover Story - http://www.autodealermonthly.com/article/story/2015/12/building-an-online-empire.aspx 

And please click this Video Review she did for Dealer Synergy - 

For information on Video Production or Consulting, please call or text 267-319-6776 

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How Retaining Customers Will Increase Sales

No doubt you have heard the saying “happy wife, happy life”, right? Of course, I think we all have. The same concept holds true for your customers. We live in an age where word of mouth, reviews, and referrals can make or break a company. When you make a customer happy, your chances of them coming back time and again will increase. Which, in turn, will cause them to recommend you to their friends and family.

Excellent customer service is a big part of keeping a customer coming back in the future. Unfortunately many people brush it off when the staff gives subpar service, or, butts heads with a customer. Eventually, the staff forgets the incident happened. We need to remember; the likelihood of your client forgetting is slim to none. The likelihood of them turning to social media to complain or leaving a bad review is extremely likely. Once that happens there’s no way of knowing the exact number of people the negative comments reach. Of course, there’s also word of mouth, and news travels fast.

That being said, when your business receives positive feedback in any form, it becomes more likely that a person will take the positive review into consideration. Take a moment and think about it, you are in the market for a new TV and read reviews on two different models. Comparable in price, one has almost all positive reviews, the other, not so much. Which one will you spend money on?

When you fuel your retention it will reveal your expertise. Your brand needs to be viewed as an invaluable resource, and, the very best option for customers. They are looking for the best option for their hard earned dollar. Meaning, you offer the highest quality product, customer service, support and all around value. This also means making yourself viewed as a resource for customers. If you share valuable information on social media sites, post regularly on a blog, or utilize an FAQ page this all helps raise your SEO value; putting you ahead of the competition!

Gaining new customers is always fantastic, but, let’s remember how rewarding it feels knowing someone has been coming to you for years. The statement “I’d never shop anywhere else!” is something your business earned and feels very rewarding.

If you found this to be of use, contact us today so that we can continue the conversation! Let’s build a strategy for your business and retaining customers!

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         For many of us email management isn’t always a top priority, but perhaps that is something we need to change. By doing so, you can cut the clutter; reduce your stress and delegate tasks to your employees and coworkers.

            One of our team leaders utilizes a method he calls the 3D method and says if followed correctly it works wonderfully.

            First D: Delegate. Should you receive an email and run in to a scenario where you either don’t have time or you know of someone who is better suited for the task, delegate the email. Prior to doing so, ask yourself “Can they handle it?” If your answer is yes, send it their way, if you hesitate to answer the question find another team member.

            Second D: Delete. We all receive emails about someone having a baby or a birthday. You offer your well wishes along with 35 of your coworkers. Next thing you know you are receiving numerous alerts with animated GIFs. Get rid of it and carry on with your day. I’m guilty of leaving those emails in my inbox, forgetting they exist and moving on. They just build up and serve no real purpose. Reducing clutter will help lower your stress level.

            Deleting an email also serves as a mini to-do list. You’ve read the email, you’ve either delegated the task or you completed it yourself. Check it off your list-or delete it.

            Third D: Decide. Decide what to do with the email, do you delete or delegate? Should it be read now or later? Setting up filters, such as color-coding, can help make this decision easier and quicker. You can set it for specific groups of people, subscriptions, and level of importance. For example, if I create an orange filter for the management team, blue for subscriptions and green for clients, my inbox may have 1 orange, 3 blue and 3 green. I can see right away which email needs to be handled immediately and which can wait.

            These are some simple tips and tricks that work for us and keep us on track during our day. You might have a different system that works for you, and, that’s fantastic. Let us know what you’re doing! We’re always open to suggestions, tricks and tidbits. 

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http://www.amazon.com/Win-Game-Googleopoly-Unlocking-Strategy/dp/1119002583/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411159341&sr=1-1&keywords=sean+v+bradley 

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/winning-the-game-of-googleopoly-sean-bradley/1120316619?ean=9781119002581

"Win The Game Of Googleopoly" Book Available For Pre-Order On Amazon & Barnes And Noble Now

Overview

Rank higher in search results with this guide to SEO and content building supremacy

Google is not only the number one search engine in the world, it is also the number one website in the world. Only 5 percent of site visitors search past the first page of Google, so if you're not in those top ten results, you are essentially invisible. Winning the Game of Googleopoly is the ultimate roadmap to Page One Domination. The POD strategy is what gets you on that super-critical first page of Google results by increasing your page views. You'll learn how to shape your online presence for Search Engine Optimization, effectively speaking Google's language to become one of the top results returned for relevant queries. This invaluable resource provides a plan that is universal to any business in any industry, and provides expert guidance on tailoring the strategy to best suit your organization. Coverage includes an explanation of the mechanics of a search, and how to tie your website, paid ads, online reputation, social media, content, images, and video into a winning SEO strategy that pushes you to the front of the line.

The Page One Domination strategy incorporates all the ways in which you can beef up your Internet presence and online reputation. This book is a clear, straightforward guide that will knock down the silos of the Internet and teach you exactly how to integrate all aspects of content creation into a synergistic, SEO strategy.

  • Understand how search engines return results
  • Design an effective, all-encompassing SEO strategy
  • Create the content that gets page views and improves rank
  • Optimize social media and video as part of an overall SEO plan

The rules of SEO are always changing, and following outdated rules can actually work against you, burying you at the bottom of the pile. This book will spark a paradigm shift in how you think about SEO and gives you the tools you need to craft a strategy tailored to your specific market. To be successful, you need to be on page one of Google, andWinning the Game of Googleopoly can show you how to get there.

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When it comes to marketing (and just about everything else), there are right-brained thinkers and left-brained thinkers. The right-brain thinkers are more subjective and often more creative and would not like the concept of social media having two options. It makes it too black and white. Left-brain thinkers are guided by logic and wouldn't necessarily believe that there are only two categories in social media marketing. In other words, neither type of person will likely agree with the assertion of this article, at least not at first.

One can make an argument that there are definitely multiple sub-categories, styles, and strategies that go into social media marketing, but there are really only two stances that businesses should take. These two categories can be called "outbound" and "inbound" social media strategies. They shouldn't be confused with inbound or outbound digital marketing strategies. In the case of these social media categories, we're being a little more straight forward than that.

An outbound social media marketing strategy is what most who believe in social media want to achieve. They feel that social media is a venue through which to reach people, communicate, improve branding, and expose the company's messages. Its goal is to be aggressive and take advantage of the fact that the masses are using social media regularly. In many cases, customers are spending more time on social media than any other digital activity.

An inbound social media strategy is very different from a pure inbound marketing strategy. It can be viewed as a defensive posture, a way of covering social media without much time or effort. It's about checking off the social media task box. This is the type of strategy that a business should employ if they either do not believe in social media as an appropriate marketing venue or they do not have the time and/or budget to put a true effort towards an outbound strategy.

Let's take a look at each strategy in more detail.

Outbound Social Media Marketing

This is an "all in" strategy. It focuses on the beliefs that lots of people are on social media, that sites like Facebook have the data that can be used for hypertargeting them with the right messages, and that either ideas or website clicks can be driven through an aggressive advertising component.

In the case of car dealers, for example, social media offers a venue to target people who intend to buy a certain vehicle in the near future. By taking advantage of this data and putting the right messages in front of them, dealers are able to pull people in from social media sites onto landing pages on their website.

To do it the right way requires an investment. It can take time to craft the messages, monitor the profiles, and participate in conversations. It takes advertising dollars to get the message out to the right target audience. Social media in general and Facebook in particular is a pay-to-play model. The old concepts of organic reach are dead.

Inbound Social Media Presence

You'll notice that I did not call it "marketing". With an inbound strategy, a business is simply creating and managing a presence so that they are there without putting in much effort. It's not a defeatist strategy by any means. For many, they have not found the benefits of social media or they're not ready to invest what it takes to have a strong marketing strategy, so they simply get their social media covered.

This is important because people will visit your pages and profiles. Most businesses have buttons that lead to their social media profiles right there on their website. The search engines will often rank social media profiles and pages high on search results for the business by name. Making sure that your pages have an ongoing flow of content is important while not being too time consuming or expensive.

It doesn't look good when people visit your social profiles and they haven't had anything added to them in some time. It's even worse when people are going to these profiles to converse with you or to leave a comment (such as a review) and it goes unnoticed. In extreme cases, Facebook pages can be "hijacked" by spammers leaving their links to unrelated pages. When this type of spam is found on a page, it can be worse than an embarrassment.

Why There's No In-Between

Some will balk and say that there are ways to have a good marketing strategy without going all-in. They are wrong. The benefits of a toe-dipping, low- or no-budget strategy that is trying to do more than establish an ongoing presence are no greater than a purely defensive inbound strategy. In other words, you can spend very little time and money on a basic inbound strategy or you can spend some more time and a little money on an attempted lite marketing strategy and the end results will be the same.

The gap between a basic presence and a "good" presence is minimal. However, the difference between a "good" presence and a full-blown outbound strategy is huge. If you're not going to go all-in, then you should focus on having a good presence rather than trying to work in a little marketing. It's a waste of time and money to go halfway. Either invest into it or keep it simple. There's nothing wrong with either strategy; they both have their benefits. Trying to be there in the middle, not quite bought in but more than just covering the basics, is a limbo that yields nothing more than keeping it all inbound.

It's a lot like poker. On some hands, you'll play it tight, particularly if you believe your hand is weaker than your opponents. On other hands, you'll play aggressive, even going all-in when the time is right. The fish in the middle who are trying to tiptoe through hands are the ones that end up losing their chips the quickest.

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Today, using the “free” social media platforms as a marketing tool without spending money on them is about as useful as playing the first level of the freeware version of iPad game.

It used to be so exciting to think about how to market a business on social media. We would read articles, watch videos, go to conferences, exchange ideas, try things out, and come up with the very best way to reach the people. Just a few years ago, it was exciting to be in the social media marketing world.

Things have changed. Many of my contemporaries who have been working in social media for nearly a decade have talked to me lately about how it’s all going downhill, how organic reach is gone and that the pay-to-play model has ruined the industry. They say things like “money makes the crap float to the top” or “there’s nothing creative about paying for exposure.” I agree with them during these conversations, not because I believe what they are saying, but because I’ve found that the exact opposite is true. I’m just trying to avoid an argument.

The reality is that the death of organic reach on social media sites is the best thing that could happen to creative social media marketers. Does it mean that some of the bottom line dollars must be spent in order to get the content the exposure it needs? Yes. Does it also mean that the crap that once filled news feeds across sites like Facebook have been yanked in favor of a proper mix of profile posts with a sprinkling of important, targeted, and paid-for exclusive posts? Absolutely.

It was once pretty futile. Sure, a few posts could get some pretty good exposure, reach, likes, retweets, shares, +1s, or whatever, but there were times when the best content didn’t reach the audience at the degree it deserved. Relying on organic when organic was still an option was a poor strategy. Now that there needs to be a budget (a very small budget, mind you), the potential exposure for high-quality content has actually increased due to the shift in need towards social media advertising.

Facebook and Twitter are the two obvious choices for embracing the paid model and in both cases, the shift was a very positive thing. Our messages can’t get muscled out by the big players just because they’re more popular. Paying to get the attention to the best content or most important posts is a sure-fire way to make certain that the message reaches the right people every time.

The thought that it killed creativity is ludicrous as well. In fact, the dollars attached to the campaigns mean that more care must be put into them. Nobody wants to waste money, so embracing a higher standard of post quality is now at top of mind. As much as we’d all like to think that we were putting out incredible content every time before, the reality is that everyone has days where they’re going through the motions. It’s on those days that a free post can slip through that is terrible. With the paid model, we must pay more attention. It’s better for everyone involved.

We all got suckered into it. We didn’t want to pay for it and for many of us, the reason that we got into this game in the first place was because we could gain exposure for our own pages or our clients’ pages by being good at the game. The paid model doesn’t change that if you really think about it. By paying, we are more invested and will perform better across the board. It’s part of human nature.

They got us to try it. In many ways, it’s like the freeware games that we download that try to get us hooked so we’ll pay for the full version. We got addicted to this world of social media marketing and now we can’t get out of it. Thankfully, the shift is starting to weed out those who are ineffective at taking advantage of what’s given to us all. If you’re not willing to pay to play this game, you should probably find another. Organic reach is dead on social media. Perhaps getting better organic search rankings is better suited for those who can’t play in social media anymore.

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http://www.internetsales20group.com
http://www.dealersynergy.com 856-546-2440
Digital Marketing & Social Media Trends "2014 - 2015" - Car Dealerships

This is a great video / info graphic for Digital Marketing and Social Media trends for not only 2014 but also going into 2015. This is some powerful information that you can use for your car dealership's marketing and advertising initiative.

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Should You Care About Branding?

"I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man."- Jay-Z

What most people don't realize is that even a living person can become a brand. This is a basic staple of advertising and sometimes it needs to be asked: what exactly is a brand? In a nutshell, The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines a brand as a "name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers."

You don't have to be a genius to realize that Jay-Z for example, can attach his likeness or endorsement to anything and it will sell. What if a Jay-Z created cereal comes to market right now...would you buy it? Someone absolutely will. Let's really explore the basics of a branding campaign. Smart people know that if you have a product or offer a service, you must advertise. This is essential to building a brand and honestly, it's hard selling something you have if no one knows it exists. There's a great line from Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross where he states that sales is about "A.B.C. - Always Be Closing." In this case, we can go with "A.R.A - Always Run Ads". The main DNA for running an ad is composed of two elements: Frequency and Reach.

Frequency is based on your advertising schedule. Ask yourself: Are you going to run this ad every day? Four times a week? Only on Thursdays? When you can answer that question, move on to Reach. For example, I can create the most amazing, awesome, astonishing ad of all time. You've never seen anything like it before and It will blow you away. If I only show it in a five mile radius, then it's not worth a lot. There's no substantial return on investment (ROI). You must have the ads run repeatedly and cover as much geographic area as financially allowable. That’s how advertising breathes and more importantly, how building your brand really works.

As a former advertising executive, the HARDEST part of my job was convincing business owners they still needed to advertise. You don’t want your customers thinking you’re going out of business if they don’t see the ads you used to run. Business owners feel that because they've been around a several decades that running ads are not necessary. That's not entirely true but telling them in a delicate way that they're wrong takes a certain amount of finesse. On the other hand, there are some situations where running an ad campaign sporadically makes sense. Think about that really popular annual football game with the extremely expensive commercials? Those are all about reach and because of the audience it draws in, frequency is not a huge factor. Your message has impacted the masses on a global scale and the cost definitely justifies the motive.

When it comes to building a brand, I would say that one important step is to create a logo. A symbol that when recognized will tell a prospective consumer or client exactly what your company, products and services are all about. That same logo will eventually lead the public to your brand's awareness on a social level. People see your logo and will always recognize your company under any circumstance. Does it mean they will always to buy in that moment? Of course not, but they will always know your company and when they need what you have, they will come. If it still remains whether you should care about branding then you're asking the wrong question.

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Brace Yourself, CASL Is Coming!

Beginning July 1, new Canadian Anti Spam Legislation will go into effect, enforcing strict regulations on the way emails are sent, as well as how lists are collected and maintained. For most businesses, this means rethinking the way they structure their email marketing strategies to be in compliance.

Whether your business is located in Canada or not, these new regulations are good practice for email marketing in any country. Canada is not the first country to impose regulations on unsolicited emails. Several European countries have been enforcing email spam laws for quite some time, and with electronic media taking off, it’s a matter of time before new legislation is passed in the United States. 

On this episode of Hard Facts, Samantha details exactly what’s in store for Canadian businesses facing these new laws, and how to best prepare for the coming changes. Learn how you can make the transition as painless as possible when legislation goes into effect, and how your business can avoid hefty penalties and fines.

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Do You Understand Search Algorithms?


Google and Bing are constantly fine-tuning their search engine algorithms to provide better results for users. With all the recent changes in search, it's easy to get confused on how search engines work, and how businesses should be using them to get the best results from their search campaigns.On this episode of Think Tank Tuesday, Paul explains how you can take advantage of search in your marketing strategies. Learn what algorithms are, how they work, and what you should know before starting your own search campaigns.
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Do You Respond Well To Customer Reviews?

Whether positive or negative, customer reviews have a major impact on your brand’s reputation. It’s important to understand how to handle both positive and negative reviews.
 
On this episode of Hard Facts, Samantha discusses:
  • How to tackle negative reviews from customers
  • Client experiences with negative reviews
  • Actionable items for building a response strategy

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