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In order to be a highly successful business, you need to have a solid organizational hierarchy. Learn what you need to create an organizational chart and how it will effect your organization's growth.

Chances are, there’s already been a Google account created for your business, but are you correctly using Google Places and Google+ Local to increase your exposure? Find out how you should be setting up these features to market your dealership.

Get the Hard Facts from Samantha Cunningham at POTRATZ, and learn strategies for increasing your dealership’s online visibility.

Do you ever find yourself asking: How long should a video walk around be? When do you have too much content in an email blast? What makes a great landing page? On this week's Think Tank Tuesday, I'll cover these questions and more!

  Tune in now and learn how long you should be making your content on several different marketing channels.

You can't control the weather, but you can control how your dealership responds to major weather events. Find out how your dealership can be the sunshine after the storm by helping shoppers who have recently been affected by these conditions.

Get the Hard Facts from Samantha Cunningham at POTRATZ, and learn strategies for responding to bad weather in your area.

On this week's Think Tank Tuesday:

• Find out what tool your website is missing
• Learn how to engage and reengage shoppers
• Determine shopper behavior
  

Why Work Harder For Less?

On this week's Think Tank Tuesday:
  ✓ Learn how to identify your clients
  ✓ Find out what you need to be spending time on
  ✓ Determine key mistakes in your sales process

I really don't know who I'm going to offend on this one. We've been researching so many vendors over the last couple of months that work with chat, lead-gen widgets, and website platforms themselves that we haven't taken the time to explore PPC vendors. Maybe that's why I was blindsided to find out that there are at least two vendors out there charging 20% and one that we found who is charging 25%.

Is it me or is this insane? We'll put aside the 25% vendor for now. I'm hopeful that it's some sort of accounting mistake or something. Focusing on the 20% charge, it really bugs me that this may be more common than I ever knew. I've always hung around the organic side of search, so PPC hasn't been a focus. With that said, I've managed dozens of PPC campaigns over the years and I could never imagine charging anything other than a flat fee.

To me (and again, I might be on the wrong side of this argument and would be very open to some education on this one), if a dealership is spending $10,000 per month on their PPC, $2,000 of it going to management seems high. If the software is driving the bidding and the feeds are generating the dynamic ads, wouldn't it seem that very little manual effort and development costs are going into the service on a monthly basis?

I've always been a fan of flat fee PPC management because of transparency. I want to be able to recommend to a dealer that they raise their budget without them wondering if I'm just trying to make more money and I want to be able to recommend that they reduce their budget without reducing my service fee. To me, adjusting a budget is a matter of changing a number or two in the backend and I cannot justify charging hundreds of dollars more per month for clicking a few buttons.

Here's the math:

• 20% service fee
• $10,000 per month initial budget
• Dealer wants to raise to a $12,000 per month budget
• Vendor clicks a few buttons, adjust some daily budgets
• Additional monthly cost for clicking those buttons: $400/month
• Yes, that's $4,800 a year for 5-10 minutes of effort

I'll say it again. I'm willing to hear why I'm wrong. I'd love to see the additional monthly effort that goes into a bigger budget. If that's not the case, I'm open to hearing why the cost is justified. If there are vendors out there charging a lower percentage or a flat fee that dealers (or vendors) are willing to recommend, I'd love to hear about those as well.

Someone, please set me straight on this issue. It's bugging me.

Using a third-party provider for leads sounds like a great idea in theory. However you need to make sure that these leads you are getting are worth the money you are spending. Learn how to make the most out of using these other providers to ensure you are maximizing your possible leads.

Get the Hard Facts from Samantha Cunningham at POTRATZ, and learn how to provide more opportunities to convert on your website.

A good social media advertising campaign (or any marketing campaign at all, for that matter) should be guided by science. Testing, monitoring, adjusting, and testing again are the cornerstones of a good marketing strategy.

Much of what we do in the car business comes with assumptions. We do things that we have known from past experience to be successful. Sometimes, we have to take those assumptions and adjust them to modern sentiment, trends, and technologies. Other times we have to take those assumptions and throw them out the window.

Below are 6 images. These images were built to plug into a single Facebook advertising campaign designed to drive traffic to the website. The wording of the ad was the same across the board. The budget was a strong one and the activity was left in the hands of the Facebook algorithm to serve the ads based upon activity and popularity.

Look at the images and come to a conclusion in your mind which one yielded the most clicks to the website. The orange section represents where the logo is. Keep in mind that the wording of the ad was generally geared towards Chevrolet - no model indicators were used in the ad other than the image. Given this limited amount of information, which do you think performed the best and yielded the most clicks to the inventory for the dealership?

1. Red Camaro

2. Tahoe

3. Black Camaro

4. Keys

5. Silverado

6. Corvette

Think you have the right answer? I'll tell you up front - it wasn't even close. The ad that performed the best had more than double the click-thru rate in the first few hours. After it started going, it ended up with more than 3 times the clicks of all of the other images combined.

If you have an answer, like this post and comment with which one you think performed the best in the ads. One name will be drawn from the correct answers before the end of the month. If you're a dealer, you'll get a cool prize in the form of some sort of service from Dealer Authority. If you're a vendor, we'll reward you with a contextual followed link to your website from a PageRank 5 site (great for SEO, and if a dealer wins and would prefer that, they can take it instead).

Who's up for the challenge?

You can't have a successful business unless everyone is on board with the process. Learn how to spot the gaps in your company's strategy on this week's Think Tank Tuesday. 

Does your website make shoppers feel good about their purchase? What is the advantage of buying from your brand instead of one with a better price? Learn how your website can help shoppers justify a purchase on this week’s Think Tank Tuesday.

Do you want to grow your business without working more? Find out ways to move the rocks in the road that are stopping you from moving forward. That's this week's tip on Think Tank Tuesday.

Do you have a strategy to market your dealership to Gen Y? Unsure of why you need one? What if I told you Gen Y, defined as those ranging from ages 18-34, make up the largest chunk of the current population? It's important to understand how to market to this generation and capture these potential sales.

Get the Hard Facts from Samantha Cunningham at POTRATZ, and learn how to get through to Gen Y.

Do you think you are doing everything you can but can't figure out why more money isn't coming in? There may be one key component missing. Find out what you are missing to reach your goals this week on Think Tank Tuesday. 

Did you know that 85% of sales are influenced by women? For both sales and service, your strategy to turn women into clients needs to be different and we can show you how.

Get the Hard Facts from Samantha Cunningham at POTRATZ, and learn how it's not just a man's world.

Anyone can have a dream, but why do some succeed and some fail? Find out what you need to reach your goals this week on Think Tank Tuesday.

Watch the tips featured in this week's Think Tank Tuesday and increase your profitability with your management style.