Is your used car dealership competitive with the bigger neighbors?

If you are a proud owner of a small to medium sized used car dealership, you understand the difficulties you are facing due to lack of funds and budget to stay competitive with your bigger neighbors. Many small dealerships can't imagine there are options out there for them to be visible on Google, and to manage their daily tasks effectively without paying the big price tag. Let's look into some of the areas the small guys need help on, website is the first stepping stone for you to have Internet customers and Google exposure. For one many small dealerships today are stuck using a poorly developed system, or worse rely on services from the bigger portals to offer them a complete cookie cutter "web site" that doesn't offer anything else other than hosting their inventory online. There is virtually no customization and virtually no SEO, but wait a second if it is a poorly developed template, wouldn't this service be free? The answer is "No", these big name portals are charging surprisingly high hosting fees, just to offer these smaller dealers a subdomain. It is important for you as a dealership to have your very own business branding and your own domain name. To have an independent domain name is the first step of getting exposure on Google and other search engines. Otherwise all the hard earned money you spent on advertising is driving traffic to somewhere else. There are solutions out there for you today, one Canadian company is called Dealer Template, you can find them online at http://www.dealertemplate.ca they offer pre-designed automotive specific template including hosting and setup for as little as $79 per month. That is lower than many other big names out there and you will get a complete customized website that will suit your business needs. There is $0 setup and up front fees, and all cost are included within the subscription fees. It is a great solution for a business that needs a website in a hurry.

The flip side to the coin would be finding a suitable CRM solution that can be completely integrated with your website for less. There are few big name CRM solutions out there, but they typically fall into the category of having a hefty setup fee and they are completely web based portals, rather than a full, independent desktop application. For Dealer Template they are integrated with a service also found in Canada called Dealer Elite CRM you can find them online at http://www.dealerelites.ca, a surprisingly low cost CRM solution that is desktop based for added security. The purpose of having a CRM solution is to effectively manage your incoming leads, update your vehicle inventory, produce real time reports, and of course manage and monitor your sales staff. A CRM system is important enough for the big dealerships to invest tens of thousands of dollars every month because it works. But for the smaller guys it is virtually impossible to have that kind of investment upfront. Therefore a cost effective CRM is so important to complete your web solution suite. The next logical step is for you to invest in some SEO work or search engine optimization. With proper SEO as your backing your web ranking and inbound Internet traffic will grow with time. Pretty soon you will be able to take a big slice of the business out of your competitor's market share.

Having these tools ready at your disposal is one thing, and using them correctly is another. Don't be fooled into thinking your competitor will stand still and wait for you to take away their market share. You should find a competitive web development firm that offers quality SEO services to boost your web ranking. If you are like me and located in the Toronto area I recommend Digital Media Advertising or http://www.digitalmediaad.com they specialize in automotive SEO services for the surrounding GTA area. Try the SEO for few months, and monitor your progress, a reputable SEO firm will send you a daily report on the inbound links they are building for you. Pick your keywords wisely and selectively, don't go after the difficult keywords right away, wait until your website has some steady traffic from the lesser competitive keywords first before making the heavy investment.

Thank you for reading this article, it is brought to you by Dealer News, we are your source of Canadian automotive dealer information. For more automotive related technology and dealer news visit us online at http://www.dealernews.ca

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