The first day of the Automotive Marketing Boot Camp (AMBC) was very productive for the 100+ dealers attending the event. It started with a series of round table discussions. Kind of like speed dating, dealers spent 15 minutes at each table, and then moved to the next table. Each table had one or two experts in the subject, and dealers were able to ask questions and seek advice. Subjects included Dealer Websites, Social Media, Mobile Applications, Google Places, etc. One of the great takeaways of the round table discussions was at the Google Places table. Brian Pasch, the expert at that table made the point that coming up on the first page in a Google search can be a terrible thing for a dealer if the Google place search result contains bad reviews for your dealership. Try searching your own dealership's name and check the reviews on the resulting search. If you have only three reviews, and all of them are bad, you are undoubtedly selling cars for your competitor. Although you can't simply remove those bad reviews, you can counter some of the effect by asking some good customers to give you a review. Try to get the good reviews to greatly outnumber the bad reviews.

After the round table, the was a cocktail party for participants, sponsored by Social Dealer, where dealers, event sponsors and speakers could mix and meet each other.  This was followed by the opening night dinner, sponsored by Dominion, featuring a great presentation by Dominion's Brice Englert.  He outlined some of the advancements in how dealer's sell cars and talked about where the business is going in the future.

Tomorrow's Boot Camp starts the many seminars and technology showcases.  Stay tuned and we will keep you up-to-date on tomorrow's Boot Camp.

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