I hit the show floor at NADA to connect with some of the sharpest minds in the automotive industry, gathering their top strategies, must-know trends, and game-changing advice for dealers looking to stay ahead of the competition. From cutting-edge digital marketing tactics to innovative dealership strategies, these expert insights will help you drive more leads, boost visibility.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Welcome back to another episode of Local Search Tuesdays. This week, I’m sharing some amazing tips from the vendors and dealers at NADA in New Orleans.

A few weeks ago, we made the not-so-easy trek down to New Orleans for the National Auto Dealers Association convention, which just happened to fall a few days after the worst snowstorm New Orleans has seen in like 10,000 years. We made it, eventually, and while there weren’t as many people there as normal, I still collected some amazing tips from some really smart people. Check them out:

Jennifer Briggs:
Uh, one of the most important things I believe that we need to think about, especially as we’re at an event like this, is that we have got to not just buy the software or the product or find a new agency, we have to train our staff to work with that, whether it’s technology or a team. If we’re not all working together, you are never gonna achieve your goals.
Paul Daly:
Alright, so my tip to dealers is with all the technology, all the AI conversations coming out there, it can be really overwhelming. I would just say find one deployable thing. What is one thing that has a practical step that you can implement in your store? And forget the big picture things if you get overwhelmed.
George Nenni:
Released just a couple days ago, Google released a major, major update from Google Analytics 4. It should help anybody that uses that tool. So if you use Google Analytics 4, chances are you played around with the explorations. The explorations are, are the report writing function in GA4 and up to now you could build a wonderful exploration for one single store. And if you tried to transfer that, you can’t transfer it. Now you can. Now, if you build an exploration for one of your dealerships and you’ve got five other dealerships, all you do is click to transfer that report to those other properties and now you’ve saved yourself an incredible amount of time. So check it out.

Jarrod Kilway:
My tip for you this year is utilizing the tools and resources you have to put more people back in the stable. So at the end of the day, new net customers versus existing retention, focus on your customers. We’re spending crazy amount of money for new customers and we’re losing our existing.

Carfox:

Paul Wright:
So I think the one tip I would tell all dealers is just to answer the question. Most important thing is when somebody ask a question, answer the question. That’s it. Simple.

Chase Cornett:
Tips for dealers 2025. Rather than engaging and asking for the test drive all the time, what is the inquiry about? Go into the nuts and bolts of why they’re interested in the car, ’cause everyone’s asking for the appointment. Ask why they’re interested in your piece of inventory in particular.

Dane Saville:
Especially with how large language models are being used, AI platforms are being used, Google AI overviews idea of accuracy of information is more important than ever. So make sure that when you’re doing your keyword research, planning out content, make sure you understand the intent of the search itself to make sure you are aligned with what users need. Because ultimately you’re gonna get, get rewarded from search engines for doing that.
Chad Graves:
Audit your own content on your website. The stuff the manufacturer puts on sometimes can be duplicate and is not helping your organic rankings. Take a look, invest in organic content that is produced by you or a really good company.

Joe Dallas:
Make sure that you get in control of your content at your dealership when it comes to how you’re displaying vehicles online, ’cause a lot of the vehicle’s value gets diminished by not, uh, actually showing original build data. Um, so if you can partner with somebody like Exide or other, uh, partners out there to make sure that on the actual display side of the vehicle, that uh, the, the original options are actually, uh, displayed there.

Brent Wees:
Uh, take an hour a week if you can in little chunks or one dedicated hour a week and just go find tutorials on AI. I know everybody’s talking about it, but actually go and learn some prompting and go take a little time to dig into tools and just muck around with them. Take some time to mess with things just to get yourself a little bit more acclimated and a little bit more warmed up and they won’t be so scary if you haven’t used one. Just go mess around. You can’t break anything.

Micah Birkholz:
So when you are looking for, uh, the best AI partner out there, uh, ask a couple questions. One, quick and easy. One is, “Do you own the technology or are you white labeling it?” It’s a great insight into what type that partnership’s gonna be like, uh, what changes, when they need to be made, how easy that will happen. If they own the tech, they can make those changes. If not, they’re gonna have to ask somebody to make those changes for you and it could take forever. So just a quick easy tip for you.

David Steinberg:
My tip, my tip for 2025 is if you’re using AI for sales, for variable ups, focus on getting the AI to match inventory to what the buyers are looking for, rather than just having the AI ask for appointments. Uh, buyers, this car’s a star. That’s my tip.

Tina Cuatto:
Words that matter on the SRP view details has 67% more engagement than more details and confirm availability has 130% more engagement than check availability.

Susan Yen:
And starting up a PPC campaign, the best thing you want to do is always make sure you have a set goal and you know what you’re, what you’re trying to go after.

Dave Spannhake:
Alright, dealers, uh, really, you should be leaning into how much Google and their automations are costing them close variance and all of the, the, the lack of control that we are now seeing with the, with the PMAX and then all the, the changing environment for Google is costing dealers 35, 45, 50% more than they should be spending. It’s real easy to go in and, and find that there’s a lot of waste going on.

Jen Patten:
Just listen to anything Greg says.

Great stuff, right? That’s definitely all the time we have left for this week’s episode, so you know what that means. Put your hand on the screen right here: We totally just high-fived ‘cause you learned something awesome. Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you again next week for another episode of Local Search Tuesdays.