| I have to hand it to the street fighting tactics of | | | | The challenge happened 18 months ago when |
| Yamaha ATV dealers. These guys have shown true | | | | newspapers started to fall apart. Running full page |
| grit in the age of the Internet. A lot of people don't | | | | ads no longer became an option for many dealerships. |
| know this but ATV and motorsports are actually | | | | Many auto dealerships do not have a real option to |
| very aggressive markets. There are a lot of | | | | run advertisements in the paper because of budgets. |
| competitors out there who are trying to get to the | | | | So they will rely on doing radio and television spots |
| top of the search engine heap. The competition is so | | | | to get attention. This becomes a difficult situation |
| fierce in fact that in a typical market there can be as | | | | when you start running out of media venues - |
| much as 15,000,000 competitive pages all vying for | | | | namely newspapers. Metro Detroit has lost several |
| the top spots. This means that a lot of Yamaha ATV | | | | newspapers including the Ann Arbor News and the |
| parts dealers are doing everything possible to get to | | | | Eccentric. There are also mergers that have been |
| the top positions. Sometimes they pay for it. | | | | happening all across the country in the last two |
| Sometimes they create viral web videos and | | | | years. |
| sometimes they do a lot of praying. | | | | One thing that the ATV web sites have done |
| But the point of this popularity game is that the ATV | | | | correctly is optimize their web sites fully and create |
| market is really setting a great example. A lot of | | | | smart pay per click campaigns. Some of the more |
| auto dealerships could really benefit from this type of | | | | creative ATV dealers have figured out a way to |
| aggressive online marketing. The main reason why | | | | scrap the PPC model entirely and deal strictly with |
| the auto dealers should take on this type of | | | | organic tactics. This enables web sites to stay on the |
| marketing is because it is so successful. When you | | | | top of the search engines without added expense. If |
| think about terms of bandwidth, web space, server | | | | the auto dealers are going to partake in this type of |
| space, viral capacity and holding a captive audience | | | | promotion now is the time. There has been a lot of |
| the choice is obvious. Newspapers cannot offer this | | | | apprehension in recent months. But actually the online |
| type of flexibility and either can printed coupons that | | | | environment has never been better. Many auto |
| you get in your mailbox. The web is a free floating | | | | dealerships could learn a lot from the progress that |
| life raft for many companies and in a lot of cases it is | | | | ATV dealers have made. |
| saving them. | | | | |