That’s a wrap on 2024! 🎉

What a transformative year it’s been at Dealers United! We’ve evolved from being social media focused experts to becoming a full-service digital powerhouse, bringing together the power of search and social to help our dealer partners dominate digital. Our team doubled in size, welcoming 40 incredible new faces who share our passion for innovation and excellence in automotive marketing.

Join us as we celebrate the wins, the growth, and the incredible journey of 2024! 💫

January

• We kicked off 2024 with a bang by announcing the launch of our search marketing services, including SEO and SEM! This exciting expansion came with a complete website rebrand to showcase our evolution into a full-service digital marketing agency. 
• Our content team hit the ground running, publishing four powerful blogs to help dealers maximize their digital presence:
• Targeting and Retargeting Techniques on Social Media for Car Dealerships
• Building a Strong Brand Identity on Social Media for Car Dealerships
• Pros and Cons of Different Social Media Platforms for Car Dealerships
• Local SEO vs General SEO: Key Differences for Car Dealerships
• A major milestone for our leadership team: We proudly welcomed Brian Malsom as our new Chief Executive Officer!
• We published a Video interview with Matt Sneed, Director of Operations at our partner Power Ford in Albuquerque NM.  Watch the full video interview (<15 min!) and learn how Power Ford turns prospects into customers for life.

February

• The DU knowledge hub grew stronger with four more blogs:
• Facebook Advertising For Car Sales: A Guide For Dealerships
• Drive More Leads and Sales Through Online Advertising for Car Dealerships
• Leverage Video to Drive Car Sales for Your Dealership
• Optimizing Your Social Media Ads Budget for Car Dealerships
• NADA 2024 in Las Vegas was a blast! 🎰 The DU Leadership Team hosted an epic Topgolf event where we gave away custom-fitted golf clubs for “The Longest Drive.” Nothing beats connecting with our dealer partners while #DrivingTheFuture! 
• We published 2 Case Studies: 
• How Dahl Ford Used SEO + SEM + Social Ads To Lift Leads & Traffic In 90 Days
• Royal Chevrolet GMC Climbed Search Results With Automotive SEO
• Team DU grew by one tiny member as Jorge Lafosse, our Head of SEO, welcomed his daughter Luna on February 9th! 👶
• We hosted a Webinar “14-Point Digital Inspection For Car Dealers” to help dealerships understand if their digital engine optimized for performance across SEO, SEM, and Social
• The Culture Committee incited some friendly competition by hosting Superbowl Squares 

⭐️ 2024 by the numbers: Dealers United drove 730K+ SEM & Social leads for our Dealers Partners!

March

• The creative team released our first holiday (not seasonal) themed Inspiration Playbook For Mother’s Day!  Click here to see the Playbook.
• We published our 3rd case study of the year with Power Ford covering their 2023 Social media results
• We teamed up with TikTok Agency Partner Manager, Julianna Wanner to teach car dealers the best ways to leverage TikTok in our webinar: The Most Powerful TikTok Strategies For Car Dealers with TikTok! 
• Watch this video interview with Jay Healey, CMO of Healey Brothers Automotive Group, where he breaks down their success in building a people-first, tech-driven approach to automotive marketing.
• March Madness fever hit the Culture Committee, keeping the competitive spirit alive! 🏀

⭐️ 2024 by the numbers: We documented over 250 new SOPs!

Welcome to the Team in Q1!

In the first quarter of the year we welcomed 10 new team members!

• Welcome to the team: Ezekiel (Zeke) Hamor, Jasmine Smedley, Zach Bauman, Madelyn Capehart, Gil Marquez, AJ Jusufbasic, John Jireh Lizaso, Tessa Brooks, Michael Sigel, & our new CEO, Brian Malsom!

April

• Check out these 2 blogs we pushed live:
• How Dahl Ford Boosted Leads & Traffic with SEO, SEM, and Disruptive Social Ads
• Maximize Online Visibility: The Power of Dealers United’s Website Optimization Services
• It’s a boy! Aleena, Performance Manager, Welcomed Sullivan Henry Martin into the world April 25
• We published #4 and #5 Case Studies:
• How Rob Sight Ford Increased Organic Traffic & Call Volume Over 40% In 90 Days With SEO + SEM
• Strategy Spotlight: Dahl Ford’s SEO + SEM + Social Ads Lift Leads & Traffic
• A major milestone achieved: We proudly earned our Google Partner Badge! 🏆
• The Culture Committee hosted one of our favorite annual events: DU Cribbs! 🏠 Team members dropped their Zoom backgrounds to showcase their real workspaces, share their office stories, and introduce their furry coworkers!

May

• 2 more blogs made their way onto the site: 
• 25 GA4 Questions for Car Dealerships: Automotive Analytics Answers
• 10 Car Dealership Blogging Tips – Automotive Marketing
• We published a case study with Pinterest! Our sixth case study of the year featured Zeigler Subaru of Kenosha’s results. 
• May’s Webinar: Decoding GA4 For Car Dealers! In this session we shared the biggest GA4 updates & features important to car dealers, and more.
• New Resources were published to help dealers dominate digital:
• SEO Checklist for Car Dealers
• Organic Social Media Guides Collection For Car Dealers
• The Culture Committee got nostalgic with “Who’s That Kid?!” 👶 Team members had a blast guessing who was who in childhood photos!

June

• More blogs? You got it! Read:
• How Dealers United’s Automotive SEO & SEM Strategies Drove 40% More Search Traffic for Rob Sight Ford
• Mastering SEO: The Ultimate Checklist for Car Dealers
• Another full-service case study made the list! Our 7th case study featured the SEO, SEM, Social results of St Albert Dodge in Alberta, Canada.
• The Culture Committee hosted an Emoji Game. The team had to guess the titles of movies based on the emojis describing the plot.

⭐️ 2024 By The Numbers: 10,196 Hubspot Tickets created & solved by our Support team! 

Welcome to the Team in Q2!

The more the merrier! We welcomed 12 more team members in Q2!

• Welcome to the team: Stuart Hardy, Farzad Jafari, Mallory Sackey, Xavier Miles, Cameron Smith, Matt Hilend, Ashley Rogers, Ashton Day, Nick Mitchum, Crystal Kulpa, David Dreier, & Clyde Jenkins! 
  

July

• Our eighth case study revealed Power Ford’s transformation after implementing Meta’s Conversions API Integration.
• We joined forces with Meta for an epic webinar: “Maximizing Meta: AI, Ads, Reels, & More” 🤖
• 📱 Dealers looking to optimize their search game got a boost with our comprehensive SEM Checklist!
• The culture committee hosted a DU favorite, the “Remote Scavenger Hunt,” where the team found objects in their homes from a provided list in 5 minutes! 

August

• We published a new search-focused blog: “SEO Strategies for Car Dealerships: Boost Sales“
• Case Study #8 featured Rob Sight Ford’s Strategy on SEO and SEM. It included a Video Interview with Bobby Sight, where he claimed “Dealers United crushes the Search game. It is a night and day difference…”

September 

• To help dealers understand how their digital marketing is performing, we hosted a Webinar with digital dealer: DIY Search & Social Digital Audit For Car Dealers
• The Culture Committee got lost (in a good way!) in our virtual Corn Maze in Kumospace! 🌽
• Digital Dealer prep kicked into high gear with our first DU Sizzle Reel Video! 🎥

⭐️ 2024 By The Numbers: 2.9M vehicles were ingested by our proprietary platform that powers our inventory ads, with over 26.6M images!

Welcome to the Team in Q3!

We welcomed 18 more team members! We are happy to have each and every one of you on Team DU.

• Welcome to the team: Jesse Charchut, Chad King, Erin Carter, Brett Ponda, Jay Shindledecker, Joel Mosquera, Mandi Eddings, Rob Steinberg, Wendy Gill, Andi Plotts, Sydney Jones, Victoria Fistler, Jason Dinh, Jennifer York, Kyle Roberts, Morgan Trent, Brad Zerman, & Emily Leasure! 

October

• The biggest event of our Marketing team’s year was the Digital Dealer conference and Expo in Las Vegas! This was our first time exhibiting in a long time, and it was so fun to set up our booth and network with dealers!
• We also co-hosted a session on the keynote stage with TikTok, “TikTok Masterclass for Car Dealers.” Watch the TikTok Masterclass recording here!
• To kick off the week, we held a party at Topgolf where a hundred dealers competed for $2,500 custom golf clubs. Congrats to the winners!

• This month’s webinar was: Sushi, Robots, Other SEO Strategies. Think our webinar title is weird? The SEO strategies we’ve seen dealers use are even weirder…
• More BLOGS coming up…
• How to Audit Your Dealership’s Search & Social Digital Marketing: The Complete DIY Guide
• Boosting Online Sales with Google Vehicle Listing Ads: A Car Dealers Guide
• 3 additional Case Studies made the website:
• #9 Power Ford’s 365-Day Results | Quick Lane, Social Ads, and Cohesive Campaigns
• #10 Royal Chevrolet GMC Climbed Search Results With Automotive SEO
• #11 Heritage Chevrolet Benefits From 125% Boost In Organic Traffic Through Advanced Search Strategy With Dealers United
• Spookiest culture event of the year: the virtual Murder Mystery! The team gathered in character to try and catch the killer in this 90s themed music awards murder mystery!

November

• We published more BLOGS to continue to educate on search and social:
• Local SEO for Car Dealerships
• How Much ($$$) Should Car Dealers Spend on Facebook Ads?
• Case Study #12 featured dealers who are dominating the SRP!!!
• Power Ford Gains 51% Boost In Organic Traffic Through Advanced Search Strategy With Dealers United
• Power Ford Achieves 71% More Store Visits Through Strategic SEM Partnership With Dealers United
• During our webinar, “6 Tips to 2x Google Performance Max ROI,” we were able to answer a ton of dealer’s questions about Pmax LIVE. 
• The #TeamDU Culture Committee planned a company give back initiative by teaming up with Letters Against Isolation. LAI’s mission is to “Fight senior loneliness one letter at a time.” Our team created greeting cards that were sent to assisted living centers around the country! 

⭐️ 2024 By The Numbers: Shout out to our Creative Department who decreased Creative Ticket turnaround time by 66% (from Q1 to Q4) ⏰

December

• The team is gearing up for NADA Show 2025 in New Orleans! 🎭 Join us for:
• Expert-led “14-Point Digital Inspection” sessions (with a special gift waiting at our booth!)
• $5K -A- DAY NADA SWEEPSTAKES – Enter to win!
• An exclusive 2-day party on Bourbon Street with VIP balcony access
• An insightful NADA workshop by Justin Friend and Jay Healey on “17 Battle-Tested Social Ads“
• Party passes, prizes, and more all at Booth #7757!
• We hosted the webinar “7 Essential Tactics to Dominate Digital” based on our most impactful webinars and trending topics, you will find out the top search and social tactics to bring into the new year and beat your competition.
• Case studies #13 and #14 showcased more incredible dealer results… 
• How Serra Ford Buick GMC Achieved 47% Increase In Conversions QoQ Through Strategic SEM
• How Big West Quick Lane Achieved 73% Lead Growth Through Meta Ad
• The Culture Committee closed out 2024 with our beloved traditions: a virtual white elephant gift exchange and our fiercely competitive gingerbread house contest! 🎁 🏠

Wrapping Up 2024 – What A Blast!🚀

What a remarkable journey 2024 has been! From launching our full-service digital marketing solutions to welcoming 40 new team members, every milestone has strengthened our commitment to delivering exceptional results for our dealers. 

We’re filled with gratitude for our amazing dealer community, dedicated team members, and industry partners who made this transformative year possible. 

We’ve built a foundation that combines the power of search and social, assembled an incredible team, and delivered game-changing results for our partners. But this is just the start – we’re already gearing up to bring even more innovations, insights, and impact to the automotive industry in 2025.