Is The Wholesale Sales Channel A Dead End?

The parts and accessories industry is built around the manufacturer-distributor-jobber/retailer paradigm. And while there are lots of reasons to love the wholesale side of the parts and accessories business, there’s also a problem with wholesale: Direct to consumer (D2C) brands are where all the growth is. Direct to consumer brands have seen double digit annual…

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How Are You Testing Your Marketing Message?

A customer asks “Why should I buy your X instead of one from your competitor?” What do you say? And, importantly, how do you know that your response is effective? Experienced salespeople and marketers understand the importance of messaging – how you explain what it is that your product does better than every other product.…

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How To Grow Your Auto Parts Email Marketing List

In case you haven’t heard, email marketing is the tops. Some used to argue that social media would take its’ place, but the numbers don’t lie. According to Kissmetrics: “…email has nearly three times as many user accounts as Facebook and Twitter combined…” “every web search made on every search engine every day equals just…

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Why Brand Name Monitoring Is So Important – And How To Do It

Brand Monitoring Important - Marketing

Monitoring mentions of your company’s brand name is one of the “little things” that can make a big difference. The benefits of brand name monitoring are considerable: You can diffuse upset customers before they go on an “Internet review rampage” You can leverage recent press mentions You can gain insights into your branding With an…

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Choosing A Domain Name For Your New Parts Ecommerce Site

Choosing a Domain Name

Choosing a domain name for a new parts ecommerce website can be a challenge. There are a million possibilities, and no clear or obvious guidelines. Our goal with this post is to provide a framework that will help you narrow down the name of your new auto parts ecommerce website.

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Five Simple Ecommerce Site Branding Tactics

The Starbucks brand is strong

The word “branding” means different things to different people, largely based on what industry they work in and their job title. To some, branding is advertising without a clear and immediate transactional goal. To others, it’s giving all your products clever names, just as Starbucks calls a large coffee a “venti” rather than a large.…

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Is it Authentic or Does It Hurt The Brand?

Chevy technology and stuff tweet

A lot of marketing and advertising efforts struggle to be authentic, which is to say that a lot of advertising and marketing seems fake, blatantly self promotional, and/or too “slick” to be taken seriously. Consumers see the ad or the content, they judge it to be lacking authenticity, and then they reject it. Marketing fail.…

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