Why Every Canadian Car Dealer Should Join the Dealer Success Network

For the last seven years, I have been following the various automotive social networks. The majority of them are on the Ning platform but there are a couple of strong exceptions. In many ways, they’re all the same other than the audiences. You can look at Automotive Digital Marketing and Dealer Elite, for example, and see that they have very similar content. However, if you dig into the people using each site, you’ll see that it’s a very diverse set of people. Both bring value to the industry despite having similarities. Different people. Different perspectives. They’re both necessary parts of the community.

There are Driving Sales and Dealer Refresh, a couple of trendsetters early on that chose to stay off the Ning network. They have their own distinct advantages as well. Driving Sales is a community that adds vendor ratings while Dealer Refresh has arguably the most robust forum in the industry. They, too, are extremely important to the automotive social networking spectrum.

One site that doesn’t get as much attention (yet) is the Dealer Success Network. Started by Michael Cirillo from Flex Dealer, it focuses on two things connecting industry professionals with each other to share best practices and focusing on the Canadian dealer body to give them their own home. Don’t misunderstand – this network is great regardless of which part of North America your dealership resides, but because it has a link to Canada, it’s important that Canadian dealers in particular join. The way that cars are sold north of the border can be different from how they’re sold south of it, so Dealer Success has the answer.

“The objective of the DSN is to bring actionable intel one step closer to dealers without them having to worry about a sales pitch,” Cirillo said. “Not only will dealers learn more about the latest digital marketing strategies, but they will have a greater understanding on where to get started implementing those strategies at the dealership level.”

As an active car dealer, you should be focused on all of the networks, but DSN is one that deserves some special Canadian attention. If we can share the NHL, we can share DSN as well!