It's Thursday afternoon, which means that Digital Dealer 18 has come to a close and all of my automotive colleagues are either home or on the way.
While I'll leave specific points and content to a future post, I'd just like to thank some people for making this a really amazing experience:
- Speakers: Over these last 3 days I picked up more than my fair share of insights. While I consider myself to be pretty adept at digital marketing, there were several sessions that absolutely blew me away, suggesting new concepts that I had never considered.
- Vendors: This huge THANK YOU goes out to the vendors that have a true passion for their brand and belief in the industry. I had dozens of conversations with incredible people that provide services for dealers and care about how we as an industry move forward. These are vendors that don't need a flashy car or a painted woman to prove that they know and care about moving this world forward.
- Colleagues: Once (or twice) a year it is great to get away from the store and get a reminder that "we're not crazy" and that common problems exist in every dealership. A huge thank you goes out to the dozens of other dealers and marketing professionals that I had the pleasure of chatting with this week. By just making the effort to learn and grow, dealers in attendance represented the very best the industry has to offer and I appreciate the opportunity to learn from all of them.
As we all arrive home we have the challenge of getting back into the normal routine while bearing the obligation to implement the things we learned into our businesses. Thank you to everyone who made this an amazing trip.