BURLINGTON, Vt., June 15 /PRNewswire/ -- According to Dennis Gailbraith, senior director of online marketing solutions at J.D. Power & Associates, 67 percent of new-vehicle buyers are using the Internet to make car-buying decisions. Research demonstrates that today's buyers will invest considerable time online before they ever approach a dealership.

While these statistics certainly aren't surprises, it's also obvious why dealerships are exploring marketing advantages inherent in technology to stay in step with today's savvy consumers.

For the past three years, a leading automotive technology marketing company, Dealer.com, has provided a proprietary search engine marketing program called Dominator designed to help dealerships reach consumers less expensively and more effectively.

Dealer.com's Dominator has driven the cost per lead in many instances to less than $8. But the national average for Dominator is under $11 per contact. When factored over thousands of annual leads, up to fifty-percent savings to dealerships is substantial.

But the cost value isn't the only advantage of Dominator. The program also drastically increases efficiency.

Dominator constantly monitors more than 8,000 key words in all major search engines and makes appropriate updates every 30 minutes around the clock to ensure that Dealer.com subscribers are most prominently found by online customers. The entire process is explained in a simple and quick video found at http://dealer.com/why_dominator.htm.

"No other web solutions provider can offer dealers an on-line marketing process as productive as Dominator," says Mike Lane, Dealer.com's chief operating officer. "Our system actually measures performance on each key word. Better yet, it generates unique leads, thus the dealer's closing rate is vastly increased when compared to third-party lead-providers or conventional advertising.

"Dominator also has intricate safeguards built in to automatically protect our subscribers from hackers or anyone who would attempt to misuse the process."

That's good news for dealers like Curry Acura in Scarsdale, NY. GM Michael Miele hired Dealer.com last year to employ the Dominator's search engine marketing technology for his dealership.

"Our store generated an additional 190 leads in the first month with only $1,500 of search engine market advertising," he said. "At less than $8 a piece to produce a highly-qualified lead, I'd call Dominator a doubly strong value.

"We can track every dollar spent and how that translates to each related call and e-mail lead from the Dominator search engine ads. Dominator allows us to know precisely what results we're getting, something we can't accurately measure from TV, radio or print advertising," added Miele.

For a small independent dealer like John Eleftherakis, of John's Auto Sales in Somerville, MA, the cost-effectiveness and high efficiency of on-line marketing is unbeatable. He employed Dealer.com five years ago to develop and build his dealership's custom website. He cites that single decision as the turning-point in his profitability.

"Our store had a 20-percent increase in sales the first year, and our leads more than doubled," Eleftherakis said. "Dealer.com knows our business inside-out and created a website that's easy for consumers to navigate, while being specifically tailored to meet the needs of our dealership."

Dealer.com offers the only fully integrated website solution that includes Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and Lead Management. Services include award-winning automotive dealer website development, user-friendly lead management tools, and the most proven local search engine advertising solutions available.

For more information about Dealer.com, visit http://www.dealer.com/ or call 888.270.3439 or info@dealer.com.

CONTACT: Ken Lees of Dealer.com, +1-888-270-3439; or Sean Brickell or
Cathy Kurchinski for Dealer.com, +1-800-333-6397

Web site: http://www.dealer.com/