In this concise YouTube segment, Ed Weeks Jr., founder of HV Social Media, shares his personal experience as an active car buyer in the Hudson Valley and uses it to illustrate why local car dealers' marketing is ineffective. After submitting multiple inquiries for used vehicles, he received virtually no direct follow‑up from dealers, only generic retargeted ads from third‑party sites like thecars.com and cargurus.com. He references Mark Stevens' book Your Marketing Sucks to frame his criticism, pointing out that dealers rely on flashy TV commercials but fail to engage real, ready‑to‑buy customers. Weeks emphasizes a systemic lack of accountability in lead follow‑up, noting that he has terminated clients who generate leads but do not act on them. He urges dealers to pause their current strategies and partner with a marketing service that holds them accountable for converting active buyers into sales.
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Hey everybody, Ed Weeks Jr. here, the founder of HV Social Media. Today, I put together this quick segment for one reason, and I want to tell you why your marketing sucks. Today, Hudson Valley car dealers. I am in the process— me, an active buyer— in the process of researching a number of different vehicles that I want to purchase. Used car. Going online, Googling, finding a whole bunch of different car options in the Hudson Valley, good deals that I can utilize for my business needs. Active buyer. Put in my information to check to see if the inventory is still available, and no one is getting back to me. No one is even sending me an email to tell me that, hey, thanks so much for, uh, stopping by and checking out to see if this inventory is available, we'll give you a call back. I haven't gotten, well, that's not true, I got one of those emails out of the dozens of inquiries that I've had, one of those emails. I will tell you the one thing that I am getting, I'm getting a whole bunch of retargeted advertising from thecars.com and the cargurus.com, all of that is showing up on Facebook and Instagram, but no one is getting to the active buyer. So today, yes, I am reading the book by Mark Stevens called Your Marketing Sucks, and I'm calling out Hudson Valley auto dealers, your marketing sucks. When you do these great commercials that you put on TV of some car that's driving through, what is the new one? There's a new one from, you're a little bit country, you're a little bit rock and roll, Chevy commercial. I'm not a little bit of country, I'm not a little bit of rock and roll, I just want somebody, I wanna buy a damn used car, and you can't find an active buyer because your marketing sucks. So that's all I have for you today. You know a car dealer in the area who's utilizing one of these services? Look, they're doing, Their job. They're getting you an active buyer at your doorstep. The bottom line is they're failing you because they're not holding you accountable. Me, I have gotten rid of and fired clients because we were providing so many leads and they were doing zero follow-up from an active lead on their desk. Somebody we are emailing, someone we are actively getting onto their appointment calendar, and they are not following up with them. Gotta go. Why? Because we are focused 1,000% on driving revenue. You have an active buyer right here looking at cars and no one is following up with me. Again, your marketing sucks, your marketing team sucks. You need to hit pause, work with somebody who's gonna hold you accountable. Peace.
