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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — More and more dealers are utilizing leads beyond just looking at them as potential buyers of used or new vehicles. In fact, an AutoUSA study released Wednesday found that almost half (47.6 percent) share service marketing messages with these potential prospects.

"In the past, dealers may have believed that the value of a sales opportunity was only realized if that customer purchased a vehicle," explained Phil Dupree, the president of AutoUSA.

"Now, in an era when extracting as much value as possible from every facet of the business is imperative, dealers are realizing the value of the information that each customer provides," he continued. "They integrate their sales prospect information into their marketing database and, more importantly, a comprehensive marketing strategy."

This was just one of the findings in the survey performed in April and May. Filling out the survey were various dealership employees throughout the U.S., a group that was comprised by owners, general managers, BDC managers, marketing managers, Internet managers and sales managers.

Looking at the survey results in more detail, 71.7 percent of respondents believed that value is added to their brand when the name is found on "numerous" third-party Web sites during consumers' searches price quotes from local dealers.

Meanwhile, the number of respondents whose stores had a Facebook page was at 77.6 percent. 

A majority (53.8 percent) said their stores are on Twitter.

That said, even though most of these dealerships utilize consumer-focused social networking, they were not as inclined to use online dealership communities to compare notes with their peers. In fact, 53.8 percent of respondents said they don't utilize these avenues.

Continuing on, the survey also asked respondents if their respective stores would be inclined to utilize an online reverse auction system (where they and other dealers would vie for one customer's sale, with the lowest price winning). Almost half (49 percent) said they would not use this, 18.6 percent said they would and 32.4 percent said "I don't know."

Next up, AutoUSA discovered that almost three-fifths (57.9 percent) did not find that leads would have more value if they were separated by category.

Also, the study found that in the midst of the market's recovery, "dealers seem more focused on maximizing the value they get from their current marketing and technology budgets rather than expanding it aggressively."

Specifically, the majority (55.6 percent) have no plans in the next six months for investing heavily in technology.

Furthermore, at 80.7 percent of the stores, the person who heads up new-vehicle leads also is in charge of used-vehicle leads. AutoUSA said this shows that "the appetite for efficiency still outweighs the appetite for additional substantial investments."