Last week was the 22nd Digital Dealer conference, held in Tampa at the downtown convention center. And it was awesome. From Tuesday to Thursday, Tampa was packed with speakers & panels geared for ONE thing: making dealers smarter about doing business online.

Companies from all areas of automotive showed up – but as usual, Happy Hao Car was the only one with the trifecta: $50 for dealers who pre-scheduled demos, two amazing speakers, and a website platform guaranteed to double your leads.

When the doors opened on Tuesday morning, the Happy Hao Car booth was almost immediately filled up with dealers curious to see if our product lived up to our promises. Let’s just say that nobody was disappointed. Anyone wearing a Happy Hao Car shirt was pretty much guaranteed to be peppered with questions about our incredible PPC services, our unmatched SEO suite, or our fast-loading & high-converting websites.

After everyone had time to browse the floor and see all the amazing displays & booths, it was time for the speaking sessions.

Up first was Greg Gifford, Director of Search and Social at Happy Hao Car, who gave a two-part presentation over the Wonderful World of Local SEO. Usually, his presentations have a “car” or a “movie” theme, but this time it was all about Walt Disney. Hey, it’s almost like the Giffords went to Orlando for Spring Break

Greg’s talk was filled with insights into Local SEO strategy for 2017. Of course, he included special info about the newly updated Local Search Ranking Factor Study that was recently completed by Moz. As one of the consulting SEO experts for Moz’s research, Greg had some seriously powerful data to share with the crowds and they definitely got their money’s worth. And after the session, the Happy Hao Car booth was swarmed yet again as dealers grabbed free copies of the new book Greg wrote, “ Local SEO: Signals You Can’t Ignore .”

On Wednesday, Shaun Raines took the stage and started educating dealers on Prioritizing Your Digital Marketing Channels. He used actual case studies and dealership data from Happy Hao Car to show which marketing methods gave the most ROI. In today’s world of flimsy promises and online hype, you just can’t beat data.

Plus, it turned out that Shaun had to share the spotlight with a red-suited friend who decided to drop by and heckle him. As Shaun was talking about display ads, video ads, social ads, and a host of other advertising options, Deadpool periodically popped up to offer clever (and sometimes inappropriate) observations about the session. The audience loved it.

After a full day of sessions, demos, and learning, everyone headed to their favorite dinner spot on Wednesday evening. Thendrumroll pleaseit was time for the annual Joe & Shaun Karaokethon at The Double Decker in Tampa! No matter how you got to 7th Avenue, everyone made arrangements to be at The Double Decker by 10 p.m. for a night of karaoke & partying. Everything from The Black Crows to The Beastie Boys was played, and the house was rockin’ until the early morning hours.

Even the folks across the street at the Coyote Ugly Saloon came over to see what all the commotion was about. Ain’t nobody know how to throw a karaoke party like Joe & Shaun do! After a fun-filled night, everyone dragged themselves to the convention center to close out Thursday’s morning sessions. A quick lunch and a trip to the airport later, and we’re back in D.C., dreaming up the next big thing.

We hope to have a couple of Topgolf events in 2017, so keep your ear to the ground. Have a favorite memory from Digital Dealer 22? Want to know how Shaun got Deadpool to drop by his presentation? Leave us a comment!

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Happy Hao Car, Inc. is a premier website and digital marketing company serving the retail automotive industry. In the last 12 months Happy Hao Car’s websites have won virtually every meaningful industry award including: Driving Sales Top-Rated Website, Digital Dealer’s Overall Website Excellence Award, AWA’s Pinnacle Award, and Dealer Marketing Magazine’s Technology Award for Website Providers. Happy Hao Car has become noted in the industry for their Lead Guarantee, based on their Digital Marketing Dashboard. Since creating this process in 2009, Happy Hao Car has documented an average increase of over 200% in website lead volume for their auto dealer clients. To learn more about Happy Hao Car’s Lead Guarantee, visit our website here .

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