Automotive advertising agencies are being challenged to deliver more for less to maintain profitability for their auto dealer clients who must reduce their automotive advertising budgets and staff in synch with reduced sales volume and profit per unit. Working for referrals, contacting spheres of influence and old fashion networking has always been part of any well orchestrated sales program but unfortunately it has always relied on individual efforts with limited resources and/or sporadic dealership processes that were more re-active than active and consistant in nature.
The Internet Super Highway has opened several new lanes to leverage the power of the people at a dealership with word of mouth optimization, (W.O.M.O.), now available to supplement the more recognized search engine optimization, (S.E.O.) , that has become the organic marketing tool of today; but tomorrow -- not so much!
Monetizing social media is now possible with new marketing platforms like
ronsmap,
DealerMouth,
SiSTeR Technologies , and too many others to list. ronsmap relies on viral marketing applications like their vBack to push "Ask-A-Friend / Tell-A-Friend" messages into social media like Face Book. DealerMouth allows a dealer to host, manage and monitor individual websites for their sales people to market to their extended online spheres of influence and SiSTeR Technologies places a dealer's inventory in fully interactive videos -- with human voice -- on an integrated link inside of Face Book to offer to online friends in an un-obtrusive manner vs. trying to post their inventory individualy --- which will not be received well by the community by the way!
I know what I know as far as the tools and technologies that are available today to put my auto dealer clients staff to work to sell more cars and service with less hard advertising dollars and with a quantifiable R.O.I. but I am anxious to listen and learn from my friends on DealerElite to find some new solutions. I would be happy to expand on the few vendor clients that I just referenced and I will show you mine of you show me yours!
After all, what are friends -- and DealerElite -- for!