The all elusive holy grail of marketing is within our grasp but most fail to truly understand its power to both create and destroy. It is both the bringer of life and of death but if used correctly can push your sales to new heights… but if only.

Marketers have been searching, for as long as advertising has been around, for bigger and better ways to engage their audience. If it’s an ad on billboard, a letter in the mail or a commercial on TV marketers are always thinking in terms of, “How can I engage my audience?”

Most of you reading this will know exactly what I’m referring to but before we get deeper into that it’s important to know why a shift in mindset is occurring, because its in the knowing that we truly transcend ourselves and are in a better position to truly grasp, absorb and use this wonderful new(er?) marketing medium.

First, it’s important to know that we are social creatures, we aren’t designed to be alone, we have a deep rooted desire to be around others, we flourish on a team and being alone scares us. We want, no need, the presence of others to feel safe, we thrive on both our communication and our connections, in fact many of us define who are by who we are connected to.

Second, it’s equally as important to know that we are working longer hours than we have worked before, we are spending more time away from our connections, and as such we are beginning to feel isolated and alone as we start to feel like we don’t belong. Our need to be connected with other people has turned into a burning desire to communicate with one another and to be social at all costs. In fact a quick search on Google and you can find story after story of people that lost their jobs because of their time spent on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace or any other number of social networks. The need is powerful.

What Does All This Mean?

It means that we are in the perfect place, at the perfect time to be able to connect with and engage our audience as never before. We have tools at our disposal, FREE tools at that, tools that allow us the opportunity to engage and connect! That’s not even the amazing part, the amazing part is the fact that the people using these tools, your future customers, want you to engage them, they are starving for engagement and if approached with the right RELATIONSHIP mindset then you have a formula for success.

Relationship Marketing is all about getting your audience to engage you; it’s all about humanizing the dealership and building lasting, influential relationships. Before, you could slap an ad on the side of a bus, record a killer radio spot, or write an impressive print ad but you ALWAYS lacked the ability to truly engage your audience. With the onset of social networks you have a vast space full of people that are looking for connections, they are asking you to engage them, but be careful you can do more harm than good if you attack to quickly use these spaces to promote. Always, always, always remember that the less you pitch the more you sell.

Social networks can and will help your dealership identify your customers and engage them almost instantaneously, allowing you the opportunity to better meet the needs and lifestyle of your customers. That’s the ONLY way to use social networks, if used any other way than in the way that they were intended to be used then you will succumb to the business destroying side of Relationship Marketing.

Asuthosh Nair of GetIT Comm said it well when he said, “It’s always about the customer and not the company’s product or service. So make sure that you understand your customer’s needs, and how to cater to them and respond with as much ‘human touch’ as possible.”

As my business partner Rob Hagen is fond of saying, “It’s not natural for people to want to befriend an auto dealership.”

Both of them are talking about the same thing; it’s much more important to engage on the human level, person to person, than it is to push your product in front of as many people as possible. I like to explain it like this:

Think about all of your friends and family, do you have to tell them every single day that you are in the car business and that if they are ever in the market that they should come to you? Of course you don’t! And the reason you don’t is because you know that due to the relationship you have with them that they will come see you when the time comes. The same is true of Relationship Marketing, spend more time humanizing yourself than you do pitching yourself. In fact the power of social media is using it to influence OTHERS to pitch for you. Build it (relationships) and they (customers) will come.