Comment

Comment by Steve Duff on September 27, 2012 at 6:39pm

Something the naysayer of the naysayers might be missing is the actual questions posed and the answers are obvious:

 

Would they go out of business?  (no)

Would business fall off 50%? (no)

Would anybody notice? (no, not immediately anyway. over time, months or years, maybe but probably not)

 

 

 

stions posed:

Comment by Candace Lawley on September 27, 2012 at 5:44pm

I completely agree with you, Paul. Unfortunately, a lot of dealers are still very old school and don't see the importance of building a brand in addition to selling cars. The consumer is changing, the way people shop is changing, and 10 years from now, anyone who hasn't taken the time to invest in a digital strategy that includes social will be at a severe disadvantage. 

Comment by Paul Barrett on September 27, 2012 at 5:31pm

I think that everyone looks at this wrong.  I wonder if the neigh sayers would agree with these statements.  Also remember in any business nothing replaces good people.  These are only additions to your business

1. Loyal or repeat customers save advertising dollars and those deals tend to have a higher gross.

#1 everyone knows that this is 100% true.  Customers who love you sing your praise and create more business. Buyers interact differently now, and Social media helps engage them. 

2  Creating a well known Brand will make customers think or you before your competitors

#2 Give people a chance to check you out online see what youre all about, the culture of your store and people. If you can make an impact on them you can set yourself apart from competition.(Aside from the race to the bottom to gut out a new car deal or outspend in advertising)

3. Creating a Brand that customers know and love will give you repeat customers saving you advertising dollars

#3 Social media is part of branding and if you do it well can contribute to your repeat and referral business by keeping your customer engaged.  Youll never get that many times to touch that customer otherwise.  Dont you want to be the one Mr/Mrs Customer thinks of when he or she decides to buy a new car?

 

4  People buy from who they like.

#4 Social Media gives you a chance to show complete strangers why they should like you, what you do better and how choosing your store is the best choice for them.  

If you agree with all of these statements. Then you should be involved with social media.  

Social Media is not a replacement of your marketing strategies, merely a low cost supplement to engage people. 

Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on September 27, 2012 at 4:46pm

Number one in used car sales in Michigan, month in and month out is not on social.... any where....Website is outdated ...."With over 8500 cars and trucks sold in 2009 and 6000 so far in 2010...." If you Google them you would see there are more negative reviews than good ones....AutoTrader carried the day for them last I knew....buys good inventory & puts it on the money and employs talented sales people.....by all of today's popular "vendor, trainer, presenters" measurements they fail at everything but they ain't buying it and remain number one and have been for years. They are not the exception...there are many just like them. There is plenty of evidence that the world does not start or stop with social.

Comment by Adam Denault on September 27, 2012 at 3:38pm

I think the world would stop spinning around that dealership....the walls would certainly come crashing in. 

While I think social media is important for connecting to your clients and potential clients, it is not necessarily a place to sell cars.  Hope this helps.

Comment by Mr. Natural on September 27, 2012 at 3:33pm

Oh yea...nobody would notice!

Comment by Mr. Natural on September 27, 2012 at 3:31pm

At the risk of tooting my own horn, I recently spent 2.5 years running the most successful Kia Internet department in it's region. The numbers are there, and they're great. I recently left that group, and moved to an even bigger one in the Quad Cities. I'm well paid, people listen to me, and I got it goin' on.

I have NEVER used Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, or any of that garbage. I don't have the time or personnel to do it. The importance of these sites is incredibly over rated. I have no plans to start using them. There are a million things I would like to implement that I think will have much more affect on my bottom line.

S.E.O. is an incredible load of crap. Trust me, if you need S.E.O., your problems run much deeper than higher placement in searches is ever gonna' help with.

Just like it's always been, best practices, and effort are going to do more for you than any paid service promising better results.

If you want better search results try things like:

• Quicker response times.
• Personalized email responses.
• Customer engagement.
• More phone calls.
• Try something new.
• Be original.
• Watch what others are doing, try something different.
• Have the heart to serve.
• Be transparent.
• Treat prospects with dignity and respect.
• Remember effort equals results.
• Faithfully use your CRM, and make sure your people write good notes.
• Perhaps just a tad of organic reputation management.

The jury is still out on the proper protocol for an automotive internet department. Processes will vary widely between stores, brands, customer demographics. Each store will have it's own correct process.

If you think your business is going to suffer because you quit with the Facebook, Twitter, Plus, and the others, then you have problems larger than those things could ever have helped with.  And S.E.O... Again, if you think you need S.E.O. that bad, you better spend some time looking for your real problems, 'cause SEO 'aint gonna' fix it!

Our automotive sales world is full of great salespersons who would love to sell us on how much we need all this stuff. What we truly need is hard work, dedication, heart to serve, effort, sincerity, honesty, and individuality.

Comment by Mathew Koenig on September 27, 2012 at 3:26pm

Mark, I love that you brought these questions up. I know there are some folks who have used Facebook to sell a car, or Twitter to do some crowdsourcing (we do it for our clients) but I'll say to you the same thing I tell anyone who asks us to manage their social presence.

My humble opinion is this: A dealer should be on the major social networks because some of their customers prefer to communicate that way. If you're on the major sites, you can meet the customer where they like to connect. There are some promotional benefits like contests etc., but will creating a facebook page or Google+ page sell you 20 more cars next month...probably not.

I personally believe that a business should have a full collection of social sites and keep them up to date with Hootsuite (it's free), if for nothing else, so that they can dominate page 1 of Google if someone searches for their business specifically. There's nothing more embarrassing than having someone type your dealership name in and having your competition take up 9 of the 10 links on page 1 of Google. 

Let's not forget, consumers are on Social networks because they want to 'socialize' with people they care about and frankly, they don't care about being buddies with us car guys & gals (for the most part) so if we're not conscious of HOW we use social networking sites, we can actually turn people off and do more damage than good.

Thanks for asking the question Mark, it's a good one :)

Comment by Candace Lawley on September 27, 2012 at 3:25pm

Immediately, there wouldn't be much of an effect. Sure, some of your most engaged customers would notice that you're gone, and the person(s) handling social media for the dealership would be out of a job (!) but other than that, you'd not likely see any dramatic immediate effects. You'd probably see a slight dip in website traffic as social sites are a notable referrer (for people who do social well). Additionally, if your competition remained and continued to make a presence as an authoritative member of your community, you'd lose out on opportunities. It would be the same as if you suddenly removed yourself from the online review sites - potential customers will be exposed to your competition, but not you.

In addition, over a longer span of time, you would likely see a difference in your SERP rankings. While social signals are not directly related to rankings, there certainly is a correlation between a strong social presence and rankings. IMO, the importance of social signals will continue to grow as the algorithms evolve and as search results become more personalized. 

Finally, if your SEO strategy includes creating quality content, you'd better be using social sites to expose people to that content. Even if likes, tweets, and shares have zero effect on rankings, likes, tweets, and shares place your content in front of a much larger audience than it would be on its own.

Comment by Bob MacMinn on September 27, 2012 at 3:12pm

Although I am not a dealer, I will give some perspective. Social Media (Facebook for example) is a great tool if you want to stay in constant contact with your customers. This would apper to work well if you business was "daily use" or "consumable". Something you buy on a regular basis. In that case, being alerted by email etc, you would want. I want to see the latest deals on clothing or shoes, what's on sale at the grocery store. 

An auto is most definitely not a "consumable". You buy 1 every 3 - 5 years, or if your like me every 10 years. With the un-digestible amount of information provided to the consumer market today, getting twitter or facebook emails and/or feeds about a car sale would become untenable. Even if you were providing feeds about a sale on services, which most people have done every 3 - 6 months, the amount of information gets to be overwhelming. 

Perhaps the add on question to the social media marketing question is, of all the customers that have "friended" a dealership, how many have "un-friend-ed" (not sure that common phase is even a word yet!) that dealership.

So given that it cost nothing, does it hurt you to do it? 

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