Social Media Should Drive Shoppers to Dealer's Website. Period.

There are several benefits to having a strong social media presence. It's great for branding. It gives you a two-way communication avenue with customers. The public relations component can be very powerful.

All of these are secondary. Don't get me wrong; I'm definitely not suggesting that there's no value in these important components. However, the real juice with social media comes in the form of hyper-targeting and driving those shoppers to your website in order to sell them a vehicle.

That's the point, right? We might love to get involved in the community or be a resource that localizes the latest OEM news, but at the end of the day we're here to sell more cars. That's why it's so very important for dealers to take advantage of the targeting and traffic-driving capabilities of sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Again, before anyone misquotes me, I'm not suggesting that you should abandon your page and let dark posts rule your social media budget. However, if you're spending $1000 a month on keeping your social media presence strong, you should be spending at least $2000 to drive shoppers to your website. At under $2 a click, it's a no-brainer. You're probably spending $4 per click or more through search. Why wouldn't you send the same buyers for less on social?

The shopper-driving abilities of social media are so powerful, we confidently offer a guarantee. Don't be one who starts late. Eventually, most dealers will be doing it. Why not get a head start?

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Comment by Philip Zelinger on November 20, 2014 at 9:23pm: Hi JD,

I agree that monetizing Social Media is indeed a challenge and using it to drive "friends" to your website is a proven method to convert engagements to sales or service appointments. However, next generation apps allow customers to engage in conversations within Facebook that seamlessly link to conversion tools that communicate in real time to established sales and service processes at the dealership within their CRM and DMS. The result is that the customer can get all of the information they need to make a buying or service decision without ever leaving the warm and friendly environment of their Facebook Page while the dealership's staff can provide relevant transparent information without having to monitor their Facebook page since the "hand raiser" is processed look any other lead source.

Once again, technology has recognized the need to address consumer centric shopping preferences while providing efficient scalable sales and service processes for the dealer. Most shoppers habits include checking thier Facebook pages before, during and after their shopping or service needs as part of daily conversations with friends. As long as the dealer is considerd a friend when the time is right they will most certainly resource them for information to purchase their next vehicle. After all, what are friends for!