Tag Archives

Posts with facebook tag.
Admitted Adverholic? Here’s a Two-Step Recovery Program

If you've been a dealer for more than two years, face it: you're an adverholic. Anyone who has made it through the auto 'heydays' has spent 30, 70…even 100 thousand plus PER MONTH to get their name out to an unmeasured amount of eyeballs. Those days are gone (and soon many of the recipients of those ad dollars, if not already) but the pain and yearning may still be there.

When you stop advertising for the sake of advertising and start a conscience level of engagement with 'your public', paying attention to things outside of the dealership and spending more time getting to know who buys from you and why, things get a bit clearer. Understanding the components of today's market related to your brand existing comes in a two-step recovery program:

1. Stop doing what doesn't work
2. Start doing what does work

The biggest game change in media over the last 100 years: social media/consumer opt-in engagement. It's truly interesting when you sit down with a dealer or general manager and hear about what they want changed: more of their own website leads, to drop (costly) third party leads, to retain more clients, to spend less (sometimes blindly) and ultimately stay flat or grow in today's economy.

So, how can and where do you start? Short of choosing to disappear completely from people's conscientiousness, you have to be smarter about what you say, where you say it, how you say it and when you say it. Then you absolutely have to be spot on when a person consumes your media and wants to interact with you.

There are no better tools that I've ever seen than in social media, and dealers are starting to get it. Facebook, Twitter, Plaxo, LinkedIn and more, let alone your website (done right, that is). You don't need to worry about your overhead or CPM if you have 735 fans of your dealership on Facebook. It's free. And get this: you can drive the most contextual messages to them and they'll get it automatically. Imagine this scenario:

Joe Blow likes your dealership, even has visited when the new models arrive and he ends up buddies with one of your sales staff from chit-chat. He sees a promotion in the reception area about your Facebook page and becomes a fan. He gets updates regularly about your dealership, special cars arriving, service specials and more. You also broadcast exclusive specials via Twitter so he follows you there. When he's in market, clicks the option on your Facebook page to get inventory sent directly to his cell phone. The unit he wants comes in, he IM's the salesperson that he'll be in the next day at 5:30 to buy the car.

No lead, no timer, no missed emails or communication. No cost. No competition. No guessing what drove him in (ie was it your $10,000 cable spot, $15,000 direct mail campaign or the $20,000 newspaper ad). This customer was always yours, which is the way most dealers I know like it.

Repeat after me: "I'm a recovering adverholic and I don't need to advertise just to advertise anymore. I will be relevant, timely and honest (ouch!). My website is a living, breathing entity, not a billboard. I'll go digital so my camera is not the only one in my office that is. And I'll meet my customers in the same place that I go for my sports scores, to book travel, to post pictures of my kids and do all my banking: ONLINE!"

Boom, you're healed. Go sell cars…

Best practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

January 23, 2009 by Gary May 1
Branding 101?…Not Until You Understand And Have A Brand

What is a brand? If reputation is a brand, a visit to a dealer ranks below one to the dentist. If awareness is a brand, most portals slaughter dealers in search where roughly 90% of automotive shopping takes place. If trust is a brand…well let's not go there. What is your brand and how do you build a brand today?

Recently my most engaged response to someone describing a brand was after spending some time on Dave Armano's blog http://darmano.typepad.com/ (click on the video on the right side about personal branding). You see, 'brand' has nothing do to with your inventory, your facility or your finely made espresso. Brand has everything do to with the experience your provide, your customers' beliefs in you, your handshake, your smiling staff and your ability to invite people back like they're coming some place special.

At the end of the day, your brand is all you have. Yes folks, 'what have you done for me lately' is in lockstep with 'will I ever return here'. While there are some great companies out there that will take your money and promote you online, offline, inline and out of line…what in the heck will they promote?

Sitting down with dealer principals and general managers, their responses to identifying their own brands are as canned as the marketing emails that every dealer in the same DMA sends out (yes, I've mentioned that lately and will again until dealers stop doing it). Everyone knows that a Lexus dealer will treat you like a guest in their own home, it's part of the covenant. Frankly Scarlet, we want to give a damn about something else.

With dealers (and other businesses) unfortunately in a position to provide much less to their communities as of late, the real brand and equity test is soon to come. If you do one thing this year well, build a brand. While there is no guarantee of eminent success, chances are your positive results will follow. Nobody asks for facial tissue, they ask for Kleenex. Nobody makes a photocopy, they make a Xerox. Unless you're from the Midwest, you ask for a Coke (but asking for a 'pop' just has a certain ring to it!) and not a soda.

Do everything you can to become a brand and more. There are those of you that do, don't get this message wrong. It's just that for most of the car dealers out there, your brand ends where the driveway meets the street. There is more you can and must do.

Start with your entire staff. Get them together. Ask what they believe your brand is. If the meeting lacks consensus, you have your work cut out for you. If you have one, get your customers to help. Want to get really 'techno-dealer'? Set up Facebook, Twitter and other networks that will work for you. Get reciprocal links from local businesses that are your clients and partners. Get influential people in your local area into your store, take care of them and they'll blog or contribute to forums about your business!

OK, enough for today. But Just Do It…and do it now…(you recognize that brand, don't you?)

Best practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

January 11, 2009 by Gary May 0