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Posts with influence tag.
A Blue/Black Dress. A White/Gold Dress. A Car Sold? Whatever…

Expose your business. Better yet, expose yourself!!

 

It’s not about who bares it all. No, the game is about who gets the exposure at the right time. And most of the time, we perform poorly.

 

Marketers have been talking for decades about exposure, impressions, brand recall and market share. And while nobody (at least here) needs to be convinced that exposure should be primarily online, we’ve once again been shown that the conversation shouldn’t be about advertising.  Yes folks, exposure leads to conversation. All kinds of exposure… 😉

 

So what does the color of a dress have to do with car sales? Both a whole lot, and absolutely nothing. Within a short while of the “dress” explosion last week, automotive b-to-b social media was abuzz with puns,  memes and conversations.  Some of those actually made it to the retail channel. No OEM or retailer had an “Oreo” moment due to what color a dress was. And it was all an experiment anyway.

 

Marketers are being shown up, at an alarming rate, by the media of individuals. And we are still concerned with the “right” newspaper ad for the weekend? Millions of people joined an online conversation about screen resolution and perception, yet nobody sold a car from it.

 

And there could have been some massive fun, too. “Buy a new (fill in car brand) and receive a (fill in department store) gift certificate toward any color dress you want” could have shown up on websites, email blasts and social media within minutes. No, it was all about the weekend ad, which gorilla looks good on the roof, or what new incentives will be, or pouring over month-end reports, instead of selling more cars through created connections.

 

What’s more disarming than making someone laugh? What’s more unexpected than having someone think they just had the least “automotive” experience they’ve ever had?

 

Exactly how to make a popular culture phenomenon part of your marketing is not the point here, realizing that you have the opportunity to capitalize on more of these types of occurrences is.  Ad agencies and media companies aren’t the ones who do this on the fly. We are.

 

Salespeople (and managers) are so focused on the “script”, the “road to the sale”, the “processes” and the such, we take so much of the human element out of making car buying fun.. 2009 was the first time we had a client sell a car specifically (and nearly solely) through social media. Stop thinking about what to say and simply start the conversation. Even if you don’t have a dress on…

March 2, 2015 by Gary May 0
Digital Signals: Hate The Player Or Hate The Game?

No matter how much it’s discussed, there are still massive
amounts of misinformation in addition to retail kick back in regard to social
media in general and what it does specifically for car dealerships. However the
simple question still remains the same: why?

It’s almost 2013 and some social signals are already making
a significant impact on local search queries and a couple networks are
absolutely affecting search engine optimization. Almost nobody at the OEM
level, not one of the existing enterprise social media providers and most
vendors have demonstrated proper use, understanding or leverage of social to
benefit you. It’s sad, however most dealers aid in this continuing and continue
to buy “services” from them…

If you’ve simply hired a social media company to “manage”
your social network content, you’ve likely made zero or near-zero impact on
local search as well as branding, defending SERP positions and a list of other
benefits. We see this continually via mediocre dealership Facebook pages,
auto-feed only Twitter accounts, automated blog posts copied onto hundreds, yes
hundreds, of other dealership blogs and copied Pinterest photos; the result? Complete
disconnect from people on their networks.

“But it’s not selling cars!” or “I don’t care about that
social garbage, that’s not what we do”, or “When it shows results, we’ll jump
on it properly” responses demonstrate that what’s happening in digital simply
hasn’t sunk in. Yes, there’s lots of talk, just very little good action, let
alone great. So are you going to hate the player or hate the game?

Most simply want to hate the game, not who’s doing it at the
dealership or outsourced to (aka the player). 
Some hate the player recognizing that the game is not to blame. However,
it’s neither. Our focus continues to go, inexplicitly, to BS “traditional”
marketing especially when there’s a sunny financial or industry volume
report.  There’s a near blanket of
ignorance put toward the largest, yes largest, shift in media consumption. And
we all do it. Well, over 90% of us.

How can you book an airline ticket online after checking
Kayak or Travelocity, or buy a pair of boots you’ve never tried on before with
glowing reviews, or even do a stock trade on your phone, tablet or computer
followed by sharing your gain on Facebook and then turn around and ignore
what’s happening with the socialization of media and search?

Digital signals are unavoidable. More importantly,
everything we do affects how others consume products and media, let alone
search.

So hate the player if you want, or hate the game if you’ve
got a louder voice or bigger fist, but when you finally decide to pay
attention, make investments, educate staff properly and turn the tides in your
favor, don’t complain if it’s too late or that someone else is eating your
lunch. It’s already happening.

 

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

November 4, 2012 by Gary May 0
Floor Traffic Down? Invite Them In! (Including 5 Ideas That Work If You Do)

Reading a number of great posts recently (while trying to ignore the blatant self-promotion via a popularity contest glorified by a number of industry members last week), all focused on getting dealers to make the shift to digital or social media, it hit me once again what we're all trying to do: get people in the door.

While a number of dealers (maybe 5% in the country) are seeing growth many are seeing flat or declining numbers. Others are experiencing unit lifts while dealing with large drop in gross or back end. And everyone is dealing with selling fewer vehicles in the past 18 months than in the previous 4-6 years.

So in this online world, what aside from actually selling a vehicle to a customer or servicing their car drives traffic? One thing that can be looked at, especially in a world of smaller budgets, staffs and sales is events. With rare exception over the past two years, the factories (and therefore the dealers) have spent less and less on driving valuable traffic via new-owner events, clinics, ride-and-drives, sponsorships, meet-and-greets and the like. While the quantity of tire kickers may be down, real purchase intention is down significantly less (we'll leave the statistics and "pent up demand" gibberish talk to others).

Fewer and fewer dealers are doing what it takes to being people in: WIIFM. Yes, the most popular radio station in the world. What's In It For Me! More and more consumers are out there, looking for answers on how to program their seat memory, sync their bluetooth, update their navigation system, find out the difference in maintaining their car at the dealership versus aftermarket besides price and a whole lot more. So…they're left with going to a discussion group/blog/forum/portal, relying on word of mouth or not knowing at all. And you believe you 'had them at hello' when you sold the car.

So no new owner clinics. No barbecues. No comparison drives. No meet the staff days. No fundraisers (let alone getting a link from the event website to your website with all of the traffic they're receiving. What's that? What's a link? What does that do?). Boy, that will work! Then tell yourself that the drop in floor traffic is fine since 70-90% of the same-brand stores in your PMA are also down rather than kicking ass. Forget about building a brand, or answering the questions that many customers won't ask you over the phone, or stopping that brand new owner from driving into (fill-in-the-blank)-Lube, let alone even retaining the customers you have and that WANT to come back for a good reason or two.

No. Maybe this whole thing is wrong. The factory is supposed to do and promote events. The factory is supposed to drive floor traffic. The factory is supposed to give you all of the handraisers in the area. The factory has to do all of the advertising so you can copy the ad and put it on your (mediocre) website. The factory is supposed to give you all of the pitter-patter of footsteps so you can just kick back, put your feet up (or in the golf cart), make money and retire in 20 years.

DING, DING, DING. Wake Up!!! (that was your floor traffic meter just hitting zero)

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

August 2, 2010 by Gary May 1
Everything About Social Media That Can Be Explained In A YouTube Clip (Where Else Would It Be?)

This has to be the easiest post ever. And probably the best since it’s in someone else’s voice (video). This is one of the best ways to ingest some compelling data around social media, even if you take it with a grain of salt.

Whether you believe in the fundamentals of social media or not, understand the impact as well as influence or not, agree with the investment of time and resources or not, this should at least open your mind to the scope and reality. If you’re in business, you should be using every tool in the shed rather than excluding one since it didn’t come with instructions and a guaranteed return of investment.

Enjoy, let us know what you think!

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

September 18, 2009 by Gary May 0
What Are You Paying Attention To? You…Or The Customer?

You know what? I can't blame you!  Now days it so easy to just think about yourself and your needs when a customer comes through the door toward you. Things are so slow on the showroom floor, you might have to role play with a set of 22" chromes (but they might not talk back) or do a walk around with the receptionist! No matter what, you can't stop focusing on what is truly most important.

The customer, how you treat them, what they expect, what they're prepared for and everything to do with that is what everything comes down to. Things may seem different, but don't lose your perspective! What you're paying attention to and how you represent yourself and your dealership is so critical…

If you're a pit bull dressed in Armani, you may get a sale but the next one will wait until after the 5 o'clock news has stopped talking about the attack (so to speak, of course). By the same token, don't wait for your general manager to come up to you to check your pulse.

Stay locked on your customer and really pay attention to them: their needs, their actions, their demeanor, their family, their surroundings and, yes, their engagement with you. Figure out how to influence them by paying close attention to these things and more. Half-baked salespeople get half-baked results, period.

In all fairness to the sales staffs, what is management paying attention to? What is it about your motivations that steers your team's results certain ways? Here in the Southern California area, one of the luxury brands' SUVs (which launched within the last month) was being sold at MSRP for, unfortunately, just a few days.

Then someone (alas, it always starts with someone) had to take the price down to between invoice and $500 over. On a brand new car. That people will pay window for. That people have waited for. In a market and industry where profit must be king today (behind paying attention to clients). Even without a unit to sell!

And for what? For leadership? To force other dealers? For the brief satisfaction? It's mind boggling how counter-productive dealers can be…and then complain to anyone who will listen about how bad things are. What are you paying attention to? Whatever it is, it's not beyond your nose.

In this teetering-on-the-edge-before-the-next-round-of-bad-news world, start paying attention to and doing the things that will get you the results you want, that continue to pay you, that build a volume of completely satisfied clients and ultimately keep you and your customers happy.

And it shouldn't be too hard since the next dealer is probably doing the same thing that caused them to lose the last customer!

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Power Results

April 5, 2009 by Gary May 0