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“The idea that the development of Internet based companies is governed by rules similar to Darwin’s theory of evolution, and that those that adapt best to their environment will be the most successful”

We are in the midst of a huge economical shift, consumers aren’t as trusting as they use to be, we live in a world of digital transparency, but still dealers want to hold onto the old way of doing things, just because it’s the way it’s always been done. It’s that very same thinking that is causing dealerships, all across the country, to close their doors for good. Sure, they put up a good fight, blaming everything and everybody, except themselves that is. (Grant Cardones Video)

For those of you that were in the car business when the internet first rolled around you know first hand how dealers resisted the change. They fought it saying that people wont go on the internet and interact with a dealer through their website. They insisted that print ads would always reign supreme and lot traffic would never dry up. If you could go back, knowing what you know now, what would you tell them?

Right now, this very second, we are in another shift, its a little different but still it’s technology based. More or less, we are going back to the way things use  to be before the internet. If you haven’t guess it yet, I’m talking about social media, and all social media is is a new way to use an old tool. That old business tool is networking and things are going back to the village mindset (thank you Jack Perry).

What do I mean by that? Well, before the the internet, actually technology in general, we use to consult our neighbors, friends, and family members about things going on in our lives. Now we have the internet and and can Google just about anything, but before the modern marvel of online search we use to have community meetings, one-on-one discussions, and asked for each others opinions. Like they say, history repeats itself and now the internet, through social platforms such as Facebook, Myspace and Twitter, are bringing us, once again, closer together.

Why then, are all these positive changes causing dealers, once again, to want to discount whats really going on? Digital Darwinism is alive and well and it’s just a matter of time before the old school car dealers become extinct, they want to fight the fact that the customer is in charge of the process. Instead of fighting them it’s the progressive dealer that’s able to relinquish control and starts to think in terms of “how can I make this new way of doing things work for?”

In reality, this goes much deeper than the onset of social media, this happened a long time ago and will take a tremendous shift in an old car dogs thinking to really get it. We are in a relationship economy, no longer can dealership afford to put the sale before the customer, it’s time to put the customer before the sale. Their needs come before money, it’s a fundamental shift in thinking that will propel a dealership to new heights and will allow them to take market share like never before.

Embrace the changes my friend, don’t fight it. Don’t try to stuff a customer in a vehicle because that’s all you’ve got, find something that the customer both needs and WANTS, even if it’s at another dealership. Honestly, I feel that if an auto dealer is against what I proposed in the last sentence then a time will come when they are either filing for chapter 7 or selling out to somebody that gets it.

Embrace It.

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1. Is Social Media for Every Auto Dealer?
2. Optimizing Your Dealership For Social Media
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No because not every dealership is ready for the prime time. By prime time I mean the public eye. While its true that we live in an age of transparency, there are some dealerships that would do well by trying to stay out of social media all together. I’ve consulted at a lot of different dealerships, all across the country, and without naming them, I can think of two or three that would cut themselves with the double edged sword of social media.

One dealership in particular, which was run by and for the sales people (you know the type of store I’m talking about), was in no position to engage their market using social media. Of course, to better understand my point of view, you have to understand that I don’t see social media as just another outlet to advertise you specials or to showcase your inventory. It’s a way of marketing your influence and building word of mouth, while at the same time engaging in relationship building tactics that puts community before the pitch.

It’s a strange concept for any dealership to grasp, but while utilizing social networks, the less you pitch the more you sell. Social media requires not just a face lift but a whole shift in the outlook of the entire dealership. What I mean by that is you can’t try to portray yourself one way then treat the customers another way entirely when they cross the threshold.

Think about it. You’re engaging people where they live, on Facebook, on Myspace, on Twitter and on blogs, its just a matter of time before you get the reputation of being a car dealership. I think you know what I mean by that comment and that I didn’t mean that in the literal sense or in a positive way.

It takes only one bad day for a sales person, a sales manager, or even a service adviser to post something that could lead people to form the wrong opinion of the dealership. In other words, the reputation of the whole dealership is on the line, each and every day, day after day. Some would argue that’s the case with or without social media and I agree ,but you also have to think that because of services such as Facebook and Twitter, the bad apples now have a bullhorn to yell into and the world is listening.

Not only is it listening but what’s being said is indexed and can be pulled up for days, weeks, months, years– forever. Do you really want to give a voice to somebody you can’t trust, who at your dealership would you NEVER allow to speak on your behalf. What about on the behalf of the dealership? (Dealership Social Media Policy)

Now imagine if you had a store like the one I mentioned at the beginning of this post and you, as the dealer, wanted to implement a social media strategy. How long before you had pissed off, social media savvy, customers blasting you all over the web, how would that impact your business?

If anything I hope this post has gotten you thinking. Think of the negative impact a social marketing campaign can have on your dealership if the players aren’t ready for prime time.

What say you? What potential fallout can you see happening because a dealership isn’t ready to live up the reputation their trying to portray on social networks? Leave a comment below.

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I’m not saying this is a bad idea, but it may not be the BEST idea for you and your dealership. A lot of dealers start a fan page on Facebook or grab a Twitter account with the thought, “Let’s see what happens.” They are, in effect, putting the cart before the horse. They are choosing a platform before they design a strategy or even choose what their objectives are. What they aren’t realizing is that they are limiting the scope of their creativity to that specific platform. How can you think out of the box if you’ve never explored what lies beyond its sides?

To see the value of social marketing you must first research your market, define your objectives, design a strategy, then find platforms that will aid you in reaching your objectives. In essence, finding the right platform is last, not first.

Below, you will find the three phases of dealership social maturity, which phase is your dealership in?

Phase 1: Platform-Oriented – This is the most common phase, its defined by a dealer that has a Facebook Page, a Twitter account, maybe a YouTube channel and is playing the ‘wait and see’ game. They are using new media the same way they used old media and that is as a one-way communication tool to talk about themselves, they have no real strategy, objectives or goals put into place.

Phase 2: Transitional - Dealers in this phase have had some luck with phase 1 and are starting to see the benefits of social marketing. They have begun to implement a few strategies here and there but aren’t really following them 100%. The dealer in this phase has the “lets dip our toes in, the water looks nice” type of mentality but are still a ways off from seeing the true potential of adopting an iron clad social media strategy.

Phase 3: Strategy-Oriented – This dealer gets it. They understand the power of building social influence and adopted a strategy, they’ve even put specific people in place to ensure that it’s carried out 100%. The dealer in phase 3 enjoys massive amounts of word of mouth advertising by building a loyal community around their brand, they employ both online and offline strategies and are only using social networking platforms to further their strategy, not the other way around.

I ask you again, where is your dealership at with social media?

Do you know everything there is to know about Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube? If so how are you getting your fans, followers, connections and subscribers to engage you, what are you doing to build community? I ask you these questions because they are all very important and ones that you should be able to answer on the spot.

I encourage you to challenge your strategy, or lack thereof, and ask yourself the tough questions. What can you do better to engage more people, where are the holes in your strategy, what can you do to build awareness around your brand?

Social media is more than a platform, social media is more than just Facebook, it’s about networking on a massive scale, it’s about word of mouth by the masses and for the masses. You can use it to get your community to help you market, you can even use it to work people into such a frenzied state surrounding your brand that they will even stop people, in the checkout line at Wal-Mart, when they hear the person in front of them talking about buying a car. Of course, the choice is yours, it’s always been yours to make and whether or not you adopt it, this whole social media thing is only going to get bigger, the only question is, are you going to get bigger along with it?

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It’s becoming increasingly more important to monitor your employees and how they interact on the internet. In a transparent world it’s easy to connect what a person says to where they work, that can be a problem if one of your employees lacks integrity, and is posting defamatory, pornographic, proprietary or libelous material about the dealership, employees, customers or even the competitors. In fact, they don’t even have to mention anything that relates to the car business but through association can have an impact on the public opinion about your dealership.

After careful research I put together the following policy to get you started creating your own social media policy. Keep in mind that I am not a lawyer and the following policy should only be used as guide and is not a stand-in for legal advice. I encourage you to download it, take a look at it and draft your own policy.

Social media can be a powerful supplement to any marketing campaign but it can be a double edge sword, use it wisely and make sure that you know what your employees are saying, it could be the different between positive word of mouth and negative word of mouth. As we all know, negative word of mouth can spread like wildfire and before you know it , it can engulf the whole dealership. Be vigilant.

The following policy is saved in an RTF format, it can be opened with most word-processing programs on both PC’s and Macs.

Automotive Social Media Policy

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Let me know what you think of the video in the comments below.

If you would like a video like this check out the amazing work Chris does over at KillerSalesVideo.com, you’re not going to believe how he priced these, you are going to be floored!

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This app can manage both hosted and self-hosted blogs and will alert you to new comments in the android status bar.

For us avid bloggers this is an easy way to slap up a blog post on the fly, wherever inspiration finds us.

It’s available in the android market, download it and let me know what you think. You can find out more about it by visiting android.wordpress.org

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The special finance customer is in an uncomfortable spot. This uncomfortableness can quickly lead to stress and anxiety as it surrounds one’s ability to find financing for an automobile.  Imagine a young family with one car and two small children, with both parents working outside the home, who run into a bit of bad luck and find themselves needing to replace their car. Knowing their credit is severely lacking they first try their credit union only to be turned down. Hitting a dead end, because they know nothing about subprime lending, their stress levels begin to rise and they start to feel as if they have nowhere to turn.

This type of scenario happens all the time, causing the couple to Google terms like bad credit auto loan, only to find, you guessed it, a third party lead site. From there we all know what happens, but I’d like to ask you, what would happen if they already knew, ahead of time, about your dealerships special finance program, not only that but they already had a level of trust in your capabilities and knew the finance manager, the general sales manager and a few sales people by name? How would the above scenario have gone down differently?

I’m telling you right now that the ONLY reason people go to third party lead sites is because they have no other place to turn except a cold, uncaring search engine, that spit out websites that spend the most money on search engine optimization.  Things don’t have to go down this way. You can make your local market more aware of your special finance department by building solid, trust inducing, win-win relationships BEFORE the need for you services ever arise. How? Through the use of social media.

Putting A Strategy In Place

Authority is influence. Having influence is authority. The two go hand in hand and I’m going to show you how to be the authority in your market, through the use of social networking. As Mitch Joel said in his book, Six Pixels of Separation, “People will buy from you and want to stay connected to you, only if they are getting real interaction from a real human being.” So let’s give them interaction!

Step 1: Create a blog. Don’t let that scare you, setting up a blog is much easier that you might think. You can get hosted, or a self-hosted blog, I recommend self-hosted. With a quick search on YouTube I found THIS VIDEO on how to set one up.

Now that you have a blog, let’s start blogging. Keeping in mind that you want to create authority, start creating posts about finances, credit repair, auto financing, banking, and the issues of high interest rates. The idea here is to showcase your knowledge in order to paint yourself as the authority. Don’t use this blog to pitch yourself, just give good information. Create a good about me page that showcases who you are, what you do and what dealership you work for but don’t use your blog as a thinly disguised advertisement. The idea here is to give.

Step 2: Start a Facebook fan page. Odds are you already have one but how are you using it? If you’re using it just to talk about yourself, you have it all wrong. Use it as a place to post links back to your blog, and other articles & blog post that relate. Do a contest or two a month in order to get your fans to engage. Maybe you can give away percentage off coupons, Flip Cams, or dinners for two.

Look for groups in your local market and become part of them. Engage people there as well. Remember to give, showcase your authority, become a person of influence through your actions.  Remember, don’t pitch!

Step 3: Create a Twitter account and start tweeting. Twitter is a great way to target you local market, it’s the easiest to build and if done right you can funnel those people to your blog, your Facebook page and to any videos you might want to make. Watch THE VIDEO I created for you on locating people in your local market.

Again, don’t use Twitter to pitch, instead use it to inform and build relationships. Engage tweeters by asking questions and answering theirs. Direct people to your blog and your fan page, keeping in mind that the majority of what you tweet about should have nothing to do with you, it should all be about them.

Going Advanced

I highly recommend video, although it’s not mandatory. It’s very easy to create and to distribute . Video is a great way to build authority and we are already accustomed to sharing them with people we know. Videos, if using the correct titles and descriptions, index in the SERPS (search engine ranking pages) very well.

You could create a series of videos on the topic of credit repair, getting financed with bad credit, or any number of topics that relate to finances in general. Just like in the strategy above the idea is to create authority, to show that you are knowledgeable in your field.

Build authority and they will come. By giving people a place to turn, in times of need, then actually fulfilling that need, you set yourself up to having a lifelong customer that creates other customers. Don’t overlook the idea of building social influence on social networks, it’s a source of endless bounty if you keep their wants and needs in mind. In fact, I feel that it’s bad business NOT to showcase your authority. Get the team together, today, and put a strategy together, today, so that you can stake your claim in the wonderful world of social media.

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Related posts:

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