In both parts 1 and 2 of the Three Ideals For Social Marketing Success, I mentioned that success in social media boils down to three things:

1. The Development Of Relationships,
2. The Creation Of High Touch, Emotion Based Connections, and
3. Customer Enchantment (think customer service to the Nth degree).

Want to know the secret behind creating rampant word-of-mouth? Wait for it… wait for it: Give people something positive to talk about! I’ve blogged about this topic a few times before and the importance of going above and beyond your customer expectations, but in this post I’m going to be laying out the ground rules for customer enchantment.

Remember: it’s the difference between what your customer expects and the level of customer service received, that will dictate whether or not your customer talks about you. Failing to meet those expectations will create negative word-of-mouth, going above and beyond will create positive word of mouth, the choice is yours.

What does customer service have to do with social media? Simple, if you want to be part of the conversation that is happening in your customers social graph, with their connections, then you have to give them something worth talking about. This doesn’t just happen by chance, it happens by design. Design excellence into your daily routine, every employee, everyday, all the time, no exceptions.

Always be on the lookout for chances to show exceptional customer service. In the service department, if you find out that a customer is having a hard time coming back in to pick up their vehicle, take it to them. Salespeople, offer your customers a concierge service where you schedule all of their service appointments and offer a pick-up-drop-off service.

The Golden Rule Of Customer Service: Never forget that you do this every day and just because you see it all the time doesn’t mean that it’s no big deal to your customers. Never glaze over an issue and act as if it’s not a problem, always reassure your customers that it’s a genuine concern and that you will personally take care of it.

In a study conducted by Bain and Company they found out that an increase in customer retention of just 5% improves profits by 25 to 95%! The logic behind this math is predicated on the fact that customer turnover is enormously expensive. The high cost of acquiring new customers can only be offset by maintaining profitable, long term relationships.

Creating Long Term Relationships By Creating High Customer Satisfaction

We’ve always known that word-of-mouth, by far, is the best form of advertising, but then why do some businesses, and whole industries (the auto industry among them), struggle to achieve it? Look at the car business, people don’t expect much, in fact they expect to be treated bad and to be the subject of high pressure sales techniques, which leads me to:

• Set yourself apart from the competition by displaying uncommon courtesy. In the auto industry it’s not too difficult to set yourself apart because people expect so little, so take advantage!
• Know your customers. If you expect repeat business then at least remember your customers names! I know what you’re thinking, how can I remember them all? You don’t have to, that’s what CRM’s are for, use them. Each visit, if you learn something new about you customer, put it in the database for other employees to use. For example if your customer mentions, during an oil change, that their in-laws are coming to town, put into the CRM. That way, during their next visit you can ask them how it went. Talking about being different!
• Smile… duh! I know that sounds simplistic but by having a genuine smile on your face your customers will feel more welcome and invited.
• Be polite. Say thank you, please, yes ma’am and no sir. Use proper salutations such as Mr. and Mrs. In fact keep using their last name until they give you permission to use their first.
• Be genuine. Obviously generosity can’t be faked so don’t fake it. If there are people on staff that can’t be genuine them maybe a job with the public isn’t for them.
• Always over deliver. You will notice that I didn’t say under promise and over deliver, I said over deliver. Do it as often as possible.
• Empower your employees to make a difference. What that means is, within reasonable bounds, empower each employee to be able to fix a mistake, that way they don’t have to go to a manager.
• Make customer service ordinary, build it into your daily processes and reward employees that go above and beyond.
• Create an enchantment budget, more on that here. Go so far and above what your customer expects that they will be forced to tell others about you.
• Do a touch point analysis at least every other month. What I mean by that is be your customer. Call in as a customer, walk in as a customer, go through the sales process as a customer and even go to the bathroom as a customer. What do you see? Is everything as you would expect it to be? If so, scrap it and start over, be exceptional!
• Call back! Too many times we have the intention of calling back but something comes up and we just don’t get around it, stop that! Treat every return call as if it were your wedding day, you wouldn’t forget that would you? Yes, it’s that important!

Final Thought

Create an environment of exceptional customer service into your dealership. Make it mandatory, tell your employees up front, at the interview, that you only hire people that puts the customer first. You need a staff of people that are quick to smile, want to serve, and understand that a happy customer breeds other happy customers. We all know how expensive it is to create a customer, so keep them happy, keep them coming back and keep them talking about you!

Related posts:

1. Three Ideals For Social Marketing Success, Part 1
2. Three Ideals For Social Marketing Success, Part 2
3. The Most Powerful Part of Social Media That you’re NOT Using

Dear You,

Yeah you. First of all, I’d like to say thank you for taking the time to read this letter, because it may will be a tough pill to swallow. In fact, if you are easy to anger, then it might be best if you didn’t read any further, I’ll never know who you are anyway so I won’t be offended and I’m not going to tell anybody.

My name is David Johnson, I’ve been in the auto industry for 10 years now, I started off in this business selling Fords and Mercurys, so I’m an insider, just like you and I have something to say… it ALL starts with you! You need to be the change you want to see at your dealership, you need to be the one to put your foot down and say, “this is the new way that it needs to be done!“

But you’re not going to do that are? You are going to let the biggest thing to come along since the internet to pass you by. Your sitting back, telling yourself that it won’t work, that social media is just a fad. Both you know and I know that’s bull crap! Think about it, we all know that the best form of advertising is word-of-mouth, referrals have always been a staple to any business, one that closes MUCH higher in both percentages and gross. You can’t dispute that, in fact you are sitting there reading this, if you’re honest with yourself that is, thinking, “I’d love to have more referrals. I’d love to sell an extra 30-40 cars a month from referrals.”

Yeah? Then what’s stopping you? Oh I know, it’s your inability to change, it’s your inability to cut through the crap and see that social media is all about connecting with your customers, connecting with your community, all in order to influence word-of-mouth. No, you see it as a way to push your inventory out there in front of more people, but when that doesn’t work you say that social media is a fad, that it doesn’t work.

You know what, I think that I’m being a little too tough on you, because there is a lot of misinformation about how to use social media out there. In fact, there are companies out there that tell you social media is all about building relationships but they themselves have no clue how to go about doing that, in my book that’s even worse. They show you a shiny tool that will help you automate certain tasks but in reality all you need to do is add more touch! You need to communicate your intent, connect with a passion and build relationships.

The change starts today, you must implement a social environment at your dealership, and the only way that is going to work is if you put your foot down and tell them how it’s going to be. Tell your people that you’re going to enchant your customers, connect with them on Facebook and build an online community based on a specific passion. No, it’s not going to be easy and you have to change your mind about social media being a lead generator because it’s a relationship generator. Of course, those relationships lead to loyalty and word-of-mouth but if you think lead then you put pushing your own agenda above making friends and influencing people.

The longer you wait, the further behind you are going to be, take market share tomorrow by implementing the PROPER social marketing plan today. Cut through the crap out there, don’t believe everything you hear and the shiny toys they may temp you with. Let’s get real for a moment, social media is about connecting with a broader audience, developing brand ambassadors and influencing word-of-mouth, if you see anything different, run away,  run away fast, they are just trying to take your money.

If you would like to have a real social media conversation then give me a call on my cell 850-341-7413.

No related posts.

This is video 1, in a series of videos, aimed at teaching the automotive sales person how to harness the power of automotive social media. In this video I will reveal a surefire way for salespeople to connect with and gain testimonials from their customers through the strategic use of Facebook and a not so well known law of human psychology.

As this will be the first video in a series make sure that you get an alert each time I post something new by entering your email address in the section just below this post.

I’d love to hear your comments, what would you like to add?

Related posts:

1. Social Proof: The Power Of The Review – An Automotive Social Media Video
2. [Video] Automotive Lead Nurturing #1: Educating Your Customers
3. [Video] Automotive Lead Nurturing #2: Social Proof

Are You Exceptional?

Well, are you? It’s a question you should ask yourself sooner rather than later, before you do though you should check your ego at the door and be honest with yourself. I ask because it’s the difference between what’s expected and the service given that will decide whether or not you are worth doing business with again. We live in a time when just meeting expectations wont earn you repeat business. You must make it a policy to continually strive to go above and beyond and do the things that your customers DON’T expect, of course that just the beginning…

Your Personal Brand

Your brand is who you are, it’s about building an identity that will resonate with your customers and keep them coming back to you even when there are no other incentives, besides their relationship with you, to do so. Building your online brand starts with who you actually are, what makes you unique, what can you offer that others will be drawn too? In the auto industry its relatively easy to stand out from the stereotypical auto dealership or automotive sales person.

Being incongruent with what people think about our industry, without you actively saying you are different, will go a long way to increasing the worth of your personal brand. If you keep in mind that people will sometimes believe what they are told, but will always believe what you conclude you will start to see that it’s better to show that you are different by your actions, not your words.

If you want to generate leads, increase your repeats and referrals, then you need to recognize that online branding needs to be a priority because it can help you to reach your goals by driving incremental business your way. Simply put, if you want to build more online business (the new networking) then you must first build your online brand or identity.

It all starts with…

Listening

Managing your reputation is as important as marketing your reputation. Word of mouth can spread like wildfire and it’s in your own best interest to listen to what others are saying about you or your dealership. While you can spend money on professional social monitoring tools (such as Radian6 and Brandseye) there are some free ways to get nearly the same results.

Setting Up Social Monitoring

1.       Sign up for Google Reader, it’s easy, free and a great way to manage all your reputation management feeds.

2.       Go to Google Alerts and put in keywords that relate to you and your dealership. Make sure “Type:” say’s “Everything”  and “Deliver to:” says “Feed.” Preview your results before you click create alert, make sure that you stay away from broad terms such as Ford or Toyota because they will send a ton of results that don’t relate to you or your dealership. After clicking create alert it will automatically go to Google Reader.

3.       Go to SocialMention.com and once again put in the keywords that relate to you and your dealership. After clicking search you will see an icon and next to it you will see “RSS Feed.” Click on that link and save the feed to Google Reader. You may have to change the drop down to Google before clicking subscribe.

4.       Go to IceRocket.com and put in your keywords and click search. Keep in mind that doing all of this may give you duplicate results but will also let you know when somebody says something about you online. After performing the search, grab the feed from the bottom left.

5.       Go to  YackTrack.com and once gain perform a search and grab the feed.

6.       Go to BoardReader.com , search out your keywords and grab the feed.

While there are many others, this is a good start and is very  thorough, remember that there will be dupes and some things that aren’t relevant but that’s just the name of the game.

Where To Start Building

Home Base

Your home base is your website or blog, while building you personal online brand you want it to be your blog. Your blog is your hub, it’s your home, its where you send everybody to find out more about who you are. You home base should have a nice about me section, a contact me page and should be easy to make comments on. It will have links to your outposts (we will talk about “outposts” next) and will have a nice “clean” look.

Outposts

Outposts are accounts, profiles or pages on other social networks and social media platforms. It’s a way to extend your personal brand outside of your home base. Create a profile on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and actively grow and engage your connections.

Passports

Passports are spaces that you post information on such as posts and newsletters and could even be other social networks that you send your RSS feed to  but don’t actively engage on. Passports can turn into Outposts if you start to use those spaces to be social and to engage others.

The idea behind segmenting your personal branding channels into home bases, outposts and passports is to allow you to better understand your flow of information and to allow for maximum influence.

Content Creation

Create content on a regular basis. This could include videos, podcasts or blog posts. Remember that you can repurpose your content  if you run out of ideas. Remember that the less you pitch the more you sell. Be humble and remember that the only thing you should be selling is you. When creating content don’t forget to include a call to action, that call to action could be to sign up for your newsletter or to leave a comment, but every video you create, podcast you record or blog post you write should have some sort of call to action in it.

When somebody comments, respond. Ask questions to further the conversation along. The more valuable your comments the more it reflects on your brand, on your personality. Create content that is pertinent to the people that you are looking to attract. As an auto dealership you can write posts on detailing tips, how to replace wiper blades, how to set the clock or work the navigation system. The ideas are endless!

Actively Engage

Spend the bulk of your time engaging the people on your home base and outposts. Get to know them, find out who the influencers are and spend more time engaging them. Use a service such as Klout.com to find your own influence score as well as the scores of those in your networks.

When engaging people there are 4 distinct “personality types” that make up your network:

• Consumers read but don’t comment, watch videos but don’t share, they listen but don’t add. Consumers make up about 96% of the people in your network and while they are influenced, they are not influencers.
• Engagers will comment on your posts and make up about 2% of the total number of people in your online community. While they do comment they don’t influence others to join the community.
• Influencers equal about 2% of your community and are a lot like engagers but they will actively help to grow the community by inviting others to be part of it.
• Brand Ambassadors equal only 1% of your online community but are golden, when you can find them use them to help grow your community. There are the people that create blog posts and videos about you or your dealership. They tell others, offline, about you, your dealership or your service department.

Give Your Brand A Voice

Based on your research (ask your customers!) determine what your audience wants to hear and what messages you want to put forth, that will build the foundation of your personal brand. Keep The following in mind:

• Be consistent. It’s hard to be consistent when the person you are trying to be is not who you really are.
• Speak to your audience not at them, don’t use industry terms and always remember to speak in a conversational tone, even when you are writing.
• Have an open mind, remember it’s what your customers want and it won’t always coincide with what you think.

Inviting Your Customers

Create business cards that has links to your home base and outposts and invite your customers to join you. When you sell your customer a vehicle take a picture of them and ask if you can tag them in it on Facebook. Once you have connected with them check out their profile and learn more about them. Engage them, converse with them and get to know them on a deeper level than just customer/ salesperson.

In Conclusion

While it won’t happen overnight, developing your own personal brand will go a long ways to generating you more business. Think about all the big brands out there and how much clout they have. By building your own brand, your own referral network you make yourself harder so no to, so what are you waiting for, get out there and build and if you have an questions, comments or concerns along the way I’m just an email or comment away.

Speaking of comments what would you like to add to this post?  I’d love to hear what you have to say.

Related posts:

1. The 5 Cornerstones Of Building An Influential Personal Brand
2. LinkedIn- Harnessing The Power Of The Super Influencer
3. Personal Branding For The Automotive Salesperson

Welcome to the 3rd episode of Automotive Social Media – The podcast. In the episode I explore how you can harness the Law of Reciprocation to gain referrals, influence word of mouth and build powerful two way relationships with your customers. As in the other podcasts I leave out the why and get to the how, leave a comment or two in the comment section below and let me know how you are using the Law of Reciprocation.

If you would like to be alerted of future podcasts just enter in your email address below and I will send you and alert.

Related posts:

1. Social Capital and Earning a Return on Influence
2. Exceeding Expectations and Influencing Word of Mouth
3. Developing Your 5 Point Social Presence Framework

On October the 21st, Rob Hagen and myself did a webinar for Automotive News entitled “Automotive News Dealer Intelligence Webinar: 10 Ways Social Media Can Help Dealers Boost Their Reputations” This is the second tip, stay tuned for the others!

Social media success lies in creating a strategy and sticking to it. Of course, creating that strategy is easier said than done, that’s why I have broken this process down into 4, very important, very powerful steps, that if followed will be the backbone of your social marketing strategy. The 4 steps are:

• Investigate: The first step in defining your strategy is to monitor your market. Figure out what platforms they are using and what they are talking about. What interests them and what are they saying on social platforms.
• Objectives:  Define what your objectives are. Do you want more website hits, more phone calls or more service traffic. These objectives must be clearly defined and aligned with metrics. How will you define these objectives?
• Actions: What are the actual actions you will perform to meet these objectives? Will you be blogging, podcasting, or creating videos? How are you going to build your community? It’s important when defining your strategy to NOT think about platforms, but instead what must be ACCOMPLISHED to meet your objectives.
• Platforms: Define the platforms that will fit your strategy.

Step 1: Investigate – Investigating your market has never been easier. With the use of Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Hi5 and a number of others you can, in a matter of minutes, find out what’s going on in your market.

Join as may local forums and blogs as possible, find out what people are talking about, what interests them and what social networking platforms they frequent. Do you see any trends? Who are the influencers, who do you see on multiple networks, how many comments do you see on local blogs, which ones are the most engaging.

The idea of this step is to find out what interests your market, what specific age groups are doing what so that later, when defining your strategy, you can target different groups. It’s on old adage but it hold true here: If you want to catch fish, go to where the fish are.

It’s imperative that you take good notes during this step, write everything down, don’t skip this step thinking that it’s not that important, because it is! In fact, it’s probably the most important  step.

Step 2: Objectives – Defining your objectives is imperative to any strategy, even more so with social media because of the broad impact it can have on your dealership. When defining your objective try to be as specific as possible. For example one of your objectives could be to double the amount of traffic to your website, or to sell more parts. It could be to increase phone ups or to sell more used cars. Your goal could be to have as many blog posts or videos created about your dealership as possible. Below are some objectives to get you started:

• Increase website traffic
• Increase number of sold units
• Improve search engine results
• Increase phone traffic
• Obtain positive reviews
• Decrease cost per sale

Once you define your objectives make sure to quantify them and come up with a date your objectives should be met by. By quantifying them you should know by how much you want to increase your website traffic or the number of sold units you want to increase by. Be sure to include a date that you want your objectives to be met. Be careful will this, if you are starting from scratch it could take some time for you marketing efforts to take off, this isn’t something that will happen overnight.

Keep in mind that you are building a community around your brand and building a community takes time, but once your community is established, objectives will be met quicker and quicker.

When setting objectives, or goals, I like to use the S.M.A.R.T strategy. Odds are you are familiar with it, but let’s break it down and discuss how it applies to creating a social media strategy.

Specific- Objectives need to be as specific as possible, to make it easier to set specific goals, think of the 6 W’s.

• Who- Who will be involved in the process, who is in charge? Defining who will be implementing specific aspects of your social media strategy is highly important to achieving your goals.
• What- What are you looking to accomplish? What is the actual end that you want to achieve?
• Where- Will your strategy encompass one location or the whole dealer group?
• When- Establish a time frame for specific objectives and when they should be begun or completed.
• Which- If there are any requirements, what are they? Are there any constraints?
• Why- What is the purpose of the objective, what is the benefit?

Measurable- Each objective must be aligned with concrete criteria for measuring progress towards the attainment of the goal.

To determine if your goal is measurable ask yourself questions such as:

• How much?
• How many?
• How will I know when it’s accomplished?

Attainable- Are the objectives obtainable, what’s it going to take to reach them?

Realistic- For an objective to be realistic it must be one towards you are both willing and able to work. Keep in mind that a high goal is frequently easier to achieve than a lower one because it exerts a higher level of motivational force.

Timely- When establishing objectives it’s important to set them in an achievable timeline. In other words don’t try to tackle the whole strategy at once, stagger certain aspects of your strategy so that you can focus your energies instead of spreading your resources thin.

Step 3: Actions – Once you have you objectives set define which actions need to be performed to reach them. Will you be blogging, podcasting, or creating videos? How are you going to build community, which non-competing business are you going to include? It’s important, when defining a strategy, not to think about platforms but instead think about what actions need to be accomplished to meet your objectives. This is important because you don’t want to think in terms of “how can this platform build community,” because then you limit yourself to what that particular platform can do.

Step 4: Choose The Platforms- Now that you have defined your objectives it’s time to choose which social platforms you need to use to complete the actions you set in step 3. To define which platforms take a look at the research you did in step 1 along with your objectives from step 2.

Keep in mind that more is not always merrier. If you take on too much at once you will not be able to give a particular platform the attention it deserves. You may be remiss to discount a platform with 2,000 local users but keep in mind that you want to choose a platforms that has both a high numbers of local users and a high amount of interactions.

Final Words

I think it important, to once again mention, that defining a strategy will be the difference between success and a part time hobby. Don’t take what we discussed in this post lightly, it will be what sets you apart from your competition because I can assure you that there aren’t many (if any) dealerships out there that are utilizing social media to its fullest.

Related posts:

1. Automotive News Webinar: Social Media Policy Tip#1
2. FREE Webinar: Developing A Successful Social Marketing Strategy
3. [Webinar Recording] Developing A Successful Social Marketing Strategy

If you want to gain market share in these turbulent times, you must first adopt a new way of thinking. The old way of thinking about marketing, your customers, selling cars, acquiring service and even financing has to go by the wayside or your dealership will shrivel up and die.

I know those seem like harsh words because they are and it’s my hope that you don’t take them lightly, I sure didn’t when I wrote them. In order to change your way of thinking, your old bad habits so to speak, you must replace it with a new way of thinking because that’s the ONLY way you’re going to be able to survive.

We’re in the beginning stages of a revolution, an uprising that if you choose to stand against it, will crush you. The revolution I’m talking about is the customer revolution. For so long they had no voice, they were like an infant trying to say their first words, and now that they have a way to get their voices heard, they will never be silenced again.

You’re old way of thinking, that the end justifies the means, should be tossed away because now each and everyone of your customers has a soap box and other people are waiting (and wanting) to hear what they have to say. In fact, you don’t even have to be present, these conversations are going on without you and they will continue to do so. It’s up to you, do you want to know what they are saying or do you feel that if you didn’t hear it or see it that it never happened? I’m here to tell you now that if a tree falls in the woods it still makes a sound, even if nobody is around to hear it.

It’s time to change your perspective; it’s time to adopt what Robert Green calls a “strategy in depth.” I’m not referring to what most people think about when they think about strategy, which is often confused with planning and thinking ahead. No, I’m talking about strategic thinking that includes a higher level of perspective.

Right now you are on the ground seeing things on a level playing field, you are reacting to the changing times by holding on to the past because it’s real, or was real, you lived through it, you conquered it and became its victor and nothing is going to take that from you, not even this so called uprising.

As humans, when we are faced with a novel situation, we tend to react in one of two different ways. The first way, the way most dealers are handling the customer revolution, is to deny the reality of it, to say that it just ain’t so. And of course, since they tell themselves that it isn’t they hold on to the old way. In other words we interpret the world in the ways we WANT to see them, not necessarily the way they are. How are you seeing the world?

The second way, which most definitely is the road less traveled, is to accept the new rules by throwing the old ones out the window. By doing that we move above the playing field and gain new perspective, in other words we have elevated our position and instead of looking both our competition and customers in the eyes, thus limiting our strategic vision, we can look down at the playing field and adjust our position on the fly.

Imagine with me if you will, that you were playing chess but you were limited to looking at the board, while standing on the board. In this position you could only see the pieces next to you which would make it very difficult to protect your king. Now, elevate your position to just above the pieces, true you have a better view but still you would have trouble seeing your opponent advance. Lastly imagine yourself with a birds eye view, not only could you see what your opponent’s moves are but you could see beyond the board, past your opponent and into the horizon. Your perspective would give you a more in depth strategic vision, you would be able to see what’s coming and adjust accordingly.

Most auto dealers are playing the game while standing on the chessboard; they react to only what’s going on around them. I’m here to tell you right now, stop it. Raise up, pay attention to what’s coming and protect your king, if not there is more than a check mate in your future.

If you want to survive then adopt a social marketing attitude, humanize your dealership and give your employees a voice, it’s in the relationships your people can create with your local market that is going to determine your market share. The choice truly is yours to make. I hope you make the right one and when you do I’m here to guide you through it.

What’s Beyond My Field Of Strategic Vision Anyway?

The promise land, the land of milk and honey, the land of increased market share, increased repeats and increased referrals. Don’t you see it? Do you want to see it?

For those of you that do it’s a beautiful thing to behold when the people in your community stop going to Google looking for a vehicle, instead they come to you because you have built the reputation of being one of them. Instead of the traditional advertising monologue you have begun to dialogue with the people in your market. Because of that you are in a the unique position of permission marketing, a term coined by Seth Godin, which means that people are giving you their permission to market to them.

So, elevate your position, take in the whole battlefield and pay particular attention to what’s coming. If not, you could be wiped off the battlefield all together.

Related posts:

1. Social Influence, Not Just For Your Sales Department: A Special Finance Perspective

On October the 21st, Rob Hagen and myself did a webinar for Automotive News entitled “Automotive News Dealer Intelligence Webinar: 10 Ways Social Media Can Help Dealers Boost Their Reputations” This was the first tip, stay tuned for the others!

With the total transparency that the web offers it’s important to know what your sales people, sales managers, service advisers and others are saying and doing on social networks, both work related and personal. Like it or not people are forming opinions about your dealership without ever having to do business with you, of course that can be both good and bad, it just depends on the opinion being formed.

Today, not tomorrow, you should institute a social media policy at your dealership. Have all employees and future employees read and sign a policy so they know what they can and can’t do. This is the first, most important step when deciding if you are going to utilize social media in your marketing efforts.

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

Related posts:

1. Automotive Social Media Policy – Free Download
2. Automotive News Webinar: Implement A Strategy Tip #2
3. [Webinar Recording] The New Rules Of Automotive Social Media Engagement – The 20-20-60 Rule

The all elusive holy grail of marketing is within our grasp but most fail to truly understand its power to both create and destroy. It is both the bringer of life and of death but if used correctly can push your sales to new heights… but if only.

Marketers have been searching, for as long as advertising has been around, for bigger and better ways to engage their audience. If it’s an ad on billboard, a letter in the mail or a commercial on TV marketers are always thinking in terms of, “How can I engage my audience?”

Most of you reading this will know exactly what I’m referring to but before we get deeper into that it’s important to know why a shift in mindset is occurring, because its in the knowing that we truly transcend ourselves and are in a better position to truly grasp, absorb and use this wonderful new(er?) marketing medium.

First, it’s important to know that we are social creatures, we aren’t designed to be alone, we have a deep rooted desire to be around others, we flourish on a team and being alone scares us. We want, no need, the presence of others to feel safe, we thrive on both our communication and our connections, in fact many of us define who are by who we are connected to.

Second, it’s equally as important to know that we are working longer hours than we have worked before, we are spending more time away from our connections, and as such we are beginning to feel isolated and alone as we start to feel like we don’t belong. Our need to be connected with other people has turned into a burning desire to communicate with one another and to be social at all costs. In fact a quick search on Google and you can find story after story of people that lost their jobs because of their time spent on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace or any other number of social networks. The need it powerful.

What Does All This Mean?

It means that we are in the perfect place, at the perfect time to be able to connect with and engage our audience as never before. We have tools at our disposal, FREE tools at that, tools that allow us the opportunity to engage and connect! That’s not even the amazing part, the amazing part is the fact that the people using these tools, your future customers, want you to engage them, they are starving for engagement and if approached with the right RELATIONSHIP mindset then you have a formula for success.

Relationship Marketing is all about getting your audience to engage you; it’s all about humanizing the dealership and building lasting, influential relationships. Before, you could slap an ad on the side of a bus, record a killer radio spot, or write an impressive print ad but you ALWAYS lacked the ability to truly engage your audience. With the onset of social networks you have a vast space full of people that are looking for connections, they are asking you to engage them, but be careful you can do more harm than good if you attack to quickly use these spaces to promote. Always, always, always remember that the less you pitch the more you sell.

Social networks can and will help your dealership identify your customers and engage them almost instantaneously, allowing you the opportunity to better meet the needs and lifestyle of your customers. That’s the ONLY way to use social networks, if used any other way than in the way that they were intended to be used then you will succumb to the business destroying side of Relationship Marketing.

Asuthosh Nair of GetIT Comm said it well when he said, “It’s always about the customer and not the company’s product or service. So make sure that you understand your customer’s needs, and how to cater to them and respond with as much ‘human touch’ as possible.”

As my business partner Rob Hagen is fond of saying, “It’s not natural for people to want to befriend an auto dealership.”

Both of them are talking about the same thing; it’s much more important to engage on the human level, person to person, than it is to push your product in front of as many people as possible. I like to explain it like this:

Think about all of your friends and family, do you have to tell them every single day that you are in the car business and that if they are ever in the market that they should come to you? Of course you don’t! And the reason you don’t is because you know that due to the relationship you have with them that they will come see you when the time comes. The same is true of Relationship Marketing, spend more time humanizing yourself than you do pitching yourself. In fact the power of social media is using it to influence OTHERS to pitch for you. Build it (relationships) and they (customers) will come.

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Related posts:

1. Building Your Personal Brand by Harnessing The Power Of Social Media
2. Tapping Into The Village Mindset
3. LinkedIn- Harnessing The Power Of The Super Influencer

This is the slide deck I used during the webinar: Developing A Successful Automotive Social Media Strategy.

Related posts:

1. Podcast # 1: Developing A Successful Social Marketing Strategy
2. FREE Webinar: Developing A Successful Social Marketing Strategy
3. [Webinar Recording] Developing A Successful Social Marketing Strategy