Optimizing Your Dealership For Social Media
I was forwarded a blog post by a colleague of mine the other day, thank you Rob, it was titled The 3 Types Of Social Media Strategy, I encourage you to read it before reading this post, it is spot on! In summary, the author of the post, Tac Anderson, talks about 3 different types of social media strategies, they are:
Bolt On
Bolt on, or what I refer to as Phase 1, is where most businesses are. It’s the stick your toes in the water form of social media strategy. Most auto dealers are here, they create a fan page on Facebook or sign up for a Twitter account with the intention of doing nothing more than talking about themselves. Of course, those that learn from their mistakes and start to see some success will move on from here but the only reason they are on social networks in the first place is because everybody else is.
Optimizing Social Media For Your Business
In this strategy you have clear decision makers and goals put into place. Certain people have certain responsibilities and you have the right resources allocated to optimize social media for your dealership. While this is a more advanced strategy and you have done some internal adjustments they are mostly tactical in nature and have nothing to do with the overall culture of the dealership.
Optimizing Your Business For Social Media
Tac Anderson says that this is “Holy Grail” of social media strategy and one that no business has yet to reach. He says, “A business strategy that is optimized for social media will use social technologies to build collaborative relationships across all company stakeholders.” Stakeholders being customers, employees, shareholders, partners and competitors.
Optimizing Your Dealership
While the author states that there isn’t any business that is optimized for social media I think it’s one that, as an auto dealership, we need to take a closer look at. To better understand what I mean by that take a look at the current relationship the general public has with auto dealers. Lets face it, they hate us. We’re the enemy, they loath having to go through the process of buying a car and break out in hives with the thought of having to deal with a car salesperson. While that last sentence may have been a little dramatic I think you get my point.
In order for a dealership to really use social media, and I’m not talking about the way it’s used now, but in such a way that the entire culture of the dealership is one based on transparency and trust, then a huge cultural shift must occur. What that means is that the way auto dealers are doing business today goes against everything social media is.
We’ve heard it time and time again, auto dealers are late adopters of any new technology. But, it’s this newest technology, social media and web 2.0, that is going to cause the most trouble. You see, it’s not the technology itself that will cause the problems but the cultural shift behind it. Take away social networks, the internet and computers and you are left with people, in fact the ONLY reason why social networks are so huge is because it allows us to do what we’ve wanted all along and that to be social.
This shift in our culture is one that was started by and ran by people, not businesses. Any dealership that continues with the old ways of conducting itself runs the risk of becoming irrelevant. In order to stay relevant a dealership must have an equal shift in culture. Just take a look at Madonna and her ability to stay relevant for so long, how is she able to it? She does it by changing her style when the culture shifts, she understands that in order to stay on top that she must adapt or she runs the risk of dying, professionally that is.
Culture is constantly shifting, whats true and correct today wont necessarily be true and correct tomorrow. The challenge then is to be aware of, and understanding the moment when the shift happens. Because, if you don’t, then you run the risk of being irrelevant. In fact, auto dealers have been irrelevant for a long time and the ONLY reason they are still in business is because the need for an automobile is so profound that it transcends the shift of culture. That’s isn’t to say auto dealerships are immune to the passage of time, quite the contrary, what that means is that because the need for an automobile is so powerful that people will put up with the “crap” only because they have to, trust me, if there were any other way, they would.
I know this post has gotten deep but it’s in the value of knowing when the shift is occurring, where the forward thinking dealership can ride the shift and be part of the new dynamic. Simply put, it’s time to change the way we think. It’s time to change the normal, adversarial relationship we have with our customers and turn them into one built on mutual trust and respect.
Takeaway
If we are going to change and influence a new way of doing business then we have to change ourselves before we can ever influence the change that is needed. Always remember that you can’t give what you don’t have. In other words, embrace the chaos, embrace the changing times and adapt along with it. Imagine if yours is the dealership that optimizes themselves for social media, what do you think that would do for your business?
What do you think, what do auto dealers need to do to stay relevant?
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Related posts:
- Automotive Social Media Seminar – Las Vegas
- The 3 Phases Of Dealership Social Maturity
- Is Social Media for Every Auto Dealer?
- What Can Auto Dealers Learn From Prussia And The War of 1806?
- The Impact of NOT Using Social Media
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8 Responses to “Optimizing Your Dealership For Social Media”
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interesting thoughts, especially about integrating across all networks including your own employees as well as customers and suppliers.
I am also in a not-very tech savvy industry (Pilates) and reaching clients seems to be the easy part. Getting my instructors to buy in seems nearly impossible.
Thanks for the insight.
Lisa
My recent post The 3 Worst Kinds of Fitness Pros
Buy in is the tough part, that's for sure! In the automotive industry you hear, "This is the way we've always done it," way to often. My goal is to affect change, and the dealers that I work with embrace that change. Because they embrace it they have a much better relationship with their customers and are seeing a much higher percentage of repeat and referral customers.
Thank you so much for commenting!
David,
I like that you're considering the underlying motivation for the growth of social media, and not just the technology when applying it to auto dealerships. Adopting a more open, transparent sales process (no, "let me run back and check with the manager on that price…") would do wonders for the reputation of a dealer.
I think when most dealerships think about social media, they'll be limited in focus to the technology… but I don't know that the technology is a great fit for the sales process (at least Twitter and Facebook). It's hard to continue meaningful contact in these forums with a previous customer in the 3-10 years between vehicle acquisitions.
I think the social media concept that has the best fit with dealerships is that of "link bait." Understand your (potential) customer and present a story that's really compelling to them. If you do that, they'll love you and sing your praises (give referrals). Simplify the sales process, give better service, value the customer's time, go the extra mile whenever you interact with them. That's a social media grand slam… without ever touching the keyboard or mouse.
- Eppie
My recent post 3 Dad Blogs that Will Keep You Laughing (and Teach You Something)
You're right Facebook and Twitter wont help the sales process much unless you include prospecting in that process. Of course, not the tradition form of prospecting where you seek out people actively in the market but the inbound marketing type of prospecting. I often say that social media is just a new way to use an old business tool and if you took away the technology, the internet and your computer all your left with is people talking with people, nothing more and nothing less. I feel the best way, much like you said, to use social media is to change the way a dealership interacts with their customers. Instead of spending their time trying to come to an agreement that both sides are unhappy with but are willing to settle upon, a dealership should be spending their time giving the best damn customer experience possible, that way the customer will sing the dealerships praises and influence others to become customers.
A customer that creates other customers are invaluable and if used correctly social media can help ANY dealership influence more of those. Eppie, thank you so much for commenting!
"Any dealership that continues with the old ways of conducting itself runs the risk of becoming irrelevant. In order to stay relevant a dealership must have an equal shift in culture. "
This is so true of any business. You have to fish where the fish are… And if your customers are changing their habit, business MUST follow suit to thrive.
My recent post How to Effectively Market Your Business Online
Absolutely Wendy! Any business should be listening and paying attention to what's going on with their customer base or they run the risk of going out of business. In fact, if any other business ran as the car business does they would be out of business. It's not many industry's that can ignore the changing habits of their customer base and still survive. Fortunately there are a lot of dealers out there making the change and because of it are growing.
Thank you for the comment Wendy!
With individual dealerships, wouldn't you be able to take some nods from the different auto manufactures that are on the lot?
I think that while there is without a question a shift going on, using some of the old tactics could actually still work, if executed properly.
For example, local dealerships to my area are all about having the "Free Burger!" cookouts and using direct mailers to promote the idea. Well… wouldn't it be cool if they took the money they were spending, and run a series of targeted ads to locals who were interested in cars, or had crappy cars, or… well there are all sorts of targeting parameters someone could run and target people who might actually be interested in a car instead of just giving away a lot of free lunches…
Really I don't think it's about one over the other. I'm all about online, and that's where I do all of my business, but the old stuff has worked for a very long time, I think the stuff that works best is the tactics that find the happy medium between old school and new school marketing techniques.
I totally agree! In fact in the seminar I put on I teach exactly that! Keep in mind that all social media is is a new way to use an old business tool. Having said that I like to take all the relationship building community involvement stuff that dealerships have been doing forever and give it a social media twist, that is, use it to create blog posts & videos then get the people in attendance to spread the word by sharing videos and/or blog posts on their social profiles.
Tommy, thank you so much for the comment!!