I began my career in the automotive industry working as a Marketing & Internet Director for a Ford dealership in Alberta. I had no previous experience within the automotive space and so I was arguably able to bring a different perspective. After doing a full audit of all our advertising and marketing initiatives I was initially shocked at the lack of the dealership’s online presence. Coming from a marketing background I already felt it was second nature to make use of all the social networks that were at my disposal.
At the dealership, the plan was not necessarily to get on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to “sell cars” — instead the objective was to use these platforms to connect with people and let them dictate where the relationship would go. A good analogy is to maybe think of it like a showroom floor where a customer is walking in. If the first question you ask them is: “Can I sell you a car?” I can almost guarantee that the customer will no longer want to deal with you for several reasons. Any good relationship, especially a sales-oriented one starts with a greeting and perhaps some subtle qualifying questions. When you look at the purchase funnel, social media is right at the top, along with “Brand discovery and consideration.”
GET PEOPLE TALKING
At our dealership, the strategy we put in place was to use our social networks to tell the story of our dealership rather than use them as a sales pitch platform. As a marketing professional you have one big question you need to ask: Do we want people to know about a certain product? OR, do we want people to talk about our product? Obviously the last question is the toughest to execute because the world is full of noise and most people choose to ignore it unless something really engages them. I knew that working in a dealership and having people care is a huge challenge right across the industry — unfortunately dealers are often still not looked at in a very favourable light from the general public.
As a result, we wanted to use this very reason to tell a different story of what really goes on in a dealership. As soon as we started to implement this strategy, engagement on all our platforms went through the roof.
We did things like send out positive messages, weather updates, staff birthdays and would talk to complete strangers on Facebook and Twitter and ask them how their day was. All in all, people want you to make it about them — we all can be a bit self-centred and as a marketer it’s critically important to understand that.
SOCIAL ADVICE
We know that over 70 per cent of potential car buyers who are in the research stage will take to their social networks to get advice, tips and suggestions from their community on what specific model they should perhaps purchase. We also know that 51 per cent of car buyers change their mind on what model they want to buy along the path to purchase. The reason for this is car buyers are touching on 24 different research points prior to purchase, social media being just one of them.
In general, the Internet has provided numerous resources for car buyers to become educated. If a customer is in the market for one to three months they are consuming information from an incredible average of eight resources!
IT’S ABOUT PEOPLE
Now having said all this, let’s keep in mind that social media is ALL about people, so if you are wanting to hop on board and start throwing sales pitches at people, the chances of you being successful and receiving engagement are slim to none. Yes, social media, advertising and marketing in our new age takes WORK!
We simply cannot fake a relationship and start out by saying hello with saliva dripping from our mouth for that next sale. Car buyers simply expect more and want to have an established relationship with their dealer. In fact we know that 62 per cent of customers decide whether they will purchase their next car from the dealer AFTER the sale has been made, which means there are no more one-night stands. Customers are in it for the long haul and as car professionals we should be too.
An example of how social media generated a car sale when working at the dealership was from a Twitter conversation I’d had with a lady for almost six months. One day she just said she wanted to buy a car, so I asked her if she’d like to come by the dealership and the rest was history. We talk about CRM (Customer Retention Management) a lot but if we could think of our social networks as just that, we would increase our chances for success.
If you are a dealer and are thinking of tackling social media (by the way, it is not a matter of if anymore, but rather WHEN) here are some tips:
- Pick one or two platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to perfect and become good at;
- Create a content calendar that is 60% life and current events and maybe 40% automotive (Not just sales related posts);
- Figure out your “one voice” at the dealership so your audience is not confused and gets a sense of your dealership culture;
- Pick one or two staff members to post that have sufficient knowledge in social media;
- Post daily and post regularly;
- And most of all, HAVE FUN!
On a final note, the automotive industry is amazing! Anyone who works in the industry is challenged on a daily basis but has access to so many resources and most of all, cars and trucks! Everything we need to be successful is at our finger tips, so let’s make use of it and give our customers an amazing experience at the same time! I now have my own marketing and consulting company and from the dealers that I do business with I am truly happy to say that as an industry we are moving forward and becoming more innovative than ever. I wish all of you success and prosperity!
