facebook is over 6 years old now, but it has only found the mainstream-online-car-industry in the last year or so. In a very short time, in our industry, it has worn out its welcome. Nobody is selling cars off of it and maintaining a facebook page is a waste of time. I just don’t understand why any dealership would want to be on it?

Could it be the wealth of consumers who participate on facebook every day? Could it be the potential to have your message branded to an extra 200 people per each fan your dealership has? Might it be a communication tool with a better chance of having something read than an email (who doesn’t read their direct facebook messages)?

If you’re like me, and capitulated to the requests of a very persistent young blonde woman to get the dealership on facebook, then let me tell you why I’m not sick of hearing about it….not yet anyway.  In our few months on facebook we have created friendships, headlines, philanthropy, controversy, and even some profit!  It has all been fun, but it hasn’t all been easy.

When we first started, fan pages were just coming out. We didn’t know what we were doing, so we started a regular account. We discovered quickly that many people did not want to be friends with a business because that business can see everything inside their profile and photo albums when they’re friends.  However, we were still able to amass over 1,000 friends, but once we broke the 1,000 friends mark we showed up on the facebook policy team’s radar. They shut our account down.  And they were unwilling to allow us to send one message to our friends stating we were moving to a fan page, so we basically had to start all over again.  I’m watching Grant Cardone go through this right now. Dealers – make a fan page. You’ll be sorry if you don’t.

facebook is a communication platform.Nothing more, nothing less. It is another telephone, email device; just a point to have direct conversations. Of course, there is the potential to spread the right ad message, but don’t go into it thinking you’re going to be able to advertise unabated. Your fans will squelch you and I’m sure another new facebook policy change is just around the corner. If you do this, you’re a spammer.

facebook isn’t for everyone.

1. If you plan to start a facebook fan page, but haven’t spent at least 3 months on there with a personal account – don’t.  Sign-up, reconnect with your old high school buddies, become a fan of a few businesses and check the site at least once a week. Get a feel for things before you dive right in.  Figure out what you like to see on there.
2. If you attack facebook like a lion, put a fan-us icon on your website, and then stop updating you’re going to look like a fool.  The old adage, “”if you’re going to do something, do it right” is fully at play on facebook. One of my favorite competitors has facebook plastered all over his website, but hasn’t updated his fan page since November of 2009.  What does that say to a customer?
3. Do you like facebook?  If you’re not excited about it, I think you should stay off of it. It takes time and commitment and that requires you honestly asking yourself whether you really want to do it. If there is any leaning toward a “no” then don’t do it. You’re only going to get out of it what you put into it.

I have been absolutely shocked by the SEO value facebook has had for us since we got over 1,000 fans. Anything we link is instantly shot up in search results.  Instantly! Some companies will say this is reason enough alone to setup a facebook page, but those companies have a tendency to forget about the content and personal attention an endeavour like this needs. If you have 11 franchises, do you really have the man-power to keep up with all 11 different facebook fan pages as you should?

On the DealerRefresh forums we’ve been asking if facebook has helped sell cars.  So far, almost 60% of the participants have said it has ABSOLUTELY helped them sell cars.  Some tidbits from that thread:

facebook adword campaigns have not yielded great results for anyone.

One dealer is using facebook as a free billboard that has the side benefit of SEO value.

Very proactive vendors are asking why a dealership would block their employees from accessing facebook at work.

DealerRater is seeing more quality traffic from the people who visit from facebook.

My personal thoughts:

facebook isn’t for everyone. If you don’t give it the full effort, you will not receive a full return. Don’t let your vendors tell you that you have to be there – you don’t have to do anything!  I’m leery of companies who will handle facebook for you because there is no way a 3rd party will ever do as well as you can do. If you hire a third party to handle your facebook fan page for you, you’re lazy, unless you’re just using them to help develop a strategy.  Make a fan page – not a regular account!

DealerRefresh welcomes new sponsor – Dealer e-PROCESS

Dealer e-PROCESS believes your website should always be selling. That’s why they’ve designed their platform around capturing leads from customers visiting your website.

Their iAutoweb is the next generation website platform

iAutoweb has comprehensive reporting and analytics tools to help you see where those leads are coming from and how often. In addition to this, they offer Social Media Integration, Call Tracking, Automated Specials, SEO and more.

“We know what it takes to have the competitive edge. We build traffic to your website, build the tools to interact and capture leads from those visitors, letting you close the deals.”

Dealer r-Process has also introduced their “Rapid Response” service. Stop the clock and return your potential customer a personalized email responses in under 10 minutes.

About Dealer e-PROCESS

To read more about Dealer e-PROCESS and their services , click here.

Dealers advertising on facebook could soon track an ROI (or lack of).

With a new conversion tracking tool, facebook hopes to help marketers (and even us dealers) track clicks through to conversion. The conversion tracking tool is already being tested by several select Facebook advertisers. A launch date has yet to be determined, but they are projecting sometime towards the end of March.

The reports will provide dealers advertising on facebook a list of tracked conversions, impressions and the clicks led to each.

Conversion tracking aims to complement Facebook Connect, a tool that allows advertisers to target fans of brands, as well as friends of the connected fans. The Facebook Connect tool reports back on everything from demographics to interests listed in Facebook profiles. Ads connecting to Facebook Connect tie in social context, such as the person’s name…continue to mediapost article.

As social media  continues to grow and more and more dealer “get it”, it’s only natural that most owners/principles/GMs will want to see some type of ROI for the effort.

Question: Should you measure your social media efforts on the same level as your other online marketing channels such as paid search, SEO, display advertising etc. ?

You can see Brian Boland’s (fb manager of solutions) full presentation here:

I’m sure by now you’ve heard of foursquare and gowalla. They’re a location service-based social network; a cross between a friend-finder, a social city-guide and a game that rewards you levels of “badges” for “checking-in”.

Ok, that’s all good and fun right?

But now, Yelp has decided to jump in the game (I’m sure others will follow). Yelp is looking to make their current service even more interesting by adding a location based feature that allows reviewers to show how many times they have “checked-in” at a location while at the same time allowing users to write a review right from the Yelp mobile app.

You’re following me right?

Let’s say Mary Smith brings her Nissan 09 Maxima in for service. She finds herself waiting in the lounge 30 minutes past the intended time. Just as frustration sets in, the unfriendly service writer finally enters the waiting lounge only to let her know it’s going to be another 20 minutes (and forgets to apologize). Mary’s car is finally ready; she deals with an insensitive cashier and finally makes her way to her Maxima tightly parked between 2 other cars in the parking lot. As she approaches, she notices a scratch on the driver side front fender.

By now she’s had all she can handle and has determined that she’ll no longer be returning for service. She reaches for her iphone, fires up her mobile “check-in/review” social app and in less than 5 minutes has written about her whole experience before even leaving the dealer!

Mary just happens to have her Yelp and/or foursquare account tied into her Twitter and Facebook account. So not only will her negative review of this dealer be posted on this dealers Yelp business page but also automatically makes it’s way to her Facebook page and twitter stream. TRIPLE WHAMMY!!

Can this really happen? You bet it can.

If you’ve been reading DealerRefresh for any length of time, you have a keen understanding of the importance of your dealer’s online reputation. As this new wave of social/review app continue to surface, it’s going to be even more imperative that you have a pro-active and re-active reputation management process established.

Are you currently tracking your dealer reviews on Yelp and other social business review websites?

Running from Training?

Just as some top athletes train by running, many senior managers in the automotive industry run from training.

Perhaps it’s due to the way most managers came up in the car business; or maybe it’s simply a fear of technology, but it seems that more often than not, Dealers, GMs and other senior managers avoid even the mention of digital marketing or Internet sales process training.

From the free webinars offered by companies like Cars.com to the informal in-store vendor visits to the full-blown Internet workshops and conferences, it is rare to ever see a General Manager or Dealer Principal in attendance. Are they really too busy to learn what’s happening in the medium that attracts at least 90 percent of their customers?

This post originally appeared on J.D. Power Automotive Online Review and has been re-posted here on DealerRefresh with permission. Posted by Amit Aggarwal.

Why would someone follow your dealer on Twitter?

Last year, I asked “Why would I follow a dealer on Twitter?” My premise was that people will follow someone on Twitter if they can get something out of it. Too often, dealers were just pushing specials and not giving people a reason to follow them. As a counter example, Courtesy Hyundai of Georgia (@HyundaiAtlanta) regularly tweets car care tips, a topic that has the potential to draw followers who will then also receive other information about the dealer and may choose to participate in conversations.

Seven months later, Courtesy Hyundai continues to mix tweets regarding car care, Hyundai vehicles, industry data, and dealer information and now reaches 2,364 followers. The tone is conversational and there’s clearly a person behind the account as evidenced by the tweet frequency – nearly all tweets come during work hours.

“When were you hoping to purchase one?”

On the phone or in person, I hear salespeople ask this question all the time.

I am going to share a story in which I was able to learn a valuable lesson early on in my career…

Of course you didn’t think we would close out the year without a post to sum up what happened here on DealerRefresh in 209, did you?

With the introduction of the new Dealer Forum, It’s been one eventful year to say the least. We had several goals mapped out for the first 6 months to a year for the Forum and have succeeded or better each one we set out to hit.

We added a Facebook Fan page where we currently have over 300 fans. Become a fan if you haven’t already!

Lets get started with the Top Blog Posts..

All of my DealerRefresh articles are inspired by something I have come across recently. This one is certainly no exception.  As most dealership employees whose job focuses around “the Internet” I too wear quite a few hats. One of those hats screams I am the CRM Dude at my dealer group. It is actually one of my favorite responsibilities because it is a never-ending cycle of developing better process, and I find that fun! In my travels from store to store, I come across the same question from frustrated sales people again and again:

Why hasn’t this CRM stuff helped me sell any more cars?

Wishing everyone a Fantastic Holiday Season
and looking forward to am exciting 2010!

UPDATE!!

What Cool Tech Gift did you get for the Holiday?

Comment over in the Forum!