For you dealerships looking to define your dealerships social media strategy, Mari Smith offers 7 simple but often overlooked ways get more noticed on your followers Facebook’s News Feed.

A few of the tips in the video include:

• Ideal frequency to post your updates
• The best time during the day and week to post your updates
• Writing short updates – 80 characters or less

If you don’t already follow Mari (like I have been for quiet sometime now) you can @MariSmith

With 30 billion pieces of content being shared on Facebook each month, what are you doing to be sure your content gets seen?

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Mobile Visits to your Dealership are on the Rise

This isn’t news. We know that more and more mobile devices are accessing the web on a daily basis. What might news to you, however, is the coming mobile tidal wave reports are predicting. Cisco’s spring 2011 study cites 2010 mobile data traffic nearly tripled (2.6x) for the third year in a row. A Tech Crunch article states mobile traffic is expected to rise 40x in the next 5 years. Fortune’s August 2010 article sums it up: “The numbers don’t lie: Mobile devices overtaking PCs.”

The coming tidal wave of mobile devices is turning into a tsunami. As such we need to evaluate how mobile users are engaging with our virtual storefront.

Your Mobile Visitors

Have you looked at your site’s mobile traffic? Here’s how to with a Google Analytics account:

1. Log in to your Analytics account.
2. Once logged in, you need to look on the left hand column for “Visitors.”
3. Under “Visitors,” click on “Mobile.”

You will then see statistics of people who viewed your site with mobile phones.

Chances are you’ll be surprised at the number. Even more interesting – look at how that number has increased over the last few months. DealerRefresh focused on this topic in May of 2010 – read the comments section from participating dealers.

Hosting a weekly video series “Mobile and the Dealer” allows me to chat with dealers around the nation. Dealers are consistently reporting 15-20%+ of total web traffic coming from mobile devices. This has increased ten fold for some over the last 12 months!

Bouncing or sticking?

Take a look at how mobile visitors are behaving on your site. Specifically look at bounce rates of mobile visitors and compare them to traditional visitors. If you’re like many, you’ll see sky-high bounce rates on your mobile visitors. In this podcast: Eric Hanson talks about mobile visitor bounce rates of vegas.com and how optimization strategies effectively lowered those stats.

Understanding Mobile Visitor Behavior

More and more reports are showing different behavior patterns for mobile visitors vs. desktop. This only makes sense, but we are now seeing data to back it up. What’s clear: giving a mobile user a desktop experience results in bounces and decreased conversion, if any.

Time on site metrics for traditional desktop users continues to be higher than metrics for mobile devices. Mobile visitors are on the go. They consume information many times in sections rather than a single sitting. The essence of being on the go doesn’t allow for prolonged spans of attention. An interesting study by ClickTale, puts some numbers to the speculation that mobile users don’t like to scroll. Long loading times, scrolling, zooming,: – all of these functions are turns off and contribute to bounces for a desktop formatted website.

Capturing Mobile Visitors

Top dealers are providing a mobile-optimized experience for their customer. These dealers are using mobile sites and mobile apps designed to capture the customer, providing first the information they are seeking, then spurring them to action. If you buy a mobile site or mobile app from a quality vendor serving the dealer market, you’ll see a lot of attention has been placed on channeling the customer through a specific set of processes.

Now that dealer apps can be downloaded right from the dealership website, dealers are using apps to create long-term relationship channels with the customer from pre-sale to post-sale service and incentives.

As mobile device traffic increases, make sure your marketing strategy doesn’t forget your mobile customer.

What is your dealerships mobile marketing strategy for the near future?

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Who cares how many email addresses your dealership collects

Once you have them, what are you going to do with them?

When I was on the floor; I got every customers email address. I was determined to follow up via phone and email, if for some reason I was unable to close the sale.

It’s what I did. It was part of MY process.

If I couldn’t close the customer on the first visit or failed at capturing a solid appointment over the phone, you can bet I was going to take a photo of the vehicle they were interested in (with my Sony Mavica Floppy disc camera) and send them a photo(s) with an email brochure until they were sold or kindly asked me to stop.

If a sales representative is determined to follow up with a customer with a personal email, they’ll ask for it (if they’re really good, he/she will even acquire their mailing address and send them a personal card in the mail).

Now we have the technology to not only send a photo but a quick vehicle video walk-around right from our phone.

That being said, when was the last time you saw someone from your sales staff taking photos or a video of a vehicle with their iphone, then sending to a potential customer?

If a sales professional is determined to follow up with a customer via email, they’ll acquire a customers email address. It will be part of their process.

Too often, having a mandatory email capture rate lands you a CRM full of bogus email addresses. Hopeful in keeping the management mouths shut.

If you don’t have a consistent email marketing campaign in place for prospect and retention, then why does it matter if you acquire a customers email address?

Because the manufacture said so…

True – but let’s agree, retention after the sale is something most sales staff place little importance on.

Education. Take the time to educate your staff on the direct benefits in gaining a customers email address. Get their buy-in by showing and educating them on the importance of how it helps them sell more cars, and schedule more service.

Are your sales and service staff copied on each email campaign? If not..why? Get it done! Today.

Including and copying your staff on your email campaigns will eventually help them understand the importance of capturing the email address. Especially when they tie it back to a direct opportunity to a sale.

We train our sales staff to sell on benefits not features.

Shouldn’t we do the same?

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Except for a telephone greeting along the lines of “Thank you for calling (Dealer Name). How can I assist you?”, there is one word track your people use almost as much..

“Sorry, my computers running slow.”

Does your computer suck? Does it really?Is it the Internet speed of which your desktop operates? Is it the crappy Internet service your dealer has signed up for? It very well may be and if it is, tell your dealer to step out of the dark ages and get you the proper technology so you don’t have to keep throwing that poor, defenseless computer under the proverbial bus in front of your customers.

“Internet is going really slow to day. (sigh and a plea) C’mon. (twenty seconds later) “There you go. Yes, it looks to be in stock.”

I don’t think your computers are always the problem, but you have no problem blaming it on the computer when a customer calls. It can’t ALWAYS be the computer. Sometimes it is the user that is causing the error.

One thing is for certain, your computers take a verbal beating and I’m here to stick up for them.

Get your desk in order. Stop answering the phone if your websites aren’t up, screens aren’t open, DMS isn’t at the ready, and your dealership CRM isn’t front and center. If your monitor is prepared for the call, then you can get the answers out quicker and stop making it look like your dealership operates on Dot Matrix machines. It is often the people and not the programs so blame yourself. If you don’t have the skills to capture the customer’s information and set an appointment without logging into your computer then it is your job to have it ready to go for the customer and stop using your inability to navigate the machine as the primary obstacle in the call. Have you no feelings for your poor, sad computer?

Let the customer think that you are 100% in control of your work station, able to answer their questions within seconds rather than forcing them to listen to awkward silences while you verbally abuse your desktop and Internet service. They will think you are more professional and hold you in higher regard.

It is not your computer’s fault that “give me a few seconds. It seems to not want to work for me. Haha. C’mon. C’mon. Here it comes. No. Shoot. This computer always does this to me. Here it is. Wait. What kind did you say? That’s right. The 1500. And… it looks like…. Hold on a second. Running so slow today” you are the slow one.

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Making Your Dealership a Gen Y Hiring Magnet

In my last article “Why You Should WANT Gen Y Workers in your Dealership“, I talked about why you should want to hire Gen Y. Now, I’ve created a three-part series to tell you how to actually do it. When it comes to making your dealership a Gen Y hiring magnet, many things may spring to mind: free puppies, a vegan taco bar, an Xbox Kinect. And frankly, my answer is yes, yes, and yes. But if you don’t have the hook-up on French bulldogs, don’t despair. Reaching my generation is really a simple matter of messaging. Appeal to our earnest generational ideals, and we’ll be lining up like your dealership is a Lady Gaga concert.

Three Messages to Include In Your Next Craigslist Ad

Escape. Blame our helicopter parents, movies like American Beauty, or the Choose Your Own Adventurebooks we read as kids. However you justify it, mine is a disillusioned generation. Traditional marketing doesn’t work on us. Job security? A straitjacket preventing us from spontaneous backpacking trips to Morocco. Assets? Manacles chaining us to a choice-less future. The American Dream? Picket fences and Priuses don’t mix. My generation is all about options, innovation, and uncharted paths. Therefore, the simple fact that a car dealership job provides an alternative from the 9 to 5 grind is in itself a point worthy of emphasis. Messaging to try:

• “Trade stale office air for the smell of exotic leather”
• “Trade a cube farm for a candy store”
• “Did you get the memo that traditional office jobs suck your soul?”

Excitement. The car business offers the potential for fun thrills, sex appeal, and pumping adrenaline that many jobs do not. After all, who wants to file paperwork and collate copies all day when you could be driving fast cars, earning crazy commissions, and hobnobbing with interesting people in a high-stakes, fast-paced business? Hey, it worked for Wall Street. Messaging to try:

• “Drive expensive cars for a living”
• “Your morning coffee shouldn’t be the most exciting thing that happens to you today”
• “Where your office includes Italian leather, heated seats and 400 horsepower”

Entrepreneurship. Gen Y’ers are proud proponents of the dual passion economy. What this means is that most of us reside in twin worlds, balancing our day jobs and our dream jobs. Every Gen Y’er has a moonlight gig of some kind: rock band, mystery novel, Etsy store, iPhone app idea. To support our true passions, many of us turn to manual labor jobs like waitressing and bartending. To lure Gen Y, emphasize that a job at a car dealership offers the same flexibility, better financial opportunity, and a cushier gig than greasy food service gigs. Messaging to Try:

• “Trapped in the Waitress/Actress Cliché? Here’s a Way Out”
• “Bartending is No Longer the Best Side Gig in Town”
• “Make Money on YOUR Schedule -No Dancing Hot Dog Costume Required!”

And if you could manage one soy beef taco with extra lettuce and avocado while you’re at it, my generation and I would really appreciate it.

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