How do car dealers advertise on facebook, MySpace, twitter and other social networking sites?

Social networking is all the buzz right now and everyone from the Automotive Industry to Real Estate is trying to figure out how to use sites like facebook to grow their business. One of the largest areas of growth is in the automotive sector. The attraction of social networking sites isn’t hard to figure out. Millions of people to reach and you can basically do it for free…if you don’t scare them all away. Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a more effective way to utilize facebook and other social networking mediums to reach your clients? I have a clear plan that is guaranteed to be better than 90% of the efforts being put forth today. Grab a pen and paper and write this down…

STOP POSTING YOUR ADS ON FACEBOOK AND OTHER SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES - THEY DON’T WANT TO BE YOUR FRIEND!

No, that wasn’t a typo. Some of you may be shaking your head at what you just read but frankly I don’t care, and you’ll thank me in just a moment when you read on. Many of you remember MySpace and the popularity it had when it first launched onto the social scene. I am in my mid thirties and I was a MySpace addict at first launch. I had my background all tricked out and added a TON of friends so that I could try to become a networking machine.

Over 5 years ago I was approached by our Vice President of Variable Ops who wanted me to take what I had done as our Honda Internet Manager and spread it through all the stores in our group.  He told me the job was temporary and not to expect it to last more than a year or 2.  He titled me the Internet Director and my job was to train “Internet Sales Agents” on how to move a lot of cars through digital communication.  His thoughts were that I would eventually find a store to call home and continue working my way up in a more traditional manner.

Since he asked me to do this job back in March of 2004, my job title has changed and I’ve worked my way into quite a few very different directions.  Once we had figured out a good way to handle not just Internet leads, but all incoming non-physical traffic too, and we had the right people in place I was able to focus more on things like our website, new technologies, and CRM.  It is the CRM that gets you!

The most important technology of any dealership is the one that promotes process.

Dealers still playing the PRICE GAME on Classified Websites.

Are dealers still playing this game? …ofcourse they are!

I was hoping this shit would stop as print continues to diminish, but it’s obvious that some of the classified sites allow it to happen as well. Maybe it’s OK. Maybe at the end of the day there really is nothing wrong with it. After all, its the customers responsibility to read the print..RIGHT?

As dealers struggle, it only makes sense to find that “trick” that gets the phone to ring, more leads into the inbox and more people through the front door “We’ll deal with the objections once they’re in the showroom”..right?

I just don’t like it and think in the long run it makes it more difficult to brand your dealership as a reputable place to do business with. I also think it brings a bad image to the classified sites that allow this type of pricing technique to happen on their websites. IMO it’s taking away from the “consumer centric” appeal and again provides a disservice to the customer.

What do you think?

Are you providing the customer a disservice by pricing your inventory like this on the Online Classified Sites?

Should the Online Classified Websites allow this type of pricing technique (knowing consumers initially search by price) ?

What are your thoughts?

Your future manager is a multi-tasking fiend. She or he will embrace every form of social media and communicate with staff by email or instant messenger.  Technology use will be first and foremost on his or her mind, with an understanding that it doesn’t always work perfectly, but incorporating technology into processes is crucial. They will demand it!

I am the oldest of 6 and also have quite a few younger cousins that I’m very close to.  They range from 5 years old to 26.  The females spend a lot of their free time on MySpace and/or faceBook and are texting fanatics.  The males also spend a lot of time playing XBOX Live.  They all play team sports, take lessons for a particular musical instrument, read books, and do fairly well in school if they’re engaged that semester. They all have a cell phone (except the 5 year old), a computer (or three), their favorite flavor of social media, and over 900 channels of television to chose from along with an arsenal of movies to watch & videogames to play.

This posting has been removed.

After a deep conversation with Frank, I have decided to remove his post from DealerRefresh. It really sirred up form shit and at the end of the day I would never want anyone to loose their job. I have asked Frank to write a quick retraction request which you can read below.

If you’re familiar with the post, please continue to comment (please keep your comments clean and respectful though )

Jeff, Alex an the rest of the DealerRefresh community;

I appreciate your support, I have been watching my post and I am asking that you remove it for a couple of reasons. First of all I have a huge amount of respect for General Motors and Cobalt websites. In our current economic situation I think it would be a benefit to support the manufacture. I also have a huge respect for the dealer I currently work for and I would not want any bad press for this or any dealer just because of my own personal opinion. I appreciate your cooperation in removing my article from DealerRefresh. After review The GM and dealer principle at this store disagree with my opinion and are 100% on board General Motors marketing plan.

Thank you

Frank Davis

One of our GM’s sent me an email with a link to another dealership who had a welcome video on their homepage yesterday. He thought it was very good, and he was right! The video quality was good, the speaker was good, and the background looked good. It was a good welcome video. The only problem is that I hate welcome videos, and this one was no exception because aside from welcoming me to the dealership website it was telling me how to use the navigation bar C’mon.  Seriously.  Obviously this dealership thinks I’ve never been on the Internet before.  I wanted my 30 seconds back after that. If I were shopping for a car I may or may not have started with the dealer’s website, but chances are I wasn’t born yesterday, bought a computer, then decided it was time to buy a car and I was going to start with a dealership website. It is probably safe to assume a consumer knows how to use your navigation bar. And that dead horse has been beaten.

Sorry about the rant, but I figured I’d give you some incite into what enticed me to write this article. It wasn’t just another dealer’s welcome video, but that was the final straw that broke this camel’s back. For years I’ve been looking at some really dumb stuff in our industry. Whether that be the newspaper ad with more disclaimer than ad or a car being released called the Aztek, we have all done or witnessed some moranisms (like that word?). Let’s talk about some of the genius work that is happening online…maybe I should contract with a publisher before I get started on that.

On second thought I don’t have the patience for a publisher so let’s begin with where a lot of this started:  the manufacturer. Granted, when the Internet became a consumer device none of us really knew how to tackle it for selling cars.  You couldn’t box a car up and ship it somewhere as easily as you could a book. Forget the past, let’s look at 3 things the OEM’s still dictate we dealers do:

1. Some, not most, still require a dealer to go to a special Internet Lead Management site to only respond to a lead for the first time. WTF is that all about?  So we responded once - I guess we’re going to sell that Hyundai now!  Why don’t all the manufacturers work with the CRM companies to help dealers streamline their processes and sell more cars?
2. What is the point of these OEM-dictated websites anyway? If you’re going to force my hand, why have them? Just build one VW or MINI website and show the entire nation’s inventory then have a specials section that dealers can upload specials to. You’re not offering a benefit to the dealer or the consumer by forcing uniforms in school. And last I checked your corporate representative either doesn’t live in this marketplace, just moved to this market, and probably doesn’t have a degree in advertising so what makes you think you know how to market in this market?
3. Are you so naive to think a consumer looking for a Honda is not going to look at a Camry too? Why do manufacturers require these dealer OEM sites? This particular thing hasn’t been talked about too often, but I think it is so silly to have them. There is no other industry that I know of who separates its products. If I am in the market for a TV, I go to Best Buy’s website and can look at Sony’s and Samsungs right next to each other. Why do we make consumers jump through these silly hoops?

How about a quick look at some of the things we dealers do to keep the rule of equal incompetence going strong:

1. Egos: whoa buddy we’ve got some big ones ’round these parts. Let’s put someone with a face for radio and a voice for the newspaper into a video on our homepage…or on TV. Let’s put a welcome message up telling us how to use the nav bar. Who wants to see that?  What other industries use a welcome message anyway?
2. Frames: I like frames for things you can’t duplicate with your site provider like the service scheduling modules. Until the site providers build this technology themselves, I think frames are the only way to do this.  The frames that are bad are the ones where a dealer was too lazy to update the incentives/specials so he just framed in Honda’s national website showing the current Honda incentives. That page was never intended to be a frame, so it looks like you’ve got a website inside a website with links to your competitors. That’s just dumb.
3. Video: we have gone wild with video. I think some dealers are just running around with a video camera and throwing it online without any editing or thought as to what the message is. Before you ever hit the record button you need to think about what you’re trying to do - what is the message you want to get across and if it is how to use your navigation bar…um…you might want to think a little harder. You really don’t want a consumer wanting those 30 seconds back. Oh yeah, that older generation who we think can’t use the Internet isn’t watching your videos - they’re reading your site content instead (that generation read books) - don’t put a welcome message telling them how to use the nav bar because they’re never going to see it.
4. SEO: I’m guilty of this, but am making an effort to get away from it. Yes, SEO is extremely important, but not the generic content of “Thank you for visiting our online dealership in Virginia Beach, Virginia where we carry blah, blah, blah” - nobody wants to read that and I believe you’re just training your visitors to ignore the written content on your site. We need to get more creative with this.
5. The About Us Page: do you even pay attention to this page on your website?  ‘nough said.
6. Site statistics: the most overlooked statistic in a dealership, but just as important as knowing how many customers walked in the door last month. I guess we still view our websites the same way we looked at television, radio, and newspaper ads: with a quick question - “Did we get any floor traffic off the website this weekend?”

I can go on and on. I’m sure many of you can continue to add to what I’ve typed, and we could do this forever. The real question is what are we doing about it? Are you even aware of these things?

Yes, I am totally aware that the automotive industry is a different retail beast than any other industry, but that doesn’t mean we can isolate ourselves from the rest of the world. If you do any online research or shopping, then you probably know what you like in a retail website and what you don’t. Have you ever thought that your customers may have those same opinions? If you could figure out how to navigate another website’s nav bar, maybe your consumers can figure out how to navigate yours. And no boss, you don’t get prettier with age.

</end rant>

Disclaimer:  can I make this longer than this novel of a blog article like one of those dealer newspaper ads?  Nah, I’ll be serious here.  Debate is something that makes us better. If you don’t like some of the things I’ve stated here, I can assure you my intention was not to insult you.  This is an attempt at education or at the minimum to spark a debate on some of these topics.

To my GM - keep bringing me all your ideas.  You’re one of the most innovative people I know and value your opinion anytime you want to give it.  Even if my answers are a little harsh or blunt from time to time, just brush those off your shoulder and keep things coming!  Let’s continue the debates.

We have not had a generation defined by hardship in a long time.  The World War II generation, the generation who survived the Great Depression, the Vietnam generation… For those of us who were born in the 70’s or later, all hard times have been very short.

I’m not saying I want to see us scarred by the current economic predicament, but I do believe it will have a profound affect on how we view the world for the rest of our lives.  That includes what motivates us to spend our money.

I started selling cars 10 years ago; just before CSI became mainstream.  I recall an excellent interest rate being around 8% and the Internet was more of a luxury - nobody was buying anything of significance through it.  Shortly thereafter CSI was enforced by all the major manufacturers and the process of buying a new car instantly became much better for the consumer.  Over time ISP’s lowered their pricing, AOL got huge, and more people were online.  Communicating with customers via email was the new fad!  As sites like Edmunds and CarsDirect surfaced consumers gained the knowledge to negotiate on invoice and a multitude of trade-in values.  Through all this, incentives were high and interest rates were low (due to September 11th).  Consumer confidence was skyrocketing and car sales were never so good!

Then it all came crashing down in 2008.  Banks stopped lending, leasing almost died, floorplans ate dealers alive as unwanted cars piled up, layoffs became motivation, and consumer confidence was wrecked.  As a thrill/speed junky, I wish they made a roller coaster with that kind of drop!

That’s where we were and this is where we are.  The Internet has become as much a part of our existence as the road we drive to work.  The Internet is inexpensive.  It is a place to shop for a deal and a cheap medium to pop an advertisement on.  With traditional medias costing so much more we are all heading online.  However, with consumer confidence low, incentive-based advertising is not working.  Or maybe we all cried wolf so long people stopped listening…

How do we market to consumers today?  How do we define a generation for future marketing?

We all know banner ads are only effective in an incentive-driven world.  There are too many spammy emails to be effective with numerous email blasts.  Google ads will eventually be passed over, by consumers, for more relevant organic results.

Do we make our inventory look so good online that we are basically driving the car out of the monitor and onto their lap?  Do we get on the forums, blogs, FaceBook pages and follow consumers on Twitter?  Do we build relationships instead of being marketers?

What will the next generation respond to?

Great Management and Great Leadership

This coming year will be a sad year for many car dealerships, so I’m writing this article to offer hope and encouragement, and maybe it will help save at least one from despair. But before I continue, let it be known that I am a very optimistic, positive, “glass is half-full” kind of guy. To me, adversity is nothing more than an opportunity for growth, and without challenges no one would develop perseverance. Now, I’m not saying that I like adversity or being challenged all the time, but lately it seems the world I’m living in serves up more and more of it everyday.

Managing The Dealership

Every dealership needs to start by looking at the way they are managed. Thousands of dealers have operated with blinders on for too many years. This mentality avoids true management of people and their processes, and has no chance against the Godzilla-sized problems facing every dealer in the country right now.

First, ask yourself, “Whose hands are on the wheel?” I’ve been in far too many dealerships that have a really great Salesman working as a Manager. NEWS FLASH: An excellent Sales Person does not equal an excellent Manager! The best Manager might not be able to sell their way out of a wet paper bag and that’s ok! Maybe this challenges your way of thinking about management, but that’s ok too…you reserve the right to change your mind when given new ideas.

Consider this. Right now, as you read this article, Managers are making big decisions. Hiring and firing decisions, vendor decisions (who to keep, who to cut, who to add), advertising and marketing decisions, decisions on what to buy at auctions and pricing used inventory, decisions on how to process incoming internet leads, website decisions, decisions on training and education initiatives and so on and so on.

Poor Managers make the above BIG decisions based on instinct alone, which is a display of ignorance. Ignorance is not only unacceptable, it represents a coffin nail that every dealer should avoid at all cost. A bad Manager has no idea what his or her employees are truly capable of and how to motivate them. When a Manager only evaluates sales people based how many vehicles they sell, they fail to identify the reasons why they sold that number of vehicles. If you don’t know why Johnny-Sales-Guy only sold five cars this month, you are a bad Manager.

Bad Managers don’t recognize, or even see the need, for tools that track sales efforts; they don’t know how to determine the value of their vendors; they don’t understand what advertising and marketing choices return the best results; they don’t know what their ratio is between their showroom traffic and their internet traffic; they don’t know what makes a good website (or even know why their website exists); they don’t know when they need training; and they don’t know how to hold trained employees accountable. Managers such as these have no right to be managing in today’s dealership.

Great Managers, of course, do all of the above well because their experience, knowledge, abilities and talents match the needs of the position. They know the strengths and weaknesses of those he or she manages and they will position their employees to play to their strengths, NOT their weaknesses. A great Manager knows what days showroom traffic is at its peak and cross-trains sales people for traditional showroom sales as well as internet sales. A great Manager tracks sales people’s response times, follow-up discipline, appointment setting ratio, closing ratio and uses metrics to help the dealership thrive not just survive.

Again, good management is a dilemma for many dealerships because so many stores are being managed by people whose greatest strength is not managing.

Helpful Hints and Encouragement

• Choosing to keep an employee should be based on the fact that their abilities, strengths and talents match your needs and that they are well utilized to make your business successful. Establish an employee rating scale (i.e. “Outstanding,” “Exceeds Expectations,” “Meets Expectations” and “Needs Improvement”), then MANAGE your staff toward success or out of your dealership.

• Keep and/or add vendors that increase sales conversion. Now more than ever, vendor choices need to be based on ROI. A good vendor will stand behind their product or service by not forcing long term contracts. Having the best tools available is useless if there is no proven process for them.

• Make cuts in places like newspaper, television and radio. If you spend more than $5k a month in any of these areas, separately or combined, sharpen your axe and start swinging it!

• Manage your processes or you will make bad decisions. If you don’t know how to effectively communicate with your customers (especially online), you will not be able to identify good leads vs. bad leads. You won’t know why one CRM tool fits your business needs vs. another. Solid processes give you critical management tools like visibility, accountability and responsibility.

• If you are the Dealer/Owner/DP, do some self-examination related to your leadership skills and abilities. If you aren’t the one casting the vision for how the business moves forward, who is? A leader must exist. Here’s a video that includes 13 great leadership rules.

Properly managing your people and processes is one of the biggest keys to your dealership’s success. Just signing-up for the latest and greatest product or service will do nothing to help you if the wrong people work for you or if you have the right people in the wrong roles. There will be amazing success stories in 2009, but they will all have two things in common, great management and great leadership.

If there is anything 2008 taught me, it is that America’s memory has shortened even further than it was before.  It is amazing how fast people switched their car-buying habits based on gas prices going up and coming back down.  I can’t get over the speed at which truck sales died and came back.  Do people really believe we’ll never see an increase in gas prices again?  Did the environment take a back seat in our Hummers once again?

The housing market died and interest rates are at their lowest, but even with housing still in the toilet people flocked to new purchases enough to have every mortgage broker and Real Estate agent I know working through Christmas.  All indications show the housing market is going to continue to drop, so why invest now?

Never try to catch a falling knife.

Wall Street is a bloody mess, but I hear more and more people are throwing money at it thinking a big return is going to happen next week.

Wait for the knife to hit the floor first.

Don’t get me wrong, I am super happy to hear people are spending money - we need it to happen more!  I’m ecstatic some faith is being restored to the system.  I’m just intrigued by the month-to-month mentality we seem to have in this country now.  One of my degrees is in History and maybe it is that dorky academic side of me that finds this whole mess fascinating.

One thing these consumer trends are showing me is that we can either get away with more experimental advertising or have to get more long-term with our campaigns.  It is obvious people are not going to remember when you made a mistake.  Sure, a few folks will, but the masses won’t.  At the same time, maybe it means we need to start thinking about spreading our messages farther and longer.  Maybe it means we have to beat people over the head until they say stop.  Maybe we have to get extremely targeted…more-so than before.  Maybe we should concentrate on branding more than ever.  Maybe we should do more guerrilla marketing.

Whatever the marketing tactic is for 2009 it is going to be an interesting year to say the least.  No matter what, it will be tougher and require better strategizing than ever before.  I think it will be a good year for online and anything that is free to consumers (non-subscription based medias).

This email made it into my inbox. Not sure who wrote it but I thought I would share it with everyone. Thanks Todd

——————–

If I hear one more person give another reason why they can’t sell cars I am going to punch someone in the face.

“The banks aren’t buying” - Yes they are idiot, just not like they were, so change what you are doing.

“There are less customers looking” - So get out of your office and work the ones you have harder.

“The deals aren’t as good” - Says who? Cars have always been expensive and they have always cost more than the customer told you they wanted to pay…so now you are going to start believing the customer?

“We cant lease anymore” - yes you can idiots …there just aren’t giveaways that any no talent order-taker could give away, so maybe you should quit and we’ll get a salesperson who can do the job.

Guess what?..We sold cars when interest rates were 18%… We sold cars when they would blow up…we sold cars that flipped over…we sold cars in recessions…we sold cars that were uglier than a monkey’s armpit and broke down on delivery…we sold cars from empty showrooms…we sold Yugo’s, and Daewoos, and Pinto’s, and K-cars for god’s sake, and Suburbans when gas was $4 a gallon.

How? Because we SOLD them. We inquired about our customers needs and wants, their budget, their family, their jobs, their travel habits. We made friends and sold the snot out of the right vehicle that met all of their needs. We didn’t sell the deal, we made the deal sell. We didn’t believe them when they told them the car was too much…because we selected a vehicle that wasn’t too much; and, when they chose a more expensive model…we told them it was more expensive and they would pay more. We sold them on the idea of putting money down so they wouldn’t be buried with debt so that cash down wasn’t a burden but a benefit - and they always found more money for the car we made them want…because we made them want it…we made them need it…and they loved us for it.

We didn’t lie or cheat, we didn’t fudge the numbers, and trick them into paying more…we sold the sizzle…and we made money doing it and our customers loved us when we were done. And they told their friends how great we were to do business with.

When I was a salesperson I loved the rain. I loved it because the other salespeople would hide in their office convinced that they were not going to sell anything because nobody was going to come out in the rain. So I stood on the lot under my umbrella and waited, ’cause I knew that if somebody did show up…they were there to buy something.

Today the news media is pumping bad weather into everybody’s living room and it is raining bad news. Today I want to be a salesperson again standing in the showroom waiting for the customer who is going to walk in despite everything they have heard because they are looking for someone to say, “its OK to buy,” and I would be there in my tie with a warm handshake and a smile ready to make it OK to part with a few thousand dollars…and I would make it fun too.

Yes, it is true that dealers will close. Banks will go under. The car business is changing. This is the time when we will undergo an economic housecleaning. We will see the weak salespeople who survived in this business out of sheer dumb luck find their true place in McDonalds dunking fries. We will see the sales managers who forgot how to sell, and who never knew how to motivate and train professionals, move on to telemarketing gig’s or make that career change they have talked about for so long.

Good riddance. This business is not for the weak or feint of heart. Here only the strong survive. When all is said and done only the best will be left standing. We will be sipping our coffee, and cashing our big checks, and rolling steel.

I will be here with my umbrella, my tie, a warm handshake and a smile. I say bring it on.

MAKE IT HAPPEN!!!

-Rob