You’re a dealer.  You’re driving along the car selling interstate, minding your own business, focusing on your own instrument panel of metrics when those dreaded lights flash in your rear view mirror.  Behind you, on a motorcycle no less, is the OEM telling you to pull over.  You do so, pull out your financial statements and composites they may ask for, and roll down the window.  As they approach, they tell you that you need to get off the car-selling interstate and take the information highway to Social Media-ville. 

Many dealers are being asked (by the OEM or their industry peers) to slow down when driving through Social Media-ville.  “Get out of the car and spend some time there.  You’ll like it.”  So you have to ask them “For what purpose?  I’m making good time and I see no need to stop.”  If you don’t have the people in place to manage it or the goals set to invest time in it, why should you even let up on the accelerator?  Why on Earth would you want to have anyone in your dealership slow down their car-selling efforts to take a peek around Social Media-ville?  If it isn’t going to be a major boon to your sold unit or service RO volume, what all the fuss is about?

These are all great questions.  There is no reason to make Social Media-ville a stop on your travels unless you are prepared to set-up shop.  Sure, countless other dealerships have gone to Social Media-ville and love it there.  The weather is nice, they live at your own pace, they are active in the community and their business has thrived in the environment because of their participation. 

However, others haven’t been so lucky.  They changed their travel plans on a whim and moved into town hoping their presence alone would be enough to get them invited to the car-selling party.  Sadly, this is not the case.  Before visiting Social Media-ville, a dealer must have a strategy on how to become acclimated when they arrive.  If a dealer is unwilling to be an eager, energetic participant in the community, they will see your online property value decline.  Why?  Because they don’t know why they should have a home there in the first place.

So if you are doing well on the road to the sale that you are on, and do not have the time, willingness, staff, or know-how to be a worthy citizen in Social Media-ville, I kindly ask you to keep driving.  Nothing to see here.  No need to clutter up our hamlet with tourists who contribute nothing to our conversations.  Follow the street signs out of town and don’t come back until you are ready to bring something new and interesting to the party.

Close your eyes. Right now. Close your eyes. Okay, open them. I just realized you wouldn’t be able to read the rest of the instructions. After you close your eyes, I want you to put yourself in the shoes of your customers. Share their mindset. I know it is hard, but you have to think like them. When you are ready, open your eyes and see yourself the way your customers see you. The way the public sees you. Are you ready? Go.

Okay, open your eyes. My guess, if you are reading this, is that you followed these unnecessary instructions. Good. Now, in your new frame of mind, take a look at your social networking accounts. Visit your dealer’s Facebook account/fan page. Look at yourself on LinkedIn. See yourself on Ning. Review your Twitter posts. Watch the videos on your Youtube channel. Now I ask you…if you were a customer, what would you actually be GAINING from connecting with your dealership on these social sites? Has the dealership shown you a specific benefit from joining together? Is it advantageous becoming a fan of your dealership? Are you entertained by the dealership’s videos? Is it more of a nuisance to be their friend than a worthy addition?

Now snap out of it.  As a dealer, what are you doing with ALL of your social networking sites that make it worthwhile for your customers to connect?  Here are some rules that car dealers should follow when utilizing social media as a way of customer engagement.

• You need to preface every single connection you make to your public with a truthful value proposition.
• You must offer Social Networking Friend-only discounts, information, updates, contests, etc.
• You need to put out information that is of value to your consumer.
• You should be filling your posts with “How To” videos, pictures of community involvement, interesting staff pics (celebrating your employees is important), discounts, coupons, recall info, interesting videos and friendly (non-sales) advice.
• Multi-media enriched content, interesting stories, and pertinent information will allow you to engage and enchant your connections provided you post in moderation.
• Recognize that the power of social networking sites is not first and foremost Conquest Business, but Customer Retention.
• Don’t be a sales pitch.
• Don’t post a price.
• They don’t need to see every new piece of inventory.
• Don’t overwhelm them with posts.
• Never ask them to connect more than once. Time won’t change your mind.
• You need to have convinced them that a connection is worthy before they receive the invitation.

As I’ve said before, it is called SOCIAL networking, not BUSINESS networking.

Institute policies in your sales and service departments where in-store customers are told they will be invited to join and there are financial benefits to doing so. The next day, make sure someone is reviewing those service department RO’s and showroom Sold logs and reaching out to these new/existing customers. THAT is called a best practice, my friends.

Businesses on the social networking platforms have just as much opportunity to turn away customers than attract them. Incessant pleas to follow, friend, and fan can be an irritating proposition for your clients. It is imperative every invite is tracked, offered only once, and that posts are not overwhelming. Much debate has been made on whether or not to drag potential prospects away from your website and onto your social networking pages. My suggestion is to proceed with caution. Your social media efforts should be used to beckon customers to your store… to your website. After all, if your website is the most important conversion tool, don’t make it too much of a priority to convert website visitors to social networking friends. There are a couple of companies I’ve seen recently (ActivEngage and Dealer e-Process) that offer a social networking toolbar at the bottom of your website. These toolbars allow the customer to peruse your soc med pages without taking them off-site. This is a great way to have your customers connect from your website in an unobtrusive way without diverting them from their goal.

You know what you should be aiming for. Find a way to give the gift of friendship. Make sure there is a BENEFIT to them for connecting online, not just for you. Think like a customer and develop a social networking campaign that takes their needs into consideration. Be selfless on the social sites. If you do this, you likely will finally see a profit come from all of your social media efforts.

When on the retail side, I trained my BDC team to deconstruct every inbound lead that they received. (This is a practice that is not done near enough in most dealerships I’ve found). I believe in maximizing every lead. You must drill down and read into the lead, picking apart the information they’ve provided and then, by being proactive, search for information about them that will help you build rapport.

Every lead that came into my CRM would be deconstructed. My team would Google search the name of the prospect and search for them on the social networking sites. Now let me preface, THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO REQUEST A CONNECTION/FRIENDSHIP. You’ve done nothing to earn their friendship. This is solely meant to spy (so to speak) and glean as much information about them as possible so you can, in turn, attempt to carefully build a little rapport (without divulging that you had researched them).

This, I believe, is just one best practice that social networking has provided us. This piggybacks off of what Todd Smith of ActivEngage said that dealers are attempting to connect with potential customers much too soon. However, if you implement this practice I taught/teach, it allows you to use these sites as a resource for you to help mold and shape your customer correspondence.

Now let me tie in Bryan Armstrong’s blog about the importance of vendor relations and how having the right, proactive vendor is important.

While on the retail side, I used a very detailed, comprehensive, expensive CRM – that I loved. However, over the course of a year, I submitted 47 tickets for enhancements/improvements. Not for support, but enhancements to be made. Being a hands-on Internet Director that was a self-proclaimed expert in my field, I felt that I was playing the role of the CRM vendor’s eyes on the street. I gave them the much needed, in-the-trenches, experience to help them improve their system for other dealers. Invaluable information. Now ask me how many of the 47 were implemented… NONE. Not one. In a year.

Now I am on the training/consulting side and I get to experiment/play with/manipulate many CRMs and websites. I had a three store group with Vin Solutions and became a fan of their product (much like Bryan Armstrong was touting.) As I said before, I do not want this post to be considered a “Pimp Fest”, but I want to tell you of an experience I had that I valued.
One my own dime, I went down to Overland Park Kansas (from Chicago) to be trained on the Vin Solutions software at their headquarters. I figured, it was worth the money for the trip because I would know how to manipulate the system for my dealer clients – showing them a better return from their CRM solutions.

While training – and if you know me, you know how very outspoken and confident I am – I told them there were 5 things their CRM needed to do, but didn’t. (I expected this to me similar to my last experience where I provided a recipe for an enhancement and it was overlooked.) Vin invited me to their Dealer Advisory board meeting in Orlando before NADA and I attended. As I walked in, Matt Watson, their CTO and code-writing genius, walked up to me and said, “We’re going to show you a bunch of enhancements we are rolling out on our software…oh, and the five things you suggested, they are in there and up and running.” In just a month and a half, Vin Solutions input ALL FIVE of my requests!

There is one specifically I want to hail. One, that I will tout as my own, is an automatic link on every single customer lead’s profile that links the ISM to that customer’s social networking profiles (if they have one) to help deconstruct the lead. It doesn’t take you off the page, but helps you dramatically increase what you know (and can learn) about your e-lead prospects. This is a massive time-saver and a best practice that should not be overlooked. If you don’t have Vin Solutions and have no interest in switching providers, I urge you to contact your current CRM provider and have them create this enhancement for you (in a month and a half). You will see your appointment-to-show and closing ratios rise dramatically.

Since it has been put in, and before Bryan Armstrong left his last post, he told me how that feature – on its first day available to his team – was used to sell an extra car that day. How fulfilling is that for little old me? That is called VALIDATION and FRUITION my friends. I only hope you can experience the same journey with your ideas and vendors married together.

With the new year upon us, it is time we sit down and determine the ROI of our past (and recent) online marketing initiatives. What has worked for you? What hasn’t? What is your social networking resolution?

Are you going to dedicate your financial resources (ad budget) to the failed or fledgling programs of yesteryear or try your hand at all of the digital marketing tactics you read so much about daily? If it isn’t working, at what point do you cut ties, end your relationship with the old school vendors, and spend time on a more worthy venture such as social media?

If you want to succeed on a social networking landscape, you must first put yourself in your customer’s shoes. You must share their mindset. “What is in it for them?” you have to ask yourself. You need to show a benefit to the consumer for joining you on these networking sites. Stop worrying about what is important to you and start realizing what is important to your audience. This is the greatest obstacle for almost every dealer with a Twitter and Facebook account right now. So few have any idea what the hell to do with them! Remember, your customers are likely on these sites for personal reasons so recognize that it is called SOCIAL networking, not “business” networking.

I’ll tell you – to do it right, you must learn how to educate, engage, and entertain your audience with multiple forms of media and user-generated content to increase customer retention, brand awareness, and positive consumer reviews all while creating interactive, VIP-styled discount/deal/contest programs to elicit referrals, responses, and business. By the way, you can’t be too intrusive, pushy, overwhelming, or generic. Let me tell you… easier said than done. The “doing” takes time, knowledge, dedication, and commitment. More than most dealers are willing to dedicate.

A year ago and a half ago, you could say that social media is still early in its evolution and could have spent time figuring out the best practices on your own. Today, it is too late to experiment. You are losing market share every single time another one of your competitors joins the social site community. You no longer have the luxury to play around and wait to find out the best practices of the medium. If you are behind the social networking times, you have to make a resolution. You’ll need to either rededicate some advertising budget to training – someone who can give you a jump start on the best practices of the platform – or farm out your entire social networking campaigns to a company or group able to control your presence in this online marketplace. Or if you wanted to spend even more money, hire a professional to do it on-site full-time. I don’t know anyone who does the latter, but DealerKnows Consulting based out of Chicago and our Preferred Partners around the nation can assist you with your social media management needs.

So I ask you…what is your Social Networking Resolution? Do you have a plan? If not, you better have a budget.

1)Understand your primary goals for creating your own site – have an objective.

2)Put someone in charge that wants to be active in following up with customers and is willing to update and manage the network regularly.Consistency is imperative.

3)Create a site on www.ning.com and create a color theme that represents your dealership and brand.

4)Upload pics of staff, logos, and any and all videos and commercials you can gather from your own dealer, the OEM, or third-party sites.

5)Have every sales person and service writer create a profile on the site and share a few family photos.Encourage your staff to show their personalities on the site.

6)Train all sales associates to invite their sold customers to the network as they wait for the business office – and help them sign up.This keeps the customer busy while waiting and gets them as a community member immediately.
a) By signing up, tell the customers they will receive service updates and specials as well as the current financing incentives and new model rollout information.
b) If the customer contacts you through this site for information regarding the purchase of any future vehicle, a social discount will be given above and beyond internet pricing.Let them know of the specific benefits for signing up.It must do something for them.
c) Explain the wide demographic of your customer base and encourage them to promote themselves and their own businesses through your site as well.

7)As the customer is leaving, take their picture in front of their new vehicle (or film a customer testimonial), and immediately upload it to the site.Alert your customers that they will be prominently featured.(This will prompt a customer to go online and actually see themselves as stars.)

Continue to maintain the site and add as much sticky content (media, pictures) as possible and alert them of every special event, sale, or community activity you involve yourself with.

This will not change the culture of a dealership.It will not solve all of your problems.To do it right takes significant dedication and creativity when it comes to content deployment.You are creating your own mini ad agency, but reaching your own customers only. However, with this medium, the customers are one step removed from a dealership’s online presence where, opposed to your website (which is to appease everyone), you have the ability to target specific people with targeted messages.It will take time to catch on and will initially drive more service traffic than sales.It is, though, the only way to effectively create and utilize your own social networking site.You’ll only get out of it what you put into it.The best part?All it costs is time and effort.That’s right.Everything I mentioned is free.Since it is a format that your customers are likely used to anyway, showing them that you are a part of the same online community (and leading the way) will only help you endear yourself to your customers.Use this task list only if you are interested in keeping customers the old-fashioned way…by making them feel special and continuing the relationship after the sale.