What is your dealerships’ story? If you were asked on an elevator to describe your dealerships’ brand what would you say? You sell XYZ products? If that’s your answer great, but more than likely if found in the same situation your competition would say the exact same thing. If that’s the case what separates you from them? Crafting, developing and understanding your dealerships story is important for it’s what separates us from our competition; It’s what makes us unique and in some cases remarkable. If you’re having trouble understanding why or how you should be using Facebook, Twitter, [insert tool here] it’s because you have yet to discover your dealerships story. Those social tools are designed to be an avenue for you to tell a story. A unique story. Your story. Here’s an example: Circa 2009 Lebanon Ford’s slogan/motto was “changing the way you feel about buying a car”. I won’t even begin...

Stop thinking like this...



and starting thinking like this....



 

Social media tools by themselves (e.g.. Facebook in this case) aren't really all that important. Stop focusing solely on the tool and begin to understand how that tool fits into your overall marketing ecosystem. Sleep, eat, think... Synergy.  

 

  You may have experienced this before, especially those who’ve recently decided to get serious about social media for your dealership. It’s that feeling when all your social platforms are open on your browser and you catch yourself just clicking back and forth between all of them without a purpose. Like a mindless zombie you’re just “there” in front of your computer, refreshing your Twitter or Facebook feeds contributing nothing of value to others, yourself, or society.   What you are experiencing is Social Media Overload. A very similar feeling to when you try to make sense of the Universe and your significance within it. It starts off by asking yourself “am I using this correctly?” followed by “I have no idea what I’m doing on Twitter!” and then caps off with “am I, and all this Social Media hubbub really worth it?”. Sometimes being social can be a bit overwhelming, here are 5 tips...

                              One of the few criteria for accepting a Community Editor role with Driving Sales is to dedicate ourselves to quality content creation each week to benefit the dealer community. While all insights, commentary, tips and discussion pieces shared with you over the next year will be solely focused on your professional and personal growth; I wanted to start off by sharing personal and professional details of who I am in hopes of giving you and me a better field of experience for future conversations and debate. The commonalities between an Auto, Entrepreneur and Gaming magazine you’re probably wondering are that they’re all part of my personal brand. I’m currently the Digital Communications & Marketing Director at Lebanon Ford a rural Ford dealer in Lebanon, OH. Graduated from Miami University (OH) last May and profes...

Craig Lockerd, for the love of all that is good and holy stop spamming the Driving Sales blog feed. That is all.

  I wrote this little piece on my other blog, Social Blade and thought it might be helpful to those dealers getting serious about Social Media Marketing in 2011.  Too often I see my fellow dealers jump into the Social Media pool without fully understanding why. Which can be mistake since the why question tends to be the most important one to answer. The how and what are easy, but we tend to shy away from the why because it’s hard to think about and difficult to answer. Or worse, we don’t know the right why questions to ask. Here's a sample of "why" questions to ask yourself. Why are we on [Insert Social Media Platform]? Why are our customers on [Insert Social Media Platform]? Why would our customers follow/like us online? Why are we investing our time and resources? Why are we monitoring conversation? Why are we directing conversation? Why are we creating conversation? Why are we measuring ROI? Why should we synergiz...