Social Media use in the car dealership is different today than it was just a few years ago. It’s interesting how in a short period of time being active on social media has evolved from something that was considered ‘free’ and optional to something that's necessary and requires an investment of time, resources and yes – a budget.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking at the 2015 Automotive Social Media Summit hosted by Thought Leadership Summits representing the LaFontaine Automotive Group. Being able to share the stage with fellow car dealers, automotive vendors and OEM representatives was truly a humbling experience.

During my presentation I shared my own journey with social media in the dealership. I told the story of how after achieving initial success with social media, we put or social on cruise control and eventually experienced a massive #SocialFail by not adapting as both social media and our automotive group evolved.

While it’s never easy to admit you’ve failed at something, it would be worse if we just gave up.

The good news is we’ve learned from our mistakes and are now realigning our social media marketing strategy for our dealerships in an effort to succeed according to the new rules of 2015.

We’ve implemented a social blueprint to follow which we affectionately refer to as the 13 Rules for Social Media Success in the Dealership. Today I’m happy to share these rules with you here on DrivingSales.com in hopes that you’ll find them just as useful as we have.

1. Define Your Social Media Mission

Before you undertake any major initiative, you need a solid foundation to what you’re doing and for me, it all starts with a mission statement.

You social media mission statement is your compass that will help guide you, your team and your employees along the way.

Here’s our social mission for the LaFontaine Automotive Group:

To engage, educate and entertain our customers and employees by providing extraordinary and unexpected value.

Every piece of content we post or share via social media needs to meet this mission. If it doesn’t, then it’s not worth sharing.

2. Identify Your Team

As I’m sure most of you know, business social media isn’t easy. It takes time and resources and often can be overwhelming for just one person to manage on a consistent basis.

Most social media experts (and by no means do I suggest that I am one) agree that for a small business to be successful on Facebook and Twitter alone, they should invest one hour per day into their social media.

Most dealerships however don’t just utilize Facebook and Twitter. We’re on Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn and maybe Instagram or Pinterest. Let’s say that adds up to an additional hour per day you need to spend on your social media.

So that’s a total of two hours per day dedicated to the social media for your dealership. Doesn’t sound too challenging does it?

But what if you have 3 dealerships? or 6? Or 16 like we do? For us that means we need to dedicate 32 hours a day just to our social media if we want to be successful at the store level.

Say What?!

Clearly one person can’t handle that. Heck two isn’t even enough. That’s why we built a team to handle the rigors and challenges associated with social media. We have a Digital Marketing Manager, Community Manager, Graphic Designer & store level Social Ambassadors all contributing to our social media.

3. Focus on How to Be Social, Not How to Do Social

This one is big for me. There’s a difference between doing social and being social.  When we first got involved in social media in 2011, we were being social. The past year and a half we set our social media on cruise control and were doing social.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that when we took our focus off our social media to focus on other aspects of our digital marketing, we slowly began to lose our audience.

To fill the space of our social media pages, we relied on 3rd party tools and automation to push out content. We we’re simple doing social at this point in time. By the time we realized that this approach wasn’t going to work, it was already too late.

Being social, i.e. engaging with your audience, other businesses and pages on Facebook is different than doing social.

4. Always Write Back

This goes hand-in-hand with #3, but deserves its own mention because it is so important.

Have you ever tagged a brand, athlete or celebrity in a tweet or Facebook message and gotten a response? Made you feel pretty special, didn’t it?

If someone says something to you via social media, respond. Every time. No exceptions.

Even if they don’t have something nice to say.

Not only does it show to anyone who is paying attention that you are active and engaged on your social networks, but it will make the person who took the time to say something to you feel special that you noticed and replied.

5. Social is on 24/7, Are You?

I think a lot of us fell in to the trap that the social media channels for our dealerships were on only during business hours. If something was tweeted our way or a post was being engaged with on Facebook after hours, it was just going to have to wait until 9am for our response.

Let’s face it, I don’t think anyone is going to blame you for not wanting to reply to that negative review that came in on your Facebook page at 1:00am.

Just know that social never sleeps and the actions you take before and after business hours will set you apart from the competition.

6. Stay on Target

People do care about what you had for lunch…if you’re a food brand!

But you’re not a food brand, are you? No, you are a car dealership. So when planning content to post, try not to fall into the game of posting the popular types of content you see in your own stream.

Posting pictures of food, cats, babies, memes, etc. may incite some extra engagement, but you won’t leave a lasting impression of your brand once you disappear from the social stream.

Part of the fun of social media is being able to figure out what content works best for you and your dealership.

Remember, you can never go wrong by highlighting your employees and customers on your social networks – it’s almost always the most engaging pieces of content you can post.

7. Be Real. People Want to Talk to YOU not Your Dealership

Have you ever met a person face-to-face for the first time and after a couple minutes of talking you walked away mumbling to yourself, “jeesh, that dude was soooo fake!”. I think we’ve all been there, and done that.

Fakeness or insincerity is just as easily detected on social media as it is in an intimate and personal setting.

If you’re not genuine in your comments, connections, thank you’s and mentions it won’t go unnoticed.

A great self-test you can do is before you send a tweet or reply to a comment, read it aloud and ask yourself would a real person talk this way?

If it sounds conversational and rolls off the tongue easily then you are good to go. If it sounds like stuffy corporate gibberish, then you may want to consider editing your copy for more of a casual feel.

Fact: People talk to people, not to brands.

It’s a lot easier for someone to talk to Jason @ LaFontaine than it is for them to talk to the LaFontaine Automotive Group. See what I mean?

8. Don’t Try to Be Clever. Be Clever!

Ok this is a tricky one, but an important one. If there’s one thing that will set your social media apart from not just other dealerships, but from most other businesses as well, it’s how clever you can be.

And unfortunately, cleverness isn’t something that’s easily taught or learned. Most people either have it, or don’t.

If you don’t have it, find someone on you team who does. Quickly!

9. Social Media is not Free nor Easy. Ever.

Back in 2011 when I first got my start as the Social Media Manager for the LaFontaine Automotive Group, there was one refrain that you’d hear over and over again as it related to social media in the dealership.

Social Media is Free!

Oh, and not only is it free, but all you have to do is hire a college kid to do your social for you since that’s their thing.

I wish I could say I was exaggerating here, but I’m not. Even after all these years I still cringe when I hear anyone suggest that social is free and easy because it’s not and it never was.

To be successful you’ll need to invest in people, partners, infrastructure and equipment. Not to mention having a campaign budget to allocate to your various page and post campaigns that you’re running on Facebook, Twitter and/or YouTube.

10. Not Everything Will Work and That’s Ok!

There’s going to be a time when you feel like you’ve crafted the perfect post. Image looks great, the copy is short and clever, your co-workers have given you the thumbs up – and then you post that bad boy and put it out there. You kick back and wait for the red notifications to start lighting up but instead you get…

Crickets.

The post goes unnoticed. Whether it’s due to Facebook’s algorithm, the time of day, the type of audience or any other numerous things that could go wrong the fact is no one saw it or engaged with it.

When this happens (and it will….often) you just have to be able to get over it. Channel your inner Stuart Smalley and say to yourself “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and, doggonit, people like me!”

11. Use Traditional Media to Support Your Social Media

For the longest time our traditional marketing and our social media marketing didn’t align or talk to each other. They both just did their own thing and went about their business

That’s different for us today. As we’re undergoing a massive shift in how we approach our digital marketing and social efforts, we’re also doing the same thing with our TV and Radio advertising.

Our branding campaigns for TV now include social calls to action and conversely we build social campaigns to support our branding campaigns.

12. It’s Called Social Media, Not Buy My Crap Media

I have to give a hat tip to Greg Gifford of DealerOn for this rule, and it’s one of my favorites.

Notice in our social mission statement there’s no mention of selling cars. Why? Because that’s not what we’re trying to accomplish on social media. We’re simply trying to connect with our customers, impress our prospects and encourage our employees. Another way to say it is that we want to build a value based community.

And believe it or not, I’ve found that when we follow this plan people reach out to us via Facebook or Twitter all on their own when they have a vehicle need.

13. If You’re Not Consistent, You’re Nonexistent

This was the biggest lesson learned from our #SocialFail. Once you become inconsistent with your posting frequency, you’ll lose your audience.

Facebook’s algorithm is unforgiving, and nothing will throttle your organic reach like a lack of content will. I don’t know if there is a magic number of posts we should be sharing per day, but I do know if you’re only posting once a week (or once per month!) you’re not going to reach your audience at all.

Our Plan In Action

We’ve recently implemented this process on the Facebook page that represents the entire LaFontaine Automotive Group, and I feel like we’re successfully meeting our mission. If you’d like to see the plan in action, feel free to take a look at our page to see what’s working for us and feel free to give us a like (insert shameless self-plug here.)

Our next step is to roll in our social media accounts for all 16 of our locations to follow the same plan. It’s a daunting task, but with our 13 Rules For Social Media Success in place, I’m confident we’ll build valuable communities for each of our locations that will help us meet our mission.

What do you think about these 13 Rules. Is there one or two that resonate with you? Is there anything else you’d add to your plan? Let me know in the comment section below.

Thanks!

Social Media use in the car dealership is different today than it was just a few years ago. It’s interesting how in a short period of time being active on social media has evolved from something that was considered ‘free’ and optional to something that's necessary and requires an investment of time, resources and yes – a budget.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking at the 2015 Automotive Social Media Summit hosted by Thought Leadership Summits representing the LaFontaine Automotive Group. Being able to share the stage with fellow car dealers, automotive vendors and OEM representatives was truly a humbling experience.

During my presentation I shared my own journey with social media in the dealership. I told the story of how after achieving initial success with social media, we put or social on cruise control and eventually experienced a massive #SocialFail by not adapting as both social media and our automotive group evolved.

While it’s never easy to admit you’ve failed at something, it would be worse if we just gave up.

The good news is we’ve learned from our mistakes and are now realigning our social media marketing strategy for our dealerships in an effort to succeed according to the new rules of 2015.

We’ve implemented a social blueprint to follow which we affectionately refer to as the 13 Rules for Social Media Success in the Dealership. Today I’m happy to share these rules with you here on DrivingSales.com in hopes that you’ll find them just as useful as we have.

1. Define Your Social Media Mission

Before you undertake any major initiative, you need a solid foundation to what you’re doing and for me, it all starts with a mission statement.

You social media mission statement is your compass that will help guide you, your team and your employees along the way.

Here’s our social mission for the LaFontaine Automotive Group:

To engage, educate and entertain our customers and employees by providing extraordinary and unexpected value.

Every piece of content we post or share via social media needs to meet this mission. If it doesn’t, then it’s not worth sharing.

2. Identify Your Team

As I’m sure most of you know, business social media isn’t easy. It takes time and resources and often can be overwhelming for just one person to manage on a consistent basis.

Most social media experts (and by no means do I suggest that I am one) agree that for a small business to be successful on Facebook and Twitter alone, they should invest one hour per day into their social media.

Most dealerships however don’t just utilize Facebook and Twitter. We’re on Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn and maybe Instagram or Pinterest. Let’s say that adds up to an additional hour per day you need to spend on your social media.

So that’s a total of two hours per day dedicated to the social media for your dealership. Doesn’t sound too challenging does it?

But what if you have 3 dealerships? or 6? Or 16 like we do? For us that means we need to dedicate 32 hours a day just to our social media if we want to be successful at the store level.

Say What?!

Clearly one person can’t handle that. Heck two isn’t even enough. That’s why we built a team to handle the rigors and challenges associated with social media. We have a Digital Marketing Manager, Community Manager, Graphic Designer & store level Social Ambassadors all contributing to our social media.

3. Focus on How to Be Social, Not How to Do Social

This one is big for me. There’s a difference between doing social and being social.  When we first got involved in social media in 2011, we were being social. The past year and a half we set our social media on cruise control and were doing social.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that when we took our focus off our social media to focus on other aspects of our digital marketing, we slowly began to lose our audience.

To fill the space of our social media pages, we relied on 3rd party tools and automation to push out content. We we’re simple doing social at this point in time. By the time we realized that this approach wasn’t going to work, it was already too late.

Being social, i.e. engaging with your audience, other businesses and pages on Facebook is different than doing social.

4. Always Write Back

This goes hand-in-hand with #3, but deserves its own mention because it is so important.

Have you ever tagged a brand, athlete or celebrity in a tweet or Facebook message and gotten a response? Made you feel pretty special, didn’t it?

If someone says something to you via social media, respond. Every time. No exceptions.

Even if they don’t have something nice to say.

Not only does it show to anyone who is paying attention that you are active and engaged on your social networks, but it will make the person who took the time to say something to you feel special that you noticed and replied.

5. Social is on 24/7, Are You?

I think a lot of us fell in to the trap that the social media channels for our dealerships were on only during business hours. If something was tweeted our way or a post was being engaged with on Facebook after hours, it was just going to have to wait until 9am for our response.

Let’s face it, I don’t think anyone is going to blame you for not wanting to reply to that negative review that came in on your Facebook page at 1:00am.

Just know that social never sleeps and the actions you take before and after business hours will set you apart from the competition.

6. Stay on Target

People do care about what you had for lunch…if you’re a food brand!

But you’re not a food brand, are you? No, you are a car dealership. So when planning content to post, try not to fall into the game of posting the popular types of content you see in your own stream.

Posting pictures of food, cats, babies, memes, etc. may incite some extra engagement, but you won’t leave a lasting impression of your brand once you disappear from the social stream.

Part of the fun of social media is being able to figure out what content works best for you and your dealership.

Remember, you can never go wrong by highlighting your employees and customers on your social networks – it’s almost always the most engaging pieces of content you can post.

7. Be Real. People Want to Talk to YOU not Your Dealership

Have you ever met a person face-to-face for the first time and after a couple minutes of talking you walked away mumbling to yourself, “jeesh, that dude was soooo fake!”. I think we’ve all been there, and done that.

Fakeness or insincerity is just as easily detected on social media as it is in an intimate and personal setting.

If you’re not genuine in your comments, connections, thank you’s and mentions it won’t go unnoticed.

A great self-test you can do is before you send a tweet or reply to a comment, read it aloud and ask yourself would a real person talk this way?

If it sounds conversational and rolls off the tongue easily then you are good to go. If it sounds like stuffy corporate gibberish, then you may want to consider editing your copy for more of a casual feel.

Fact: People talk to people, not to brands.

It’s a lot easier for someone to talk to Jason @ LaFontaine than it is for them to talk to the LaFontaine Automotive Group. See what I mean?

8. Don’t Try to Be Clever. Be Clever!

Ok this is a tricky one, but an important one. If there’s one thing that will set your social media apart from not just other dealerships, but from most other businesses as well, it’s how clever you can be.

And unfortunately, cleverness isn’t something that’s easily taught or learned. Most people either have it, or don’t.

If you don’t have it, find someone on you team who does. Quickly!

9. Social Media is not Free nor Easy. Ever.

Back in 2011 when I first got my start as the Social Media Manager for the LaFontaine Automotive Group, there was one refrain that you’d hear over and over again as it related to social media in the dealership.

Social Media is Free!

Oh, and not only is it free, but all you have to do is hire a college kid to do your social for you since that’s their thing.

I wish I could say I was exaggerating here, but I’m not. Even after all these years I still cringe when I hear anyone suggest that social is free and easy because it’s not and it never was.

To be successful you’ll need to invest in people, partners, infrastructure and equipment. Not to mention having a campaign budget to allocate to your various page and post campaigns that you’re running on Facebook, Twitter and/or YouTube.

10. Not Everything Will Work and That’s Ok!

There’s going to be a time when you feel like you’ve crafted the perfect post. Image looks great, the copy is short and clever, your co-workers have given you the thumbs up – and then you post that bad boy and put it out there. You kick back and wait for the red notifications to start lighting up but instead you get…

Crickets.

The post goes unnoticed. Whether it’s due to Facebook’s algorithm, the time of day, the type of audience or any other numerous things that could go wrong the fact is no one saw it or engaged with it.

When this happens (and it will….often) you just have to be able to get over it. Channel your inner Stuart Smalley and say to yourself “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and, doggonit, people like me!”

11. Use Traditional Media to Support Your Social Media

For the longest time our traditional marketing and our social media marketing didn’t align or talk to each other. They both just did their own thing and went about their business

That’s different for us today. As we’re undergoing a massive shift in how we approach our digital marketing and social efforts, we’re also doing the same thing with our TV and Radio advertising.

Our branding campaigns for TV now include social calls to action and conversely we build social campaigns to support our branding campaigns.

12. It’s Called Social Media, Not Buy My Crap Media

I have to give a hat tip to Greg Gifford of DealerOn for this rule, and it’s one of my favorites.

Notice in our social mission statement there’s no mention of selling cars. Why? Because that’s not what we’re trying to accomplish on social media. We’re simply trying to connect with our customers, impress our prospects and encourage our employees. Another way to say it is that we want to build a value based community.

And believe it or not, I’ve found that when we follow this plan people reach out to us via Facebook or Twitter all on their own when they have a vehicle need.

13. If You’re Not Consistent, You’re Nonexistent

This was the biggest lesson learned from our #SocialFail. Once you become inconsistent with your posting frequency, you’ll lose your audience.

Facebook’s algorithm is unforgiving, and nothing will throttle your organic reach like a lack of content will. I don’t know if there is a magic number of posts we should be sharing per day, but I do know if you’re only posting once a week (or once per month!) you’re not going to reach your audience at all.

Our Plan In Action

We’ve recently implemented this process on the Facebook page that represents the entire LaFontaine Automotive Group, and I feel like we’re successfully meeting our mission. If you’d like to see the plan in action, feel free to take a look at our page to see what’s working for us and feel free to give us a like (insert shameless self-plug here.)

Our next step is to roll in our social media accounts for all 16 of our locations to follow the same plan. It’s a daunting task, but with our 13 Rules For Social Media Success in place, I’m confident we’ll build valuable communities for each of our locations that will help us meet our mission.

What do you think about these 13 Rules. Is there one or two that resonate with you? Is there anything else you’d add to your plan? Let me know in the comment section below.

Thanks!

In a recent post on Think With Google, a compelling study shows how “Near Me” type searches are on the rise. And not just a steady rise either, these searches are up 34x since 2011.

You know the kind of search I'm talking about, right? You're in a town that you're not too familiar with and in need of nourishment so you whip out the trusty smartphone and google restaurants near me.

And just like a good Google should, up pops a list of restaurants near your present location complete with reviews, the address, the type of food and the hours of operation allowing you to make an immediate decision on where you're going to go stuff your face with food.

Google refers to these scenarios like the one I just described as "I Want To Go" moments. A consumer has a need, want or desire and they're using mobile search to provide a solution now.

In these moments, consumers aren't just getting information, they're making decisions and often heading straight to stores.

According to the Think With Google study, 50% of consumers who conduct a local search on their smartphone visit a store within a day. A Day!

What About Car Dealerships?

So while the research that Google presents is compelling and gives great insight in to consumer behavior, I was thinking the same thing you probably are - yeah this is great info for restaurants and retail stores - but what about car dealerships?

Great question, I'm glad you asked.

Google didn't report on anything car dealer specific,  however they did mention this,

There are some searches or services you may not expect. People have started to search for "dermatologists near me," "plumbers near me," "jobs near me" and other things that are typically in a high consideration set.

After reading this snippet, I thought it's probably safe to include "dealerships near me" in that high consideration set. But is anyone really searching this way?

Not wanting to just guess, I fired up my browser to do some good ol' fashioned research to see if "near me" style searches were being used (and how often) for car dealerships.

In my research I discovered two things.

1. Consumers are indeed searching using terms like "Toyota Dealers Near Me"
2. The volume of these searches has a similar increase to other 'near me' style searches

What's a Car Dealer to Do?

While being aware of how consumers are behaving is important, it's another thing to understand how that behavior can impact your business.

Here are 6 things you can do to make sure your dealership is looking its best when a consumer searches for a car dealership near them.

1. Use the Google AdWords Keyword Planner

If you've never used the Google AdWords Keyword Planner before, it's a fantastic tool that helps you plan your Search campaigns and helps you learn what your customers are looking for.

Once you launch the keyword planner, do this:

• Click get search volume and data trends.
• Enter your keyword phrase (i.e. Toyota dealers near me)
• Select your targeting (State, County, City, etc.)
• Choose your Date Range (Up to 2 years)

Now you'll see the month-by-month search volume trend in your location by consumers looking for your brand of dealership near them.

2. Put on Your Consumer Hat

I'll admit that because I'm so engrossed in automotive digital marketing that sometimes I can get blinders on and not see something the way someone outside of our business would.

Because of this, it's important that we try to remove ourselves from our dealerships and become the consumers we're trying to attract.

Remember, when a customer performs a "near me" search, most are looking to fulfill a need immediately - not in a week or two.

3. Do a 'Near Me' Search

Now that you're in the mindset of a consumer, take out your smartphone and do a 'near me' search for the brand of vehicles your dealership carries.

Take note of the information that's visible to the consumer - two or three ad placements and a map displaying the car dealerships along with the users location. You'll also find:

• A list of the closest dealers sorted loosely by distance and review count
• Address & distance to each dealership
• A star rating & number of Google reviews
• Hours of operation
• An easy-to-tap call button

4. Target "Near Me" Searches With You SEM

As you can see and as I noted above, there are also two ad placements at the top of most "near me" searches.

You may want to geo-target specific "near me" searches that you might not normally show up for in the first 3 organic map listings.

5. Reviews

You already know why your dealership needs to build reviews on Google, so no need to dive into that here.

Because you're still wearing your consumer hat (you haven't taken it off, have you?) it's easy to see how a consumer could be influenced more so from your review count and star rating that relative distance to your location.

Having a solid reputation on Google can be enough to win a consumers first consideration and ultimately their tap (click).

6. Check Your Google My Business Page

Take the time to make sure you have current photos uploaded to your My Business page. Heck you can even work with a Google Trusted Photographer to capture a virtual tour for your dealership that will show up right in your business listing.

Having a completely filled out business page complete with good photos and content will give a fantastic first impression to a consumer.

Also don't forget to check your My Business Dashboard to track number of Driving Direction Requests and Phone Calls generated from your mobile listing.

Are You Ready?

The mobile device is becoming our first screen and the one we all rely on most often. Being aware of consumer trends when it comes to mobile can keep your dealership ahead of the curve and in line with consumer behavior and expectations.

How do you feel the increase in "Near Me" search will affect your dealership? Share your thoughts with me in the comments section below.

In a recent post on Think With Google, a compelling study shows how “Near Me” type searches are on the rise. And not just a steady rise either, these searches are up 34x since 2011.

You know the kind of search I'm talking about, right? You're in a town that you're not too familiar with and in need of nourishment so you whip out the trusty smartphone and google restaurants near me.

And just like a good Google should, up pops a list of restaurants near your present location complete with reviews, the address, the type of food and the hours of operation allowing you to make an immediate decision on where you're going to go stuff your face with food.

Google refers to these scenarios like the one I just described as "I Want To Go" moments. A consumer has a need, want or desire and they're using mobile search to provide a solution now.

In these moments, consumers aren't just getting information, they're making decisions and often heading straight to stores.

According to the Think With Google study, 50% of consumers who conduct a local search on their smartphone visit a store within a day. A Day!

What About Car Dealerships?

So while the research that Google presents is compelling and gives great insight in to consumer behavior, I was thinking the same thing you probably are - yeah this is great info for restaurants and retail stores - but what about car dealerships?

Great question, I'm glad you asked.

Google didn't report on anything car dealer specific,  however they did mention this,

There are some searches or services you may not expect. People have started to search for "dermatologists near me," "plumbers near me," "jobs near me" and other things that are typically in a high consideration set.

After reading this snippet, I thought it's probably safe to include "dealerships near me" in that high consideration set. But is anyone really searching this way?

Not wanting to just guess, I fired up my browser to do some good ol' fashioned research to see if "near me" style searches were being used (and how often) for car dealerships.

In my research I discovered two things.

1. Consumers are indeed searching using terms like "Toyota Dealers Near Me"
2. The volume of these searches has a similar increase to other 'near me' style searches

What's a Car Dealer to Do?

While being aware of how consumers are behaving is important, it's another thing to understand how that behavior can impact your business.

Here are 6 things you can do to make sure your dealership is looking its best when a consumer searches for a car dealership near them.

1. Use the Google AdWords Keyword Planner

If you've never used the Google AdWords Keyword Planner before, it's a fantastic tool that helps you plan your Search campaigns and helps you learn what your customers are looking for.

Once you launch the keyword planner, do this:

• Click get search volume and data trends.
• Enter your keyword phrase (i.e. Toyota dealers near me)
• Select your targeting (State, County, City, etc.)
• Choose your Date Range (Up to 2 years)

Now you'll see the month-by-month search volume trend in your location by consumers looking for your brand of dealership near them.

2. Put on Your Consumer Hat

I'll admit that because I'm so engrossed in automotive digital marketing that sometimes I can get blinders on and not see something the way someone outside of our business would.

Because of this, it's important that we try to remove ourselves from our dealerships and become the consumers we're trying to attract.

Remember, when a customer performs a "near me" search, most are looking to fulfill a need immediately - not in a week or two.

3. Do a 'Near Me' Search

Now that you're in the mindset of a consumer, take out your smartphone and do a 'near me' search for the brand of vehicles your dealership carries.

Take note of the information that's visible to the consumer - two or three ad placements and a map displaying the car dealerships along with the users location. You'll also find:

• A list of the closest dealers sorted loosely by distance and review count
• Address & distance to each dealership
• A star rating & number of Google reviews
• Hours of operation
• An easy-to-tap call button

4. Target "Near Me" Searches With You SEM

As you can see and as I noted above, there are also two ad placements at the top of most "near me" searches.

You may want to geo-target specific "near me" searches that you might not normally show up for in the first 3 organic map listings.

5. Reviews

You already know why your dealership needs to build reviews on Google, so no need to dive into that here.

Because you're still wearing your consumer hat (you haven't taken it off, have you?) it's easy to see how a consumer could be influenced more so from your review count and star rating that relative distance to your location.

Having a solid reputation on Google can be enough to win a consumers first consideration and ultimately their tap (click).

6. Check Your Google My Business Page

Take the time to make sure you have current photos uploaded to your My Business page. Heck you can even work with a Google Trusted Photographer to capture a virtual tour for your dealership that will show up right in your business listing.

Having a completely filled out business page complete with good photos and content will give a fantastic first impression to a consumer.

Also don't forget to check your My Business Dashboard to track number of Driving Direction Requests and Phone Calls generated from your mobile listing.

Are You Ready?

The mobile device is becoming our first screen and the one we all rely on most often. Being aware of consumer trends when it comes to mobile can keep your dealership ahead of the curve and in line with consumer behavior and expectations.

How do you feel the increase in "Near Me" search will affect your dealership? Share your thoughts with me in the comments section below.

Are you a tech-obsessed nerd like me? When it comes to the latest phone, tablet, computer, gizmo, gadget or wearable device – I want it and I want it now.

I began following the Apple rumor mill intensively back when everyone referred to the forthcoming smartwatch from Apple as the iWatch. And being the geek I am, I felt like I just had to have one of these shiny new watches that did so much more than tell me what time it was and remind me that I was late for a meeting…again.

Honestly because of my excitement, it never occurred to me just how the latest whizzbang-gizmo from Apple might affect human behavior, communication and personal interaction.

Now that the Apple Watch has launched and many of us eagerly await our smart-timepiece to arrive on our doorstep, it’s a good time to take a deeper look to see how this new device could impact our dealerships digital marketing in general and email marketing specifically.

Entirely new ways to stay in touch

One of Apple’s stated benefits of the Apple Watch is that it gives it’s users a new way to communicate:

Apple Watch makes all the ways you’re used to communicating more convenient. And because it sits right on your wrist, it can add a physical dimension to alerts and notifications. For example, you’ll feel a gentle tap with each incoming message…

Think about how this will work for a second. You send a customer a typical email, and if they’re wearing an Apple Watch they get a taptic notification letting them know that they have a new message.

The assumption is that the user could then view your email right on their watch and take action accordingly. Seems pretty straight forward, right?

On pixels yes, but perhaps not so much in the real world because it turns out the Apple Watch doesn’t handle email the way we might expect.

How The Apple Watch Handles Email

When a new email message comes in to an Apple Watch user, they feel a tap on their wrist to notify them of it’s arrival. That’s all well and good, but the question is what does the user see when they check that email on their watch?

Plain Text.

That’s right, plain old-fashioned unformatted text displayed on a watch face less than two inches wide. No images, no color, no bold, italicized or underlined text and most importantly no clickable links with two exceptions Addresses and Phone Numbers (addresses when tapped will open in the Maps app and tapping a phone number will initiate a call on the users iPhone).

Take a look at a sample of the emails your send your prospects and customers and imagine how they might be displayed on an Apple Watch.

Mentally strip out the images, logos and formatting and see what’s left. Is there actually a personal, compelling and easily consumable message behind all the fluff? If there’s not, then you may want to start thinking about the content you provide in your email communications now.

Another interesting side effect of how the Apple Watch handles email is that open rate tracking is not possible because the Apple Watch can’t load or display the 1×1 tracking pixel.

Understanding the Shift in Time

Now I know there are probably more than a few of you who are thinking “why on earth would I change anything about my email marketing just to satisfy what amounts to a small percentage of people using a smart watch?”. Without a doubt that’s a very valid question, but consider this….

During the first day of the Apple Watch becoming available online, over one million orders were placed. To put that in perspective, in all of 2014 there were approximately one million Android Wear devices ordered – meaning Apple effectively did in a day what it took Android Wear to do in a year.

And while there’s some doubt that once the early adopters and nerd types have their watches on their wrists that Apple Watch sales will flatten out, I wouldn’t count on it. On average, industry analysts are predicting Apple will sell over 22 million smart watches in 2015.

That’s a lot of wrists that will be wearing an Apple Watch in the very near future.

And let’s not forget what happened prior to Apple launching the iPad. There were plenty of people who questioned Apple’s entry in to a market segment that had a history of failed consumer products.

Conceptually, a tablet device is appealing…But given the saturation of mobile phones and laptop computers, particularly in the consumer market, is there a place for the tablet? Not many of us would want to lug a 10-inch tablet around all day — what benefits would it provide to the average user?

Jeff Bertolucci – PCWorld

250 million iPad’s later, I don’t think anyone is questioning Apple’s decision as they redefined and dominated the tablet space with the iPad.

The same thing can hold true for the Apple Watch. Sure they weren’t first to the market with a smart watch (or an MP3 player, or a smart phone) but Apple certainly looks to be on track to redefine and dominate the smart watch market going forward.

Watch or no Watch it’s Time to Change

Smart Watches aside, Apple or otherwise, I feel there’s an important lesson to be learned here about tailoring our email communications to align with consumer behavior in 2015 and beyond.

Keeping our messages simple, personal and to the point will probably get us a lot more traction with our customers regardless of which device they read our emails on.

Are you ready to rethink and redefine your email communications with your customers? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Are you a tech-obsessed nerd like me? When it comes to the latest phone, tablet, computer, gizmo, gadget or wearable device – I want it and I want it now.

I began following the Apple rumor mill intensively back when everyone referred to the forthcoming smartwatch from Apple as the iWatch. And being the geek I am, I felt like I just had to have one of these shiny new watches that did so much more than tell me what time it was and remind me that I was late for a meeting…again.

Honestly because of my excitement, it never occurred to me just how the latest whizzbang-gizmo from Apple might affect human behavior, communication and personal interaction.

Now that the Apple Watch has launched and many of us eagerly await our smart-timepiece to arrive on our doorstep, it’s a good time to take a deeper look to see how this new device could impact our dealerships digital marketing in general and email marketing specifically.

Entirely new ways to stay in touch

One of Apple’s stated benefits of the Apple Watch is that it gives it’s users a new way to communicate:

Apple Watch makes all the ways you’re used to communicating more convenient. And because it sits right on your wrist, it can add a physical dimension to alerts and notifications. For example, you’ll feel a gentle tap with each incoming message…

Think about how this will work for a second. You send a customer a typical email, and if they’re wearing an Apple Watch they get a taptic notification letting them know that they have a new message.

The assumption is that the user could then view your email right on their watch and take action accordingly. Seems pretty straight forward, right?

On pixels yes, but perhaps not so much in the real world because it turns out the Apple Watch doesn’t handle email the way we might expect.

How The Apple Watch Handles Email

When a new email message comes in to an Apple Watch user, they feel a tap on their wrist to notify them of it’s arrival. That’s all well and good, but the question is what does the user see when they check that email on their watch?

Plain Text.

That’s right, plain old-fashioned unformatted text displayed on a watch face less than two inches wide. No images, no color, no bold, italicized or underlined text and most importantly no clickable links with two exceptions Addresses and Phone Numbers (addresses when tapped will open in the Maps app and tapping a phone number will initiate a call on the users iPhone).

Take a look at a sample of the emails your send your prospects and customers and imagine how they might be displayed on an Apple Watch.

Mentally strip out the images, logos and formatting and see what’s left. Is there actually a personal, compelling and easily consumable message behind all the fluff? If there’s not, then you may want to start thinking about the content you provide in your email communications now.

Another interesting side effect of how the Apple Watch handles email is that open rate tracking is not possible because the Apple Watch can’t load or display the 1×1 tracking pixel.

Understanding the Shift in Time

Now I know there are probably more than a few of you who are thinking “why on earth would I change anything about my email marketing just to satisfy what amounts to a small percentage of people using a smart watch?”. Without a doubt that’s a very valid question, but consider this….

During the first day of the Apple Watch becoming available online, over one million orders were placed. To put that in perspective, in all of 2014 there were approximately one million Android Wear devices ordered – meaning Apple effectively did in a day what it took Android Wear to do in a year.

And while there’s some doubt that once the early adopters and nerd types have their watches on their wrists that Apple Watch sales will flatten out, I wouldn’t count on it. On average, industry analysts are predicting Apple will sell over 22 million smart watches in 2015.

That’s a lot of wrists that will be wearing an Apple Watch in the very near future.

And let’s not forget what happened prior to Apple launching the iPad. There were plenty of people who questioned Apple’s entry in to a market segment that had a history of failed consumer products.

Conceptually, a tablet device is appealing…But given the saturation of mobile phones and laptop computers, particularly in the consumer market, is there a place for the tablet? Not many of us would want to lug a 10-inch tablet around all day — what benefits would it provide to the average user?

Jeff Bertolucci – PCWorld

250 million iPad’s later, I don’t think anyone is questioning Apple’s decision as they redefined and dominated the tablet space with the iPad.

The same thing can hold true for the Apple Watch. Sure they weren’t first to the market with a smart watch (or an MP3 player, or a smart phone) but Apple certainly looks to be on track to redefine and dominate the smart watch market going forward.

Watch or no Watch it’s Time to Change

Smart Watches aside, Apple or otherwise, I feel there’s an important lesson to be learned here about tailoring our email communications to align with consumer behavior in 2015 and beyond.

Keeping our messages simple, personal and to the point will probably get us a lot more traction with our customers regardless of which device they read our emails on.

Are you ready to rethink and redefine your email communications with your customers? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Not too long ago, I had the pleasue of overhearing this conversation take place in one of our showrooms....

It started with a sales consultant greeting a customer as he walked through the door, “Hello sir, welcome to LaFontaine Hyundai – what brings you in today?” 

The answer however, was not what I was expecting, “I just read the article you posted about the 2015 Hyundai Genesis on your blog. I had a few extra minutes, so I thought I’d swing by your dealership to learn a little more”.

“That’s fantastic sir, I’m glad to hear it! I do feel a little embarrassed though, and maybe you didn’t see it in the article, but the 2015 Genesis hasn’t arrived yet.” was the response.

“Oh I know, I checked your inventory online” and then with a knowing smile the customer said “I just thought I’d take a look at the current Genesis. Maybe you can make me a great deal on one of these?”….

When I re-launched the blog for the LaFontaine Automotive Group, FamilyDealBlog.com, back in October 2013, this is exactly how I would imagine our blog would work.

We’d post useful and relevant content on our blog, distribute it via email and social media marketing channels, let Google crawl it - and people would walk through the doors of our dealerships because of it.

You might say, “hey that sounds great in theory but so do flux capcitors. We have a blog too, but it doesn't really do anything like that that for us”.

I get it, I really do and I don’t blame you for your skepticism. At one point in time I used to be just like you.

From 2010 to 2013 we paid an outside company to run and create content for FamilyDealBlog.com and while we got some decent web traffic, it didn’t convert that traffic into prospects and customers the way it does today.

It’s been 8 months since we took direct control of our blog.

Since then our blog content pulls in 4,000 unique visits per month and not a day goes by where we don’t get at least a phone call, lead form submission or walk in customer that can be sourced directly from our blog.

One lead a day adds up pretty quickly when you think about it. And the rate we're going, I only expect that number to increase over the next year.

I just wish I would have taken control of our blog sooner than I did.

If I Only Had a Time Travelling DeLorean

So, how powerful can your blog be?

Let me put it this way: If I had a time machine, one of the first things I would do (after I placed a few wagers using my handy Sports Almanac) would be to go back to 2010 and take control of FamilyDealBlog.com.

Why? Because after the results I’ve seen in just eight months, it kills me knowing that I wasted three and a half years underutilizing our blog.

Three and a half years of building authority with Google and establishing relevance and usefulness with our audience went by the wayside.

I’d do just about anything to have that time back.

You, however, don’t have to share my regrets. You don't have to revisit this article 3 years later and wish you would have started today.

The good news is that you can have a blog that converts too, and you can do it quicker than you think. 

And while you can get started today, I will caution you and say - Bloggin' ain't easy. There are a lot of challenges associated with creating useful and relevant content.

If you are going to travel 88 miles per hour down this path, you have to be very intentional about implementing the process.

But Why Blog? Why Not Just Publish on Social Media?

Why should I invest time and energy into a blog? If I want to share content with my audience, isn’t that what Facebook is for? I’m not a writer, how am I going to write articles for a blog?

These are all questions I’ve asked myself before. 

The main reason your should invest serious resources to your blog is simple: You own the platform. It's under your direct control and you make the rules.

The reality is, the social network landscape is undergoing a major transition as we speak.

Facebook is cutting off all organic reach for those of us with business pages. Pretty soon, if we want our content to be seen by our fans and friends, we’ll all have to “pay to play”.

Twitter’s growth has leveled out and has recently taken steps to make itself look more like Facebook and less like…well…Twitter.

And as much as I love Google Plus for all of the wonderful benefits it provides for your dealership, it too is facing an uncertain future.

Think about it like this. Say you have 2,000 likes on your Facebook page, you publish a post and if you're lucky 100 people will organically see that post. A small percentage of that audeince will engage, and then the post falls down the timeline never to be heard from again.

Now let's say you just published a snazzy article on your blog giving your audience useful tips for taking a Summer Road Trip.

For the sake of easy math, say you have 10,000 people in your email database you can send a link to the article to.

If you get a 20% open rate, that means at minimum 2,000 people will see the intro of your article.

If you've crafted your email in a way that entices the audience to click the "read more" link in the email and you get a 15% click-thru rate - that's 300 visitors who just landed on your website.

That's 300 people on your website, reading your original content.

Of those 300, some are going to like your article enough to share it on their own social networks givng you the social juice you've been craving.

So without taking into consideration the other benefits of blogging (SEO, establishing expertise & credibility, etc.) which would your rather do:

Publish a post on Facebook or publish a post on your blog?

May I Have Your Intention Please?

There’s no secret blog-sauce here folks.

In order to make your blog work for you, you have to become intentional about blogging and creating useful, relevant content for your defined audience.

You have to become a student dedicated to learning the in’s and out’s of a blogging platform.

You’ll need to eat, sleep and breathe your way into success. But it’s not a journey you should take alone.

Not only do you have to see the value in dedicating your valuable time, resources and money in to your blog – but your entire leadership team need to see the value as well.

If you are prepared and have the passion to succeed, you won’t need to “sell” anyone on building out the platform.

It's my goal to freely share with you what I've learned about what it takes to have a sucessful blog for your dealership.

But like a good blogger should, I don't want to write random articles and "hope" it's relevant to your needs.

I want to understand what your current pain points are when it comes to your blog and provide targeted info that you'll find useful.

Feel free to add any additional comments or thoughts about blogging in the dealership in the comments section below.

Cheers!

Not too long ago, I had the pleasue of overhearing this conversation take place in one of our showrooms....

It started with a sales consultant greeting a customer as he walked through the door, “Hello sir, welcome to LaFontaine Hyundai – what brings you in today?” 

The answer however, was not what I was expecting, “I just read the article you posted about the 2015 Hyundai Genesis on your blog. I had a few extra minutes, so I thought I’d swing by your dealership to learn a little more”.

“That’s fantastic sir, I’m glad to hear it! I do feel a little embarrassed though, and maybe you didn’t see it in the article, but the 2015 Genesis hasn’t arrived yet.” was the response.

“Oh I know, I checked your inventory online” and then with a knowing smile the customer said “I just thought I’d take a look at the current Genesis. Maybe you can make me a great deal on one of these?”….

When I re-launched the blog for the LaFontaine Automotive Group, FamilyDealBlog.com, back in October 2013, this is exactly how I would imagine our blog would work.

We’d post useful and relevant content on our blog, distribute it via email and social media marketing channels, let Google crawl it - and people would walk through the doors of our dealerships because of it.

You might say, “hey that sounds great in theory but so do flux capcitors. We have a blog too, but it doesn't really do anything like that that for us”.

I get it, I really do and I don’t blame you for your skepticism. At one point in time I used to be just like you.

From 2010 to 2013 we paid an outside company to run and create content for FamilyDealBlog.com and while we got some decent web traffic, it didn’t convert that traffic into prospects and customers the way it does today.

It’s been 8 months since we took direct control of our blog.

Since then our blog content pulls in 4,000 unique visits per month and not a day goes by where we don’t get at least a phone call, lead form submission or walk in customer that can be sourced directly from our blog.

One lead a day adds up pretty quickly when you think about it. And the rate we're going, I only expect that number to increase over the next year.

I just wish I would have taken control of our blog sooner than I did.

If I Only Had a Time Travelling DeLorean

So, how powerful can your blog be?

Let me put it this way: If I had a time machine, one of the first things I would do (after I placed a few wagers using my handy Sports Almanac) would be to go back to 2010 and take control of FamilyDealBlog.com.

Why? Because after the results I’ve seen in just eight months, it kills me knowing that I wasted three and a half years underutilizing our blog.

Three and a half years of building authority with Google and establishing relevance and usefulness with our audience went by the wayside.

I’d do just about anything to have that time back.

You, however, don’t have to share my regrets. You don't have to revisit this article 3 years later and wish you would have started today.

The good news is that you can have a blog that converts too, and you can do it quicker than you think. 

And while you can get started today, I will caution you and say - Bloggin' ain't easy. There are a lot of challenges associated with creating useful and relevant content.

If you are going to travel 88 miles per hour down this path, you have to be very intentional about implementing the process.

But Why Blog? Why Not Just Publish on Social Media?

Why should I invest time and energy into a blog? If I want to share content with my audience, isn’t that what Facebook is for? I’m not a writer, how am I going to write articles for a blog?

These are all questions I’ve asked myself before. 

The main reason your should invest serious resources to your blog is simple: You own the platform. It's under your direct control and you make the rules.

The reality is, the social network landscape is undergoing a major transition as we speak.

Facebook is cutting off all organic reach for those of us with business pages. Pretty soon, if we want our content to be seen by our fans and friends, we’ll all have to “pay to play”.

Twitter’s growth has leveled out and has recently taken steps to make itself look more like Facebook and less like…well…Twitter.

And as much as I love Google Plus for all of the wonderful benefits it provides for your dealership, it too is facing an uncertain future.

Think about it like this. Say you have 2,000 likes on your Facebook page, you publish a post and if you're lucky 100 people will organically see that post. A small percentage of that audeince will engage, and then the post falls down the timeline never to be heard from again.

Now let's say you just published a snazzy article on your blog giving your audience useful tips for taking a Summer Road Trip.

For the sake of easy math, say you have 10,000 people in your email database you can send a link to the article to.

If you get a 20% open rate, that means at minimum 2,000 people will see the intro of your article.

If you've crafted your email in a way that entices the audience to click the "read more" link in the email and you get a 15% click-thru rate - that's 300 visitors who just landed on your website.

That's 300 people on your website, reading your original content.

Of those 300, some are going to like your article enough to share it on their own social networks givng you the social juice you've been craving.

So without taking into consideration the other benefits of blogging (SEO, establishing expertise & credibility, etc.) which would your rather do:

Publish a post on Facebook or publish a post on your blog?

May I Have Your Intention Please?

There’s no secret blog-sauce here folks.

In order to make your blog work for you, you have to become intentional about blogging and creating useful, relevant content for your defined audience.

You have to become a student dedicated to learning the in’s and out’s of a blogging platform.

You’ll need to eat, sleep and breathe your way into success. But it’s not a journey you should take alone.

Not only do you have to see the value in dedicating your valuable time, resources and money in to your blog – but your entire leadership team need to see the value as well.

If you are prepared and have the passion to succeed, you won’t need to “sell” anyone on building out the platform.

It's my goal to freely share with you what I've learned about what it takes to have a sucessful blog for your dealership.

But like a good blogger should, I don't want to write random articles and "hope" it's relevant to your needs.

I want to understand what your current pain points are when it comes to your blog and provide targeted info that you'll find useful.

Feel free to add any additional comments or thoughts about blogging in the dealership in the comments section below.

Cheers!