Look, I get it. Building a social media program for car dealers that is scalable, effective, and affordable requires choices. In many cases, vendors have to pick two of the three in order to maintain their business.

With that said, it still appalls me to see "personal" messages from the dealership being broadcast in bulk. One can make a valid argument that bulk messaging around the release of a new vehicle or an upcoming program is acceptable. There's an OEM strategy that we've been working on that plays with this concept in certain circumstances. However, when a message is supposed to be heartfelt from the dealership, please turn automation off.

The two dealerships above were part of a batch of personal messages sent simultaneously to dealers across the country. It's a generic as can be and makes the risky assumption that people will never follow more than one dealership, therefore they'll never know it's an impersonal bulk social media post. That assumption is incorrect and dangerous.

Let me end this mini-rant by saying that if you cannot put forth enough effort to make "personal" messages for your clients that are actually personal, you should consider a different verticle. The automotive industry deserves better.

(Thanks for reading my rant and sorry for sounding like a scrooge but this stuff really chaps my khakis.)

From a business perspective, there's really only one choice for marketing vendors. Software sells. It's easier to sell to businesses, particularly in the automotive industry. It's easier to sell a software company to a larger entity. Software is scalable. Strategy is too confining.

Strategy relies too much on people. It isn't scalable in most circumstances. Unlike software, the more that dealers start using a particular strategy, the less effective it becomes. Anyone wanting to build a successful digital marketing company in the automotive industry should definitely choose building software over building strategies. To build a company that's based upon strategies is absolutely insane.

I like being insane. It's good for the digestion.

Car dealers have the potential luxury of being able to take software and build strategies around them. Vendors can as well, but it's much riskier to do so. There are several companies who were built around the concept of supplying like-gated contests to post to Facebook. When Facebook outlawed it, many companies had to pivot or die.

Dealers aren't restrained in such a way. You have the ability to build great strategies around someone else's software without the financial risk of crumbling based upon changes. The companies that had a foundation built on Facebook like-gating died. The dealers that built a strategy around Facebook like-gating simply had to change their strategy. The dealerships didn't shut down because of Facebook.

We've been told on more than four occasions by respected people in and out of the industry that basing our company around strategies for Google, Facebook, and other ever-changing software providers put us in a position of facing potential oblivion every day. This risky business that we've gotten ourselves into is the key to our success. Living on the edge keeps us sharp. It keeps us always looking in all directions for threats and it allows us to continuously need to improve on what we're doing for dealers...

... and that's the point that dealers need to understand for their own digital marketing presence.

Don't rely on software. Had Robert Karbaum relied on YouTube software to do what everyone else does with posting standard video content, he wouldn't have won the Best Idea Contest. More importantly, he wouldn't have been able to improve his process and increase sales at his dealership.

Dealers have the benefit of being able to live on the edge with their strategies and not have to face oblivion. We might be crazy for doing so, but you definitely don't have to be. Take the tools, turn them inside out, devise plans around goals that your competitors would never see, and develop your own success through brilliant application of everything the digital age gives us. In a single word: innovate.

From a business perspective, there's really only one choice for marketing vendors. Software sells. It's easier to sell to businesses, particularly in the automotive industry. It's easier to sell a software company to a larger entity. Software is scalable. Strategy is too confining.

Strategy relies too much on people. It isn't scalable in most circumstances. Unlike software, the more that dealers start using a particular strategy, the less effective it becomes. Anyone wanting to build a successful digital marketing company in the automotive industry should definitely choose building software over building strategies. To build a company that's based upon strategies is absolutely insane.

I like being insane. It's good for the digestion.

Car dealers have the potential luxury of being able to take software and build strategies around them. Vendors can as well, but it's much riskier to do so. There are several companies who were built around the concept of supplying like-gated contests to post to Facebook. When Facebook outlawed it, many companies had to pivot or die.

Dealers aren't restrained in such a way. You have the ability to build great strategies around someone else's software without the financial risk of crumbling based upon changes. The companies that had a foundation built on Facebook like-gating died. The dealers that built a strategy around Facebook like-gating simply had to change their strategy. The dealerships didn't shut down because of Facebook.

We've been told on more than four occasions by respected people in and out of the industry that basing our company around strategies for Google, Facebook, and other ever-changing software providers put us in a position of facing potential oblivion every day. This risky business that we've gotten ourselves into is the key to our success. Living on the edge keeps us sharp. It keeps us always looking in all directions for threats and it allows us to continuously need to improve on what we're doing for dealers...

... and that's the point that dealers need to understand for their own digital marketing presence.

Don't rely on software. Had Robert Karbaum relied on YouTube software to do what everyone else does with posting standard video content, he wouldn't have won the Best Idea Contest. More importantly, he wouldn't have been able to improve his process and increase sales at his dealership.

Dealers have the benefit of being able to live on the edge with their strategies and not have to face oblivion. We might be crazy for doing so, but you definitely don't have to be. Take the tools, turn them inside out, devise plans around goals that your competitors would never see, and develop your own success through brilliant application of everything the digital age gives us. In a single word: innovate.

It's been a while since I bought a car. Six years. Yep, I'm one of those people. A lot has changed since then. I know that next time I buy one, I will definitely do something that I didn't do any time before. I'll check reviews.

It occurred to me this morning that I don't do anything at all without checking the reviews first. Before I watch a movie, eat at a restaurant, buy electronics, or get my hair cut, I read reviews. Heck, I usually won't watch a YouTube video if the ratings are too low. I don't think that I'm alone.

I've always known that reputation management was important for car dealers, but I suppose it never really hit home until I had my epiphany this morning that there must be other people out there who simply will not do anything at all without checking reviews. I have an insider's view, having a stake in a reputation management company, that makes me skeptical about them to some extent. I realize that positive reviews can be encouraged and negative reviews can be partially avoided. Even armed with this knowledge, I still read them and I usually trust them.

Those of us who read reviews often can tell the difference between sincere reviews and those that are less-than-trustworthy. There's something in the wording, something about the reviewers themselves that send off alarm bells. You can see how many reviews they've left in the past, whether or not they have real friends, and even something simple like whether or not they have a real profile picture.

I'm not telling you all of this because I think dealers need to know the importance of reviews. Most here on Driving Sales probably already consider their reputation to be an extremely important part of their marketing. I'm telling you this because right now, this morning, I finally get it. I have become part of the machine.

It's strange that it took me so long to realize just how important reviews really are.

It's been a while since I bought a car. Six years. Yep, I'm one of those people. A lot has changed since then. I know that next time I buy one, I will definitely do something that I didn't do any time before. I'll check reviews.

It occurred to me this morning that I don't do anything at all without checking the reviews first. Before I watch a movie, eat at a restaurant, buy electronics, or get my hair cut, I read reviews. Heck, I usually won't watch a YouTube video if the ratings are too low. I don't think that I'm alone.

I've always known that reputation management was important for car dealers, but I suppose it never really hit home until I had my epiphany this morning that there must be other people out there who simply will not do anything at all without checking reviews. I have an insider's view, having a stake in a reputation management company, that makes me skeptical about them to some extent. I realize that positive reviews can be encouraged and negative reviews can be partially avoided. Even armed with this knowledge, I still read them and I usually trust them.

Those of us who read reviews often can tell the difference between sincere reviews and those that are less-than-trustworthy. There's something in the wording, something about the reviewers themselves that send off alarm bells. You can see how many reviews they've left in the past, whether or not they have real friends, and even something simple like whether or not they have a real profile picture.

I'm not telling you all of this because I think dealers need to know the importance of reviews. Most here on Driving Sales probably already consider their reputation to be an extremely important part of their marketing. I'm telling you this because right now, this morning, I finally get it. I have become part of the machine.

It's strange that it took me so long to realize just how important reviews really are.

Let's call it what it is. This is a post about active digital marketing versus passive digital marketing. It's one that covers two of the types of marketing disciplines that are near and dear to my heart, but more importantly it lays the groundwork for an understanding of the various marketing styles and how we should classify them.

First and foremost, let's get an understanding of what the difference is between active and passive digital marketing. In our industry, the word "passive" is often shunned, but in this particular case it's not bad at all. Passive marketing lets the customer make the first move. Search marketing is an example of passive marketing because you must wait for them to engage with the search engines to find a car before the marketing kicks in. Active marketing goes out to them - you make the first move. Email marketing is an example of active marketing because you're initiating the action. On our website, we compared it to stand hunting vs still hunting.

With that understood, let's look at more examples of each:

Passive Marketing Disciplines

• Search Marketing
• Classified Listings (Autotrader, Craigslist, etc)
• Buying 3rd-Party Leads
• Video Marketing (not preroll or paid)

Active Marketing Disciplines

• Email Marketing
• Social Media Marketing
• Banner Advertisements
• Video Preroll

The Active Message

By now you're hopefully asking, "Great. What's the point?"

Passive marketing is a discipline that requires positioning and strong messaging, both guided by relatively consistent ROI. Active marketing tends to have a wider range of success and failure, and I wanted to point out why.

All too often I see dealers applying passive marketing messages to active marketing venues. This is why there is often such a gap between the success levels of two different campaigns. With active marketing, you can be bold and timely more than you can with passive marketing.

We've seen dealers spending decent budgets on social media without a verifiable sale and we've seen the same dealers with the same budgets gaining tremendously in market share by selling cars directly through social media messaging through targeted ads. The difference was in the way that the message was pushed out and what the message said.

Be bold. Tell them why right now, regardless of their current vehicle situation, is exactly the right time to come to the dealership and do business. This is the type of messaging that needs to play on active marketing venues.

On search, it makes sense to advertise "The Largest Selection of Altimas in the State", but in email or on social media, the message is wasted. Who cares? They're probably not intending to buy an Altima at that very moment and you haven't given them a reason to move up their buying cycle. It works for search and other passive marketing campaigns. It fails on active channels.

Instead, the message should be something like "The Biggest Discounts of the Year on Altimas are Happening RIGHT NOW for a Limited Time at Rucker Nissan!"

That's a message that plays.

Digital advertising can be broken down into message and exposure. Make sure the right messages are hitting the venues for the most appropriate exposure.

Let's call it what it is. This is a post about active digital marketing versus passive digital marketing. It's one that covers two of the types of marketing disciplines that are near and dear to my heart, but more importantly it lays the groundwork for an understanding of the various marketing styles and how we should classify them.

First and foremost, let's get an understanding of what the difference is between active and passive digital marketing. In our industry, the word "passive" is often shunned, but in this particular case it's not bad at all. Passive marketing lets the customer make the first move. Search marketing is an example of passive marketing because you must wait for them to engage with the search engines to find a car before the marketing kicks in. Active marketing goes out to them - you make the first move. Email marketing is an example of active marketing because you're initiating the action. On our website, we compared it to stand hunting vs still hunting.

With that understood, let's look at more examples of each:

Passive Marketing Disciplines

• Search Marketing
• Classified Listings (Autotrader, Craigslist, etc)
• Buying 3rd-Party Leads
• Video Marketing (not preroll or paid)

Active Marketing Disciplines

• Email Marketing
• Social Media Marketing
• Banner Advertisements
• Video Preroll

The Active Message

By now you're hopefully asking, "Great. What's the point?"

Passive marketing is a discipline that requires positioning and strong messaging, both guided by relatively consistent ROI. Active marketing tends to have a wider range of success and failure, and I wanted to point out why.

All too often I see dealers applying passive marketing messages to active marketing venues. This is why there is often such a gap between the success levels of two different campaigns. With active marketing, you can be bold and timely more than you can with passive marketing.

We've seen dealers spending decent budgets on social media without a verifiable sale and we've seen the same dealers with the same budgets gaining tremendously in market share by selling cars directly through social media messaging through targeted ads. The difference was in the way that the message was pushed out and what the message said.

Be bold. Tell them why right now, regardless of their current vehicle situation, is exactly the right time to come to the dealership and do business. This is the type of messaging that needs to play on active marketing venues.

On search, it makes sense to advertise "The Largest Selection of Altimas in the State", but in email or on social media, the message is wasted. Who cares? They're probably not intending to buy an Altima at that very moment and you haven't given them a reason to move up their buying cycle. It works for search and other passive marketing campaigns. It fails on active channels.

Instead, the message should be something like "The Biggest Discounts of the Year on Altimas are Happening RIGHT NOW for a Limited Time at Rucker Nissan!"

That's a message that plays.

Digital advertising can be broken down into message and exposure. Make sure the right messages are hitting the venues for the most appropriate exposure.

Over the years, I've worked with some of the best social media marketers in our industry. I've seen some posts that have hit incredible numbers on social media sites that were seen by tens, even hundreds of thousands of people. They were all memorable, not because the content was so incredibly awesome but because "going viral" on the internet is so hard.

In fact, it's not just hard. It's what most would consider to be a fluke.

It's for this reason that I want to warn dealers about the concept of going viral. Reference.com says that going viral is something "pertaining to or involving the spreading of information and opinions about a product or service from person to person, especially on the Internet or in e-mails."

It sounds awesome! Wouldn't every dealer love for their messages on their website, blog, YouTube channel, or social media profiles to go viral and get spread from person to person in bulk? Unfortunately, it's not something that can be easily manufactured. I'm not going to go so far as to say it's impossible (my partner has participated in making things go viral for dealers in the past) but it's extremely difficult and in many cases extremely worthless. More importantly, it's not something that vendors should be selling.

This is where I rant. A dealer told us that during a pitch, they were sold on the concept that an automotive social media company would make their content go viral. We asked for any examples that they had of this and apparently the vendor didn't have any that they we're "allowed to show" to the dealer when they asked the same question, but their strategy was somewhat compelling:

1. Generate really incredible content on their website.
2. Advertise the content on Facebook so that it's seen by thousands of people.
3. Let it get shared by many of those people so that it got tons of attention from other people, and more people, and more people...
4. Boom. You're viral. Let the massive traffic to the dealership begin.

The first two steps are very reasonable. The third step is questionable because one never knows when something is going to resonate enough with the audience in order to achieve the tens of thousands of social media engagements required to be even remotely viral.

The fourth is a joke. A viral post, if you're ever lucky enough to experience one, does not sell a massive amount of cars. It can help. It can obviously drive more traffic to the website and some of that traffic can turn into leads and sales, but it's not going to be a life-changing event.

Here are some realities dealers should know about the "viral content pitch" in case you ever come across it:

• For every example of a positive viral post, there are dozens of times when going viral is a bad thing. Most dealers that go viral do so because a news agency reported something bad that they did to a customer.
• Viral posts spread out to the whole country and often the whole world. We saw an example of one that hit CNN and Autoblog along with getting tons of social media love and the vast majority of the traffic was outside of 100 miles from the dealership. The campaign was a success and they did sell several cars as a result, but the sales increase was nowhere near the scale of the traffic increase.
• Quality often doesn't matter. For example, one of my posts accidentally went a little viral with 15k Facebook likes and around 50k visitors. This wasn't my best story ever. The topic was interesting - If You Still Think Car Dealers Rip People Off, You Don't Understand the Modern Process - but it wasn't what anyone would consider to be viral content. It simply resonated and took off. It was more luck of the draw than anything we did to promote it.
• As I said before, it technically can be manufactured, but it's so hard that having it as a centerpiece of a product is silly.

I'm not trying to throw stones at another vendor here. I'm simply trying to warn dealers that there are much better ways to spend your money and get realistic, tangible ROI results from social media. When I hear about pitches like these, it's no wonder that dealers are skeptical about social media vendors. We don't want to be classified as one of those who are selling snake oil. We like to keep things real.

Over the years, I've worked with some of the best social media marketers in our industry. I've seen some posts that have hit incredible numbers on social media sites that were seen by tens, even hundreds of thousands of people. They were all memorable, not because the content was so incredibly awesome but because "going viral" on the internet is so hard.

In fact, it's not just hard. It's what most would consider to be a fluke.

It's for this reason that I want to warn dealers about the concept of going viral. Reference.com says that going viral is something "pertaining to or involving the spreading of information and opinions about a product or service from person to person, especially on the Internet or in e-mails."

It sounds awesome! Wouldn't every dealer love for their messages on their website, blog, YouTube channel, or social media profiles to go viral and get spread from person to person in bulk? Unfortunately, it's not something that can be easily manufactured. I'm not going to go so far as to say it's impossible (my partner has participated in making things go viral for dealers in the past) but it's extremely difficult and in many cases extremely worthless. More importantly, it's not something that vendors should be selling.

This is where I rant. A dealer told us that during a pitch, they were sold on the concept that an automotive social media company would make their content go viral. We asked for any examples that they had of this and apparently the vendor didn't have any that they we're "allowed to show" to the dealer when they asked the same question, but their strategy was somewhat compelling:

1. Generate really incredible content on their website.
2. Advertise the content on Facebook so that it's seen by thousands of people.
3. Let it get shared by many of those people so that it got tons of attention from other people, and more people, and more people...
4. Boom. You're viral. Let the massive traffic to the dealership begin.

The first two steps are very reasonable. The third step is questionable because one never knows when something is going to resonate enough with the audience in order to achieve the tens of thousands of social media engagements required to be even remotely viral.

The fourth is a joke. A viral post, if you're ever lucky enough to experience one, does not sell a massive amount of cars. It can help. It can obviously drive more traffic to the website and some of that traffic can turn into leads and sales, but it's not going to be a life-changing event.

Here are some realities dealers should know about the "viral content pitch" in case you ever come across it:

• For every example of a positive viral post, there are dozens of times when going viral is a bad thing. Most dealers that go viral do so because a news agency reported something bad that they did to a customer.
• Viral posts spread out to the whole country and often the whole world. We saw an example of one that hit CNN and Autoblog along with getting tons of social media love and the vast majority of the traffic was outside of 100 miles from the dealership. The campaign was a success and they did sell several cars as a result, but the sales increase was nowhere near the scale of the traffic increase.
• Quality often doesn't matter. For example, one of my posts accidentally went a little viral with 15k Facebook likes and around 50k visitors. This wasn't my best story ever. The topic was interesting - If You Still Think Car Dealers Rip People Off, You Don't Understand the Modern Process - but it wasn't what anyone would consider to be viral content. It simply resonated and took off. It was more luck of the draw than anything we did to promote it.
• As I said before, it technically can be manufactured, but it's so hard that having it as a centerpiece of a product is silly.

I'm not trying to throw stones at another vendor here. I'm simply trying to warn dealers that there are much better ways to spend your money and get realistic, tangible ROI results from social media. When I hear about pitches like these, it's no wonder that dealers are skeptical about social media vendors. We don't want to be classified as one of those who are selling snake oil. We like to keep things real.

The most amazing part about the internet and social media is that it has opened up communication between people and businesses that was never possible before. We now have the ability to talk to our customers and for them to talk to us in an interactive fashion, allowing for clear lines of engagement that can be both public and private.

For car dealers, this has translated into an incredible way for them to broadcast their messages and get feedback in real time. On Facebook, people can like, comment on, or share their posts when they appreciate them... and even when they do not. The world is completely different than it was a decade ago when the most powerful method of online communication, the email, was still relegated to being private.

This all means that dealers can receive interaction, but it also means that they're required to deliver interaction right back at their customers. Every day, we see dealers who are not taking advantage of this. People will comment on their Facebook posts, talk about them on Twitter, or respond to their blog posts and YouTube videos, but we then see many of the interactions going one way. The people are talking to the dealers but the dealers aren't always replying.

This is a big mistake because proper two-way communication breeds more communication. When people see your posts and also see that you're replying to the people that are commenting, it makes it more likely that they'll want to comment even more.

It also creates a proper feedback mechanism. A lot of dealers are doing this best practice on review sites, but then the same dealers are failing to engage on social media. When you allow social media to be a way for people to engage in a proper discussion on automotive topics, you're allowing them to help you get more reach for your messages.

The more you comment back, the more new comments you'll get. The more new comments you get, the more people will see the posts that are getting the comments. It's a great way to increase your message exposure.

Perhaps the most important reason to reply to everyone who comments on your posts is that it's simply proper manners. If someone says "hi" to you in the grocery store, you'll usually say "hi" right back at them even if you don't know them. It's good form to reply to those who talk to you and that carries over to your social media interactions.

Dealers that are doing this well can take it to the next level. They can get involved with other conversations of a general interest to the local community and start to really express the dealership's personality. This is key on social media. After all, part of being "social" is interacting with as many people as possible.

The streets in the social media world run in both directions. Savvy dealers are making sure that they're not just seeking engagement from others but that they're being engaging as well.