Advice for Auto Dealerships Facing Recalls

In the past few years, almost every auto manufacturer has announced some kind of recall for its vehicles. Your dealership needs to have a social media plan in place to minimize damage from the bad news and be proactive about fixing the problem. You can take advantage of social media to address the issue. First, create a custom tab on your Facebook page about the recall. Talk about the qualifications of your service department and provide a graphic people can click to schedule an appointment. Next, talk about it on social pages like Twitter and Facebook (including both business and personal pages). Let customers know that you're ready to schedule appointments for them to bring in vehicles for inspection and repair. Give them a phone number, email address, and link to a web contact form to provide as many options as possible. Finally, make a plan to talk about the integrity of whatever vehicle is under a recall. Post video and text testimonials talking about reliability and also the ease of repair for people who did experience problems. When you are proactive about addressing a recall, people will see that your dealership is honest about problems while providing a path to solve them. Social media helps auto dealers like you to reach people in your network of customers and encourage them to come back to you for service.

Mobile Marketing at Your Dealership

 

Mobile Marketing for Auto Dealers

Does your dealership have a Mobile Marketing Campaign in place yet? Cell Phones have become necessities in every day life and are beginning to replace the more traditional land lines. Your dealership now has the power to get your Sales & Service Incentives directly into your customers hands via their cell phone.

The most pivotal ingredient of any Mobile Marketing campaign for Car Dealers is Text Message Marketing. Everyone with a cell phone is capable of sending and receiving text messages. Your dealership can build up a loyal Text Message Database by placing your dealership’s Short Code and Keyword in Traditional Advertisements, such as print ads and television commercials, or on your dealership's Social Media Profile. Your dealership can encourage customers to opt into your text message database by providing exclusive offers and savings.

Smart Phones are increasing in popularity and so is the number of car buyers visiting web sites on their phone. Has your dealership's Mobile Site gone live yet? Judging by our Car Dealer Websites, more and more site visits are coming from Droid and iPhone users. Having a mobile site for your dealership means potential car buyers have access to your dealership's Inventory and Specials while they are on the go.

Mobile Apps are also important for your Dealership’s Mobile Marketing Campaign. The major benefit of Mobile Apps is that they work across all Smart Phone platforms. More car buyers are accessing the internet through Mobile Apps than they are through Mobile internet browsers. Is your dealership’s app accounted for in the iTunes Store and the Droid Market?

PAUL POTRATZ

QR Codes for Automotive Text Message Marketing Campaigns

Text Message Marketing is a great way for an Automotive Dealership to promote inventory and service to your valued customers. Much like E-Mail Marketing, Text Message Marketing requires customers to opt in before they are given updates from your Dealership. Starting a Text Message Marketing Campaign for your dealership is a bit easier when using a QR Code.

QR Codes can do more for your dealership than just driving traffic to the website. In order for a customer to opt in to joining a Text Message List they first need to text a keyword to a short code. You could put your dealership’s short code and keyword in a print advertisement, or you could plug all of those details directly into a QR Code.

A QR Code can store your dealership’s short code as well as the keyword the customers need to text to join the Text Message List. All of this information is stored in the QR Code and is then loaded into the phone when read with a QR Reader. This makes joining your dealership’s Text Message List that much easier.

Once your dealership has a Short Code and Keyword loaded into a QR Code you can promote your dealership’s Text Message Updates in print advertisement as well as interactive marketing materials. This will help to build your dealerships Text Message Database exponentially and shape up your Automotive Mobile Advertising.

PAUL POTRATZ

Facebook Questions and Polls for Auto Dealers

Once you’ve built a fan base for your auto dealership on Facebook, you want to take full advantage of opportunities to survey them and ask questions to get feedback about how to reach them. Surveys are important to make sure that you are on the right track to reach the most leads and sell the most cars.

Facebook has made this process easier by developing a “Question” option that appears right at the top of the page where you post your status update. Facebook is still working on rolling this feature out to all users, but once this appears on your car dealership’s Facebook business page, you can ask people about what they’d like to see in a service department or poll them on their experience with your sales staff. The results then show up right on your page for all to see, and the best part is it’s built right into Facebook so you don’t have to install any extra applications.

When developing surveys for your auto dealership and wondering which audience is the best to reach, consider the fans that you have on Facebook. These people are already proven to be active in social media and more likely to respond to a poll, especially if you offer a service coupon or some other incentive for participants.

Paul Potratz

Using Facebook as a CRM for Automotive Sales

Facebook is an intelligent Customer Relations Management Tool for auto dealers, allowing you to group your friends into lists. Automotive Sales Professionals can use Friend Lists to manage their relationships with past customers as well as potential leads.

Facebook allows a more personal level of marketing than email or direct mail while still letting you potentially reach thousands of people in your market. You can divide your friends into lists, such as leads and past customers, broken down by brands or models. The more specific the categories, the better you can microtarget each group with a fine-tuned message. For example, one list could include Customers that have Purchased the 2011 Ford Fiesta, and another, leads interested in the 2011 Ford Fiesta.

Once you have these lists set up, you can add all new friends to the proper list going forward. Successful automotive sales requires reaching people where they are. Right now, people are on Facebook constantly, and your sales department can build relationships and send messages to keep in contact. Ultimately, an organized social media campaign yields more leads and more sales for your dealership.

For a detailed walkthrough of using Facebook as a CRM, click here to watch our tutorial video! Also see this Think Tank Tuesday episode about using Facebook as a CRM.

I travel frequently around the country and often eat out. But when I’m in unfamiliar locations, I don’t always know where to go to find a decent meal (besides McDonald’s). So I pull out my iPhone and search for restaurants. Let’s say I’m in the mood for Italian. So I type in “Italian restaurant” and see a list of all the Italian restaurants near the street where I’m driving. Right on top of this list, I see an ad for a restaurant just a few blocks down, offering $5 off an entree, exclusively for iPhone users! Now, stop thinking about food (I know, I made you hungry), and think about how you can harness this technology for automotive marketing.

You probably know about being able to run ads in Google search. But did you know that you can target ads to users based on what device they’re using (iPhone, Droid, etc.) or what network they’re on? Using mobile advertising, you can custom-tailor messages to specific users. The possibilities are endless for auto dealers to use mobile ads to promote vehicles, service specials, and more.

And that’s just the beginning. With Google’s click-to-call feature, users can click on a phone number right beneath an ad to immediately connect with a dealership. You can even track analytics to see how well ads are performing in pulling in phone leads.

The bottom line is, auto dealers need to take advantage of opportunities in mobile advertising to sell cars and push specials. Even if your dealership is already running a pay-per-click campaign in search, you need to target the millions of people using smartphones with custom-made ads. Contact us today to learn more about using mobile ads to drive leads.

Yahoo! Local for Auto Dealers

Yahoo! Local has created an algorithm to gather content from local blogs, newspapers and local retailers to create another great opportunity for Auto Dealers.  Although this service remains as a Limited Beta there are more cities being added rapidly.  This is an attempt by Yahoo! to aggregate deals from sites like Living Social and Groupon with content from authors writing in the community.

For those Automotive Dealers that already optimize their Car Blogs, this could be a great opportunity to get your local message picked up by some other bloggers in the community.  Not only does this create an opportunity for the more tech savvy among car sales, but also creates a space to potentially focus some of your Dealership’s Interactive Advertising Revenue.

This would be a great place to showcase your dealership's face because content is being generated regularly.  This is also a great place to get content for your dealership’s social media campaigns.  We talk a lot about making your Social Media Campaign a diverse one that includes News and Events from the Local Community.  Yahoo! Local is a great resource that can keep your dealership’s Social Media Message consistent with the stories that are happening right within your dealership’s community.

Even if your Car Dealership’s Internet Team doesn’t use Yahoo! Local as a resource for generating content for your Social Updates, it’s still a great place to market your dealership to readers in the community.  The fact that this page is composed of content specific to the community, it will undoubtedly attract car buyers from within your Dealership's Market Area.  Be on the lookout for when Yahoo! Local opens up shop in your community.

PAUL POTRATZ

Social media gives you the opportunity to talk to the world in real time about what you're watching on TV. By posting to Facebook or Twitter on your smartphone, you can reach far beyond the world of your ugly upholstered couch and tell the world what you think about what you see. Positive words about a show can encourage your friends to watch it, and vice versa.

Now, think about the millions of people who use social networks and how many of them post about what they see on TV. Yes, couch potatoes have influence in numbers. The impact of social media discussions should play a role in placing media for automotive advertising.

In a recent Mashable article, the Senior VP of Bravo Digital Media shares how tracking social conversation gives insight into how many people are talking about shows, what their opinions are, and how these discussions tie into ratings. Networks can use these social results to see what works and what doesn't.

Ultimately, social stats can also show what shows are best for auto dealer ads and what demographics are watching which shows at which times. The possibilities are endless.

So you're managing PR for an automotive brand rolling out a new model, and you're ready to reveal specs that the public is waiting to hear. How do you announce those specs? Traditional PR guidelines would say to write a press release and send it out to major media outlets. Well, for the new 2011 Ford Explorer, Ford has bypassed traditional media and revealed the vehicle step by step over social media. Most recently, the manufacturer announced the new Explorer's MPG through an entertaining YouTube video without even mentioning the mileage in any press release.

After weathering the recession better than any other American auto manufacturer, Ford continues to see successful sales. Besides knowing how to make a quality vehicle, Ford knows how to market to today's generation. People today use social media sites like Facebook and YouTube constantly. When a manufacturer can tease a product and promise to reveal features over time, people will flock to a page and also tell their friends. Long before the official revelation of the 2011 Explorer, Ford pumped up its release with sneak pics and continues to add interesting content to the official Explorer Facebook page. Their efforts have picked up almost 80,000 fans on the page!

Take a lesson from Ford and learn that traditional automotive marketing efforts just don't work the same way in an interactive world. Build a social media following for your auto dealership to reach today's audience.

Paul Potratz