It’s that time again—and no, I’m not talking about Christmas. Facebook hasn’t made any major changes to profile pages for at least several months, and now they’re rolling out an extensive redesign for personal profiles. This new design consolidates personal info and pictures onto a more streamlined page that lets users see at a quick glance who you are, offering an excellent opportunity for auto dealers to develop their personal Facebook profiles to connect with leads for automotive marketing through social media. Now, the top of your profile shows data that before was tucked away under your info tab or in a sidebar, such as education, employment, hometown, and more. Right under that info, a row of your tagged photos helps to show a snippet of your life. You can pick the photos that appear here. Under these photos lies your wall, where you and others can post status updates, images, videos, and links as before. Along the side, a compact list of options replaces the tabs that were on profiles before. You can navigate to see photos, videos, notes, etc. With the new Facebook profile, auto dealers need to add content to show who they are as people. Listing hobbies and relationships, as well as having some informal pics, shows that a dealer is more than just a cold businessperson. Facebook is easing the transition by letting users choose to upgrade to the new page design for several weeks before the social network applies the change to all users. You can get the new layout for your profile here.

Has your dealership gotten on board with social media? Perhaps you’re wondering how many other dealers are really using social sites to build a following. A recent study by SmartBrief, surveying 6,000 people, shows that a wide range of businesses (yes, including car dealers) are using social media, with many jumping on the bandwagon recently. In fact, half have used it just over the last year, while almost 20% joined the social world in the last 13 to 18 months.

Also, most of these companies utilize the top 5 platforms: YouTube, LinkedIn, blogs, Twitter, and Facebook. You know, these are the sites where you go to watch the video of the skateboarder crashing or see your friends’ uploaded pics of their Thanksgiving plates. Companies that have used social media over a longer stretch of time acknowledge that using these sites effectively requires a well-planned strategy using more than one site. Auto dealers wanting to jump into the social media arena can’t go in and expect results if they have not planned ahead.

So what keeps dealerships from getting into automotive social media promotion? The answer is the same as in this general survey of a variety of companies. A large chunk of those surveyed said they had no freedom to make decisions or met resistance from management. Also, one-third said confidentiality was a key issue.

Also, many companies do not utilize social media as a business tool but merely as a fun toy they don’t take seriously. In fact, fewer than 15% bothered to measure ROI for social efforts.

Learn a lesson from this survey: to involve your auto dealership in social media, you need to take it seriously, and you need to plan out a strategy. Treat social sites like Facebook for what they are: a place to network, build relationships, and have conversations, not a place simply to pump out hard-sell advertising. So, what’s the state of social media at your dealership?

Paul Potratz

Mobile Marketing for Car Dealers

Mobile Marketing comes in many forms and each can be beneficial to your Car Dealership. Text Message Marketing (also known as Short Message Service Marketing or SMS Marketing), Mobile Websites and Smartphone Apps are the three dominate forms that Mobile Marketing comes in. Considering 85% of Americans own a cell phone, while only 80% have a land line, it seems that Mobile Marketing is worth looking into.

Text Message Marketing is cheaper than a direct mail piece. And unlike an email blast itʼs sent directly to your customerʼs cell phone. It is easier than optimizing your dealerships mobile site for 300 different cell phones and less expensive than developing a dealership specific application. Text message marketing doesnʼt require a fancy smart phone either. Best of all, approximately 94% of SMS Messages are read and received.

If you have ever seen American Idol, then youʼre familiar with how Text Message Marketing works. Text Message Marketing takes an opt in approach, similar to email marketing, and thereʼs a lot of potential uses for Car Dealers. Texting updates to customers about current promotions, events and service specials could drive customers to the lot.

Dealerships can encourage customers to join their Mobile Lists by promoting exclusive specials and offers through their Text Message marketing campaign. Return Orders and Lot Posters can illustrate the steps customers need to take to opt in to your dealerships Mobile List. Joining a Mobile List requires a customer to text your Dealership a 5-6 digit short code.

There are a couple ways to plan Mobile Marketing into your Car Dealership’s Advertising Strategy. The best Mobile Marketing Campaign would not be solely based on sales incentives. Several Dealers across the Nation use Text Messages to update their customers on special events while also promoting a sales message from time to time. Your car dealership can do the same by promoting special events and saving the big sales messages for when it’s needed most.

PAUL POTRATZ

Automotive Marketing on Facebook creates the possibility to build relationships in your local community.  We say that “Facebook is a cocktail party” and urge dealerships treat it as such.  It is important to build the number of likes that your public page has, but that doesn’t mean that you have to do it on your own.

Creating social relationships with other businesses such as restaurants, not-for-profits, colleges and other local businesses and industries will help a car dealership brand itself as a community leader.  Working with other public pages that are social leaders will help build your dealership as a social leader.

With being committed to conversing comes a consistent non-sales message.  Everything your dealership does on Facebook appears on the News Feed and you don’t want to be ignored.  Even worse, you don’t want to lose likes because you continually post messages that your fans can’t relate to.

If your dealership promoted iPad or iPhone giveaways in the past, do you think you can promote low lease rates in the future?  Maybe, but only if those messages are kept to a minimum and aren’t invasive.  Your dealerships entire Social Media Campaign shouldn’t be based on Traditional Media Messages, but it shouldn’t be entirely based on giveaways either.

Keeping customers involved with updates on manufacturer warranties and recalls is important because it builds that professional trust in the consumer’s eye.  Creating relationships with national manufacturer campaign’s is important, but your dealership's Social Media Campaign shouldn’t be based entirely on their message either.  As a local leader in selling automobiles, you need to find the balance between promoting the national message with local messages like community events and news.

Making a good cocktail is all about mixing the ingredients.  Automotive Marketing on Facebook should contain four key ingredients: National Messages, Giveaways, Local Messages and Sales Incentives.  Dealerships need to show the product they sell and where they sell it.  Dealerships also need to know when to reward their fans.  All of these components should be visible in a social media campaign and shouldn’t drown any of the others.  Let the cocktail party begin!

PAUL POTRATZ

Automotive Dealers looking to connect with Car Buyers using Email Marketing or Social Media Marketing might want to take a look at Facebook’s "Modern Messaging System." This new Messaging Platform uses @facebook.com addresses to allow users to send messages to people using conventional e-mail and Facebook urges that their new messaging system is anything but conventional e-Mail. Facebook looks to integrate Text Messaging, Email Messaging, and Instant Messaging into one organized place. This will allow users to see the conversations that they have had with anyone.

Conventional E-Mail Marketing may be threatened, but is still a very valuable asset to any Automotive Marketing Campaign. Facebook’s new approach to messages would only allow a user’s friends to communicate. This means that Salespeople need to be more active in the Social Media Community to keep communication open with potential car buyers on Facebook’s Messaging System.

Now with Facebook’s Messaging System the threat of your Dealership’s Message going unread is even more likely. The best way to combat this is urge salespeople at your dealership to be active in their social media communities and to keep the relations open with potential car buyers. Your sales people may be your best Dealership’s best in with the car buying community.

The Modern Messaging System announced by Facebook really values personal relationships over commercial relationships between businesses and consumers. As Facebook continues to evolve this issue may be addressed. However, the Potratz Team encourages Car Salespeople to focus on building their network of professional connections with their profile in addition to the Dealership’s Public Profile.

We encourage you to continue reading our Exclusively Automotive Blog to keep up to date with all of the emerging trends in Social Media and E-Mail Marketing.  We also invite you to check out our schedule of upcoming Automotive Marketing Webinars and feel free to contact us for more information.

Paul Potratz

MySpace, attempting to regain its former popularity as a social network, is now letting people sign up with existing Facebook credentials. This new MySpace Mashup feature will supposedly encourage Facebook users to get on, or back on, MySpace. Whether people will really head back to MySpace is the question.
 

Myspace has seen a significant drop in users over recent years, with its traffic dropping by half from 2009 to 2010. Will this move help to bring users back to MySpace? Only time will tell. As Facebook has grown more popular, many people have left their MySpace accounts dormant and switched over to Facebook. Recently, MySpace has integrated with Facebook in other ways, such as letting people update statuses on both networks.

Should auto dealers focus their efforts on MySpace as well as Facebook? Even if the Mashup feature does take off, all of these people are already Facebook users. It’s better to focus time and effort into developing an active Facebook following and a content-filled Facebook page than to get spread out and disjointed across multiple networks and not have a unified message. Spend your time refining an auto dealership Facebook page and building a following there.

Right now, Facebook is dominant. Though that dominance may change over time, you can reach the most people, and the most active people, with your automotive marketing message on a Facebook page.

Paul Potratz

As the holiday season approaches, auto dealers seek ways to take advantage of the holiday spirit to promote their dealerships. One way to do this is to choose a charity to donate money to and then use Facebook and Twitter pages to encourage people to give. For example, Chevy dealers are running the Chevy Gives More campaign and integrating this with Facebook. A charity promotion is a good opportunity to help those in need as well as to build fans on a Facebook page.

To encourage people to like a Facebook page, dealers can commit to give $10 or another amount to charity for each new fan on the page. To push this promotion, a full campaign includes Facebook ads, pay-per-click display ads on other websites, and web panels on an auto dealership website. When running a promotion, the dealer should post frequently on the page to keep people coming and giving.

Dealers need to show a personal side to encourage people to come to the dealership and give.

Salespeople should take pictures and video at the dealership, showing themselves and any donation boxes. People can come to the Facebook page and watch as the boxes grow fuller.

If you are running a donation to charity this holiday season, do not miss the opportunity to promote your efforts on social media. Build your Facebook page as you encourage fans to give.

Paul Potratz