As a blogger myself I read a lot blogs.  They help form opinions and research topics.  Many people mistake blogs as authoritative content.  When someone is an authority in a specific niche and they blog about topics they are familiar with they are using their knowledge to influence their readers to come around to their way of thinking or to establish their competency on the subject matter, if the blog is of a "commercial" nature. Not everyone will agree and thats is why blogs have comments so people can give other points of view and build the conversation between the blogger and their readers.  Personally I only try to sell ideas from my blogs not services, that may change soon, and provide a call to action of sorts; however the dialog is slow to start online many times.  Why is this? Could it be because people in our niche are unwilling to share ideas and expertise or are they just so busy in what they are doing the conversation does not matter to them?  Are car guys still playing their cards so close to their chest and afraid that if they give away what works for them that their competition will use this information against them?  Those questions are from my opinion and not fact.  Of course style matters a lot and post that are published need to be to be geared to start the conversation and many times they are not in this niche. Hopefully with my contributions to the community here will change those lines of thinking and we can start engaging each other more to provide our experiences, knowledge and opinions to build the best automotive social network ever. Please give your insights to help start building the conversation.

According to SearchCRM.com, - On the Internet, viral marketing is any marketing technique that induces Web sites or users to pass on a marketing message to other sites or users, creating a potentially exponential growth in the message's visibility and effect. One example of successful viral marketing is Hotmail, a company, now owned by Microsoft, that promotes its service and its own advertisers' messages in every user's e-mail notes.

Ok now that we know what viral promotion is how do we use it in our industry? I can think of some very ingenuous ways to apply it to selling cars and to getting people involved online. The biggest issue is execution. Bringing the idea to reality is the toughest part in this type of marketing campaign. Birgdogs are a form of viral promotion. If you can get your customers talking about you then you have leveraged it. No doubt there are many people who work their book of business and referrals only in the business. You will notice they are usually the ones that sell the most cars and have the less stress in hitting their numbers, regardless of what techniques they use to facilitate their contact with these individuals. At the last store I worked at there was a salesperson who consistently sold 15 cars + per month using that form of generating his own business. You could hear him singing Happy Birthday in the showroom almost daily. He was a great self marketer and you can be rest assured his customers talked about it to their friends and family. Maybe it was a snicker, maybe the said how surprised they were who knows, but 4 out of 10 customers walking through the front door were asking for him. There is a lot to be said about that. So to answer my on question yes viral promotion is possible and executed all the time in a traditional sense, now how do we apply it to marketing ourselves online?

Online networking allows you to interact with people that you would not normally meet in traditional settings. People that you would normally consider unreachable in real life become open and accessible. We all have strengths that we can share with others in addition to be able to seek advice from others when we have questions that can not be answered by our traditional circle of influence, using online networking. One of the most critical keys in networking is to be a giver to your peers before you try to leverage the power of your online contacts when you need them.

"Those who ignore the party/conversation/network when they are content and decide to drop in when they need the network may not succeed. It’s pretty easy to spot those that are just joining the network purely to take –not to give. Therefore, be part of the party/conversation/network before you need anything from anyone. Start now, and continue to build relationships by giving now: share knowledge, help others, and become a trusted node and connector, not just an outlying ‘dot’ of a comet that swings in every 4 years or so." - Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang

You can participate in the community here at Driving Sales on many levels and build your network. You do not have to be an authority to contribute and leverage the power of online networking. You can invite your peers, rate strategies, rate vendors and connect with others in the industry. Get your name out there, you will be surprised how much your network will support you when you really need it. I am living proof of that.

Not really car related but still applicable here. Today I took a drive to do an interview and make a personal contact with a new friend in the industry and was caught in some road construction. Nothing new on I -95, it appears every time I decide to travel it for the last 15 years. Anyway traffic was being directed to merge right about a mile before the road went to one lane. When I see the warnings I always try to get over immediately to keep the traffic flowing and doing my part to alleviate the bottleneck at the point of impact. It just amazes me though to see the people speed by after seeing the signs for quite sometime that the lane was ending. Not one or two cars that may have a real reason to try to cut the line, I am talking about people who merge over then get back out to pass around the ever growing one lane or never make an atempt to get over until the very last moment. I counted 55 once I dutifully merged at the first warning. It really shows true human nature. People are not worried about what is going on around them until it affects them. While others just blissfully take their turn and let these people continually get their way. What does this have to do with the car business other than the opportunities presented to towing services and body shops because of rude drivers, there were two fender benders in this fiasco? It may have nothing to do with the retail aspect other than fact people do not really care about what you sell until they want to take notice. No more than they pay attention to warnings that a lane is ending until they have the absolute desire or necessity to read the message no matter how many times they have seen it before. True to my nature I did not give an inch at point of impact to only chuckle at the exasperation I saw when no one would let the speeders over into the go lane.

Consumers are becoming more and more immune to interruption marketing. We use TIVO to not watch commercials, Ipods and Satellite radio reduces the reach of local radio stations and most people get their daily news online as people cocoon more in more in the solace that the Internet provides them with.

These technological advancements have made it harder and harder to capture the attention of those that do not want what we offer. The largest possible customer base at any given time are people who are not in the market for what we sell. It does not matter what the product is cars, boats, homes and even toothbrushes. If people are not looking to buy these items it is almost pointless to try and convince them to seek us out using mediums that only irritate and are ignored.

To an extent print could be considered a form of permission based marketing. The full page ad is only going to attract the attention of a customer that may be in the market for what you sell, but with the declining subscriber bases how many people are really picking up the paper? News is delivered on demand through many other mediums as it happens and the paper is just an historical accounting of what happened yesterday, not in the last 5 minutes. Which is longer than the attention span of the average website visitor.

The problem is how do we move someone who is not in the market today to take action? It is not by shouting louder with greater frequency, that is days of old. The new paradigm is permission based marketing and as slow adopters of change and a declining car market we have two choices as marketers.

Capture a larger slice of the pie.

Encourage the non buyer to get into the market.

We can grab a larger slice by getting into the game and making it easy for people to find what we offer when they seek us out. That is what smart marketers have been doing for the last several years. Ebay and Amazon come to mind.

Encouraging those that are not in the market to seek us out is the tougher part of the equation to solve. Automobiles are not extraordinary unless they are in limited supply. A hard truth to swallow is anybody can get what you sell from a variety of locations unless you have something to offer that no one else does.

Our product to capture that larger share of the market is our people, our process and our story. If those things our delivered in truly satisfying experience for consumers they may "sneeze" loud enough to interrupt those in the bubble to seek us out before they are officially in the market.

Bursting the bubble in any other fashion will get us all wet and may drown us. We busted one at the turn of the century and the water is still rising. Few have grabbed the life line to be pulled to safety and the raft is almost full.

The number of cars being sold is not going to change those who sells them is!!

Which is more important Traffic, Conversion or Process?  It is almost like the rhetorical question "Which came first the chicken or the egg?"

Each one of those components fails based on the lack of the other except traffic.  Traffic is the life blood of any online marketing effort and websites allow us to bring in very targeted traffic if they are properly optimized and marketed.  You do not need conversion and process to build traffic.  Traffic is needed to engage conversion to enter the process.

Building traffic can be done in so many way it would be chore to list them all here. 

Where does traffic really fall in the puzzle? 

Ideally we would have high traffic, high conversion with superior process. 

What if we have high traffic and the other two fail?

Recent events in the Online Automotive Social Networking space have brought on great changes of thought, ended careers and even induced me to change the direction of my automotive career forever,  it is doubtful that I will ever seek employment in a dealership setting again.

There has been a cottage industry developed in the car business where dealers and their sales people are being held under scrutiny by their customers.  The dealers are even encouraged to seek these reviews out from their customers.  While I may not agree with some of the marketing tactics being used by these organizations (No M.L I don't mean you), they still provide value to people searching out dealers.

Here at drivingsales.com dealers will be allowed to review vendor practices and interact with the community and the vendors in a level forum.  That is the power of networks such as this.  It give everyone the opportunity to engage each other in an online setting.

You will never get everyone to agree on certain aspects of online marketing. As an example from my experience as an affiliate marketer I believe that traffic is everything while as a dealership Internet Sales Manager my main concern was conversion.  It was probably due to my payplan at the time, but at the end of the day I still believe that Traffic is Supreme, because it helps build your branding message while at the same time it does produce conversions.  You cannot zero in conversion ratios until you have built the traffic.  That is Internet Marketing 101.

What we publish on the world wide web is being scrutinized very closely, mostly by people who do not participate.  Many times things that we say or do online causes people to react inappropriately.  Keeping the conversation tied to their back room networks and not addressing our criticisms head on, while at the same time they make ever effort to sensationalize things that are published that empower approval of their product or use our content to market theirs, without giving credit to the source.  I have experienced all of these phenomenons personally.

What is sad is people will try to use their influence to strike down what we have to say about their products and services using back door techniques instead of openly engaging you.  Some even resort to threatening to sue you (personal experience) or try to have people removed from their positions (Ralph's Experience).  Extreme Examples!!  I am aware of many other incidents that people have received pressure based on what they have said about products.  Even people who have no affiliation with competitors.  At the end of the day it is our collective voice that will influence the industry as a whole even if it is rumblings of disagreements and gnashing of teeth that eventually brings about fair play and open communication channels, that is the power of networking.

What is great about the country we live in we have laws in place that allow us to give our opinion on anything we want.  It is called the 1st Amendment.  One of the best pieces of advice I can give before you publish something online that may go against the grain, think of the consequences and how it may impact you.

Does that mean if you feel like you are adding value to the discussion or creating one should you hold back?  Absolutely not.  I only encourage you to remain transparent and to speak your mind while at the same time don't put anything in the public domain that may affect you at a level at which you cannot tolerate.  Also if you would not say it in front of your mother don't say it where someone else's mother may see it too. 

My views and opinions expressed here are my own and not those of the staff, management or ownership of drivingsales.com unless they specifically endorse them.  I don't mind them seeing them, that is the spirit of blogging transparency and engagement.

GET IN THE GAME

 

I can remember back in the early 90's I was working with a couple on a program Sedan Deville. They were in their late forties their last child had just graduated college.  The Mrs. wanted to start to experience some of the finer things in life as their obligations had diminished drastically with this event.  I had done a million dollar presentation and she was in love with the car.  I knew I had a deal but the husband was still very luke warm at best.  I had an objection that had not been uncovered yet.

Me: "Mr. X, you and your wife obviously like the car but I notice some hesitation on your part.  Have I done something wrong?" ( Thanks Jackie B. Cooper for that one)

Mr X : "No, Paul, you have been great.  I really like the car too but I am just not sure."

Me: "You're not sure about what?"

Mr X: "This car is a front wheel drive and I have always said I will never own a front wheel drive.  People have problems with them."

Me: "May I ask you a very serious question?" (Zig) (smiling and almost laughing as I asked for permission to close him)

Mr X: "Sure Paul, I love the car but just am not sure about front wheel drive.  We probably need to look at something different."  ( he noticed my glee and was smiling and felt the close coming)

Me: "If you had a wagon at the bottom of a hill loaded with rocks.  Would you push it or pull it?"

Mr. X : (Embarrassed look on his face with no reply.  Feeling very uncomfortable at this point.)

Mrs X : "Answer the man, Honey!!"

Mr X: "That is a silly question Paul.  Of course I would want to pull.  It makes sense now."

This was just an effort to get them to the table to to finalize the transaction.  They bought the car and have been loyal customers ever since.  We now we joke about pushing and pulling. 

Thinks about how this applies to our business today.  I am not talking about bear trap closes to overcome objections.  It is much deeper than that. 

Traditional advertising incorporates push and pull marketing.  We concentrate a huge effort to reach a small percentage of people who are in the market today utilizing radio blast and ad slicks of a current sale.  This is push marketing.  While any branding message we deliver is pull marketing.  Letting people know we are there for them and we have what they want when they are ready.  It causes people to seek us out.

Online advertising is pull marketing, if done properly.  Customers only find us when they are searching for us or the products we sell.  This is the best form of permission based marketing.  Our message is only delivered to those that request it.  However dealers spend money trying to encourage people that are not in the market for what we sell to jump in prematurely.

The results of push marketing are partially to blame for the down turn we are in now.  After 9-11 the manufacturers pulled out all the stops to encourage people to jump into the market faster than they planned to.  We are feeling the effects today. - Gilbert Chavez

If your best customers are the ones searching for what you have to offer or you directly, why do we spend the majority of our advertising dollars on push marketing.  When we can receive a greater ROI marketing to those that want what we have.  One of the old paradigms in marketing is "Encourage the customer that does not want what you have to buy your product".  That is the largest base of customers out there and most expensive ones to move into action.

Spaghetti marketing, slinging stuff against the wall and see what sticks,  is a  waste of time and money.  Why participate in it?

Why not make it easier for customers to find us an our offers?

When customers find us online they have already given us permission to sell them on contacting us.  Otherwise they would not be looking at our offers.  Our job at that point is to convince them to take action.  We can accomplish this by using effective copy writing, online merchandising and building trust with our audience.

The Internet has made it easier and cheaper to reach the best customers out there, the ones who want what we sell.  Concentrate on solving your customers problems and it will solve most of yours, become visible and transparent at the same time and stay in the game!!

Stop pushing those rocks, pull them and enjoy the ride.

 

People have been trashing the Internet for ages about it's viability as a marketing channel, establishing virtual communities, interactive education and allowing people to work from everywhere.

The Internet as a viable tool has raised eyebrows for many years in and out of the automotive industry. Clifford Stoll from Newsweek lambasted the medium way back in 1995 as well.

The Internet has reverted us back to a time when ideas and products were introduced by "word of mouth". The days of acceptance in the marketplace via one way communication, read interruption marketing, is falling by leaps and bounds. Customers do not care how great you claim your product is, they don't care about the great big sale you are having, they don't care to be interrupted in their daily lives until they are ready for what you have to offer. That is just the way it is today.

When the radio then the TV became the primary ways for companies to communicate with their customers it took us out of a time where people talked about what was available in the marketplace by letting their friends, family and business acquaintances know who had what and how you could get it yourself. Consumers still did it they were just ignored and the best way to overcome negative press was to buy more advertising. The Internet is bringing us back to marketing at it's most basic level. Make a product and/or experience worth talking about.

Make it easy for consumers to communicate with you and to provide feedback. Don't give them fill in the blank rating forms then buy their review with perks. Seek honest feedback with a give and take, engage your customers and offer yourself as a resource and drop the pitch until it is asked for. Once you master this then you will be heads above your competition and capture a larger piece of the ever shrinking pie.

Where do you start? I can't answer that for you, but I know you must discover what differentiates you from any other supplier in your niche. If you can't do that you will be stuck in the Dead Zone forever...

Engaging others in the web 2.0 environment can be a daunting task for many.  Myself included!!  With the hundreds of application and sites built around communities it would be impossible to engage with those users unless you actually outsourced your social media presence.

But what is the cost of that?  It can be far more negative than positive unless you have the right people leading that initiative and really that is something I can see our industry slow to embrace.  We first need to learn to leverage these mediums ourselves.

One of the huge benefits I have seen here at drivingsales.com is the Automotive Strategy Section here.  Inside that you will find initiatives your competitors and colleagues are using to increase sales.  Some of the better ones I have seen are:

Customers move Down Funnel, Ad Dollars move Up.

Stump the Chump

and My Persoal Favorite : Reward Sales People for Generating their Own Business albeit self serving.  :P

Participating in reviewing these strategies is just the precursor to the levels of engagement that will be available here in the very near future and gives those who are not acclimated to this new world of engagement a chance to get involved in reaching out to others.

Join the conversation get involved today!!