GOSO

By: Chris Garrett Co-Author of Best Seller of ProBlogger, our celebrity blogger, Chris has helped thousands of individuals, non-profits, small businesses and blue chips make the most of the web.

When I look at auto dealer marketing there are some things that stand out as trends in the industry.

• Preference for in-person sales
• Reliance on traditional print advertising
• Inventory based communications
• Differentiation around price and service
• Increasingly price-concious consumers

Agree? Disagree?

Either way, where am I going with this?

The thing is, if you follow the trends of the industry, and do what has always been done, then your profits are going to suffer because of that.

You need to go where your customers are. Follow them to where they hang out and engage them there.

Increasingly your customers are going to look to their social connections for recommendations. They are hearing news through social networks rather than the media. Even the way people search the internet is changing.

Here is a question for you. We all know Google is the world’s biggest search engine. Which is the second most popular?

If you said Yahoo! or Bing then, sorry.

According to ComScore …

“YouTube continues to be a standout contributor for Google generating 2.73bn searches in the U.S., up 8.5% from 2.52bn last month and up 114% from 1.28bn in November 2007″

BN. That’s billion. That’s a lot of searches. YouTube isn’t even a dedicated search engine, it is a social video site!

So, OK, YouTube might be an exception to the other social media sites? No, think again.

Did you know FaceBook has a community bigger than many countries? Back in April 2009 FaceBook registered its 200 Millionth member. To put it in perspective, FaceBook might now be more populous than France, UK and Italy combined.

You need to ask yourself a couple of questions and get good answers:

1. Where do your customers congregate? What media do they consume? How do they behave and interact? What are they saying?
2. How can you engage them? What content and information do they want/need? Which networks and techniques will attract them best?

Let us go back to my findings about how traditionally automotive dealers market and how social media is changing things:

• Your customers are unlikely to start their search for their next car in your dealership.
• Print advertising is going to miss all of the community that no longer reads newspapers or direct mail.
• Communications need to be more than specs and prices if you want to get noticed.
• Price and service matter, but increasingly trust and relationship are major factors.
• Price-concious consumers are not the only market out there.

Bottom line? If you are ignoring social networks then you might be overlooking a large part of your market. If you are not visible where customers hang out then you might as well not exist.