When I tell anyone about this blog I always get asked two questions in reply:
- Do you get to test drive cool new cars?
- What? People sell cars with social media??
Obviously the answer to the first one is “yes, a new supercar every day. Tomorrow is a nice Aston Martin number”.
The answer to number #2 depends on how much time I have and who is asking.
Why? Because the simple answer is “yes”. Yes you can sell cars with social media:
- By engaging an target profile you understand your prospects and customers better, and what appeals to them
- By being available you can address and counteract any customer service issues, turning upset into loyalty
- By growing your traffic and audience you put your deals in front of a larger audience
- By targeting a specific market with focused content you can carve out a niche or geographical area as your own
- By seeding out deals, events and campaigns you can go viral
- By incorporating loyalty approaches you can keep yourself top of mind and keep customers coming back for more
BUT (and you knew there was a “but”, right?) that does not mean every dealer is going to achieve this. It is not just about the tools, though they help, but the strategy, along with the attitude, intention and engagement of the people working the strategy.
All too often in every market or niche of social media there are people who go into full on “reap” mode before trying to “sow”. Establishing a social media prescence is not an instant win, and a lot of people try to bolt on social media tactics without impacting their company culture and without any real strategy, then wonder why their cash register isn’t overheating!
Yes there are some semi-immediate benefits, not least having real contact with your market and some search result benefits, but the real big benefits are through a long-term dedication to a well planned strategy. As you can imagine, not many people are happy to hear that.
For those who do go into social media prepared to integrate the approaches into their whole business, from customer service through to sales, there are huge gains to be made. All I am saying is the investment has to come before the rewards.
Nice post. Sums up a lot. Hits on the big point that must be shared with and learned by all markets and companies considering investing in social media marketing.
One. SMM is a Warren Buffet investor strategy. Patient. Monitor. Evaluate. Hold for the long duration. For auto dealers, this means re-orienting sales cultures and management practices behind a true and startlingly real fact. That a prospect or existing customer is worth more in profits to your dealership over a lifetime of interactions with your store and car brand than from onetime or periodic interactions. The social web offers extraordinary options to foster lifetime engagement, then extraordinary payoff in profit per customer.
Two. SMM is a planned-community approach to living out your auto dealer marketing, not a gleaming shiny high-rise building approach. What I mean is that the social media approach to building up profits per customer over his/her lifetime means fostering-creating-monitoring-understanding-tracking-engaging-triggering interactions with the customer *across all of a dealer’s planned profit centers” throughout your dealer enterprise community,” like from the showroom, to parts department, to repairs, to customer service, to real live events, to your web site, to your auto merchandising on your Facebool Page, to your Twitter announcements…Patient. Presevering. Payoff!
Your customers will trust your dealership for their needs,
their family needs, their automotive life needs–after all, your social marketing has planned and built a
community.
@Juan – Great comment, thanks
I love what you say about it being “Warren Buffet Investor Strategy” 
Can You Sell Cars With Social Media? http://bit.ly/9fRkBq
RT @boalt: Can You Sell Cars With Social Media? http://bit.ly/9fRkBq
Adam Boalt Can You Sell Cars With Social Media? http://bit.ly/9fRkBq http://ff.im/-ivBhX
Excellent post by @chrisgarrett. You *can* sell cars with social media [see comment] RT @connectedcar, @boalt: http://bit.ly/9fRkBq #sales
sorry…here's the correct link to the GOSO 'You can sell cars with Social Media' post, http://bit.ly/9fRkBq @mygoso, @ChrisGarrett #sales
RT @boalt: Can You Sell Cars With Social Media? http://bit.ly/9fRkBq
Can You Sell Cars with Social Media? GOSO blog post by @ChrisGarrett http://bit.ly/98045z