Automotive Dealers and Social Media

It's long been my contention that the key to unlocking the value of Web 2.0 in the marketing space is to get car dealers in on the deal. I learned a long time ago that car dealers in the US are hands down the best pure marketers around.

From the product to the price point to the sales pitch, car dealers are always on the cutting edge, and if there's anyone who can make the transition from social media dabblers to social media marketers, it's your local dealership.

So far, they've done nothing to prove me right, but more and more people are recognizing that the word-of-mouth dynamic in social media combined with the local aspect of selling cars eventually will lead to some use of these platforms by the auto dealers.

Rohit from Influential Interactive Marketing captures the idea and suggests that real customers giving real comments might persuade him to buy a Volvo.

The missing link mentioned in the title of this post is the incentive for current owners who are happy with their cars to share this opinion widely and vocally. Word of mouth marketing is not just about hoping people tell their friends and family about something and attributing a category and name to the phenomenon when it happens by accident. It's about finding the satisfied customers that are willing to broadcast (or microcast) their opinions and giving them the tools to do it. Imagine if a fraction of the marketing spend automotive advertisers poured into TV advertising was spent on this. John (and I and many others) might at least be far more likely to consider the Volvo C30 for our next car purchase ...

Too often, the push marketing mindset - that of creating a community of new prospects is the focus of agencies and owners. If you already have a list of contacts, prospects, and former customers, the former customers are the ones most likely to participate, but only if asked and persuaded that what they are doing will benefit them.

We're not talking abotu giveaways and discounts, but rather a sense that taking time out of our days would yield some kind of benefit, whether that's emotional, psychological, or financial.

Currently, twice as many people go to a dealer's website as go to the classifieds to look for cars. What would happen if a tiny portion of the money dealers use to pay for ads in the local paper were put into a social media program for their website? I'm guessing you dealers would sell more cars with less time and effort.