There has been a promising trend in the automotive industry over the last couple of years. Dealers are starting to pay a good amount of attention to their online reputation, something that simply wasn’t a priority not too long ago. Today, it’s at the top of mind for most dealers. The only challenge is that many are taking action towards improving their reviews on sites like Yelp, Google, and Dealer Rater, but are not focusing at all on the other components of their reputation.
It’s cheese steaks and education May 14-16 in Philadelpha as the good folks at First Class Educators are putting on their 4th annual Automotive Boot Camp. This is going to be one a bit different for us as I get to do something I’ve been dying to do for a long time – talk advanced social media marketing with the attendees.
The image above shows the last four Facebook activities by a major car dealership in a metro area. Over three months ago, they abandoned their page. This could easily be a very long post where I go into details about how this is wrong on so many levels, but I’ll keep it short because if you’re reading this, chances are very strong that you’re a savvy dealership that would never let this happen.
Here’s a stark truth that may make some of our competitors, employees at Facebook, and even some of my own employees a little upset: car dealers don’t need social media marketing to be successful. Search, proper website maintenance, display ads, reputation management, and mobile marketing may all have a claim of being more important that social media when it comes to driving leads and foot traffic to a dealership.
There was a promise silently made by social media a few years back. It was so prevalent at the 2009 round of conferences from NADA to Digital Dealer that many might have thought that social media would eventually encompass the entire internet marketing required by a dealership to be successful. The promise was this: “Everyone’s going to be on social media in the next couple of years and you’ll be able to reach them.”
