Anyone the attended the recent JD Power Conference took away at least one concept. Social Marketing is big. Not just a little bit big and something you should be dabbling in, but KING KONG big. Changing the world big. Did I mention it is big?
Seemingly every panel and discussion throughout the 3 days revolved around, in some capacity, social marketing and how companies are reaching out and having conversations through these new channels of communication. The thing that was lacking from a majority of these conversations are how companies are executing social marketing strategies as part of their overall marketing mix.
Below are some examples of OEMs and automotive retails that understand how to participate and don’t have a clue.
THE GOOD
Honda Social Marketing
Honda Facebook Page
If you haven’t been living in a cave over the course of the past 2 weeks, you’ve seen Honda’s happy go-lucky TV ad with smiling happy people proclaiming their overwhelming love for all things Honda. At the end of the ad, consumers are directed to the company’s Facebook page @ Facebook.com/Honda.
Have you checked this website out? 132,300 people have become fans posting over 1100 photos of their beloved Hondas. The wall posts are a never-ending waterfall of people screaming from the Interwebs their appreciation for Honda. Want rapid fans? Lead them to the trough and watch them lap up the waters of the social web. Truly remarkable stuff.
Ford Social Marketing
Jim Farley delivered a tear jerker during his presentation @ JD Power. I’ve never experienced a speaker that was so well received at a conference. 100% of the people I spoke to after his delivery were impressed enough with Ford’s future that they were talking about buying a Ford or applying for a job.
The Ford Story Screenshot
Ford ‘gets’ social marketing and has executed multiple channels for their customers and fans to participate. The Ford Story is an example of how they are providing content to their customers in order to allow them to be a part of Ford’s past, present, and future. This is the only example I’ve found online of a corporation granting access to a warchest of content to be shared freely across The Web. The result? The hottest brand in Automotive with the most online buzz…go figure, right?
AutoNation and Checkered Flag Automotive Group
I was asked by an eCommerce Director of a Top 10 automotive group yesterday, ‘What dealer group or dealership is doing social marketing well?’. This is a tough question to answer. Over the past few months, I’ve compiled a list of car dealerships using Twitter through @sellingcars and have become a Fan of 100s of dealerships and dealer groups through Facebook. I’ve searched far and wide for auto retailers that get it, hoping to uncover some gems of information that I could share with our clients and prospects that I’m working with.
The result? Of the 100s of dealerships that are ‘doing social marketing’, only 2 stand out, AutoNation and Checkered Flag.
AutoWay Twitter Page
AutoNation has launched a social presence through an AutoWay campaign. Being a national brand in virtually every market in the US, they aren’t targeting a local following, but instead offering value-added tips about car maintenance, car repair, how to buy a car…basically everything and anything that has to do with a car dealership, without being a car dealership.
Checkered Flag Screenshot
Checkered Flag took the concepts of Web 2.0 and executed them on their website. Utilizing high-quality video content and an on-site blog, they’ve created a way for their customers to connect with their dealerships in a way that is truly unique in the automotive space. Recently, Christine (who I met @ JD Power) has become the face and spokesperson for the group, updating their Facebook and Twitter pages with content you would expect from an employee of Checkered Flag. Alex Snyder and his team is doing some revolutionary stuff for our industry and I’m glad he’s on our side!
THE BAD
Toyota
Honda has a happy go-lucky advertising campaign and over 100,000 people raving about their product on Facebook. Toyota? They last updated their Facebook page on June 26, 2008…seriously.
Toyota Facebook Page
Why Toyota has been so reluctant to participate in social marketing is beyond me. Having cult-like brands such as the Prius, you’d thing they’d be all over this space. This is not the case.
Astro Planet Twitter Page
Put yourself in a customer’s shoes. You decide you follow your favorite car dealership on Twitter. You’re excited about connecting with them and learning more about their culture and people. Your reward? 100s of random tweets with inventory that they just received. OF COURSE a car dealership has inventory, why do they need to automatically update everyone with this information. This is an example of social media fail in my opinion.
As our industry progresses of more OEMs, dealer groups, and dealerships participate in social marketing, I hope that we take queues from the current leaders of the space and also learn from the mistakes of those experimenting with new ideas.
If you have any examples of companies in automotive that are doing a good job with social marketing, please share!!
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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Patrick,
Thanks for posting this. I couldn’t agree with you more on the futility of posting automated inventory listings as status updates.
As for other automakers that are showing initiative in this space, I think VW’s Meet the Volkswagens Facebook app is worth mentioning. VW’s Facebook vanity URL directs you to its Meet the Volkswagens app, which digs through your profile data, including date of birth, gender and education, to match you with a pair of Volkswagens that are right for you. (More examples of automotive marketers on Facebook are covered in this Headlightblog.com post: http://bit.ly/azkl3)
Mary
I agree with your comments about VW’s Facebook app. Thanks for the reminder and sharing the RazorFish article!
THE GOOD – THE BAD – THE UGLY
Patrick, it’s always a pleasure. I remember when I first started for my dealerships to post tweets, and then suddenly saw random Car dealerships popping up in my Follower list. I was excited and wanted to see what they had to share with the world. Would they like we did post TwitPics from arrivals of the all new redesigned 7 Series or the Z4, did they link the tweets to their YouTube Channel, showing walk arounds on rare and hard to find vehicles or just share with a link to Facebook how their customers just joind the “ABC Dealer Owner Club”, and were showing them with a pic – proud and with a small comment how good their experience was?
Sorry, that I asked for “too much”, instead these followers bombarded me with inventory feeds, and “sales on the weekend, won’t last long messages” – geeez…We automotive digital marketing professionals will have our work and duty cut out for us, at least the next 2-4 years to convince particpating “social marketing” dealerships to join the conversation and not necessarly “dictate” their point of view to their customers. Let me please close it with a sentence and philosophy of Sir Winston Churchill’s speech, which stated “Never, never, never – NEVER (Give UP) “just tweet sales and inventories”"!
WIN — FAIL
I’m curious to see if Toyota will begin a ‘Ford Fiesta Movement’ campaign for the Prius. In fact, I expected one with the rollout of their new redesign.
Something dealers/groups/OEM’s are starting to realize is that social media is great for community building, but it also drives search. Fantastic opportunity to curate the experience for your potential customers by dropping a trail of crumbs on the social nets and landing tracking the lead cycle using tracking URL’s, phone numbers, and …
OK, before I lose myself in metrics and nerdery: Great post Patrick!
@VJnator – The amount of SPAM that exists in the form of social marketing in our industry is really sad. With education, I’m certain dealerships will ’see the light’ and realize that these online conversations are just an extension of the telephone or a fresh ‘up’!
@joemescher – I’m shocked that more product launches aren’t embracing the power of these social networks. The idea that vehicles that cult-like following fail to develop…well, cults, online is beyond me. I guess their television and print ads tell enough of a story, eh?
The industry will progress…slowly but surely.
I hate to break up the party, but all I have heard is how OEMs are taking advantage of social networking. That’s fine. But I go to JD Powers Round Table to find out what’s in it for dealers. Right? Isn’t that the audience? But as a dealer, I am still waiting to see the evidence that the celebrated social networking wunderkind like Twitter and Facebook can help me sell cars, really-actually-produce-leads! I don’t see it happening.
I read your post anticipating an answer finally, to “who’s doing it right?” But I don’t hear anybody pointing to dealers whom are getting it right – because I don’t think there is a there there.
It makes sense that an EOM can gather a following and harvest some sales from loyal fans using social media. But there is no “KING KONG big” here when it comes to a retail dealer participating in social networking. Or am I wrong?
Troy – I agree with your statement that Twitter and Facebook are not lead generating engines like your website, 2nd, and/or 3rd party providers. If you’re tracking the performance of your social efforts on a per lead basis, you’ll likely be disappointed.
If you’d like to speak with two individuals that are using social marketing to drive interest and sales at their dealerships, I recommend you speak with Eric Miltsch of Auction Direct USA (@auctiondirect on Twitter; Eric was a panelist @ JD Power) or Tracy Myers of Myers Autos (@myersauto on Twitter). Both of them have multiple examples of how their social marketing efforts have helped their dealership’s bottom line.
How is your dealership currently using social networking?
Troy,
I am a large independent dealer in NC and my family has been doing business here for more than 82 years. While I agree that there is no “King Kong” big YET (with YET being the operative word), social marketing is helping us generate the leads and the interest to sell another 5 vehicles a month. A perfect example happened just yesterday on FaceBook. I posted a video walk around of a Ford F-250 truck and within
24 hours, 2 people had asked me the price on the truck on my FB page! Cool stuff. I had my BDC Manager check the database to see if they were “new” to our system, and they were. If I had not had a FB presence, would they have visited my store/website to look for that truck? No one knows for sure but my bet is that they wouldn’t have.
Currently, Social Marketing is simply another piece of the puzzle.
Patrick – I really enjoyed reading your recap of the J. D. Power Automotive Internet Roundtable, and reading your words made me wonder how you stole my thoughts! That’s how aligned both our perceptions of the event are… However, I want to take exception with your proclamation that Autonation and Checkered Flag are the ONLY two dealers who are handling Social Media Marketing properly. Keep in mind that Autonation is a big ADP client, so any professional bias I would have, would be in their favor. One only has to take a look at the front page story on the Monday 11/23/2009 issue of Automotive News to realize that their are HUNDREDS of dealers in the USA that have been using various aspects of social media marketing quite effectively. Not all of these dealers are big stores or mega groups… Some of them are individual single points selling 100 new and used a month… Others are mid sized family owned operations like the Ancira Auto Group in San Antonio.
What I really enjoy about this space is all the variety and unique approaches to leveraging social media that I see various dealers using. For me, it has been and will continue to be a great learning experience. Heck, after my presentation at Digital Dealer, I met the owner of a dealership where they have taken free Google apps and using Gmail and Google Calendar combined with Google Groups, they have fashioned a CRM system and set of processes that are remarkably well thought out and highly effective.
I have seen other dealers that are using a Social Media strategy that is far more focused on fixed ops, customer service, accessory sales and brand enthusiasts than on trying to use SMM for selling cars… Yet, they are increasing their sales from referrals and word of mouth…
One of the first dealers I ever worked with around social media marketing, Ford of Kirkland in WA state has gone from middle of the pack to become the #1 Ford dealer in the state of Washington… And, they deserve all the credit for it, but their focus on getting customer reviews posted to DealerRater.com and then syndicating those positive reviews across multiple social networks, including the one I built for them certainly has helped them get increased sales during a recession…
I think we tend to hear more about the social media marketing disaster than the many success stories out there… Quite a few dealers keep their success stories as low key as possible because they don’t want to wake their neighbors up…
But there are two things that I believe will characterize almost all highly successful Social Media Marketing dealers as we all go forward in this space:
1. The Dealer will build their own social network that serves a “Hub and Spoke” strategy where dealership employee and customer submitted content originates. The content will then get syndicated out from the dealer’s “community” site to other social networks.
2. The most successful dealers will learn how to encourage, manage, incentivize and leverage their employees into being productive socially connected members of their local communities… These employees will use the dealer’s own social network as their central point of connection to the dealership as they in turn connect from there to their own various social media accounts and profiles across hundreds of other social media sites… These most successful dealers will learn how to leverage their single largest investment in resources, P-E-O-P-L-E, to create an online social networking presence that reflects a mass of real people who believe in what they are selling, and the services they are providing as a means of earning a decent living… Connecting with their customers, neighbors, friends, relatives, classmates, fishing buddies, snowboarding companions, bowling league members, Girl Scout troops, etc. in a manner that brings us all back to the days when we bought cars from people we liked and trusted, rather than simply the lowest bidder… Only this time around, we won’t mind paying a few hundred dollars more than we could have paid at another dealership… Why? Because the relationship value will far exceed the value of any additional discount we would have received buying a car from a stranger!
Anyways… That’s my story and I’m sticking with it. If you don’t believe it is possible, just call April or Gilbert Ancira down in San Antonio, or Jim and Amy Walen in Kirkland.
Ralph – Can you share some examples of successful social media strategies in retail automotive? I’m not entirely sold on the concept of Ning networks, as most of the fans are people in the industry and not really prospective customers.
As always, your thoughts and insights are appreciated.