I found several vendors on the fringes of blogging and social media, but it wasn’t what defined them, it was something they were comfortable promoting.

There were three companies however that do define their business with their online reputation management, social media, and like solutions. These companies are:

• PCG Digital Marketing
• Social Dealer
• Digital Air Strike

The fact that these companies have booths says a lot. Most importantly it says they believe they will profit from their products and services. I believe they will too, if they aren’t already, but it won’t be easy.

Automotive Blogging and Social Media

These companies can profit because the role that blogging and social media play for dealers throughout the automotive purchase cycle is still in its infancy, meaning there is much room for growth in this space, and they are the early players. Companies that are able to be in this space now and profit from it are getting a jump on future competition.

The reason it won’t be easy though is twofold: 1.) It is difficult to profit in the service business (as opposed to software business), unless you overcharge; 2.) There is a lot of education required with this niche audience of auto dealers, and a sales process that requires education is a difficult formula.

PCG has already raised the bar on what can be accomplished in this space. Led by one of the industry’s leading experts in automotive SEO and online reputation management (Brian Pasch) PCG offers some of the best training events and conferences the industry has to offer (DMSC, Automotive Bootcamp, PCG Pit Stops). PCG has been highly effective at garnering a core audience, or base, from which it can grow over the years.

But this could be more a reflection of knowing the game and being diligent in practicing what it preaches, which does not always translate to the type of results that a dealership actually needs. Whether or not PCG’s methodology is right for your dealership is something you must decide and depending on who you talk to you may get a mixed bag of responses from people.

SocialDealer is in a unique position in that its business model revolves around an actual piece of software. SocialDealer does offer social media services, but that is not its core business. SocialDealer’s software is practical, I have seen it, but much like a CRM system does not alleviate the need to communicate, SocialDealer’s interface does not alleviate the labor-intensive requirements of social media. It merely provides an interface to organize these labor efforts much.

As they are finding, most dealerships prefer to have support carrying out these labor efforts, or handle them altogether, and so they become the primary users of their own software. As a social media power user, this interface has limited value to me personally but depending on where they take it that value could increase quickly for me.

Digital Air Strike interestingly is in a unique position as well. After learning about their approach, or methodology, I was weary of what they had to offer. From what I have gathered, Digital Air Strike offers to do a lot of stuff that on paper sounds like the right things to be doing, but in the end what do these activities ultimately accomplish?

I realize this might seem like a brazen thing to say and that I will need to explain myself with more detail, but knowing this space and what it takes to produce a meaningful result for auto dealers, I would be sure as a dealership to define your objectives and expectations of the service offerings at Digital Air Strike before making too big a commitment. As I stated earlier, it’s one thing to do the work of social media for dealers, but producing a tangible effect or result that can be mutually appreciated is tricky business.

All three of these companies are in unique positions in front of the pack – for now. Each has value to bring to the table and each offers a solution that is of growing importance to dealerships. I expect next year we should see at least twice as many players in this space.

Key Takeaways

There were two key messages I heard across the handful of sessions and breakaways I attended. One was regarding the rapid acceptance of Mobile Computing and the other was the increasingly vital role of Social Media.

Social Media

Social media is not only a new frontier in marketing for automotive, but for all industries and for consumers too. While this might be obvious to some, to see the top tiers of the auto industry preach about social media in absolutes means that it is only a matter of time before this level of acceptance can be expected at the dealership level. Auto dealers are already embracing social media. It is an obvious choice.

The goal for car dealers is shifting from generating leads to something more broad, stickier, transparent, and mutually beneficial for everyone.

The nature of a lead is evolving into something more broad and generic, elusive in a way. I heard one presenter talk about how dealers want to expand their ideas about what a lead is and how much it is worth. There is now doubt that having people in your dealership looking at vehicles is ultimate measuring stick for the effectiveness of your marketing. Everything else is just TOMA.

Mobile Computing

A second key message was that all the new platform distribution mechanisms such as Droids, iPhones, iPads, etc., are bringing new challenges to auto dealers, but also new possibilities that were unheard of fewer than five years ago. This is something that has been developing over the past couple years, and which started accelerating earlier this year. In fact, one company, Dataium, showed data suggesting this acceleration beginning in April 2011.

Of all the companies out there, Dataium, co-founded by Jason Ezell, is the one that sticks out the most for me. What Dataium does is distinguished in its name.

Dataium gathers data about people, anonymously and individually, to help auto dealers better understand people’s behavior and interest level before and after they visit the dealership’s website.

What Dataium is able to know about you is unprecedented, and ethical. I plan to get more into this in future posts and I suspect you will begin hearing more and more about this company as they dig their heels into the auto biz. In fact, DealerRefresh did a post about Dataium after the 2011 Digital Dealer conference which is actually where I first got to see what Dataium is all about.

I have every bit of confidence in the dealer-vendor community to continue coming out with products that address the ever-changing, growing, and challenging needs of auto dealers when it comes to mobile computing and social media. For those that closely follow what I do you know that we have been hot on these trails now for several years, and you know that I am committed to remaining on those tails.

(Yes I dropped the “r” in trails.)

These were my key takeaways. I was not able to attend as many sessions and breakaways that I would have liked, but I am glad to have been there to attend the ones I could.

Why is this important?

It’s important because it shows the mentality of the car dealer industry.

How often do you hear from the dealer Principal or GM state that they don’t see the point in social media because they don’t see how it sells cars? Or how often does your supervisor approach you with questions like, “how are things going for us on Facebook? Are we selling any cars from it yet?”

Study after study suggests, and marketers using social media confirm, that the point of social media is not for selling or closing deals, but rather for numerous other purposes such as to:

• Drive traffic to your website
• Build your brand and reputation online
• Add value to the customer experience
• Establish and maintain relationships
• And more…

Fortunately this is becoming a moot point that I think many dealers are getting past, but for those that aren’t, this is a good story to consider.

Now, this isn’t to say that you should not expect results from your efforts using social media, just that matching it to the number of cars you sell as a result is not the right metric to go by. That’s what lead-to-show and show-to-close ratios do. But that is a whole other topic. I just wanted to draw attention to this important example you can refer to when put under the gun at your dealership for your efforts on the social web.

What are some things you can share from your experience with people at your dealership who are not embracing social media as a viable means for branding your dealership?

Photo courtesy of LayOutSparks.com

One question I hear more often than others is, “How often should I post to my blog?” But to answer this question there are so many other related factors to consider it will take you burrowing down a deep rabbit hole of other similar topics, such as:

1. Why would a car dealer want to blog?
2. What is blogging and how is it different from micro-blogging and social media?
3. What type of content should you have on your dealership blog?
4. And of course, how often should you be posting blogs?

To address these other important considerations, I started on an e-book white paper of sorts today. It introduces these as topics from a strategic marketing point of view and how each ties in with how often you want to be publishing content and information in general.

Chances are, your dealership is using at least one or more forms of blogging, micro-blogging, and/or social media tools. One can not answer the frequency question without first knowing which blogging platform is in question, and what the strategy is behind the content being put on it.

You can answer this qualitatively though…

As an example, you certainly do not want to put vehicle specials, or service specials, on your Facebook wall every day or multiple times a day. This is a sure way to make your Facebook marketing strategy ineffective. However, you do if possible want to be on Facebook every day, as often as possible that is good for your brand, keeping in mind your ROI.

For the sake of argument, let’s define things such as Facebook and Twitter as micro-blogging tools, otherwise known as Social Media. Also for the sake of argument, let’s define “blog” as the conventional dealership blog which runs on say WordPress or Blogger and is on its own sub domain or directory of the dealership website, e.g. blog.mydealershipsite.com or mydealershipsite.com/blog.

Strategically, the marketing objectives are similar. You want to increase exposure of your dealership and drive traffic to your dealership website. You also want to add value to the customer experience through time, and both blogs and social media are effective tools for doing so.

As for the actual frequency, that depends on the type of content being produced and to which platform. This is another important element to your  content marketing strategy. You MUST be producing quality original content that people will SHARE. If you are not doing this, then you can only really be micro-blogging. This is good for building credibility and managing your reputation, but without original content on your blog it will be difficult to drive consistent traffic to your blog and website, and it will be near impossible for people to share anything because you haven’t created anything.

Creating quality original content that people will share is a great and growing challenge today for auto dealers that want to be and compete in the game with auto shoppers. This is large in part why we created the site AutoConverse.com, to give auto shoppers a way to engage with their local dealers on equal playing turf, if you as a dealer chose to service customers this way. And I see no reason why you  should not want to. It will become more important as advertising and technology evolve. The information you want from them will become increasingly more valuable, because they will have ways to protecting it better.

I will do a series of posts that explores these topics in more depth and make it available as a free download. You can sign up now for your free copy by joining our mailing list to become a free member. We will be sending everyone a copy it that is already a free or premium member, and it will be included at the time of sign up for people moving forward.