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This is part 1 in a series about building brand ambassadors at the dealership. I'll be adding more parts later, but here is the series so far:

• Turn Social Media into a Brand Ambassador Factory
• The Importance of Brand Ambassadors
• How to Identify Potential Brand Ambassadors
• How to Approach a Potential Brand Ambassador About Social Media
• The Actions Needed to Build True Brand Ambassadors

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It isn’t what you’re saying on social media that has the biggest effect on your business. It’s what others are saying about you that makes the true impact.

I’ve used those words in various forms since 2008. It’s become a cliche in my own mind because I have to say it so often; many businesses we talk to haven’t gained that understanding by the time we have our consultation even today in 2013. It’s not their fault. The social media marketing industry is challenged with laziness in many ways. Building brand ambassadors is hard work so many “gurus” prefer to stick with what they can do easily, namely posting random things and pushing for likes, retweets, +1s, repins, and other components of social media promotions that are useful but that aren’t as important as they lead their clients to believe.

There are three truths that need to be understood about social media marketing:

• It’s a communication tool more than it’s a broadcasting tool.
• Getting others to talk about your business in a positive manner is the most powerful thing that can happen to influence your business through social media.
• It isn’t as hard as most think but it takes more effort than most are willing to allocate.

The easy road is to post interesting or entertaining images, text, video, or links. The more fulfilling road is to play outside of your own profiles, to make your social profiles a conduit rather than a hub, and to do the things that encourage the customers or clients who love your products, services, or ways of doing business to advocate for you online.

It’s about building ambassadors, and as inhumane as this may sound, you should be building a brand ambassador factory. Sounds creepy. Almost makes it seem like an allusion to Soylent Green. Thankfully, we don’t have to turn our customers into feed in order to make this work. We simply have to make them happy and give them the opportunities and prompting to tell the world that they love you.

The processes to do this differ from business to business. There are too many moving parts from one industry to another and from one store to another within the same industry to be able to post a roadmap or guide that would do justice to the topic, but over the next week I will be posting articles that give some general concepts to help you develop your own plan. The best way to stay on top of this (there will be much more written on this specific topic) and other social media marketing concepts is to subscribe to Soshable by Email.

More to come on this important topic very soon…

This is part 4 in a series about building brand ambassadors at the dealership. I'll be adding more parts later, but here is the series so far:

• Turn Social Media into a Brand Ambassador Factory
• The Importance of Brand Ambassadors
• How to Identify Potential Brand Ambassadors
• How to Approach a Potential Brand Ambassador About Social Media
• The Actions Needed to Build True Brand Ambassadors

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You’ve made a customer extremely happy with their purchase and exceeded their expectations. They’re smiling, shaking your hand, and thankful that you earned their business. They show all of the signs of being a potential brand ambassador. Now, how do you actually convert them from happy customer to brand ambassador?

We’ve already established that it’s important. Now go for the post. Your goal is to turn this happy customer into someone willing to advocate for you online. It’s not about getting a review. Those are easy. Reputation management on review sites is an important activity, but save those conversations for those who aren’t going to post about your on their social profiles. Getting an endorsement on Facebook is much more useful than getting a review on Yelp (unless your Yelp score is poor, in which case you probably want to get that bumped up first).

To get someone to post about you on social media, there are two effective methods to try.

Give Them an Incentive

This is the easiest way. It’s also slightly less fruitful because they must divulge in their post that they received compensation. That’s okay. If done right, even divulging the “payment” can be turned into a positive thing.

First and foremost, don’t go straight for the close. Just like with any sales process, you have to sell them on the idea. This requires a little setup first. Try to catch them when they’re really happy. After they’ve just given your store a compliment is ideal. Then, ask them about their social media presence.

Here’s an example of a conversation:

• Customer - “This has been the easiest car-buying experience I’ve ever had.”
• Salesperson – “Thank you for saying so. We do business differently here because we want our customers to come back to us and recommend us to all their friends and family.”
• Customer – “Yep, I’d definitely recommend you to my friends.”
• Salesperson – “Are you on Facebook?”
• Customer – “Of course.”
• Salesperson – “Because we value our customers’ recommendations, we give them their first oil change for free when they post about their experience on Facebook.”
• Customer – “That sounds good. I’ll post when I get home.”
• Salesperson – “If you want to do it from your phone right now I can walk you through it. To give you the oil change, it has to be worded a certain way.”
• Customer - “Okay. Let’s do it.”

The wording should be something like this: “I just had a great experience buying my new car at ABC Motors. They even gave me my first oil change for free just for posting this.”

That’s it. Of course, it’s not always that smooth of a conversation, but remember that even a handful of people per month can make an impact on future sales.

Give Them a Valid Reason

Similar to the incentive, the valid reason approach can be almost as effective. Done well, it can be even more effective because you’re asking for real endorsement without anything attached.

Use the talk track above but replace the oil change dialogue with something like this:

• Salesperson – “One of the ways I’m judged on whether I’m delivering a great customer experience is by getting mention on Facebook. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d appreciate if you’d write something about us on Facebook through your smartphone while we wait for your car to get cleaned up.”

From there, it doesn’t matter how they post it. They aren’t required to divulge anything and we’ve seen that when customers are given complete freedom to advocate for you how they want, they’ll do a better job at it.

But that’s not all…

Getting a Facebook post is amazing. Unlike review sites, it exposes your brand and the experience you deliver to people through a trusted peer. It’s human nature to trust the advice of people we know more than strangers on review sites. These types of public endorsements show “skin in the game” as we’ve mentioned in previous articles. Review sites are made fine, but they aren’t broadcasting the message to the right people the way a Facebook endorsement works.

This is all great, but a true ambassador won’t stop there. This is where we get into the real ways that happy customers become the brand ambassadors that we need. We’ll discuss all of that in the next post in this series.