Despite the ups and downs of the last year, it appears the auto business is slowly moving upward on the activity meter. If this trend holds, 2011 should be a pretty good year for the auto business, but you need to start you planning now. Since we’re in October, it’s time to make plans to attend the NADA Convention in San Francisco February 5-7, 2011. To get the best hotel rooms and flights, you might consider booking now to save yourself the scramble later. This promises to be an innovative year on the exhibition floor. As in past years, there will probably be one, stronger theme throughout the hall. My prediction is Social Marketing. I think we can look forward to half the booth holders adding some form of social marketing to their offerings. This prediction is based on the trends we are seeing in the larger product businesses like Proctor & Gamble. Big business has discovered that you can reach a half million eyeballs using Facebook and engage the customer with the product for a lot less money than it costs to reach that same number of people using traditional media. Watch for auto dealers to ramp up their engagement with social media sources like Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare. To the skeptics that say, “Consumers don’t want to communicate with an auto dealership on Facebook,” you are wrong. What consumers don’t want is to be hit with sales messages on Facebook. The secret to Facebook and all social marketing is the concept of “giving.” This is hard concept for us in the car business to grasp. The value of Facebook to an auto dealer is to make friends with people who will eventually need to buy a car. You don’t make friends by saying, “Hey we have cars on sale!” You make friends by saying, “Acme Ford is participating in the March for Breast Cancer. We will donate additional cash to the March for every person that signs up to be on our team.” Or, another “giving” form of social marketing would be to say, “If you’re a Mustang fan, check out the Mustang Club that Acme Ford has formed. Sign up today and receive our free book, The Ford Mustang: American Classic, just for joining the club.” Do you see the difference between trying to push people with sales messages instead of pulling them with “giving” messages? A good way to learn more about using social marketing for your dealership is to go on Facebook and see how other businesses are engaging customers. The ones with the most friends are probably doing it correctly. Once you have earned the trust of a lot of “friends” on Facebook, you can communicate with a ton of potential customers without spending anything in the way of media dollars. Zero is a really nice price for marketing. If you are not savvy at Facebook, find someone who is to handle your Facebook site. Just make sure they understand “giving” vs. pushing.
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