Looking at the screenshot above of the landing page that Facebook took me to when I clicked on Dodge’s advertisement in the sidebar, one might believe everything was in order. It’s not exceptionally attractive and definitely offers way too many options to be a strong landing page from a social media campaign, but at least it’s pretty compelling. The clear call to action – get a quote. There’s a payment offer for those who want such things. There’s a financing term offer for those who like 0%. There’s a cash back offer for those who want to pay less.
One might ask, “What’s the problem?”
Poor landing page layout aside, there was one big problem with the landing page. It’s about a Dodge Avenger. The ad that I clicked can be seen to the right. I wanted to look at deals for a Dodge Charger. That’s what I was promised. That’s not what I got.
Everyone makes mistakes and other than a few hiccups in recent years, Chrysler has done a pretty good job at staying aggressive on social media. This is the type of mistake that can cost money. It’s the type of mistake that can cost customers. There was no easy way for me to get to what I was promised, namely information about deals on Dodge Chargers that were associated with the big Dodge Event.
If you run ads on Facebook, test, check, recheck, test, click through, verify, and then do it all over again. You often get one opportunity to reach a buyer before they end up looking elsewhere. On social media, this is amplified by the medium itself. Test that the links work on mobile devices. Test that the promise (the ad copy) is what’s delivered when they get to the other side of the click. Otherwise, you’re just blowing through cash and customers.
Spring and “springtime” refer to the season, and also to ideas of rebirth, renewal and regrowth.
Infant
The term infant is typically applied to young children between the ages of 1 month and 12 months;
Green Pea
An inexperienced car salesperson. We all were one at one time, remember?
Summer
The warmest of the four temperate seasons, between spring and autumn. At the summer solstice, the days are longest and the nights are shortest, with day-length decreasing as the season progresses after the solstice.
Teenager
A transitional stage of physical and psychological human development generally occurring between puberty and legal adulthood
90 Day Wonder
The 90 day wonder is the sales associate, brand new to the business, who starts out like gang-busters. Who, for the first couple of months, leads the board. Then, after about 60 to 90 days, their production starts to dip until it plateaus somewhere around the average. [Average; The best of the worst] Anyone relate to this stage?
Fall
The possibilities of summer are gone, and the chill of winter is on the horizon. Skies turn grey, and many people turn inward, both physically and mentally
Adult
A fully grown human being that is of relatively mature age,
Veteran Salesperson
Set in their ways and resistant to the new initiative. Most of us were this at one time as well.
Winter
The coldest season of the year in temperate climates, between autumn and spring. At the winter solstice, the days are shortest and the nights are longest,
Senior
A common polite designation for an elderly person. The old-timer, complacent, sacred cow Sales person. Tail wagging the dog salesperson, change not possible. I only sold for 6 years, didn’t get to become this one.
Let’s tie this all together
Don’t you just love spring? I swear I can almost hear things growing and blooming in my yard, can almost see the bulbs coming up like one of those time lapse videos. The area I live in has flowering pear trees everywhere and for a few weeks it’s just amazingly beautiful. The smells, the coolness of the mornings, love it. A fresh start!
Who doesn’t like babies? The way they laugh, grow so fast, everything is so new to them and they seem interested in everything, learn multiple new things each day. The way they smile and laugh is just so real. The crying isn’t that cool, but the way they smell [most the time] and everything else makes up for those late nights. Wonder and excitement in their eyes!
Green Pea salespeople; Now these we all love, they are those new salespeople that are committed, trained, with no bad habits, clean canvas’s for us to paint on. They say what you trained them to say, they do it without hesitation, with enthusiasm and the results are typically outstanding! They want to learn everything, they actually come and ask for lists to make calls, how to prospect, what to read, how they can become better.
Spring turns to summer and the days become longer, the beach, warm summer nights. Summer always reminds me of when I was younger and summer vacation, playing baseball, drive in movies [yes I’m older and they didn’t have DVD’s then] driving with the top down on your car.
Being a teenager is both fun and exciting but also confusing at times as well. We think we know everything, yet as we find out eventually we know very little. Our voices change, we are more concerned about what others think and our bodies change faster than we emotionally mature. Some of us were in the “in crowd” others in different crowds or cliques, but all of us felt awkward in some respect, but still tried to act cool.
The 90 Day Wonder Salesperson; he or she has growing pains as well, we think we have it all figured out and start to short cut everything that made us great to begin with when we were mere Green Peas. Funny how stupid our managers become after we have sold for a few months. Little later to work, leave a little earlier, start getting more involved in the salesperson “Dope Ring.”
Fall…..ahhhh my favorite, Football, leaves turn color, sweaters, great sleeping nights. Halloween and scaring the neighborhood kids, Pumpkin Spice Cappuccino at WAWA …
Adults, finally we can vote, drink, get married, get divorced… we can cuss, have sex, live on our own, earn a living [pay bills] take advantage of all the freedoms that are available to us. Don’t need to listen to our parents any longer.
The Veteran Salesperson; we are now experts in our field, we have sold at several dealerships, know the “holes” in each pay plan. This should be our peak earning years, repeat and referral clients. We have attended training, seminars, read books on selling; we are now “Professionals” For sure we don’t need to do everything our managers tell us to do.
Winter, don’t get me wrong I’m not a huge fan of being cold but that first snowfall and the way newly fallen snow looks on the trees and the sound it makes when you walk in it is pretty cool. Christmas, a warm fire… more football and bringing in the new year are great things about the winter.
Seniors, as much as I try and fight it at nearly 61, I guess I’m a senior. Even though through the years I have learned much, I make mistakes each day, I am a bit better at covering them up now perhaps. We begin to think some about mortality, maybe winding down our work just a little. Kids are grown, grandchildren growing. I seem to get cranky quicker but at the same time have patience for things I wouldn’t have when I was younger.
Entitled, untouchable, sacred cow Salesperson; most showroom floors have at least one, they have been there forever, friend of the DP, GM or family member. Don’t attend meetings, which might be a good thing. They hold their own daily meetings on the floor with the 90 day wonders, telling them how it REALLY is. The have sold 3-4000 cars or more over their career yet still can’t ever seem to get over 12 a month now.
Building A Better Salesperson
How can we build that “perfect salesperson” and keep them that way?
We can’t get them at the mall..
Ha,I don’t have that answer, if I did I’d own a nice island somewhere and not be banging at this keyboard .
I do however have some thoughts and opinions on this building of a better salesperson. There is little doubt and I don’t think that it can be debated that in any relationship the selection process will have much to do with how well that relationship goes and how long it will last and stand up against bumps in the road that will surely come.
We have all heard the phrase Hire slow and fire fast and I generally agree with that.
When we do recruiting/training campaigns for dealers we take a full week of interviews and then initial training with really acts as a culling or vetting process so the dealerships can make a wiser decision on who to hire. Now weather you use us or do it yourself, why wouldn’t you want to really take your time if you knew that that person or persons are going to directly affect your paycheck, the perception of you and your dealership? I think we all get caught a little bit in the “I’m a great judge of character” thing… man I have made that mistake way to many times, maybe you are and maybe you’re not but in either case it’s no way to hire salespeople.
Let’s take that infant salesperson and teach them everything, they are sponges at this point and the more you give them the better and faster they will grow.
At some point a few months into their employment they pretty much feel and or think they have both you, the customer and this business of selling figured out. They are still pumped up and still teachable but due to their rapid growth and all the changes that are going on in them they begin to question many things i.e do I really need to demo every client? Is a walk around really necessary? Why show them our service department, they will get that done down the street anyway.” Boss, they know everything, so we need to start this deal at the “real money” etc. Their sales begin to drop and of course you, your ads and the inventory are mostly to blame.
Protect the 90 day wonder against themselves, it’s not their fault, its human nature. They need even more attention, more training, more mentoring than ever before, this is a critical time in their development and if we don’t develop them, we will always be looking for replacements.
I think that as a salesperson matures into an adult veteran we tend to over look them, we figure they are plug and play and better left alone if they are doing “ok.” It seems as though we feel they don’t or wont need, want or relate to any motivation or additional training. At AutoMax we believe in getting the veteran salespeople very involved in their training, actually let them train themselves and we just facilitate the training meetings in a proper direction.
They all think they are smarter than management anyway, and in fact they are the ones that are belly to belly with the clients each day so who better to know what objections need to be overcome and the proper, professional way to do that… that actually doesn’t just sound good, but works!
Finally at the end of our season and cycle in the “sacred cow salesperson” what do we do about them? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying every 25-30 year vet is bad, most are very good or they wouldn’t have lasted so long, but…. have they stayed current, can they truly relate to today’s clients and their needs?
When I did turn around consulting on the road in the late 80’s,early 90’s we would go in and first thing blow that guy right out of there ,didn’t need the “headache “Looking back I’m now not 100% sure that’s the proper thing to do. I am concerned about this salesperson taking ups, they have sold forever why in the world would they need to and if they don’t need to take ups, why should they be at the dealership every hour that the other salespeople are there? Maybe the best way to handle this seasoned salesperson is flex their schedule, keep them away from your “infants and teens” Change their pay plans to reflect being paid only on commission, decreased benefits but the flexibility of not having to be there bell to bell either.
In summary, take that baby and nurture them properly, understand the teenager and help them get over those hard times, engage the adult and help them become leaders in a good way and as long as there are healthy keep that old timer, just make sure they are not poisoning the others or they may need to be put in a home.
There have been valid business reasons to use hashtags for years. Twitter started it off. Pinterest added to it. Google+ mastered it in many ways. Instagram, Tumblr… the list of social sites on which hashtags are relevant is long. Facebook was the last major holdout. Now that they’ve joined the bandwagon, it’s go time.
Mastering the use of hashtags takes practice, testing, experimenting, and more practice. Thankfully, there are few things you can keep in mind that will make the journey much easier. Here are some basic techniques for using hashtags that should help you find your own strategy pretty easily…
Send a Message through Emphasis
This is hands-down the easiest and arguably most effective use of hashtags on a regular basis. It’s also, oddly enough, the most misused or underutilized. In the example above, there are no major hashtags that people search for or click through to on a regular basis. They aren’t designed to market anything in particular. They’re meant to make the words themselves stand out in the text and to enhance the message itself through emphasis.
Notice the words that are hashtagged – affordable, beauty, performance, reliability. There aren’t a whole lot of better words to use in a description of a used Chysler 300. It makes the message stand out in the stream and helps to punctuate the overall message of the post itself.
Latch on to Trending Topics
This is the most used technique to use with hashtags and is also arguably the least useful, especially for a local business. Trying to “trend surf” can be dangerous as some businesses have found it. It also means trying to stand out in a very large crowd. However, that doesn’t mean they’re useless.
The easiest way to make them effective is to latch onto national campaigns associated with hashtags that are relevant to business. For example, a Toyota dealer would want some posts with the hashtag #Toyotathon when the event comes around. Local trending hashtags can also be useful. For example, #Travelers and #Golf were both trending in Connecticut at the beginning of the Travelers Championship held in Cromwell, CT.
Personalized Hashtags
If you can make this one work, you’re a winner. Many big brands fail miserably at this. They can turn into debacles that allow the trolls of the internet to desecrate a brand and their message. However, it’s worth noting as something to explore when you have something really strong to promote.
The essence is this – make and spread a hashtag that is attached to your brand, then ask (hope) people will use it in a positive fashion. No need to go into the gory details here, but this backfires much more often than it works. Still, businesses will continue to try it and occasionally some of them strike gold.
* * *
Hashtags work. They should not be overused. They should not be utilized for spamming. Put in the proper context, they can be great ways to highlight your message and get it exposed to a wider range of potential customers.
I was recently onsite at a Dealership client in Michigan and was PLEASANTLY surprised to see that the ENTIRE management team was immersed in the 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People Training! Every week they read a new chapter and discuss it in the Manger's Meeting. When I came to the dealership to train they were on habit 6... "SYNERGY"! They were so kind to invite me to share some of my thoughts and knowledge as a FranklinCovey Trainer and I had such an amazing time explaining my interpretation of Dr.Covey's message.
This video is of me "free styling" my thoughts about the 6th Habit and how it all comes together.
With pleasure, I announce the launch of Hyundai Customer Reviews powered by SureCritic, a new and innovative program created for your dealership’s Service Department. Hyundai Motor America designed this web rating and review program for you to leverage customer satisfaction in order to more efficiently market your dealership’s reputation, increase web visibility, and ultimately grow customer retention.
In today’s consumer-driven marketplace, automotive retailers need a web presence. In fact, your Service Department has one, whether created by you or not. HMA collaborated with a group of our dealers to create a program that ensures a positive presence with verified reviews from real customers.
Our approach is simple. Customers complete a four question web survey about their service experience. Customers can share their review on the social media sites of their choice. Dealers can address and fix customer complaints before lower ratings post on the web. Dealers can also share reviews via social media sites.
A six month pilot among 22 dealers produced fantastic results.
·Ratings averaged 4.7 on a 5-point scale. All dealers performed at 4.3 or higher.
·95% of customers would recommend the dealer for service.
The law of averages applies to the web: The more real reviews your dealership receives, the closer your score reflects real performance, which is over 4-stars for most Hyundai dealers. The many positive reviews overshadow the few negative reviews, but these negative reviews lend credibility to the process.
Hyundai Customer Reviews launches as a voluntary program, and I encourage all dealerships to participate. Web ratings represent the CSI of the future. HMA will guide you through the enrollment process and support you through the simple start-up period.
Hyundai Customer Reviews comes at no additional cost to you. That’s how strong we feel about it.
Watch for a communication from Frank Ferrara, Executive Vice President of Customer Satisfaction, with program details.
From all of us at Dealer Synergy, have a safe and enjoyable Fourth of July holiday!
While you're at home today, spending time with your family and friends, take a moment to not only remember and honor our Founding Fathers, but also the brave men and women who have fought fearlessly to secure our freedom time and time again!
Businesses are starting to get it. They once saw social media as a channel like many others through which they could broadcast their message. When that didn’t work, they shifted to using it as a branding tool only. When that wasn’t effective, they started communicating with people. Bingo! Now, more need to take it to the next level.
We see it all the time on some social media pages. Businesses are posting things to Facebook like pictures of happy customers. They’re answering questions and highlighting things happening at their business. The next step is to be thankful.
Social media in general and Facebook in particular is a perfect place to humanize the business. One of the best things a business can do to humanize itself is to be thankful. There are many things that businesses today can focus on through social media, to highlight as a positive thing. It’s customers. It’s good things that happen to the business, the local community, and the people in it. It’s testimonials and reviews.
The key is to make it social. Making it social takes a little work. It’s not about sharing a link to a review, for example, on Facebook. It’s about expressing true gratitude for the review and personalizing it in a way that makes it stand out.
People are much more appreciative of the effort it takes to highlight a personalized response to a review than they are about a review that was a simple click of a button on a link. More importantly, highlighting reviews in this way is much more visible on news feeds. Many of the review sites have been so blasted out onto Facebook and other social media sites that they’re not even eligible for promotion through Facebook ads.
Social media is about reaching people and allowing people to reach you in return. Being thankful, humble, and appreciative of the good things around you and your business is an effective way of amplifying the reach abilities from both directions – you reaching them and them reaching you. It’s what makes social media so important.
Do you struggle to find content for your website? In this week's Think Tank Tuesday, I'll show you the ideal place to get 200-300 pieces of relevant content for your website every month.
This is the second post on management for all levels of business. In the last post I explored using transparency as one of the base tenets of running a successful Dealership. Now I am moving on to transparency's older sibling, ACCOUNTABILITY.Dealerships have become experts on the individual process of handling a transaction. It has been analyzed from every direction, and has remained in a consistent form for decades. While there are many small enhancements available to the process, the physical steps are perfectly functional, and produce excellent results. This means our greatest method for improving within the Dealership is creating an environment where we perform the process properly the greatest percentage of times.Transparency is one method of management that enhances the chances of process happening at a greater rate, by removing removing incentives to cheat a process by leaving fewer areas to hide missteps.Now accountability steps in, and in many people's eyes this is the long arm of the law. Accountability is measuring a performance against a defined set of rules, and reacting on any deviation from the set course. Sounds like a very harsh system, and in most employees eyes this is a very frightening concept.As I was putting together notes for this post, I asked my cousin's daughter (if you want true answers ask a child) if being held accountable sounded positive or negative to her. without hesitation she said NEGATIVE! I think this is the view of most people, but frankly accountability can be reinforced with negative and POSITIVE actions. As with most things in life, there has to be a healthy balance to be effective.Let's explorer accountability through three levels. Self, Team Leader or Manager, and Organization Leader or Dealer. Management isn't just a task for the top of the organization, every employee should both learn and display it. To have integrity, management style and principle must flow up and down the chain.Self:What does it mean to hold myself accountable? What is the standard I have to live up to, and how do I reward or prod myself as I either ace the process or deviate?It all starts with a "WHY" list. The tangible goals I have set, that will improve my life or standard of living. Those things which drive people to become motivated at those critical moments when everything is fighting against it. Call it the personal business plan backbone.Your WHY list should be SMART (Specific, Measured, Attainable, Relevant, & Tracked). Break down the things you want into three groups, Short term (attained in 2 months or less), mid term (2 months to 1 year), and long term (1 year and over). Put actual written figures in as to what it takes to purchase each of these categories in the set time. So if your short term goals are $1,000 then it is $500 per month. Perform this at each level, then total the amount for a total monthly WHY list budget. This should become the reason you wake up.From here total your bills that are necessary to keep living and add the WHY list budget to it and this should become your base forecast figures. In writing on your person at all times should be a listing of how many cars are needed to sell, and how many people are needed to meet to change the list from a wish to an actual CASHABLE SHOPPING LIST!!This is the ultimate form of accountability to your own personal future. No other motivation is near as powerful. Better yet you are richly rewarded for simply performing your job, positive accountability. Feel free to email, or contact me for a sample forecast sheet that will help you keep daily tabs on this, it is easy to make.Management:Team Leaders are the group most associated with accountability. Typically responsible for punishing those that do not complete follow-up activities, chastising Sales Consultants with below average results, and acting as a general watchdog. What metrics are we chasing, and how what are Managers reinforcing?My last post was all about transparency, and it is one of the most power accountability tools a Manager has, it creates peer pressure. Published results on key metrics that create success allow the group to work together to find the highest attained level. Two great points to publish are test drive percentage, and percentage of clients that receive a Manager's quote to purchase. Each percentage is a direct reflection of the Sales Staff's ability to follow proper process. Your CRM tool has the ability to track each of these steps. Hand out a spreadsheet, once a week, with the top performer on the header in bold type with their percentage and a congratulations. Every other Sales Consultant should be listed with the amount they are behind the person on top. It might look like this:Salesperson A - 90% test drive percentage - TOP PERFORMER - GREAT JOB!Salesperson B - <5%>Salesperson C - <7.5%>etc......Executive Leader:This is the trickiest. How can a top of the food chain leader hold himself and those below him accountable at the same time? The Dealership isn't a democracy and nor should it be. So without being on equal footing how does a Dealer fall into accountability.The Sales Consultant leverages his personal life to be accountable, the Manager uses the staff, but the Leader has to take accountability to a higher level. No management philosophy flourishes until it takes hold at the top!The first key is beginning to see your staff like stock holders. They have their entire financial future hooked to your company, and your financial future is on their back. If you want your employees to care about your business like it is their own, show them why it is.Have a quarterly meeting, just like a stock holder's convention. Call it the "Board Meeting", and make it a requirement for all Sales Staff! During the meeting tell everyone exactly what you are going to do to make their business thrive. Don't walk in and ask them to work harder, show them how you are working harder for them. Show them what the business is investing to make sure that effort, time, and toil produce results.Provide them with the same information you would want to know if you were investing in a company. How much inventory are going to bring in, and what will stocking levels be over the next quarter? Planned training, and employee improvement, what will the business reinvest into future success? Advertising guidelines and plans, Dealers spend tons on motivating the public, why not share what is happening going forward? Are there going to be any capital investments in the facility?Every day your employees are considering your business and their continued relationship with you. Tell them all the great things you do everyday to keep them successful. You are ultimately accountable to your staff.Next post management through metrics.
Read more…
I was consulting with a potential client yesterday and started looking at their Facebook and Twitter pages. Once a day, every day, they would post a question that had very little to do with anything at all. "What was the last movie you watched?"
Once a day, every day, they wouldn't get a response from anyone. It was awkward in a social media way. There was no engagement. The reason was easy to find - their 3000+ Facebook fans had not been engaged with their page for a long time (meaning that nobody was seeing their posts in their news feeds) and their Twitter profile had 40 followers.
"I've heard you say that questions drive engagement," she told me as I started pointing out the challenges. She was correct - I have said that many times before and it's true. The problem is that questions do not work if nobody is listening and they're not the right way to get people to listen.
I don't envy her. She took over a Facebook page that had been getting updated by RSS feeds for over a year and a Twitter account that was autoposted from Facebook. The remaining followers and fans were spam bots. Nobody was listening. It was an empty room.
There's an old saying that says, "fake it 'til you make it" and that applies in this type of situation. There are still people who will visit the profiles because they show up in search and are linked from the website, so one still has to post quality content during the rebuilding period (stage one in our three stage process), but questions aren't the answer (pun intended). At this stage, it's important to show those who do visit the pages that you're posting quality content, but you don't want to highlight the fact that nobody is paying attention at that point.
Statements, facts, pictures, videos, and occasional links work best at this point. Through ads and engagement-driving posts, you'll be able to get your following back up and engaged. Once that happens and you're on to stage two, it's time to start asking questions again. Until then, avoid them.
For a few months now, I’ve been discussing the idea that local businesses should never fall into the trap of trying to be funny or interesting through the use of irrelevant pictures and memes. “No cat or dog pictures” has become a mantra of sorts with the concept being that businesses should try to stand out, not fit into the mix on Facebook and other social media sites.
As some have argued, there are definitely exceptions to the rule. One such exception is when the interesting dog or cat picture is relevant to the business or local area. Here’s an example of an acceptable dog picture post on a business Facebook page:
It’s local – this is the mascot for the school in this Honda dealership’s local area. It’s epic – how often do you see a dog that regal? It’s informative – many in the local area may not realize the fact in the description on the post. The results were that this relatively small Facebook page got decent traction on it with 20 likes and a share. It’s not fantastic, but it’s better to have local flair than to be random with funny pictures.
There’s another exception to the idea that local businesses should not post cat and dog pictures that was pointed out to me the other day: veterinarians and pet stores have every right to do it. In the spirit of being thorough, it had to be said.
Social media marketing is not about being popular. It’s not about getting likes. For local businesses, it’s about reaching people in the community with a business message. To do so, it’s important to play the “Facebook algorithm game” to earn the right for posts to be seen. This is one of the reasons that businesses resort to memes and funny pictures, but they don’t have to. They can find plenty of interesting content closer to home that is both relevant and important to their fans.
A few months ago, we confronted one of our dealers that had our website solution about why they were putting a watermark of their logo on irrelevant pictures and posting them to social media. Apparently, their social media vendor had a theory.
It was a process, really, and it went like this:
Find viral images on sites like Reddit, 9Gag, and Buzzfeed.
Slap the dealership’s logo in the bottom right corner.
Get it liked and shared by hundreds of people around the world.
Sell more cars as a result.
The biggest challenge with a strategy like this (and there are many) is that it hurts the brand’s image. Most people on social media have a nice flood of funny and interesting pictures coming through their feeds. The idea that a dealership needs to fit into this is ridiculous. Dealerships have to stand out.
The goal should not be to take an irrelevant picture and get it exposed to tens of thousands of people scattered around the world in hopes that enough of them are locals who can buy a car. The goal is to take truly local, relevant branding messages and get them exposed to thousands of locals only.
Would you rather your brand be associated with an image of a car nicely placed in front of the dealership with a the sign glowing bright on local people’s news feeds, or would you rather have people in Singapore or Tunisia loving a funny image that has made its rounds around the internet?
Social media isn’t like other marketing venues. On search, it doesn’t hurt to have your message reach people who aren’t in your market. On social media, it does. You want to be as localized as possible. You want a bare minimum of 80% of your fans to be within driving distance to the dealership. When you spread out too far, you are no longer able to post high-quality localized messages that the majority of your fans will recognize and care about.
It’s not realistically possible to keep 100% of your fans localized, but you can get close. In the image to the right, you’ll see that this page is small. It had practically zero fans less than two months ago. There are a couple dozen offshore likes; the only way to avoid this completely would be to manually inspect every new like and kick out those who are not helpful to the cause which is a waste of time. If you keep it over 80% localized (and these guys over 90% local) then the out-of-towners won’t do much damage.
Perhaps the biggest reason that dealers and vendors like bulk is that they follow the misconception that you can only reach fans. There has been this confusion that has followed social media sites, particularly Facebook, since they became marketing venues. The thought is that since this page has hundreds of fans, not tens of thousands of fans, they can’t reach enough people. This misconception is completely opposite of reality.
When someone likes, comments, or shares your post, it has the opportunity to be exposed to their friends in their own news feed. When two people in the same circle of friends like, comment, or share a post, it becomes much more likely that their friends will see it. By “much more likely” I don’t mean twice as likely. I wouldn’t go so far as to say the chances increase exponentially, but it’s a dramatic increase.
For example, Bob likes a post on your Facebook page. His friend, Sally, also likes the same post. They each have around 200 Facebook friends and 30 of them are mutuals between them. Their friends have a chance of seeing your post in their news feed, but their mutual fans have a much greater chance. Now, one of their mutual friends likes that post, and the dominoes start falling. The reach potential from Bob’s first like was small. Once Sally liked it, the reach potential increased. When Tom, their mutual friend, also likes the post, now we’re getting into a post with the potential to be seen by hundreds just from the Bob’s like alone. That doesn’t include the other people who are already seeing your posts. For those people, the potential can continue to grow as well.
This localized expansion of exposure is impossible when you have too many fans from outside of the area. Those people outside of the area hurt the potential for locals to see it because they’re less likely to interact with it. This lack of interaction can damage your posts algorithmically. In other words, by having too many distant fans, you hurt the chances of Bob ever seeing the post in the first place, which means Sally would never have seen it, which means Tom would have never seen it, which means those hundreds of locals who might have seen the post never had the opportunity.
It’s a little confusing. That’s why it’s just easier for dealers and vendors to think along the lines of accumulating as many fans as possible regardless of why they liked the page in the first place or where they actually live. Perhaps the easiest way to understand it is to see the actual reach of the page example above.
These numbers are decent for a page that was reaching nobody less than two months ago. They’re not fantastic; localized reach should be sustainable at five-digits with spikes in the six-digit range at times depending on the area targeted. Still, it’s a good illustration that a properly managed page with hundreds of local fans can still reach thousands of of people within driving distance to the dealership.
The bottom line is this: social media strategies in general and Facebook strategies in particular fall victim to misconceptions about fans and reach. You want to reach locals. You want to post content that is relevant. You want to brand the right way. You don’t need to employ tricks or schemes to become the most popular kid in school. You only need to employ sound strategies to reach potential consumers who can actually make a difference to your bottom line.
Some infographics are long for the sake of being long. They take up way too much space to make very few points or to present data in ways that simply don’t make sense from an graphic perspective. Then, there are those infographics that are long for a valid reason. This is one of those.
Social media is ever changing. In many ways, this is a good thing. Innovations come through change and the major social networks are all much better than they were just a couple of years ago. Other changes are annoying, especially for businesses that rely on their social media presence as a venue to drive engagement, communication, and branding. Having the appropriate matching of the brand look and feel is important. Unfortunately, just when you have the right graphics in the right places, they go and make changes to the size and location of these graphics.
It’s a drag. Thankfully, this infographic from Tent Social is up to date… as of right now. There’s no telling when Facebook will decide to make their cover images larger or when LinkedIn will change the dimensions of its logo space, but for now, here’s a good reference for everything from image sizes to post lengths.
Tim Morgan of Radley Acura Named Autobytel Dealer of the Month; Dealer of the Year Awards Slated for January 2014
Autobytel honors exceptional dealers from a competitive field of thousands of automotive retailers for outstanding Internet lead management and customer service standards
IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 28, 2013--
Autobytel Inc. (Nasdaq: ABTL), the company dedicated to helping automotive consumers and dealers connect online, has named Tim Morgan, General Sales Manager of Radley Acura in Falls Church, Virginia, the Autobytel Dealer of the Month for May 2013.
The company's Dealer Awards Program honors exceptional Autobytel dealers who employ the highest standards in customer service and Internet automotive retail sales and lead management processes. The Autobytel Dealer of the Year Award is slated to be announced at the NADA Convention & Expo in New Orleans in January 2014, with the crowning dealer chosen from this year's pool of monthly winners.
Tim joins Patti Scipione of M'Lady Nissan and Paul LeRose of Pauly Toyota--who were recently named Autobytel Dealers of the Month for March and April 2013--in that pool of winners.
"One of the primary reasons the Radley Acura team is so successful is the customized approach they take with every Internet customer they service," said Jeffrey Coats, President and CEO of Autobytel Inc. "Today's car buyers are unique, each with their own set of wants and needs when it comes to finding the perfect vehicle. Tim has helped implement a personalized sales process at Radley Acura--one that evaluates Internet leads individually, addresses every inquiry in a personalized way, and provides information of substance that goes above and beyond the standard price quote."
Each month, Autobytel's sales and dealer operations teams evaluate prospective candidates from a competitive field of thousands of automotive retailers in the Autobytel network, with a monthly winner selected based on key online automotive best practices.
Criteria evaluated for the Autobytel Dealer Awards Program include conversion rates, lead management processes, customer service principles, customer and brand retention analytics and Internet department practices, among others.
"We've learned a lot in the 10-plus years we've been an Autobytel dealer, " said Morgan. "The most important thing we've learned is how to communicate with Internet customers to gain a full understanding of what they're looking for in a new car and then guide them through the entire process of finding, buying and owning that car. Our customer service ratings and internal metrics prove we're successful, and Autobytel helps our efforts by sending us great quality leads. However, being named an Autobytel Dealer of the Month, which recognizes how well we stack up against other dealers, is especially rewarding."
Radley Acura is a 27-year Acura retailer located in Falls Church, Virginia, serving the Alexandria, Fairfax and Washington, D.C. markets. The dealership offers new, used and certified pre-owned Acuras and has been a part of the Autobytel program for over 10 years. Radley Acura is a Precision Team Dealer of Distinction, the most prestigious and coveted honor that Acura can grant to its dealerships, which recognizes those dealership teams that demonstrate superior achievement in customer satisfaction, new-car-unit sales volume, business management, customer follow-up, sales and service training.
Named #1 Dealers' Choice Awards in 2012 by Auto Dealer Monthly, and a finalist of the 2013 DrivingSales Most Valuable Insight Award this April, Autobytel consistently ranks as a top quality Internet lead provider, with the company's internally-generated leads converting at approximately three times the rate of the estimated industry average.
For more information about the Autobytel Dealer Awards Program, or to learn more about the winners as they're announced, visit the "Dealer Corner" at dealer.autobytel.com. Visit www.autobytel.com to learn about the company's leading automotive information, products and services; watch exclusive new car videos, test drives and car reviews at Autobytel's YouTube page; or join the conversation on the Autobytel Facebook Fan Page.
About Autobytel Inc.
Autobytel Inc., an online leader offering consumer purchase requests, or leads, and marketing resources to car dealers and manufacturers and providing consumers with the information they need to purchase new and used cars, pioneered the automotive Internet when it launched its flagship website, www.autobytel.com, in 1995. Autobytel continues to offer innovative products and services to help consumers buy, and auto dealers and manufacturers sell, more used and new cars. Autobytel has helped tens of millions of automotive consumers research vehicles; connected thousands of dealers nationwide with motivated car buyers; and helped every major automaker market its brand online. Through its flagship website, network of automotive sites and respected online affiliates, Autobytel continues its dedication to innovating the industry's highest quality Internet programs to provide consumers with a comprehensive and positive automotive research and purchasing experience, and auto dealers, dealer groups and auto manufacturers with some of the industry's most productive and cost-effective customer referral and marketing programs.
Investors and other interested parties can receive Autobytel news releases and invitations to special events by accessing the online registration form at investor.autobytel.com/alerts.cfm.
I'm "that guy." You know, the one who thinks that 4-stars is an amazing review coming from me, the one who hasn't rated anything a 10 out of 10 since my wife's Mediterranean pasta, the guy who wonders why his kid only got an "A" and not an "A+" on a test. There are more of us out there than you think, but there's a benefit to what I call the "conscientious reviewer". You might only get 4 out of 5 stars from us, but we'll write a book and sing your praises.
That's the real key to reviews. It's the words. It's the sentiment. The stars are only important if you don't have them already.
I get discouraged when I see dealers sitting there squeezing every possible five-star review they can get. If you have 300 reviews and a 4.9 average score, you don't need more 5-star reviews. You need more quality reviews. On the surface, most dealers would say that they would want the bottom review more than the top one because it's 5-stars rather than 4. If you think about it from a customer's perspective, they will read and get more out of the top review than the bottom one. It wouldn't even be close.
Some dealers are pushing their sales team to get 5-star reviews. They are even offering spiffs to make it happen. In the example above, the person who acquired the 3-word 5-star review would get the bonus and the person who acquired the well-written, conscientious 4-star review would likely get rebuked for not prompting their customer appropriately. This is a mistake.
Reviews with less than 5 stars get read more than the others. People are waking up to the idea that these review sites are often gamed. They know. They've probably been asked at one time or another to leave a positive review for a business. They do not believe that any business can accumulate 300+ reviews and have them be almost 100% positive. That's not how the world works. As a result, when they visit a review site that's listed on the search under "ABC Motors Reviews" or whatever they type in, they're looking for the reviews that have less than 5-stars.
I'm not suggesting that you should be promoting the concept of getting 4-star reviews. I'm not saying that a 3-star review from a happy customer is better than a 4-star review. All I'm saying is that you should be encouraging your customers to write full reviews. You don't need more 5-star ratings with 3-word reviews. You need more reviews that actually tell the story about their experience. In the example above, the 4-star review will have more of an impact on a buyer's decision than the 5-star review below it. Keep that in mind as we continue the never-ending quest of review acquisition. Focus less on the stars than the sentiment.
Poor landing page layout aside, there was one big problem with the landing page. It’s about a Dodge Avenger. The ad that I clicked can be seen to the right. I wanted to look at deals for a Dodge Charger. That’s what I was promised. That’s not what I got.
