Unlike automotive brands who are thriving in social media, dealers and service centers are not truly achieving any sort of verifiable ROI with their own social media efforts. Social media is a terrific tool for top of the funnel activity, which is why automotive brands do well with it, but for conversion, dealers still depend on their website.
When you look under the hood of dealers claiming success with Facebook, what they are really claiming is that it’s a cost effective way to drive website traffic, which it is, but, effectively they are only leveraging Facebook like any other ‘push’ marketing tactic.
Consumers Love ‘Pull’ – Tolerate ‘Push’
Consumers don’t want to hear or see your brand story (‘push’ marketing) – they want to experience your brand in an authentic, real-time, hands-on way. Experiencing a brand, alas ‘pull’ marketing, is when the consumer is choosing to engage with the brand. Push marketing has an effect, but like commercials on TV, we tolerate ads in social media in exchange for other benefits of using the network. The more relevant and entertaining the better.
Pull marketing is what consumers want. Consumers want to know everything they can about your brand leading up to the point of sale and throughout their entire relationship with you.
At the social and mobile levels this experience is through quality content delivered via multiple engaging channels on a multitude of ‘always on’ devices. The purpose of this content is to create engagement. Not engagement for engagement’s sake, but engagement for profitability, in a verifiable way.
The ‘push’ factor of social media advertising is one of several reasons dealers are struggling to see verifiable ROI. Social media ads are great for branding and top of mind awareness, but as customers move into the consideration and purchase intent phases (ZMOT), social media has little to offer.
As a result, the customer experience moves away from the social network and takes the tangible ROI along with it. All dealers are left with are metrics such as impressions, clicks, and website traffic that somebody has to sort through to verify some sort of return on investment. There must be a better way?
Free eCourse and eBook: Keys to Verifiable Social Media ROI
To assist with this, I’ve created a 7-day e-course with HELIOS designed to explore the obstacles and causes behind why dealers and agencies are not able to produce a verifiable ROI with social media, and what it will take to do so, namely, DMS and CRM integration with social media. The e-course is absolutely free and at the end of the course you will receive a free e-book that contains all the curriculum in the course plus more. The course and book were designed for dealers, automotive marketing firms, and ad agencies alike. Enjoy!
