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Social Media - Keep In House Or Contract Outside???

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#41
The reason for the large amount of quality content would ideally to have it hosted on the dealer's site. 3 uses of content shared on social media: 1) actually bring customer from a social into a dealer's site 2) provide SEO value 3) reference material for engaging shoppers and customers
 
#42
ddavis said:
And after all of this expense and time, how many cars will this sell?
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I think the concept of "how many cars will this sell" is all well and good, but at the end of the day the more important question is how has this affected my brand. Social media isn't about forcing people to make a decision now, it's about the overall perception of your dealership and how your dealership is perceived within their social circle.

Building that perception is extremely key with millenials, which I think we all can agree is a market we can do better reaching out to. An active social media dealership isn't going to jump their car sales 10 cars a month off the bat, but if two equal dealers compete and one uses social media, it eventually will snowball to a considerable advantage.

If you are looking for a sell me a car today method, social media isn't always going to be the answer, but if you want consistent and constant reach with your customers and you are willing to provide great content and be patient, it will pay back.
 
#44
From a internet marketing professionals perspective I would say that first you need to look at your website analytics to see how many customers are coming to your site from Facebook/Twitter because "likes" doesn't have any bearing on whether they are visiting your site and "buying cars", or future sales - you can easily see your traffic from social media in your analytics. This will give you a good idea of how effective social media is for your dealership. The next thing to ask is if your team has been so successful at social media, why hire an agency? An agency doesn't know your business as well as you do so you will lose that "personable" feel. An agency is great as a partner to manage (and come up with social media promotions to gain fans) your social media effectively while still having your staff post those personalized updates. So for it to work it all can't be "farmed out", but I would continue to do what you're doing and hire an agency to make an ever larger impact by working on social media promotions and working on the overall content marketing strategy. Have you ever thought about content marketing? This is way more powerful than social media alone and would put dealerships above competitors.

One last thought, go with a company that is creative because the one thing that separates agencies (online marketing, social media) is creativity because we all have the same tools/techniques to work with, there are only a few of us that are very good at using those tools creatively to get more results than others.
 
#45
CARBIZ said:
We have been at this Facebook and Twitter thing for a few years now and I am contemplating paying an outside company to take over. We are nervous it may not be quite as personal though. We finally reached 500 fans but I see other competitors that have a few thousand. I think we have the customers base so it is just a matter of the best practice.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Specific Companies?
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Wanted to bump to see if Evan can give us an update with their Facebook page.

They have over 3400 likes and it looks like they capitolize their relationship with the Super Bowl Champion Ravens !

https://www.facebook.com/#!/carbiz?fref=ts
 
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#46
Dan & group,
After my initial post we decided to go with the company SocialDealer to handle our social media output. We emplyed them for a year and decided it wasn't for us. I'll explain, first on their content... This area I felt was not their weakest point. They provided decent content to post but after the first month it started getting repetitive and they were not focusing on getting creative with new content that I requested. We would still internally post relevant material on a regular basis to supplement their content. Second, their backend web tool was very glitchy and did not work as described on many occasions. Lastly, and probably the main questions you are wondering, how did it not work if we now have so many likes??? We had about 1500 before we started and we decided to take their advice and do Facebook ads with them. They told us they were going to target people that were in our local demo. We increased to 2500 likes in a matter of a few months but realized that they were mostly out-of-state people. Fail. That is when we decided to part ways.

On a side note, we have been fortunate enough to leverage our relationships with the Ravens players and that has been our strongest improvement to our social presence. I still have to ask myself periodically "are we selling more cars because of our concentration on football on our social pages?" Not sure, but i do like building our brand in Baltimore, whatever it takes.
 
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#48
With all the attention given to the "video" - http://www.dealerrefresh.com/facebook-advertising-big-lie/ - I just wanted to give another perspective. Facebook Advertising does and can work when done right. A national campaign - where we know that click fraud is rampet - is no gauge of what a LOCAL well run advertising campaign can do for a dealer.

I gave an example a while ago at http://forum.dealerrefresh.com/f43/social-media-keep-house-contract-outside-2543.html#post28123

Well here is another one:

We promoted this post (Jan 23 to Feb 9)

DrewAment33 Feb. 13 16.35.jpg

The targeting was:

* exactly between the ages of 35 and 60 inclusive
* Who like northern arizona university alumni relations, Northern Arizona University or Northern Arizona Lumberjacks
* Who are in the broad category Parents (All)

We basically wanted parents of college age kids (35+), who had some like/affiliation with NAU.

Results of the campaign were as follows:

Campaign reach of ~14,000 people, with a frequency of 3.6, with 822 post engagements. Bit.ly link says 482 clicks - https://bitly.com/1faaipd+

And, guess how much we spent? $500? $300? -- nope a big $116.77 - that works out to $0.24 (24 cents per click). And the positive PR? Priceless....

Did it sell cars? Maybe. Did it sell service? Yes. Did it make our name known and re-enforced in a positive way - ABSO-FRIGEN-LUTELY!
 
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#50
DrewAment said:
Just another example -[snip]- https://bitly.com/1j3CdaH+ Bit.ly stats show 219 clicks....for a whopping $142.17. You do the math.
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FYI, there are very very few people on this planet that make me stop and read what whats on their mind. Drew Amet is one of them.

If you're too busy to DIY, you need him on your team. His ocean of knowledge is amazing.
 
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