Don't Judge a FaceBook by it's Cover

[joe.pistell]

Beware the anecdotal evidence covering FaceBook.

It is a phenomenon that is both gigantic and minuscule at the same time. Everyone sees It's gigantic side as it now claims to have 300 million accounts signed up. But, FB's audience will always be limited to your personal connections.

Your time to work selling cars is not infinite. You have to choose where to put your time. Which battle front will produce the most results? Here's a rough draft of how I see the battlefield.


||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| <------ALL Shoppers "In Market" to buy a car
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| <------Shoppers "In Market" that use the internet to find a car
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| <------Shoppers "In Market" that have been to 3rd party auto-shopper sites
|||||||||||||||| <------Shoppers "In Market" that have been to your store website
|||||||||| <------Shoppers "In Market" that have been to CL
| <------Shoppers "In Market" have ever discovered ANY product via FB
. <------Shoppers "In Market" that have twitter "dialed in" (hehe had to toss that in!)


IMO, the opportunities are everywhere. Dale Pollak's vAuto helps your mine the 3rd party used sites. Responselogic helps you win the email quote game.

What are you doing to "work" shoppers on your site??
Chat is a huge help. You're still closing only 1-5% of your visitors. The amazing part is that EVERY visitor to your site is in market. 95-98% of your visitors go elsewhere.

GO UP THE FOOD CHAIN!
I guarantee you there are 1000% more "in market" car shoppers are at your site this month than your FB fan page. Look at your traffic stats! I challenge you! Work on bumping that closing ratio one half of one percent!

Social Media is fun, but don't let it suck you up.. It's free, but it'll rob you of your time if you let it.

 

[DrewAment]

Joe,

Well said - very good point. I has a similar conversation with a dealer today. Quality vs. Quantity! Your highest in market (quality) shoppers on on YOUR website. No other reason they would be there. People don't wake-up and say "lets go to some dealership websites today".

Thanks Joe!

 

[tijerin]

Personally, I think you're mixing apples and oranges.

The point of Facebook and Social Media isn't to SELL cars through your Fan Page, it's to build relationships with your existing customers and allow THEM to bring their friends to you to buy cars and/or retain your current customers through consistent, positive engagement (c'mon, what percentage of salespeople actually follow-up after the sale) BUT, and most importantly, it's to funnel internet traffic TO your website thus creating more visitors and more opportunities.

Some experts believe that social media will become the Internet's next search engine.

A quote from Edelman Digital, the largest independent PR firm in the world:

" I believe business web sites will become less important over time. They will be primarily transactional and/or for utility. Brands will shift more of their dollars and resources to creating robust presence where people already are and figure out how to activate employees en masse in a way that builds relationships and drives traffic back to their sites to complete transactions."

Also, I disagree with your statement that "FBs audience will always be limited to your connections." That's just false. Google is now indexing Facebook Pages in real-time. Your FB audience is available to everyone.

You want to talk about the importance of SEO and SMM? The 3rd top referrer to your site (usedcarking.com) is facebook.com and I bet you don't spend much time optimizing your business's facebook presence.

Imagine how many more people you could be getting if you did.(Statistics provided by compete.com)

If I do a Google Search with the words "used car king joe pistell", your facebook page is the second result. If I search just "joe pistell", it's the 5th result.

If you're trying to SELL CARS through Facebook then I would agree that you are wasting your time and, in fact, actually hurting yourself. Facebook ENHANCES your visibility and gives you the opportunity to INTERACT with your customers.

Here's how I see the "battlefield":

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| <------ALL Shoppers "In Market" to buy a car
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| <------Shoppers "In Market" that use the internet to find a car
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||<------Shoppers "In Market" that use Google or some search engine to facilitate the search
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||<---influence SEO and SMM (Facebook) campaigns have on those search results
|||||||||||||||| <------Shoppers "In Market" that have been to your store website
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||<-----Shoppers "In Market" that would be on your store's website with an effective SEO/SMM campaign
|||||||||||<------Shoppers "In Market" that come to your dealership
|||||<-----Shoppers "In Market" that you sell on their first visit
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||<-----Shoppers "In Market" that did NOT buy a car that go do some research AFTER visiting your store
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||<--Shoppers "In Market" that trust what their friends tell them
.<------------Shoppers "In Market" that trust what the salesperson or dealership tell them
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||<--Shoppers "In Market" that communicate with friends on Facebook
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||<---chances that someone has an opinion about your store or brand on FB
<-----chances of you selling a car to "In Market" shoppers that get poor feedback about you on FB (or anywhere)
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||<--chances "In Market" shoppers buy from you with positive feedback on FB (or anywhere)
| <------Shoppers "In Market" have ever discovered ANY product via FB
. <------Shoppers "In Market" that have twitter "dialed in" (hehe had to toss that in!)

I actually agree with the second-to-last one. I doubt there's anyone "discovering" cars on Facebook and I left the last one 'cause I know why you said it.

P.S. Every visitor to your website is NOT "In-Market"

EDIT: I'm not saying let your salespeople run wild on Facebook but I do believe it's important for your business to have a Facebook presence. Make it one person's job to update Facebook and handle your SMM daily for 15-30 minutes and that's all you'd need. Of course, the point of ANYTHING you do online (or anywhere) is to sell more cars.

 

[joe.pistell]

Arnold,

I like it when I am challenged in the hope that my findings are WRONG, 'cuz when I am wrong, it opens a whole new profit arena for me to explore...

That being said your remarks are the classic Social Media zealot reply. Lots of "feel good fluff", no reality. I'm ready to talk cold hard facts, hope you can too.

Personally, I think you're mixing apples and oranges.

Woops... Stop right there.
Arnold, you're missing the whole point. TIME IS NOT INFINITE. We all have to choose our fights to produce the largest returns. This fact is at core of everything we do. I am not saying that FB has no value, I am saying that time and $$ spent working your own web traffic audience will produce more results.


Compare 2 dealers.

• Dealer #1 commits to FB, researches a FB app/vendor, gets the app bugs out, goes thru a period to find the right person that can produce the ideal "non-invasive" FB message, then time is spent "contributing" (aka working) the FB fans

• Dealer #2 lowers his focus onto her audience.
  • She puts up special "no purchase necessary" drawings.
  • She looks at aged units for bad camera work, typos, or incorrect listing info.
  • She tosses in special offers on select units and crafts the message so all know it's from the manager.
  • She's very proud of her personal commitment to service and creates a personal video on her service page, then places a link to that video on every single vehicle detail page.
  • She works her entire store to find the best walk around rep and to create walk around videos on her units.
  • She hires a pro to produce a silky smooth video "about us" (Kudos to Craig B & team of http://www.actontoyota.com/index.htm for one of the best vids I've seen yet!)
  • She puts coupons on units,
  • She puts "exit site" coupons
  • She adds a strong call to action on her tradein forms
  • She adds a "send me your suggestions" button n the footer, she finds a favorite charity and promotes it on her site.
  • She adds Chat
  • She creates a special private invitation "customer appreciation" banquet to all past customers, hires entertainment, then videos the crap out of it and puts it on the site (thnx to eric and auctiondirectusa.com)
  • She creates a "make me a commercial" contest (kudos to Eric's group again! YouTube - AuctionDirectUSA's Channel)
  • ...I have 100 more, but I am time challenged you know!

We all know this will produce ridiculously lopsided results for dealer #2. Next, take all that time and energy from dealer #2 and drop it onto FB, again, far lower ROI.

Don't bounce past this test Arnold.
Don't go anywhere else. Stop right here. Forget FB for 2 secs. How many Dealers "work" their web audience? I'll ask again, how many have a merchandising and marketing attack plan? <3% I'd bet (web vendors take note, there's work to be done and money in this!)


Howinthehell can any normal Dealer* fund a FB initiative when his home site is getting 4,000 visitors a month yet only selling 120 units a month?? That's a 3% closing rate. Bump that up slightly to 3.5% and you've got 240 more sales annually.

*everyone but Alex

 

[tijerin]

That being said your remarks are the classic Social Media zealot reply. Lots of "feel good fluff", no reality. I'm ready to talk cold hard facts, hope you can too.

I'm not a social media zealot. I just think that social media has more of an influence than people think and as it takes a larger share of all internet traffic, people who have not instituted a SMM campaign and presence will be racing to catch up. The cold hard facts are that:

facebook is your websites 3rd top referrer.

YOUR website drives THE SAME AMOUNT OF TRAFFIC (within 1%) to (what I have to believe is your competitor) another car dealership - billrapp.com - than Google does . YOUR website accounts for 25% of billrapp.com's TOTAL REFERRING TRAFFIC. Yet they drive NO traffic to your site. So why are people leaving YOUR website to go to your competitors but not leaving THEIR website to come to yours?

Bill Rapp has 2 Facebook Pages and a Twitter account.

If you search "Bill Rapp" on Google, there are 11 organic search results. 9 of those results are dealer specific results (ie. not another company, aggregator, etc). 2 of the 9 results are their Facebook pages and 1 of them is their Twitter page.

If I search "Used Car King" there are 10 results. Only 2 of them are dealer specific. The other 8 go somewhere OTHER than a URL you own.

Wouldn't you like to have more links show up on Page 1 of Google search results that link DIRECTLY to you (in some way)?? Do you think by having more links on Page 1 of Google search results that you would INCREASE the likelihood of people going to a website you own and/or facilitate? Isn't there value in that?

Woops... Stop right there.
Arnold, you're missing the whole point. TIME IS NOT INFINITE. We all have to choose our fights to produce the largest returns. This fact is at core of everything we do. I am not saying that FB has no value, I am saying that time spent working your own web traffic audience will produce more results.

What I meant by apples and oranges is that I understand what you're saying.. correct me if I'm wrong.. but your website traffic is more important to engage than your FB traffic. I agree.

My point is that Facebook will help you get MORE website traffic TO engage.

Don't bounce past this test Arnold.
How many Dealers "work" their web audience? I'll ask again, how many have a merchandising and marketing attack plan? <3% I'd bet (web vendors take note, there's work to be done and money in this!)

Howinthehell can any Dealer fund a FB initiative when his home site is... just hopin' to catch a lead?

Not many dealers "work" their website visitors at all. Most simply think having a website is enough. That's why chat and other creative ways to engage your website customers are so important.

Social Media Marketing is supposed to compliment your website and other marketing efforts, not replace it.

EDIT (while I was replying, you added to your post): Dealer #1's efforts could take 15-30 minutes per day. Dealer #2 needs a full-time employee to accomplish that. Why not combine the two "efforts" and have what you outline as a total solution?? All it takes to add dealer #1's efforts into dealer #2's is to get someone who would spend 15 minutes per day actually doing it.

You can't disagree that combining the two dealer examples into one strategy would increase the end result which is more traffic to your website.

 

[joe.pistell]

...Some experts believe that social media will become the Internet's next search engine.

A quote from Edelman Digital, the largest independent PR firm in the world:

Arnold,
Beware the famous quote, it's useless for forecasting.


“Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.â€
[Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949]


“There is no need for any individual to have a computer in their home.â€
[Ken Olson, President of Digital Equipment Corp, in 1977]


"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
Bill Gates, 1981


"Computers will bring an end to the use of paper"
Steve Jobs 1987

 

[tijerin]

Cold Hard Fact:

Google's web traffic increases by 8% per year.

Facebook's web traffic increases by almost 95% per year.

LINK

Where do you think the future lies?

 

[joe.pistell]

The cold hard facts are that:

facebook is your websites 3rd top referrer.

FaceBook is my 12th largest referrer (of 305). My total Referal audience is only 6% of my traffic.

In the last 30 days FB sent me 78 visits (and their traffic metrics suck!). Total visits for the last 30 days at 57,800.

Can you see why I spend so much time working "my audience"?



p.s. hahaha... Arnold, you did uncover that the crew at BillRapp.com are watching our every move! hahaha.. I am sure they'll see this post via Google Alerts too! Hi guys at BillRapp.com! I love it!

 

[tijerin]

haha.. Joe, you're a good guy. I don't care what everyone says about you. j/k

I agree with you, Joe. I'm just saying that a SMM campaign is not "worthless" or a "waste of time". I certainly don't think you should spend A LOT of time on it, but then, a lot of time isn't required to do it effectively.

 

[joe.pistell]

Cold Hard Fact:

Google's web traffic increases by 8% per year.

Facebook's web traffic increases by almost 95% per year.

LINK

Where do you think the future lies?

Dood,

You still haven't even budged me from my seat. We both agree that FB is gigantic, but I say it's minuscule at the same time. It's reach is limited by the connections you make within it PLUS FB is a branding tool.

IMO, The work required is better spent in other venues and if you press me to measure it's branding benefit, I'd prefer to work with a charity, then people will give a sh*t what you're saying.

Would you FB Fan a Realtor? (I have and it sucks)