I cut the cord. DEATH to TV!

[Ed Brooks]

"Tomorrow’s advertising will be more about public relations than what we call marketing.  It will be based on your deeds.  It will be based on your image; your brand, and it will be shaped by your customers." Hit the nail on the head Alex!

Pulling 3 words out of this quote, we can get to the heart of the issue. We tend to use ADVERTISING and MARKETING interchangeably. We need to stop doing that and stop it today. Advertising and PUBLIC RELATIONS are both subsets of Marketing, today and in the past.

When Traditional Advertising was thriving, we had full control of our message. Customers today have much more power. The internet has given the average Joe much greater ability to "screw with" our message.

When you say "It will be based on your deeds" you couldn't be more correct. Customers today will talk about what we do, and pay much less attention to what we say. And they have a much louder voice than they ever had before. Public Relations and Social Media are inherently much better suited to two-way communication than Traditional Advertising.

It's all Marketing, but it's a profoundly different Marketing Landscape than 10 years ago.

 

[joe.pistell]

ahhh, I see... now I think I TOTALLY get it Alex.  Let me know if I got it:

Piss off a customer and they'll instantly hit FaceBook to vent among friends.  

The avg FB user has 130 friends.  Piss off 3 customers a week, that's 20,000 negative ads per year (not including pals replying).  And these negative ads are sticky (people remember them).

Ouch.
Year or 2 later, the Dealer can't explain why his business is soft, never knows what hit him and corrects the problem by spending $$$ to replace his lost traffic.   

hmmm... never thought about this silent killer.  damn scary stuff.

 

[Alex Snyder (blog)]

Yep - don't get Gaddafi'd  

But on the positive side, start thinking about how you can get your customers speaking to their friends positively about you now.  This is why I mentioned "klout" in the article.  Try to recognize who has the most clout and do something above and beyond the call of duty to make yourself remarkable (read Seth Godin's Purple Cow).

And I just found out, directly from Facebook, that the average user now has 170 friends.  They'll be updating their numbers soon.

 

[Dennis Galbraith]

Great post Alex.

If marketing "is based on your deeds," and I'm not disagreeing, then customer satisfaction with delivery and service had better be a big priority. Tom mentioned the ZMOT book. By definition, the Second Moment of Truth lasts for years in durable goods industries. We are not selling candy bars that are quickly consumed and identical to the previous one purchased. Shoppers modify their opinions of the products we sell them and the service we provide them over the course of ownership. 
I spoke earlier this week on a webinar about when to spend on traditional media and when not to. Branding is simply not as important as it once was, and it's harder to do right. Satisfaction during the ownership process is more important than ever, right up to and including the trade-in value. Dealerships can talk about social media as a cool and wonderful thing without earning deep relationships. That doesn't stop at the deal-closing handshake, it starts there.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

I typed this comment this morning but I'm just now getting around to post. So I apologize if it doesn't completely fit into the ongoing conversation here...

Funny you writing this. For a few reasons I'll get into.

Personally, I don't watch much tv. And when I do it's on the DVR. I just purchased an apple tv a few weeks ago. A purchase I now wish I had made long ago. Love it!

I also subscribe to Hulu. The source for most of my Cable content (with forced preroll commercials).

I switched my Netflix account over to stream only. Mostly for the kids; movies, cartoons and documentaries (and my fav - Ancient Alien series). But their library of latest releases is no where close to where it needs to be.

I still hold onto cable but not sure why. For the UFC fights? I hear Xbox just signed an agreement with them for streaming. I'm really not sure why I have it to be honest.

Alex, your article may have shed light back on a decision I've been thinking about for several months now.

I'm not the norm. Alex, your not the norm,  and many DealerRefresh readers are not the norm. But let's agree that the norm is currently the 80%. And TV still has its place.

However, this isn't the message Alex is trying to get across. The point is, marketing has fragmented so much and as it continues, it will be harder to push your message / brand.

Great story. True story. Sitting in a marketing meeting with my dealer groups owner last week. The conversations are usually lively and veer into discussions around marketing in general. We were on the topic of ZMOT (I've sent and encouraged all my GM's and management to read) which lead to a study that has shown consumers are spending less time on retail websites and establishments but over all conversion and sales are up.

Why is that?

Out of no where the owner (Brandon) starts agreeing and understands how that could be happening. He goes into sharing his shopping (decision making) processes for a rifle scope he's been looking to purchase. He mentions he had been on several blogs and forums and even joined one of the forums in order to ask the community about this particular scope.

He made a decision based on online social interaction. Social media. Online peer to peer conversation. Whatever you want to call it today.

The point is he was doing exactly what more and more people are doing when it comes time to make a decision.

I looked at Brandon and said "and you don't think people are following the same process to research and purchase their next vehicle?". It was an ahha moment for someone.

Another simple example. I just purchased my first iPhone the day it was released. Do I or don't I get the insurance. I didn't visit the websites or the local AT&T store to make a decision. Instead I posted my question on Facebook and received several great ideas and suggestions on what to go with (thanks Arnold).

I'm guilty of equating the term social media to facebook.  When the discussion at the dealership goes down the social media path, educate your GM and managers that social is much more than facebook. It's forums, blogs, photo share, location based apps and so much more.

Im not saying people are making their decisions differently now because asking others their opinion has always been around (word of mouth) but lets agree the ease of doing so and the volume of opinions received has dramatically changed.

 

[Michael Sos]

You make a great point. I think both you and Alex are correct and it comes down to demographics.

Go look at any keyword report for a dealership and you will see that a vast amount of traffic comes from the dealership name...which means that word of mouth, traditional media and that big neon sign out on the highway are creating awareness. The question is...who are these folks. I think these people are the 30 and over crowd that hasn't unplugged cable tv and are not skipping the commercials. These are the same people that are buying cars right now. 10 years from now the mix will be different and we will have more people who have unplugged. How will we make them  aware of a dealership's brand? dealerships better look good on google maps/places because your online rating may be the only opportunity to differentiate yourself.

BTW, The reason these guys(Travelocity,Orbitz,PriceLine,Kayak, AutoTrader.com) are pushing so hard on tv is because Google clipped their wings in SEO. You have to have a brick and mortar location to compete in most local search now-a-days...which forces these guys with budgets to buy adwords. This also clears the way for Google to be a player in any online marketing business...don't be surprised if we see an auto channel and travel coming from google soon.

-Michael Sos

 

[Michael Sos]

I disagree with your assessment that "google reviews are a joke". It is poorly implemented but only industry stooges like us know that. The average consumer sees these reviews every time the dealer shows up in a search. They have a huge impact right now.  Trip Advisor, Yelp, dealerrater, citysearch are slowly moving away from the impact zone of where NEW consumers will see them and google is influencing this. As of right now the only way that potential customer will see a DealerRater review is if dealerrater shows up in a local search for the dealers name. The reason they show up is because they have review content that the dealer helped create by handing out cards. Once dealer stops influencing customers to go there and the page gets stale and it will fade from the first page...thanks to the new algorithm.

 

[JQ]

Most importantly, Alex, you may have heard that I will soon be moving.  Can you help me set-up my new system??