Brian, as usual, I think you just hit the preverbal nail on the head…how do we define success?
And I think this is a great place to start, if you don’t define success…how do you know you accomplished anything? Once defined, how do you then measure your success, and what “yard stick” is best to accurately chart your success. You don’t want to define in inches and track in centimeters…you won’t get the proper bearings for your path.
That said, there is so much emphasis on leads, visitors, LTV as the industry standards of measurement. Problem is, different on-line media generate much different results, thus just measuring an on-line campaign or presence by number of leads generated or uniques to the website, is using the wrong yard stick to measure success in many cases…take Social Media.
In watching the behavior of more than 1.5 million auto shoppers we are currently tracking, of those 1.5 million, we only saw a direct correlation to leads and vehicle searches in 11922 shoppers…that’s less than one percent. And of those 11922 direct shoppers, a total of 6 leads were generated. Facebook was the overwhelming leader among these 11922 with Ning being a distant second.
Now is this saying Social Media has yet to “prove itself” in on-line auto-sales? Certainly not, in this scenario, we are measuring Social Media with the wrong device, and we should not define success in Social Media in terms of direct leads and vehicles hits
These numbers are based on shoppers clicking directly to a dealer sites from a Social Media path and committing to a vehicle search. Social Media seems to be much higher in the sales funnel in the “create awareness” and “build value prop” stages. Thus, we should use Social Media for those purposes, and measure accordingly.
Example, use Social Media as the “Face” of the dealership on-line…your dealership’s personality, perks, softer side, community involvement, local sponsorships, club meetings, feedback manager, FAQ, Sales and events promotions, opinion gatherer, new vehicle promos, etc.
In other words, treat it as a huge, multi-media, multi-sided jumbo-tron of news, info, promo, demo, intro, whatever puts your dealership in the best, most respectable and informative, easy-to-do-business-with light possible.
You won’t get many direct leads or searches…but I can promise you this, by watching these shoppers behavior over the course of their entire shipping process, across multiple sites and monitoring when and where they send leads…the Social Media visitors you have now, will be shoppers, lead generators, and probably and more likely, walk-ins over the course of the next several weeks and months. But you would not have seen any direct correlation at the time to reach out to these folks as a Social Media “Up” per say.
The fact we must consider is that we are all human beings and as such, we tend to do business with those we know and respect.....and social media expands the circle of influence (Steven Covey) for a dealership...and thus the potential pool of auto shoppers.
