EasyAutoSales Blog

If your company is struggling to figure out how to measure ROI from jumping into social media, (or if you should invest in people and money to do it at all,) check out the following slides.

Everywhere you turn, online marketing experts in every industry are letting you know the importance of Twitter, Facebook and social marketing. Being savvy car dealers, many of you have signed-up on these platforms to see what all the hoopla is about. Unfortunately, this also leaves proof why 99.9% of you guys are doing it wrong.

While compiling our list of car dealers on Twitter, we’ve came across a number of NUMEROUS examples showing why dealers are failing miserably on Twitter. If your dealership is currently on Twitter, see how many of the following examples apply to your Twitter account.

5. You Act but You Don’t Interact

Social media is called that for a reason – in order for it to work, your brand must be social.  Being socially acceptable on Twitter means engaging in conversations.  Furthermore by conversations, I mean BOTH speaking and listening. While the above may seem like common sense, the amount of accounts we found violating this basic rule pretty much made our heads explode.

Your plans for world domination in the social media world will not work if you are a wallflower. On the flip side, it will also not work if all you do is scream.

4. You Falsely Believe You Have Fans

You sign your dealership up for Twitter and before you know it you have a hundred or so followers. Heck, you have no idea where they are coming from but you are happy to get them.  Despite your lack of activity on there, this social networking thing must work because you have a small fan base by simply being on there right? WRONG.

Here’s the secret – your dealership is attracting followers because your Twitter name is popping up when people and bots are searching for car manufacturer names.  These automated scripts are looking for people with interest in cars to respond to their follow with a follow back so they can spam and shout their own agendas.  I’m sorry to say you don’t have any real fans.

3. You Hide Behind a Curtain

One of the fundamental elements of being social is human interaction yet many dealers do not reveal who the real people behind their websites or Twitter accounts are.

If the peoples’ desire is to interact with other humans, why do so many of you have Twitter accounts that hide the people behind the brand?  Am I supposed to believe I’m speaking to your building, your website, a logo or worse yet, your manufacturer’s mascot?

2. You Are Serving Old SPAM to an Empty Room

Ford, Honda, etc. have done a great job of putting real people behind their social initiatives and spending millions of dollars to promote their brands.  As a potential car buyer, many of us already know the various make and models that are available for purchase but what many of us don’t know is where to look locally to acquire the vehicle.

Many dealers have resorted to shouting out weekend specials (to nobody) and become echo chambers of their manufacturer’s tweets. Why is that? Just because you tweet about an award Scion or Ford wins, does it mean we’ll be rushing into your particular dealership to make that purchase? The answer is no.  If you’re not personalizing your tweets and speaking as an individual to other individuals, you are just adding noise to the room.

1. You Gave Up Before Understanding It

Most of the dealership accounts on Twitter suffer from lack of sincere interactions. However, it’s a lesson that most of you will never learn because you never gave Twitter a chance.  Most of the accounts we have seen have been started and neglected – some even as short as 2 DAYS!  Unless you are giving cars away for free, I don’t think there is a campaign out there that can help you move metal with a 2 day running time.

If what you have been doing on Twitter hasn’t worked, why not try something different instead of abandoning it? Do you even care that your potential customers are finding your failed attempts online?

What grade would you give your dealership’s current Twitter account?

If you guys want some help, let us know in the comments below. With enough demand we will do a follow up on how your dealership can actually use Twitter to bring people in the door and make money with it.

Social media is the next big thing on the internet but many dealers are dropping the ball on taking advantage of it. Social media is not just about brands such as Facebook, Twitter or Youtube but rather how these platforms are changing the way customers are communicating with businesses and each other. If you are still not convinced investing in social media is the right thing to do, check out the following video.

Is your dealership already taking advantage of social media? What are some of the things you are doing to connect with customers?

It seems like everywhere you turn, people are talking about Twitter. It’s no wonder with all the press, Twitter usage has jumped from 14 million users into 24+ million users in just a few months.

With all the buzz, it’s no surprise that a couple of classified services have also popped up on Twitter during this time. (e.g. ilist and tweba to name a couple) While Twitter is mostly used for conversations, many users on Twitter have also been selling items and asking friends to help them find good deals.

Because word-of-mouth sales and referrals is key on this particular platform, we have designed and completed our integration with Twitter so that it would be effective without being spammy. The 1-click submit is setup to work with a number of marketplaces currently on Twitter via #hashtags and our own tests have shown very positive responses from occasional postings.

As a seller, you can now test this feature in your EasyAutoSales and Twitter accounts.  Simply log in to your admin console and click on the Twitter icon next to the vehicle and submit your posting via Twitter’s web interface.

Once submitted, the classified services on Twitter will contact you within a couple of minutes with potential buyers that have expressed interest in similar vehicles in the past.

As more and more users turn to Twitter for these services, these small but quick interactions should help increase your dealership’s online presence and create more foot traffic in your stores.  Log in and check it out!  We would love to get your feedback on the new feature.

As many of you have noticed, EasyAutoSales launched our new website last week!!! This new look was months in the making and took hundreds of hours to complete. I wanted to thank everyone that were involved in the upgrade and praise those who worked the late night shifts and helped finished this 8 month project in a mere 3 and a half months.

If there’s one thing that I know we do well, it’s that we can listen and adapt quickly to the ever changing web. Is there something you’d change about our website? If so, let us know in the comments!

So what has the new look brought us? Has anything changed since the upgrade? Below are some highlights and stats from this past week.

- User engagement has already gone up 25%! Our community forums are being used and buyers are asking questions.

- User attention has also gone up! Shoppers are staying on the site longer, browsing more pages (+14%) and leads using our new form has also gone up. (+33%)

- Dealers who have upgraded their packages are seeing an increase in their traffic and leads. We have included priority placement in this new release to showcase dealers and private sellers that are paying to use or to advertise on our service. As our network of sites expand, the priority placement will be continued on to the new partner sites.

So what else is in store for us? We plan on doing a number of minor upgrade over the next few weeks and months to make sure our dealer services are comprehensive. If you have any suggestions on how we can help you sell more cars, please let us know at our suggestions board.