February 2013 - Storytailer

Humans are competitive by nature. Throughout history, as a species, we’ve been competing in one way or another whether that’s with each other or nature. So it came as no surprise to us when one of our clients – Princeton Mini – approached us and said that they “had to” win a regional OEM contest being held in conjunction with a national sales event, and enlisted our assistance.

The “Not So Normal” sales event held by Mini was designed to advertise the exceptionally high gas mileage that Mini Coopers have. The contest itself was between the dealerships and they were given little guidance other than being creative and not so normal.

The dealership already had a huge head-start in the contest deciding on building a custom-made miniature golf course (Mini golf course, get it?). The employees themselves built this very creative and elaborate 9-hole course spending their own free time to do so. The contest was to culminate in a dealership event promoting the “Not So Normal” sale and was to be judged by the regional representatives from Mini via pictures and videos of the event.

After brainstorming with the General Manager, Robert Ogust, we came up with a “Caddyshack” theme to build up on the miniature golf course they had created. We scripted out the video based on scenes from the classic movie and incorporated the infamous gopher and make the event even less “normal”. The plot was that the gopher was going to infiltrate the dealership and they needed to get rid of it.

We attended the event and filmed the scenes needed with the employees playing the various roles and to photograph the event. The dealership really went all out for this event. It was very apparent that they had put a lot of time and effort into it. They had given each golf hole Mini-inspired name such as Mini Mulligan, Fore Wheel Drive and Cooper Chute. The employees were all wearing these, for lack of better words, not so normal golf costumes. They had music playing, catered food (including a chocolate fountain), a bounce house and even threw in some large, stuffed sumo wrestling outfits at the end. They were even successful in getting customers to participate in doing some “not so normal” things on camera!

The event was a great success with everyone attending – from employees to customers – having a great time and the dealership making sales. In the end, Princeton Mini ended up winning the contest. Instead of keeping the $3500, the staff at MINI decided to donate their winnings to the Red Cross to help the many people in NJ impacted by Hurricane Sandy. Princeton MINI’s generosity was matched by their parent company, Asbury Automotive Group, and MINI for a total donation to the Red Cross of $10,500.

It goes to show what a little imagination, commitment, elbow grease and fun can earn you. Sometimes it pays to be “not so normal”… and have a pet gopher.

…and if you’d like to see the fun video, you can check it out by clicking here!

Originally published in the January 2013 edition of the 3 Birds Marketing newsletter

You’ve ventured into the world of social media. You have a Facebook page, promoted it in your marketing and in your store, started posting great content and the people that started liking your page are engaging with you. You created a Twitter account, have been tweeting and re-tweeting content, built a following and are starting to get re-tweeted and mentioned. Life is great! You did it!

…whoa, hold your horses.

As the title of this article indicates, Facebook and Twitter, while a great beginning, are far from a conquest of social media. If we were playing Risk, you just conquered Australia. There are a lot of territories left and some are pretty big. Let’s take a world tour and hit on some more social media sites as you take your social media efforts to the next level.

There are literally hundreds of social media sites. Luckily, you don’t have to worry about most of them, but there are a few that you should definitely have a presence on for your dealership: Google+, Yelp, and Foursquare.

Google + is the 800-pound gorilla in this mix. It has a total of about 250 million users and, while it does not have the level of engagement or activity that Facebook and Twitter has, it is essential to have a presence here. Google has migrated from a general relevance model of delivering search results to an enhanced relevance model on an individual level by integrating a searcher’s social network. G+ has the best SEO of any sites as Google, naturally, favors its own products. Google hosts 11 billion monthly searches which are mostly people looking for relevant and timely content. It is a different platform so you need to differentiate your G+ strategy from your Twitter or Facebook marketing strategies. Google searchers are looking for timely news, offers, information, articles, etc. about not only your dealership but your brand and models. This is the site where your most visible business presence will be through Google searches so it’s important not to neglect this network.

Many businesses think of Yelp strictly as a review site. While it is an important part of your reputation management and review building strategies, there are also strong social media components which exist that could be used to fully leverage your Yelp presence. Yelp claims to have 71 million unique visitors. Yes, there are some dealers who have strong criticisms of how Yelp holds them hostage when a negative review appears. Did you know, however, that Yelp also has strong location-based components that you can leverage to make offers to people that are near your location? It can also inform them that you are there in the first place, if they didn’t already know. Make sure to explore all the capabilities of Yelp, have a complete and optimized profile and are paying attention to more than just the reviews.

Foursquare is a location-based service which is growing increasingly valuable. Foursquare has 20 million registered users which, according to the company, “check-in” over 3 million times per day and they are about to pass 750 million check-ins total. It is another free service that is also very low maintenance and can be leveraged to not only drive traffic to your store but steal traffic from your competitors. Users can leave “tips” which amount to mini reviews at your location. These are becoming increasingly important as Bing recently integrated these tips into their map search engine. You also have the ability to create “offers” that you can leverage to attract new customers. These offers appear on a user’s mobile device when they check-in at a location. The location doesn’t have to be yours, however. It only needs to be a business in the general vicinity. If your store is in an auto mall, a customer could potentially go onto Foursquare to check-in at your competition (let’s face it, every dealer is your competition when it comes to used cars). They will see a special icon that will indicate that you have an offer. Curiosity may lead them to look at it and, if it’s compelling enough, may persuade them to visit your store.

As you can see, there is more to social media than you probably ever imagined. No one expects you to master all the sites, nor should you. But you should be cognizant of which sites are available, which sites your demographic is using, and which sites are generating traffic NOW, not last month. Remember MySpace? AOL? Social networking sites come and go. The ones that are hot right now may not be in a year. Be where your consumers are engaging and know how they want to be engaged with, no matter where that is. Digital marketing, and social media marketing by extension, is an ever-dynamic field. If you pay attention, you’ll know where you need to be and what you should do when you get there. For now, these are a good start.

Article originally published in the October 2012 issue of the 3 Birds Marketing newsletter.

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