Storytailer

STORYTAILER LLC
CHAPEL HILL

How Do You Sell Your Bottled Water?

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It’s easy to sell your bottled water if you have the only
bottled water stand in the middle of the desert.

What do you do when there is a bottled water stand every
mile? What about every 100 yards? Now, what if every bottled water stand in the
world were 2 feet in front of you, all in the same place?

Well, the strategy a lot of people take is one of price
competition.

“Buy from me because my bottled water costs less than that
guy’s!”

Another strategy is one using the quality argument.

“Buy from me because my bottled water is better than
everyone else’s!”

You could also use the branding method.

“Buy from me because you can trust that my company stands
behind its bottled water!”

Now take off the sales hat, and put on the consumer hat.

Who do you buy the bottled water from? Why did you make that
choice? What factors contributed to that choice?

Most of the time, we are told how consumers would choose our
bottled water over the “other guy’s”. Someone, somewhere, sat down with a lot
of analytics, focus groups, case studies, market research and a lot of other
people and decided that this way was the best (or at least most successful) way
to sell our bottled water.

They handed you a script and said, “Do this.”

If it doesn’t work, it’s easy to blame “those people”.

You did what “those people” said and it didn’t work.

Do you have a strategy? Do you have something that “works”?
Could your “something” work better than what “those people” handed to you?

Don’t be afraid to be different. The people that are the
most successful in this world did things differently. They tried new ideas.
They probably failed more then they succeeded. That’s how they became
successful.

In my automotive sales career, I did things differently. My sales managers hated that I did what I wanted. At the end of the day, however, it worked. I don’t know whether they were bothered more by the fact that I wasn’t doing what they told me to or by the fact that what I was doing was actually working.

How do you sell your water?

You better figure that out because every bottled water stand
in the world is, right now, 2 feet in front of the consumer’s face… and they’re
all only a mouse click away.

How To Add Inventory or Web Sites To Your Facebook Fan Page for Free

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So, you  have a Facebook Fan Page.

How do I “showcase” my cars to my customers without spamming their news feed?

Why not add your inventory to your fan page in a tab? (BTW, the methods I’m about to teach can be used to add ANY web page right within Facebook so, add your inventory.. add your credit application, etc)

The following instructions assume you already have a Facebook page. If you don’t, you can find directions here.

Step 1: In the search box, search for an application called “Static FBML”

Step 2: Go to their page. In the top left corner (under the logo), click on “Add to my Page”. A pop up box will ask you which page you want to add it to. Select that page.

Step 3: Go back to your news feed. Within the left menu will be an application called “Ads and Pages”. If not, click on “Applications” and search for it.

Step 4: That will take you to a page titled “Pages You Admin”. Find the page you added Static FBML to and click on “edit page”

Step 5: Scroll down the page until you see the Static FBML app under Applications. Click on “Edit”

Step 6: A pop up box will open. In the “Box Title” field, enter the text that you want the tab on your Facebook page’s wall to read.

Step 7: Cut and paste the below code into the lower box eliminating the BEGIN CODE and END CODE parts. Now edit it accordingly (Ive added an image illustrating the parts you need to edit)

BEGIN CODE
<script type=”text/javascript” charset=”utf-8″>
function disp1(var1) {
if (var1==’link_1′)
outside_location.setInnerFBML(link_1);
else if (var1==’link_2′)
outside_location.setInnerFBML(link_2);
}
</script>
<form>
<select id=”gowhere” onchange=”disp1(document.getElementById(‘gowhere’).getValue())”>
<option>-Select below-
<option value=”link_1″>View Our Inventory
<option value=”link_2″>Visit Our Website
</select>
</form>
<div id=”outside_location”></div>
<fb:js-string var=”link_1″><fb:iframe width=”760″ height=”1280″ frameborder=’0′ src=’http://backwebs.homenetinc.com/SalesDemo-ATijerina/browse/view_detailed/type_both/’ /></fb:js-string>
<fb:js-string var=”link_2″><fb:iframe width=”760″ height=”1280″ frameborder=’0′ src=’http://www.homenetsalesdemo5.com/site/’ /></fb:js-string>
<script type=”text/javascript” charset=”utf-8″>
var outside_location = document.getElementById(‘outside_location’);
</script>
END CODE

Note: The highlighted areas are the areas you will need to edit. Don’t edit anything else.

Step 8: In the first area (starting with <option value=”link_1″>) The text should be what you want the FIRST choice in your drop down box to say. Change that to describe where they would be going. In this example, the text reads – View Our Inventory

Step 9: Repeat Step 8 for the second link.

Step 10: The third highlighted area above is the URL you want to take them to. Notice each line of code corresponds with the number of the link you established in Steps 8 and 9. So, in this example, the first URL corresponds to the first link you created in Step 8.

Step 11: The fourth highlighted area is the second URL.

Step 12: Click “Save Changes”

Step 13: Back to the “Edit Page” page you were on in Step 4. Scroll down again and find the Static FBML application. Click on “Application Settings”. Make sure it reads “Box: Available” and “Tab: Added” under the little “profile” tab in the little pop up box.

Now you’re finished!

[Note: The Page Administrator cannot see the results after selecting from the drop-down (for some odd reason) but if you log-out, you can see it. Everyone but the Page Administrator(s) can see it, however.)

You can do this to infinity and beyond, by following the instructions in the addendum below (although I wouldn’t put a link to every page in your website).

This code creates a tab. Within that tab is a drop down box. Within that drop down box are your link titles. When someone selects a link, the page opens up WITHIN Facebook, right on that page.

Here’s an example of what the finished product looks like. LINK (Click on the “My Inventory” tab)

Of course, there are alternative ways to get your inventory onto your Facebook page. Gumiyo has a new application titled “MyShowroom”. If you do a search in Facebook, you can find it within the applications search results.

(You can see it on my example page linked above by clicking on the “MyShowroom” tab)

To use Gumiyo’s “MyShowroom” app, you need a way to feed your inventory to Gumiyo either through the company that handles your inventory feeds (I know a great company if you’re in need!), or directly with Gumiyo through a product that you have.

This is for the budget-minded and costs absolutely nothing! (assuming you have web pages to link to but chances are, if you’re a car dealership (or any other business), you at least have that.)

Now what?

You don’t want to get too intrusive with your Facebook Fan Page. Remember, the whole point of Social Media Marketing is to engage your customers, not irritate them.  If you irritate them, they will either “un-fan” you or “hide” you in their news feed. Either one of these actions will make you invisible to your fans. This, of course, is contradictory to what you’re trying to accomplish.

The second thing you have to keep in mind is that the number of fans you have is absolutely irrelevant. You’d rather have 100 fans that are actually your customers (or potential customers) then have 1000 fans who will never buy anything from you. Personally, I’d start by recruiting the people who already do business with your dealership, your service customers. Create a half-page flyer and stick it in every service customer’s vehicle prior to giving them their car back asking them to “fan” you on Facebook.

(Caveat: To get a customized URL for your Facebook Fan Page, you will need 25 fans. Get your employees to fan your page so you can get an easy URL for your customers.)

Keep your page interactive and throw a bone to your fans every once in awhile (ie. service coupon, etc.). Announce your sales. Keep relevant news about your dealership posted. If your dealership is participating in the community (ie sponsoring a little league baseball team, organizing a recycling campaign, etc.) Post information about your vehicles or new models. You have a never-ending supply of free content to add by just utilizing content from your OEM site. Take pictures of your sold customers with their new cars and post them within your photo album. Take photos of your staff. Be creative.

You want to humanize your dealership, NOT make a sales pitch.

Be helpful. Answer any questions you get. Respond to any complaints. Be pro-active. Do these things and, I promise, sales will come. This will only take you about 15-20 minutes a day (if that). Seeing as Facebook pages are now indexed by Google, this has some SEO value as well.

This is a cheap and easy way to interact with the people that truly matter….. your customers.

Hope this helped!

Addendum:

You can add more links to more pages simply by adding lines of code. To add a third line, you would copy and paste this line:

<option value=”link_2″>Visit Our Website

and change it to this:

<option value=”link_3″>The name of your new link

Make sure to paste it right after the first line you copied. In other words, keep them in order.

Then copy this line:

<fb:js-string var=”link_1″><fb:iframe width=”760″ height=”1280″ frameborder=’0′ src=’http://backwebs.homenetinc.com/SalesDemo-ATijerina/browse/view_detailed/type_both/’ /></fb:js-string>

and 1) change the “link_1” part to the new number (ie. “link_3), then 2) change the URL to the new web page corresponding with the title you gave link 3. IMPORTANT: make sure you keep the URL surrounded by the single parenthesis.. ‘desiredurl.com’

Keep repeating this process until you have all the links you want. They will all open within Facebook. (although only one at a time can be viewed.)



It Takes All Of the Pieces To Finish the Puzzle

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Recently, I got the opportunity to spend an entire day at a dealership analyzing their processes and marketing efforts.

There are many pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that any dealership has to put together to end up with a “finished”puzzle that is an online marketing strategy. The particular vendor I work for offers a lot of services (puzzle pieces). It’s difficult to effectively outline all the pieces of the puzzle we have to offer in brief, to a dealer, on the phone. So, it was a nice treat to really let my creative juices flow and assist a dealer with their desire for success, in person and with their full attention, after being able to analyze what they’re currently doing.

Some of the services we offer require a little work on the dealers’ end. More often then not, when I present a “plan” and parts of it require work, people tend to start losing interest. You have concerns from the owner who doesn’t have confidence in his people to actually DO the work. You have management who passes the buck and says “We’ll get Bob to do it!” and then you have Bob who, typically, doesn’t really want to do it. He wants to stand outside, smoke cigarettes and wait for the next customer.

It was very refreshing to be able to analyze a dealership’s online marketing, to look at the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle I can provide and,from that, develop an aggressive online marketing strategy. Then have the opportunity to explain the entire strategy and how all of the “pieces” fit together and why this particular puzzle will work for them… in person and with everyone’s full attention.

Watching a room filled with the owner, all the managers and key salespeople follow along with each “piece” and really “get it” is priceless. They saw the puzzle I had created, saw the value and need for each piece of that puzzle and understood that putting the puzzle together takes work but, in the end, you have art.

I swear I saw light bulbs coming on over everyone’s heads. People were excited, engaged and motivated. There was complete buy-in from everyone.

Too often, the owner (or the decision-maker at the dealership) likes the ideas and strategies but decides to only implement some of them, rather than all of them. On this day, he, and his team, decided to start putting the puzzle together… with all of the pieces.

The confidence and trust given to me by everyone and the knowledge that I truly helped this dealership to grow as a company was priceless.

On this day, art was created and I rocked. (link)

The Death of the Internet Sales Department

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Internet Sales Departments will become extinct.

        Yes, I said it. That’s my
prediction.

        The reasoning
behind that prediction is an extrapolation of industry trends and
consumer shopping habits. We’ve all seen the trends.

        A) As time passes, more and
more consumers will start (and maybe even complete) their vehicle
purchases online. The natural result of that increase in behavior is
that a higher and higher percentage of any dealership’s sales will be
generated through their internet departments.

        B) Right now, “good”
internet departments account for anywhere from 30-40% of a dealerships
business. “Great” internet departments can easily generate half (or
more) of the sales within a retail sales department.

        If the current level of
consumer internet shopping generates 30-50% of dealerships sales, the
logical conclusion is that as (A) increases, so will (B).

So,
how do these factors support my prediction?

We all know that
people in retail automotive positions work hard. Crazy hard. They work
long hours and, generally, make good money. Of course, there are
exceptions to this rule but chances are that at some point in their
career – they worked a lot. Why do they work a lot? In general,
customers are not loyal to a salesperson. You can give them every
different way possible to contact you and do your best to reinforce that
you will be there whenever they are ready to buy and build great
rapport with them and they will still come in and buy a car from someone
else.

How many of you have experienced this? You come back from
your day(s) off just to find that your customer bought a vehicle. Isn’t
that frustrating? What does that make you do? Work harder.

Now,
every dealership has “normal” salespeople. What I mean by that is that
they work the “floor” and do not handle any internet leads. Typically,
the “retail” sales departments have antagonistic relationships with the
“internet” sales departments. They are run separately and, in most
dealerships, there is a clear divide between the two departments. Not in
all cases, mind you, just in general. They’re fighting over customers.
They’re fighting over deals. The sales managers tend to protect the
“floor”. The internet department is viewed as giving cars away and on,
and on. Animosity exists between the two groups.

So, now we have
two groups of people. Both groups are in sales. Both groups work hard.
Both groups make decent money.

As this increase in consumer
buying habits continues to shift towards the internet and the percentage
of sales within a dealership shift to the internet departments, this,
by necessity, decreases the sales within the “retail” sales department.
Dealerships are continually expanding their internet departments to
accommodate this shift. They have been shifting their advertising
dollars to capture these shoppers. Traditional advertising is declining.
We all preach this. We all tell dealers this is the future. Some
listen. Some don’t.

So, now we still have two groups of people.
Both groups are in sales. Both groups work hard. Both groups make decent
money. The dealership is shifting its advertising money to internet
sources. This, in turn, drives more traffic to their internet
departments creating the need for expansion, which, in turn, prompts the
dealership to spend more money to generate more traffic to its internet
departments.

Where does this leave the “retail” group?

As
this shift continues, and a higher and higher percentage of the total
sales volume is funneling through internet departments, the logical
conclusion is that less sales are being generated by the “retail” sales
departments. So now, the members of this second group, who are still in
sales and work hard, don’t make as “decent” of money. The reward for
that hard work diminishes.  This will contribute to a
higher turnover of “retail” or floor salespeople.

However, there
is an absolute need for retail salespeople. Customers still like to
shop in person. They still like to touch and feel the cars. They still
need to test drive vehicles. They still need to actually go into the
dealerships to do this regardless of how they originally started their
car shopping.

So, now we have a dilemma. How do we accommodate
the consumer when our second group whose sole purpose is to accommodate
these consumers, is diminishing because they are working hard and being
rewarded less.

The end result, out of necessity, will be a
merging of the two groups. You need people who can handle the internet
customer and you need people who are physically at your dealership ready
to meet and greet, find needs and wants, land them on a vehicle and
take them for a test drive. The dealership of the future will not have
“internet” sales departments, they will just have sales departments.
Every sales person will be responsible for not only handling floor
traffic, but also handling internet customers. This means, of course,
that every salesperson will have to be trained and have the skill set to
do this.

This merging creates one group of people. All of them
are in sales. All of them work hard. All of them make decent money.
Consumers continue to shift towards the internet but 100% of the sales
are In your “retail” sales departments. Just as in the past, everyone
has an equal opportunity to make a sale. Your eagles will still soar and
your dead weight will still sink but your dealership will be whole. No
longer will there be two groups of people. No longer will your sales
managers resent your internet departments. No longer will your
salespeople fight over customers (or deals).

Most retail sales
departments spend more time with each other than they do their families.
Their co-workers become their extended families. Is yours
dysfunctional?

With a single change of mentality and some
training, your dealership can become whole.

It’s going to happen.
It’s already happening.

Is your dealership ready?

Socialnomics and Guerrilla Marketing (inspired by Sean Bradley of Dealer Synergy)

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There’s a book that’s been out for awhile called Socialnomics:How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business by Eric Qualman that is fantastic.

If you’re still on the fence about what social media is doing to our society and how you can capitalize on it, you need to read this book. Since this book came out, I’ve seen the videos I’m going to embed here pop up in presentations at conferences and conventions. Yes, they’re that good and they’re eye-opening.

Amazing, isn’t it? 1.5 million people have watched this video (the longer version).

Here’s the follow-up to the first video you just watched. Not as many people have seen it but it goes into the ROI of Social Media Marketing.

I just had to share those two videos. They’re very powerful statements and really illustrate the value of social media and how it will transform our lives.

Now that Google has incorporated real-time search results of Facebook Fan Pages (link), the question you have to ask yourself is do you want your business to show up when consumers search for your product, or do you want someone else’s to?

An interesting article popped up in the Automotive News this week detailing a campaign that is being run by Scott Robinson Honda in Torrance, CA. Sean Bradley, CEO of Dealer Synergy, Inc., helped design this campaign. In a nutshell, Scott Robinson was targeting people shopping for Toyota Corollas (right in Toyota headquarter’s backyard). When people searched for the term “Toyota Corolla” at the top of the first page of search results there was a little video of a guy telling these searchers that maybe they should consider a Honda Civic (from Scott Robinson Honda, of course).

Imagine the possibilities of a dealer using a similar technique on their Facebook fan pages. Heck, they don’t even have to do it on their REAL fan page. They can have a fake Facebook fan page solely designed to be used for this purpose. Stick rich, relevant keywords in the status updates that can be indexed by Google or Twitter.

What would happen if you filled a Twitter feed and/or Facebook page with tweets or status updates like this….?

(Imagine YOU are a Honda dealer)

“Looking for a Toyota Corolla? Why not consider a Honda Civic? (insert TinyURL here)”

“Thinking about buying a car from (insert competitor name here)? We won’t be beat! Come to XXX Honda! (insert TinyURL here)

You get the idea.

Guerrilla marketing at its best.

Opportunities Aren’t On The Be-Back Bus

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Opportunity is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “a favorable juncture of circumstances”. The second definition of the word is “a good chance for advancement or progress.”

A study I heard of awhile back said that 80% of people who went to a dealership left their house with the intention of buying a vehicle that day.

The customer walking onto your lot, sending you an e-mail or calling you on the phone is a combination of many things: the advertising your dealership does, a vehicle you have in your inventory, or the desire (or need) of the customer for a new vehicle. In other words, the stars and planets have aligned and all the right things happened that led to that particular customer calling your dealership at that exact time. For the customer, that moment in time was the perfect time. That’s why they called (or emailed or came to your dealership) when they did.

At that moment of interaction, you have a favorable set of circumstances leading to a good chance for advancement or progress.

Make sure you have the skills necessary to take advantage of that opportunity. You are in control of your own knowledge. If the dealership doesn’t have a training program in place or material for you to use, get them yourself. Stop making excuses.

Once, while working as a closer, my team and I were standing on the point awaiting the elusive “up”. The next thing we knew, a big yellow school bus pulled up on the street and parked. The driver came out and proceeded to look at some cars. Of course we all got a laugh out of that saying that the be-back bus had finally came back. She told my salesperson that she (and her husband) were looking for a vehicle and she saw a vehicle we had that caught her eye. Needless to say, the woman said she needed to bring her husband back.

The be-back bus became a be-back.

Make the most of each opportunity. You might not get it again. Carpe Diem.

Thoughts on Google’s Securing of Patent for Location-Based Advertising

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Today, an interesting development came to light. Mashable is reporting that Google has secured a broad patent for location-based advertising. (See Article Here)

One thing I noticed within the abstract for the patent kind of peaked my interest and I started thinking of how this could be leveraged in the car business.

Here’s the specific line that caught my eye.

“The content of an ad creative, and/or of a landing page may be selected and/or modified using location information.”

We all know that there are vendors in the automotive industry selling mobile marketing. As mobile phones get more sophisticated and more consumers start using them to browse the web, mobile websites and SMS marketing will become more important.

Imagine the possibilities of being able to designate which ad, or landing page a person sees based on where they actually are!

Would you give a bigger discount to the person shopping you from 60 miles away than to the person shopping you from 2 miles away? Do you think the 60-mile-away-person needs a bigger inventive to drive to you and buy from you? I certainly do.

Say you sell Hondas. Would you serve up a different ad to the person at a Toyota dealership then you would to the person standing on your competitor’s lot?

Now, imagine automating this effort.

The possibilities are mind-boggling.

(…and it sure could throw a few kinks into some iPhone apps seeing as Google now holds the patent.)

Leveraging Social Media in Marketing (or why Ralph Paglia is everywhere)!

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(Bear with me, I’ll get to the subtitle)

Recently, I’ve been researching ways in which a company can leverage social media in their marketing campaigns and why they should. The “front-runners” in our business understand how powerful social media is and how it’s going to change how we market ourselves. I’m a firm advocate in this power and recent events should reinforce this to people (as an old teacher used to say) with their eyes open and their listening ears on. Both Google and Bing have incorporated real-time search results of Twitter and Facebook into their search results. This, in and of itself, should show you the VALUE that these search results are to people. Neither search engine wants to be left-out as Facebook and Twitter increase the size (and attention span) of its user base.

A study by Forrester Research illustrates the fact that companies WILL embrace this marketing strategy. In my opinion, they will be forced to. They show that in 2009, companies spent $716 million dollars on social media marketing. They predict that by 2014, companies will spend $3.1 BILLION dollars on social media marketing. That’s a 400% increase in 5 years!

So, if you believe this prediction, you will see that inevitably, you will be spending more money on social media.

There are plenty of naysayers that aren’t “on-board” with the social media revolution despite all the signs. That’s OK. They will be forced to come around or be left on the side of the road.

It’s hard to believe that anyone can deny that social media marketing is the future. I’m going to call it SMM. (I don’t know if this is a unique acronym or not, but if so, I call dibs!) We’ve all been preaching it. In fact, it seemed most of NADA 2010 was emphasizing social media (from speakers to vendors) and its power so I know I’m not alone in my thoughts.

There have been, however, differences in opinion on HOW to be effective in SMM. There are the people who believe that you should use your SMM to leverage your SEO by throwing as much out there as possible and then there are the more crafty marketers that seek engagement from their target audience. (Can you tell in which camp I am in?)

I’ll briefly address the first group. If you use SMM solely to increase your SEO, you will do one thing. Annoy your customers. MOST dealerships understand that e-mailing your customers everyday turns your e-mail into spam – whether its by their e-mail client or by themselves designating your e-mails as such) and have cut back on the frequency of their e-mail marketing. With this new marketing delivery method, you can also become “spam”. Go ahead and post 20 times per day to your Facebook page’s wall and watch your “fans” diminish. Even if they DON’T (which they will), all it takes is two clicks of a button to “Hide” your posts from THEIR news feed. If everyone of your fans (and your employees who you asked to “fan” you don’t count) “hides” you, your SMM efforts become worthless. I’m not going to dwell too long on this but the key is that you want to keep your messages infrequent, relevant and engaging. If you don’t, you become spam. What kinds of things do YOU like to see on your Facebook wall?

The second group of people are the ones that will leverage SMM effectively. These are the people that recognize the truths within the last paragraph. These are the people that understand and do not want to become spam. Exactly how do you do this?

Well, there are plenty of ways and I could go on for a long time but, today, I will share only one of them.

Let me ask you a question. If your friend tells you that a restaurant sucks, are you more or less likely to go to that restaurant? What about a movie?

You trust your friends, right? They know you. You know them. We’ve all heard the old expression that more people will share about negative experiences then positive ones, thus the creation of reputation management. You want to make sure that what’s being said about you online is what you want being said. Do you know what people are saying about you on the internet? That’s a huge topic so I’m not going to expand on it but let’s cut to the chase and assume that you want more positive things being said then negative. You can TRY to control the negative by offering great customer service but it won’t always work. There are always people who you can’t please and, apparently, websites who “alledgedly” extort businesses in exchange for the removal of bad reviews.

So, how do you accomplish the goal of getting more positive reviews then negative?

We all know the power of “testimonials”. Most dealerships have a place on their showroom wall for letters from happy customers. Some have these on their websites. Some take video and post them to sites like YouTube. Some salespeople do this for themselves. These are all great things. Imagine being able to increase the amount of these testimonials exponentially.

How do I do that?

Why not incentivize your customers for engaging in this behavior? Let them become the raving fans and evangelists of your business. Put a monetary value on their participation and then let them do the work for you. Make them tag you on Twitter. Retweet your tweets. Fan you on Facebook. Share your posts on Facebook with their friends. Give them “points” (or something like that) in which they can earn for participating in this activity. Let them become your marketing department (or an extension of it). However, don’t become spam. Make sure the content that you are asking them to share is meaningful and something they would “want” to share. Free oil changes to the first 10 people that reply? Free car wash with a printed Facebook post? etc. Customers dig freebies and coupons. Make sure you are posting relevant content within your SMM.

OK, now I’ll stop my “preaching” for now and get to the subtitle all you industry folks (or at least the ones who know who Ralph Paglia is) have been waiting for.

In my research, I came across a cigar company who has, as their home page, a Google Earth map overlaid by a real-time Twitter feed that shows all tweets with the word “cigar” in them to their visitors. The company is named EP Carillo and they obviously decided that SMM is worthwhile. Check out their website here. Anyways, I thought that was pretty cool and started thinking about possible applications of this in an SMM campaign. Specifically, I was wondering if you could narrow that map down to say a city, or county. Then, a Ford dealer (as an example) could have a “localized” Google Earth map showing real-time tweets containing the keyword “Ford”. It just interested me so I started researching further.

I found that  the before-mentioned cigar company did it using an app called “Twittervision“. (As of this writing, their website appears to be down). In my further research, I discovered a techie site talking about Twittervision. On their article, they had an animated GIF showing an example of this.

Keep in mind, this is a techie website with no connection to the automotive industry at all. This GIF is about 35 seconds long. I’m imagining that the writers of that website just took a random clip of the app at some random point in time for the sole purpose of illustrating the application. Remember, the application shows real-time tweets overlaid onto a Google Map. (I couldn’t figure out if there were any keywords used within their example)

So, imagine my surprise when about 32 seconds into this 35 second GIF, a tweet from Ralph Paglia showed up abou
t his Automotive Digital Marketing website. I swear I thought I was seeing things. Here’s the GIF, enjoy!

and here’s the website (and article) it came from.. Technospot.

Ralph Paglia is everywhere and I’m sure that’s on purpose.

If this isn’t proof that social media is relevant. I don’t know what
is.

“Why We Don’t Need Car Dealers”

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I found this article in “The Week” magazine (July 17, 2009) reprinted from The Washington Post and thought I’d share.

“Why We Don’t Need Car Dealers” – Charles Lane, The Washington Post

“Why, in this day and age, should I have to haggle with ‘grinning salesmen’ when it’s time to buy a car? asked Charles Lane. The short answer is that car dealers are protected by state laws that give them exclusive sales territories and bar online competitors. Such laws might have made sense once upon a time, when dealers needed an incentive to invest in showrooms and inventory. But this ‘old business model has been obsolete for decades,’ and is completely anachronistic in the age of the Internet. Were it not for those laws, I could browse a manufacturer’s website, choose my model and equip it the way I like it, and then take delivery a few days later. The bankruptcy filings by Chrysler and General Motors offer a chance to move to this more efficient, lower-cost distribution model and break the stranglehold of the dealers. But powerful congressional Democrats are backing a federal bill that would preserve the dealers’ unfair advantages. If they prevail, the dealers will once again be ‘exercising political clout at the expense of the car-buying public.'”

It’s interesting that, at the very least, this person has this viewpoint. I submit that car dealers provide a valuable service to the car-buying public. Without car dealers, where would one test drive cars? Where would one go for factory service or warranty repairs? How would you trade-in a car? Who would help with financing?

This person’s viewpoint seems like a two-headed snake to me. While this columnist can whine about the injustices forced upon him by car dealerships, he would whine just as loud when he had a problem with this car (that he bought online sans dealer) but nobody to listen to him or help him with it.

In our industry, it’s the trend that we are making it easier and easier for people to not only communicate with us in whatever means they feel comfortable – in person, email, phone, chat, etc – but we make it as easy as possible for them to buy a car from us.

I believe this person is simply – uneducated. He could just about accomplish what he wanted to RIGHT NOW. There are many dealers that would facilitate just such a transaction and do so on a daily basis. I believe this person is simply just unaware that this option exists for him.

At the very least, I’d be willing to bet that the dealer that could show THIS consumer that he COULD buy a car this way FROM THEM would probably get at least one more sale and a customer for life.

As more people get enlightened to the internet car buying experience, it will be increasingly important for car dealerships to adapt to maximize their opportunities with EVERY consumer.

The most successful dealers will be the ones who cater to all shopping consumers – not just the ones walking in the front door….right now.

Originally published on ADM

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