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How to: Spam People on Facebook

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Social media is all about engagement. The option to “friend” someone or “like” a business’ page exists to enhance the user’s experience and present to them only what they have chosen to see and engage with. If you choose not to engage with someone, you simply don’t accept their friend request. YOU choose which business’ Facebook page you are interested in having information delivered to you.

Imagine if Facebook were completely open. “Friends” didn’t exist. You saw every status update from every person on Facebook and every business. Facebook would cease to exist except maybe as a search engine. There would be too much noise. Facebook even recognizes this by filtering status updates for you and providing you with the option to create lists of people so that you can not only tailor who sees any particular piece of content but so you can easily filter out status updates and content into subgroups of your friends.

Then came Facebook groups. Initially, I thought this was a splendid idea. The ability to create an open or private group of individuals who share like interests and who can interact with each other without having to “friend” any group member. It offered a convenient way of sharing via a group Facebook e-mail address and, at the time, it was one of the only noise-reduction alternatives on Facebook.

Facebook groups has now become a convenient way to spam people in your social network against their permission. The ability to add people to groups without their consent has become not only a nuisance but, I believe, has actually decreased the value and allure of groups. I cringe whenever people add me to a Facebook group because 1) it irritates me that people can be presumptuous enough to choose what I’m interested in seeing and 2) because Facebook in their infinite wisdom chose to make the default notifications via e-mail on.

I belong to several Facebook groups. The groups I belong to are through my choice and consist of people and content I am interested in. I can’t belong to every group in existence, nor do I want to. Imagine if businesses could choose whether you liked their page or not. There would be many businesses who would just add everyone on Facebook and leave it up to each person to unlike it.

To compound matters, there are some people who will not only add me to a group, but after I LEAVE the group, will RE-ADD me.

It’s presumptuous and arrogant to take it upon yourself to decide for others where their interests lie. By doing this, you make yourself no different than the person who decided everyone you know could benefit from Viagra.

… and there’s a word for people who do that: spammer.

Pre-Conference Twitter Advice for Vendors

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I’ve had the privilege of handling social media for nine major automotive industry conferences in the last few years. (the 1st and 2nd DrivingSales Executive Summits, the 8th-11th Digital Dealer Conference & Expositions, and the 1st and 2nd Innovative Dealer Summits). In that time, I’ve also tried to include exhibitors and sponsors in the conference’s social media campaigns both for their benefit and for the conference’s.

I routinely asked them for Twitter accounts and created lists of those accounts for people following the conference Twitter account (like this one) whether they provided it for me or not (lots of searching Twitter, sadly). We left spots on speaking applications asking for their information and we had the sales team ask. If I had to guess, only about 15% actually provided this information and even less actually used social media to reach out and engage with attendees.

As you can imagine, there is a lot of “pre-conference” promotion (by the conference) and an essential piece of that was done via social media. Attendees would start getting excited and I would see Twitter conversations start ramping up via the conference hashtag. What I wouldn’t see is vendors participating in those conversations. No matter how hard and how many times I would advise a vendor that they should, they just wouldn’t do it. So for the few months leading up to the conference, there would be plenty of conference-related chatter (“Are you going?” “I’m excited” “Let’s get together”, etc) but virtually no vendor engagement. Amusingly enough, I have even had dealership attendees on Twitter publicly noticing and inquiring about the lack of vendors.

About a week before the conference…. it hits. Like someone hit a “Go” button somewhere. Vendors galore. All over Twitter. It was great that they would finally start participating but the problem was that there was no engagement and they were late to the party. A typical vendor’s tweet would read something like “We have your magic solution! Come visit us at booth #1234” or “We’re giving away an iPad2! Come to booth #1234 to enter”. By this point, they are entering (and creating) noise. The dealers and managers attending see this. They know that there is virtually no value in those tweets. They’ve received the countless pre-conference e-mails from vendors promoting something or other all with the same basic call-to-action of “come to our booth”.

On the flip side of this, I see vendors who DO engage with attendees. I see the vendors that engage attendees successfully setting up demo appointments and building interest and rapport with attendees. On the conference side, I always tried to increase their exposure (and the conference’s) by re-tweeting those vendors and encouraging people to interact with them. I rewarded exhibitors and sponsors for contributing to, and participating in, the conversation. What I didn’t retweet was blatant sales-only type tweets.

Fact: The 11th Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition hashtag saw 9,100 tweets from over 1,400 unique people with a combined reach of almost 100,000 people that generated over 9 million impressions…. and this was only from people that tweeted with the hashtag!

Why a vendor would want to skip out of being included in this is beyond me. I think they don’t understand social media 101 – the whole point of social media is not only to engage with your primary audience, it’s also to reach THEIR social network. The only other reason I can think of that they’re not doing this is that they can’t be bothered or see no value in it.

Vendors need to realize that conference attendees paying attention to the conference hashtag don’t want to see your 140 character sales pitch a week before the conference while, at the same time, they are receiving all the direct mail pieces and e-mail marketing campaigns that are hitting their real (and virtual) in-boxes. You become noise. Spam.

They are willing and want to engage with you but you must start this engagement MONTHS before the conference and it must be REAL engagement.You want to get a dealer’s attention pre-conference? Start talking to them pre-conference, not selling to them.

Sell to them at your booth, not on Twitter.

TrueCar Goes Too Far

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Look, I’ve not been a big supporter of this TrueCar lynchmob for a few reasons. I don’t believe that TrueCar is solely responsible for all of the issues pointing their way. In my opinion, they are just a very visible and convenient target for a much wider-spread problem. My position has always been that the dealer needs to police its own data, not get mad at a vendor that’s been taking it and repurposing it. If you don’t want any vendor to have access to your DMS, don’t give it to them. Be mad, yes, but at yourself.

Transparency on the internet is not going away. Consumers won’t allow it. There are many third party sites that operate in a similar way to TrueCar. Getting rid of one is not going to stop other sites from taking their place.

If TrueCar is really changing to conform to state regulations, that’s a step in the right direction. You can’t blame THEM for the race to the bottom, dealers are to blame. Steve Stauning laid out the argument perfectly in his recent blog post: “How TrueCar.com Caught Dealers Off Guard”

This post, however, is not to debate whether TrueCar is right or wrong or any of the arguments for or against them.

I read today that TrueCar has purchased some interesting domain names from Domain Name Wire.

They are:

F*ckedbytheDealer.com
F*ckedbytheDealer.net
F*ckedbytheDealer.org

Now I don’t know about you, but that certainly doesn’t seem like a “dealer partner” to me. The only reason for buying those domains is to attract consumers who are pissed off at dealers. I mean, c’mon, anyone who wants to buy a car (which is what TrueCar is supposed to help people do easier, right?) and is searching with those keywords may not be a customer I want to have. That’s pretty extreme. Even if they optimize for DIFFERENT keywords, the fact remains that if someone were to click on that URL (after reading the domain name), I highly doubt they’re going there to try and buy a car. Chances are they’re going there because they feel like they’ve been.. well.. “f*cked by the dealer”. Now you’re going to try and massage that and send them to a dealer? What?!?

That’s a CSI nightmare waiting to happen and probably on a loser deal. (Not that the amount of profit should make a difference.)

Is this a preventative tactic? What will they actually PUT on those websites and/or where will they redirect them? Time will tell.

Like they didn’t have enough heat to worry about.

[NOTE: Since this post, I’ve added a new comment feature. Comments prior to today can be seen by scrolling down further under the “About” block of text.]

Why locking your DMS is not practical

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There is a lot of discussion surrounding TrueCar and how dealers should not use their services and why they are bad for our industry and dealers in specific. I wrote a blog recently titled “In Defense of TrueCar” that many interpreted as my support for their services.

In reality, the main point of my blog post was that everyone is pointing fingers at TrueCar right now saying how evil they are and how they are using a dealer’s data against them, however, nobody is mentioning the fact that, at some point in time, through some avenue, a dealer allowed their customer and financial data to be extracted and used. Dealers need to accept responsibility for this data being available in the first place. No matter how indirect that permission for data use was gained, ultimately, you allowed it.

My opinion of TrueCar is that they are a marketing and lead source for your inventory. I personally liked the pay-per-sale leads vs. the pay-per-lead pricing model. I don’t blame TrueCar for using your data to drive leads to you. There are many companies that use your data, crawl your website or obtain your financial and customer data and use or resell that data and then use it for their own monetary gain. They spend tons of money on SEO to drive consumers to their website where they convert the lead and resell it to you. There was a conversation about this for awhile too. The fact remains is that they spend the money to do it, are better at it than you and dedicate resources to accomplish this. Even OEMs do this and sell the leads to their dealers. If you want to dedicate the budget, time and resources to do this, you can do it also but don’t blame them for doing something you ultimately both aren’t going to and don’t want to do.

One of the suggestions that has been made is to lock everyone out of your DMS. This is really not a practical option. Many website companies do not have the ability to extract inventory data from your DMS so, ultimately, they outsource the data polling to another company whether you know it or not. In most cases, it’s transparent. There were many times when I was with HomeNet Automotive that a dealer had no idea that we were already polling their DMS on behalf of some vendor or another that they were using. In fact, most vendors do not have the ability to directly poll your DMS so unless you use no 3rd party vendors whatsoever, you really can’t lock your DMS. This includes desking software, pricing software, inventory management, etc.

If you lock everyone out of your DMS, you will have no inventory marketing whatsoever, and that includes having your inventory on your website.

Am I saying you shouldn’t be aware of who is getting your data? Not at all. You should know who is getting it, what they’re getting, and, most importantly, what your agreement with them allows them to do with your data.

It is your responsibility to protect your data through aggressive policing and review of your vendor partner contracts. You need your DMS polled to market your inventory and market to your customers (if you use any service to do this), get deals financed, and have any sort of integration with other software you use and your DMS.

When Reynolds and Reynolds took steps to police and protect dealer DMS data, dealers complained that they should have full control over their data and who gets it. Even in the cases of Reynolds implementing stricter and more difficult ways for a non-Reynolds Certified company to poll the DMS, dealers would allow third parties to create and install workarounds to this or they would manually create and upload the reports to their vendors. Now dealers are complaining that the data is being misused and/or used against them. You can’t have it both ways.

Accept responsibility and choose who gets your data, what they get, and what they are allowed to do with it.

Stop pointing fingers at TrueCar.

In Defense of TrueCar

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There’s been a lot of talk about TrueCar lately in automotive industry forums blasting them for their business practices and how “evil” they are. There’s a thread on DealerElite with over 33 PAGES of comments [edit: 50+ pages] in response to Jim Ziegler’s question:

“TRUE CAR and ZAG Cyber Bandits: Parasites or Good for the Car Business?”

..and even a video from Jerry Thibeau of Phone Ninjas who has a very strong opinion:

(Edit: I guess TrueCar didn’t like the video. It appears that they had it removed.)

My experience with HomeNet Automotive (the leading automotive data distribution company now owned by AutoTrader) gave me unique insight from all perspectives: vendors, 3rd party inventory sites and dealers.

Whether you think TrueCar is good or bad for the automotive industry, you have to step back and consider a few things:

(In regards to TrueCar having, and using, a dealer’s sales data) In the early days of inventory marketing, it was the general thought that having your inventory on every 3rd party site possible was a great idea. Most dealers signed up for every 3rd party site they could, especially if it was free. When I was an Internet Director, I signed up for them all also. When I was with HomeNet, I talked to many Dealer Principals that wanted their inventory everywhere. Most never read any “terms and conditions”, they just signed up. Any of these third party sites could have been polling their DMS for not only inventory but sales data and they never would have known. Nothing’s free. It wasn’t until recently that people started questioning the wisdom of shotgunning their data and, even then, it had nothing to do with whether the sites should have it but how it was effecting their SEO efforts and how the sites were using their data to collect leads then selling those leads to the dealer. It had nothing to do with the fact that they HAD the data in the first place.

When HomeNet Automotive integrated TrueCar into their inventory management tool, (IOL Pro), as a rep, I visited many dealers who loved the TrueCar feature and ability to use reports to close deals and research competitor pricing. Only a few even questioned where the data was coming from and in only one case was a dealer actually upset that we (ie. HomeNet) had the sales data at all. The fact remains that this data was given voluntarily by the dealer to hundreds of 3rd party sites, each with their own terms and conditions, and any of which could have been polling their DMS for sales data and, in turn, providing it to TrueCar, Edmonds, AutoTrader, etc. or any of the hundreds of other sites.

(In a now amusing tangent, industry people demonize Reynolds and Reynolds all the time for protecting their data (ie. not allowing unauthorized 3rd party access) and throttling their control over distributing it to just anybody and now these same people are complaining about 3rd parties having the data.)

Now, onto the lead program.. People are complaining that TrueCar leverages the dealer’s data (which the dealers are giving to countless websites already) to provide consumers information on the lowest prices for vehicles, converting the lead and offering it to the dealers on a per sale cost of $300 versus a per lead basis. Why is this so evil?

There are plenty of 3rd party sites that do the same thing with the only difference being that they charge per lead. Hell, even MANUFACTURERS do it. When I was in retail, I used a company with a similar pricing strategy named Autotropolis (since bought by Autobytel for $15 million). I LOVED those leads. I could easily identify a lead from them and factor in the $250 per sale fee into any deal structured or quote given to a consumer. I only paid when I sold a car. It was great. At least on a per sale basis, my cost per sale was fixed. With 3rd party leads, it wasn’t. I hear dealers complain about $900+ costs per sale with their AutoTrader programs yet they still participate. The point is that I was always in control of the sale. If I didn’t want to sell the vehicle at the pricing given to them, I didn’t. It was my choice. The fact is that I would rather have the opportunity to earn the sale than not have it. Why wouldn’t you want a fixed cost per sale on internet leads? 

Dealers have been sending their transactional and inventory data to 3rd parties for YEARS. This isn’t some new phenomenon that’s all of a sudden appearing. Everyone wants to single out TrueCar when, in fact, TrueCar is only ONE OF MANY companies that have their data. Dealers have willingly and happily provided this data to 3rd party sites for YEARS (at least as far back as 2003 to some sites that I personally know of).

To top it all off, dealers and industry professionals have been evangelizing transparency in their sales processes, pricing and interactions with consumers yet it appears that dealers don’t really want transparency, what is wanted is the illusion of transparency.

Bottom line: If you don’t want your data used by a 3rd party, stop giving it to them. I’m not just talking about TrueCar, I’m talking about EVERY 3rd party.

TrueCar is a business that pays for information received from the dealers themselves. Rather than demonizing TrueCar for monetizing the data by providing a service to both consumers (via transparency) and dealers (via sales), don’t participate.

As the saying goes: Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

(Edit: TrueCar is just a scapegoat and convenient target. I don’t necessarily disagree with all of the arguments, just the placing of the blame on TrueCar. Dealers created this, not TrueCar.)

UPDATE 12/1/11: Seems as if my friend Jerry created a new video.

When Dealer Promotions Go Wrong

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In browsing a popular deal website, Slickdeals, I noticed a thread titled “20% off all new Chevrolets (Arizona)”. Out of curiosity, I thought I’d check it out. I was more curious to see if the dealer (or an employee) posted this or if it was something that a forum member posted.

Wow. Talk about negative publicity. Here are some choice comments from the thread from people who TRIED to take advantage of this deal posted on the dealership’s website (which does actually say “20% off All New Chevrolets”) and one local customer who decided to chime in about his buying experience at this dealership.

“Interesting. Called the dealer and he stated that the deals are good for Arizona residents, although this isn’t stated anywhere on the website. Doubt very much that the OP was successful in securing a car from these guys. I was trying to buy a Chevrolet Volt from them. The salesman was very accommodating, suggesting that I falsify my residency to obtain the price. Imagine that, a dealership suggesting that we do something illegal so that we can take advantage of their poor advertising and sales tactic. Unfortunately this is another example of one poorly run dealership proving the stereotype that all dealers are thieves. Sad really.”

“Get ready. My deal went all the way to the owner. Just another car dealer living down to their reputation.”

“I’ll be interested to see if any of you get the deal. I live close to this dealership and recently tried to buy a new truck that was listed in an ad. Went to the dealership that morning and was told that the truck listed in the ad “wasn’t available.” The salesman offered me a truck with the same exact options, color and sticker price as the one listed in the ad, for $2,000 more than the price listed in the newspaper.”

They even included a response e-mail from the Internet Manager at this dealership that they got when inquiring:

“Hi Chris … Thanks for your email 11-27-11 on the New Chevrolet Volt #120126 and choosing Sands Chevrolet in Surprise for your next Chevrolet purchase.

This Volt is available from Inventory here in Arizona. Is that a CRAZY PRICE or what? $7,500 of this Huge Discount will be in the form of a Tax Credit at Year End Tax Time, and you will also need to be a Resident of Arizona to purchase at this Special Price.

There are no Rebates or Special Interest Rates at this time. Please call or email me.

Thanks
XXX XXXXX
Internet Manager”

 

To date, over 5,000 people have viewed this thread.

That’s 5,000 people who were interested enough in buying a new Chevrolet that they clicked on the thread to get the details and found the above types of comments.

Done right, that could’ve been 5,000 leads. This probably led to 5,000 people who aren’t going to buy a car at this dealership.

Is Content Marketing Valuable?

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Last month at BlogWorld LA, I had the privilege to see Jay Baer and Joe Pulizzi’s session about content marketing. Their session focused on the different types of content marketing that companies participate in. It was titled: “How Much Do You Open Your Kimono?”

IMG_0059

Is content marketing worthwhile? How do you tie it to revenue?

They taught that there are six types of content marketing. The six types of “opening the kimono” are:

1. Closed Kimono – There is no online thought leadership. Your content is not for public distribution. This type has the goal of significant repeat and “word of mouth” business. Pro: There is zero time investment. Con: You have limited exposure and a reduced ability to build online influence.

2. What Happens In Vegas – Online thought leadership is distributed and built via micro-platforms. Your company is participating in platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. and leaving blog comments to build your reputation as a thought leader. Pro: Original content is not required. You’re sharing other’s content in an effort to become a community resource. Con: You have no ability to drive the lead source and limited search engine potential. A great quote included in this segment was:

“To be considered a leader in any field, one must build and gain trust within their communities.” – Lisa M. Loeffler, Genuine Media Co.

3. Quid Pro Quo – This type comprises of selling thought leadership via methods such as e-books, how-to articles, and e-newsletters. The essential flow is that you give away free content and include a form asking people to subscribe to receive more free reports, etc. This builds your subscriber base and you then you market to those people with your paid content. Keep in mind that your free content needs to be “best in class” or people won’t pay you for your paid content. Pro: Recurring revenue. Con: Passive income.

4. Give Me Your Number – This is essentially lead-gated thought leadership. In this type, you put your content behind a gate (such as a lead form) and people have to give you some personal information to access the content (such as an e-mail address, etc.). Here you can focus not just on lead generating but lead nurturing. You would promote your content through all of your media channels but not give it to away until someone completes a lead form. Pro: If your content is good, you can generate a river of leads. Con: You have no control over the lead quality.

5. Peekaboo – In this type of content marketing, you give away what you know but not the process. Your content itself becomes your resume of thought leadership. Pro: You will get heavy SEO and PR awareness within your audience Con: This type takes tons of effort. It can also devalue each piece of content. You also risk publishing too much which could lead to you being ignored.

6. The Full Monty – Just like it sounds. You give it all away – what you know and how to do it. You create content for content’s sake. You even create content that is outside your industry. You can still have a lead form but it should not act as a gate to the content. Pro: There is no barrier to the customer. You can go big or small. Con: This type requires serious effort. It also allows others to “steal” your content and diverts attention from your core attributes.

Which one is right for you really depends on your target audience. Through testing, you can determine which one converts the most for you with your audience.

They provided a worksheet with a testing plan that you can use to evaluate each type and see which is the best fit for your company. You can access that worksheet at http://bit.ly/openkimono

It was fun using this “type-guide” to identify which type of content marketing various members of the online automotive community are using.

You can follow both Jay Baer and Joe Pulizzi on Twitter for more valuable information and content.

 

Inflatable Gorillas vs. Social Media

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The question I hear asked the most by dealers when talking to them about social media is “What’s the ROI? How do I measure that?” The problem with getting a buy-in from them is that they want to see a straight line between a Facebook post or tweet and a sale. Sometimes that’s possible but most of the time, it isn’t.

gorilla

My rebuttal is, “What’s the ROI on the inflatable gorilla on the roof? How do you measure that? Do you have a source in your CRM for “Gorilla” similar to the infamous “Billboard” one you have?”

Inevitably, they can’t answer that question. Funny thing is that even Google got into the “gorilla” game when they posted an ad for PPC advertising stating that Google Adwords would have “tons of customers headed your way” and implying that the gorilla would not (which they were promptly sued for by the makers of inflatable gorillas).

googlegorilla

The most common thought is that the giant inflatable gorilla gets people’s attention (just like the weekend tradition of “ballooning” the cars. Nobody that I ever know of said that they stopped at a dealership and bought a car because they saw a gorilla on the roof. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I’ve seen many comments by consumers that say inflatable gorillas are insulting to them. Some have even said that they are an indicator of an “old-school” dealership and would avoid these dealers at all cost.

Social media, on the other hand, when done properly, can increase customer loyalty, satisfaction and referrals through engagement with your customers. There are TONS of examples of this result from HUGE companies (Ford, Southwest Airlines, etc.). I’ve NEVER heard a customer say those things about a dealership using social media (with the exception of dealers that spam their customers with inventory).

Let’s assume that you can’t track ROI on social media (which is incorrect) and that you can’t track it on an inflatable gorilla, which end of the spectrum would you rather be on?

There’s only one way I could see an inflatable gorilla actually working and that’s if it can do this:

….jump off the roof and physically drag customers in.

So, if you’re willing to put an inflatable gorilla on your roof, balloon-up your lot every weekend, have a “hot-dog food fest” or any of the other things that surely have people (presumably) slamming on their brakes on the freeway to come to your dealership and buy a car, then why wouldn’t you have a presence on social media whether you can measure it’s ROI or not?

What do you think of giant inflatable gorillas on car dealerships?

Can Your Dealership Be Too Social?

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I hope dealerships realize that a social media presence is necessary these days. Hopefully, there is someone at your dealership handling this. More likely than not, this task has been assigned to someone which this is NOT their primary responsibility.

That being said, is there a thing as being “too social”?

There are many social networks out there and new ones popping up everyday. In a perfect world, dealers would have a dedicated person that could keep up with and manage them all by posting new content (preferably original) via blogs and all the social networks with their listening ears on. Most dealers, however, don’t have the budget for this type of person. It’s hard enough for ME to keep up with them all much less to ask a dealer to.

Would it be better if a dealer picked a few and concentrated on being really good at those instead of spreading themselves so thin that they aren’t managing or maintaining an active presence on them all? It’s not enough just to have a Facebook page or G+ page or Twitter account, you have to engage and keep fresh content on it.. nurture it.

Right now we have Facebook, Twitter, G+, Google Places, LinkedIn, YouTube, … and the list goes on. Now Microsoft is about to enter the game with Microsoft Socl.. yet another social network to maintain. Right now, there are 205 websites listed on Wikipedia as “social networking sites” (Yes, I counted them). You can’t effectively manage all of them (and most of them wouldn’t apply either) but you do still have to figure in managing your online reputation through sites like Yelp, DealerRater, etc as well as the location-based services out there like Foursquare.. Oh, and don’t forget about blogging!

It’s exhausting to think about, isn’t it? I promise it’s just as exhausting to actually do.

My advice: If you don’t have (or can’t afford, or don’t want to afford) a person that can actually manage this full-time, pick a few sites mixing up social, reputation management, location-based and a blog… and be good at them.

Consumers Now Have the Ability to Block Your GoogleAds

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Google announced yesterday via its blog, that it had instituted a feature in Google search and GMail ad transparency. This change will give consumers the ability to see why ads are being delivered (ie. what previous searches triggered the ads) as well as the ability to block ads from a particular company/advertiser. This option is available for all Google Ads delivered to a consumer.

Is it a cause for concern? Probably not as I believe a low percentage of people will actually utilize this feature, but it is certainly something you need to be aware of. I would equate this to “hiding” a company from your News Feed on Facebook, in a sense.

Below is an example of what a consumer would see should they choose to go into the “Ads Preferences Manager”.

Do you think this will have any impact on your ability to target consumers or is this a non-factor?

Contact Me