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Facebooks Potential New Feature Could Kill Your Newsfeed

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Facebook has always been experimenting with ways to generate revenue. It’s mostly been focused on businesses through Facebook Ads and Sponsored Stories but now it’s contemplating a revenue stream generated through users.

TechCrunch reported last night that Facebook has began testing a feature it calls “Highlight”. The basic functionality of this feature is that a user can pay a one-time fee to have a single post shared with more of their friends. Facebook’s algorithm is designed to identify and deliver what they believe is the content most interesting to any individual. According to the TechCrunch article, only about 12% of any given person’s friends see any given post. (People that utilize EdgeRank to maximize the potential that their posts are seen probably have a slightly higher average.)

facebook-highlight-status-updates1

In my opinion, there are only a few legitimate uses for for this feature by an individual that wouldn’t annoy the heck out of their friends: “I’m moving”, “having a baby”, “someone died”, “help me raise money for a good cause” etc. would all be legitimate reasons, in my eyes. However, I don’t see too many people actually paying for increased exposure to other legitimate types of status updates even if it were available. (“Legitimate” in my eyes being a valid, non-spammy type of status update.)

More than likely, the people willing to pay for increased exposure for their posts would be people selling something.. whether that’s recruiting for a multi-level marketing “opportunity”, advertising their business or services, and, in the case of the automotive industry, delivering the many different ways of saying “come buy a car from me (or my dealership)”.

With many car dealers still stubbornly clinging to Facebook profiles versus Facebook pages, I think it’s just going to be way too tempting for them to pay the small fee to make sure more of their “friends” see their sale ad, highlighted vehicle, or “come buy a car” message. It will also be tempting for individual vendors to ply their wares on your Facebook newsfeed paying a couple of bucks for increased exposure to all the car dealerships they’ve friended.

The potential for people to newsfeed spam is way too high, in my opinion. I put up with an “occasional” plug from my Facebook friends. I mean, everyone needs to earn a living and rule #1 in sales is to make sure everyone you know is aware of what you sell. There’s nothing more frustrating than being a Toyota salesperson and having someone you know buy a Toyota from somewhere (or someone) else. That being said, I do have a line that a person can cross when the volume of those types of posts by them gets annoying to me.

I’ve never been a huge fan of Facebook choosing who they think I want to see posts from. I would personally like to be able to control that option but, for the most part, it accomplishes its goal. I also think I’m probably in the group of people that actually tells Facebook who and what I want to see by hiding people, creating lists, knowing (and using) my privacy settings, etc. as the more you do this, the more accurate Facebook’s algorithm can be in delivering relevant content. It’s unclear whether “Highlight” would circumvent these settings (ie. delivering messages from people I’ve hidden or normally wouldn’t see status updates from just because they’ve paid for that increased exposure).

Bottom line is that if your newsfeed becomes littered with individual advertising-type posts rather than being filled with relevant content from people you want to interact with, people will either start hiding or unfriending more people or they’ll use Facebook less.

According to TechCrunch, the feature is currently being tested in New Zealand.

How Reviews Stop Buying Decisions

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First, it’s been way too long since I’ve blogged. For those who care, I apologize. I’ve been very busy in my new role with a great company, 3 Birds Marketing, and I’m very grateful that they invited me to join their team.

We all know that reputation management is mandatory in today’s digital world. Consumers have increasingly more information at their fingertips and there are more choices than ever out there. With auto brands barraging consumers with marketing, consumers are continuously relying on reviews to help make buying decisions. Studies show that consumers have more confidence in reviews left by other consumers than any other type. Everyone knows the importance of building and maintaining a solid, balanced reputation across all the review sites.

When can reviews actually stop the buying process?

I’m NOT talking about someone choosing WHO to buy from necessarily. Part of the problem is that consumers are so overwhelmed by reviews about your PRODUCT that not only is it essential to maintain a great reputation as a DEALER but to also pay attention to reviews about your brand and models.

Here’s an illustration I found that details pretty accurately what can happen:

original

Has this ever been you?

How do you prevent consumers from progressing past panel #1 in that comic?

Imagine this scenario… A customer comes into your dealership. They find a car they like. They go online on their phone to see if they want to do business with YOU. While reading your dealership’s reviews, they also come across product reviews from consumers saying positive things not only about YOU but also about the car they are trying to decide upon. After deciding they are comfortable with you, it’s possible that a consumer wouldn’t then feel the need to progress to product reviews on other sites and it could help avoid the progression illustrated in the comic.

In addition to not only building a solid reputation online across ALL review sites (not just focusing on a single site or two), why not also encourage your customers to say great things about your BRANDS and models?

There’s no reason why you can’t ask your customers to write a review about the car they purchase from you. Not only does this add to your reputation but it provides relevant and fresh content that could assist your dealership in not only appearing in name searches on Google but also brand and product searches.

There’s no reason why you can’t leverage consumer product and brand reviews on all of your review sites that can assist your dealership in gaining exposure that your competitor wouldn’t have.

If a consumer is trying to make a decision NOT on whether to do business with YOU but on whether to purchase your PRODUCT, a good mix of both types of reviews can certainly help prevent consumers from progressing to indecisiveness.

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.

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.

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.

The Ethics of Online Reviews

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This article started as an investigation into a company providing services to the automotive industry,Review Boost. I didn’t know much about the company, only that it had received some negative press and accusations of gaming online reviews. In fact, it even had a local San Antonio television station, KSAT, run a news segment regarding a dealership who used their services. There have been blog articles written questioning the authenticity of the reviews as well as articles written in both Automotive News and F&I Magazine.

The importance of reputation management has been increasingly on dealers’ minds, being, from the dealers I spoke with and interviewed for DrivingSalesTV, the hot topic of this year’s NADA convention. The FTC is cracking down on companies engaging in posting misleading reviews, legislators are pushing for stricter laws regarding this practice, legal advisors are reporting that a company exposes themselves tolegal risks by engaging in this act, and a California law went into effect Jan 1, 2011 making it a criminal activity. Add to these variables the fact that search engines are starting to increase the importance of online reviews in their algorithms and incorporating them into search results, naturally, when they popped up on my radar again after partnering up with an industry vendor, I was curious as to why the partnership happened and I started asking questions and doing some homework.

[Edit: After sharing my article with representatives from Review Boost, they informed me that they decided not to move forward with the partnership I referred to above.]

I spoke with William, the owner of Review Boost, at length. We spoke for upwards of an hour and he walked me through what his company does. First, to be clear, they deny all accusations of gaming reviews and/or writing the reviews themselves. William was very pleasant, if understandably nervous during our conversation but, in my opinion, sincerely wanted to clear the air regarding what his company does. Without revealing too many of his proprietary practices, which he shared with me, I didn’t get the impression that he is doing anything wrong at all. Now, given that there were already a ton of articles investigating and breaking down why other people feel that they are, I didn’t feel the need to rehash what others have already done and I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt.

See, William isn’t in the car business. Review Boost began assisting local businesses like dentists, doctors, and such. It ended up that dealers account for about 30% of their current client base but this wasn’t by design. The crux of their strategy, which is what surprised me the most, is that they administer a website called myreviewboost.com in which they post reviews collected from clients of their dealers. These reviews are then syndicated across about 40 online review directories through partnerships with them. I was surprised that such a syndication was allowed but I did some investigating and, not only is it allowed, but it is encouraged. Judysbook.com, in example, promotes review sharing partnerships openly.

I reached out to Google themselves. The fact that they syndicate reviews is telling about their policies but they did point out within their Review Posting Guidelines that conflicts of interest, including misrepresentation and/or posting reviews on behalf of others is not allowed.

In essence, William’s company is soliciting reviews only from the customers which the dealer provides contact information to them. They do not edit the reviews – whether positive or negative. They will moderate a negative review, if received, allowing the dealer a chance to resolve the problem and then, when the dealer reports that the problem has been resolved, resurveying the customer to get an updated review. In my mind, this absolutely explains why almost every review is positive.

If I were a dealer who needed to increase my online reputation, I certainly wouldn’t hand over an unhappy customer’s e-mail address to be reviewed. In fact, I know many dealers that will occassionally RDR cars to the factory with incorrect information to avoid a potential negative CSI survey and/or “buy” surveys from their customers through offers of free oil changes or something to encourage their consumers to return the surveys to THEM and not mail them in to their OEM unscreened.

William’s strategy made perfect sense to me and the syndication accounted for the reason for the same review appearing on multiple sites. So while this practice may be viewed by some to be unethical, it’s not illegal or in violation of these directories terms of service. They’re simply taking advantage of existing online directories willingness to crawl their review site to maximize the SEO value of each review they collected from their client’s customers.

So, is this article about Review Boost? No. The real story is what is ethical in the online reputation management arena.

I’m sure that we would all agree that posting fake reviews is unethical and, in some cases, illegal.

What about these practices?

  • Posting REAL reviews, verbatim, by your customers on their behalf with their permission.
  • Screening WHO gets reviewed to avoid negative reviews.
  • Choosing which reviews get displayed (ie. avoiding sites in which negative reviews exist)

The fact is that online reputation management, and the process in which dealers are utilizing, are becoming more and more important for the many reasons I described above.

How do you feel about this? What’s ethical or unethical regarding online reputation management?

Originally published on DrivingSales.com

With the Verizon iPhone Coming, Is It Time To Re-Think Mobile Marketing?

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With today’s announcement of the iPhone coming to Verizon, you have to analyze the mobile market and wonder if it’s time to embrace mobile marketing (if you haven’t already).

The facts are that 85% (264 million) of the US population (307 million) has a cell phone.

 

Smartphones accounted for about 30% of all phones as of Oct. 2010 but that number is projected to overtake non-smartphones in 2011 per Nielsen. That would take the number of smartphone users to 132 million across all cell networks – almost 1/2 the population of the U.S.

Android and iPhone users account for about 1/2 the total number of smartphones in use but the iPhone accounts for 65% of AT&T smartphone subscribers. I’m expecting that the chances that the percentage of Verizon smartphone users who have an iPhone will approach, if not eclipse, the percentage that AT&T has. Assuming this holds true, the iPhone will end up accounting for 86 million smartphones with the Android comprising 30 million.

A large percentage of the US population will have, and be using, smartphones. According to Morgan Stanley, mobile internet usage will overtake desktop internet usage within 4 years (by 2014).

Getting the picture? This isn’t even accounting for web traffic originating via iPads, iPod Touches and Android-based tablets. It also doesn’t account for traffic generated through apps.

Bottom line is that you need to have a mobile website and/or make sure that you’re existing website is mobile-friendly, at the very least.

It’s time to seriously re-visit a mobile marketing strategy if you don’t have one. Don’t play catch-up later.

 Originally published on DrivingSales.com

 

Creating Revenue through the new Groupon Stores

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Last night, the popular consumer shopping website Groupon announced the implementation of Groupon Stores.

For those unfamiliar with Groupon, here is the skinny: Groupon offers customers discounts on products and services in which Groupon has negotiated with the business for discounts based on an agreed upon number of people accepting the offer. They offer 1 deal per day, per city and then market this deal to the members in that market. They currently have over 33 million subscribers.

Groupon collects a 50% commission on sales from the business for each offer BUT, since they only offered one deal per day, the exposure was fantastic since everybody saw it. It didn’t get “lost in the crowd”. It was still a VERY steep cost but the advantage businesses have found from utilizing Groupon in their marketing efforts is from attracting NEW customers and focusing on customer retention.

With the launch of Groupon Stores, businesses can set up their own Groupon distribution presence and offer (and control) their own discounts. There is still a commission but it has been drastically reduced to only 10% of sales.

Groupon is promoting several features of it’s new stores:

  • “Setup a permanent (and free!) e-commerce presence on Groupon for promoting their business.
  • Create their own offers to run deals whenever they want.
  • Submit deals to be promoted to Groupon subscribers through email and the Deal Feed.
  • Get customers to follow their Groupon Store, and stay in touch by sending messages through the daily email and deal feed.”

This could be leveraged well in your service department by running oil change specials, tire deals, etc. It would give your dealership the exposure through Groupon via the free business-specific page they’ll provide.

This new page will probably offer your dealership some SEO value as well but my advice would be to not set up a page if you don’t plan to offer any discounts. Too many dealerships have “Specials” pages on their own website that don’t have any specials on them. Don’t compound that huge mistake by participating in more “deal” websites in which you don’t have any deals.

The biggest benefit to utilizing Groupon’s Store is that they will market it to their members in your area through both e-mail and via the other announced new feature – the Deal Feed, which is sort of like a Facebook wall for consumers to see the deals offered in their area as well as deals offered from businesses they “follow”. This does come at a cost (10% of sales from the offered deal) but the marketing power to attract new customers is huge.

With the rumor-mill steadily increasing that Google is going to  buy Groupon, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Groupon deals integrated into Google Place Pages. This would increase the perceived value of Google Place Pages to consumers in that it would centralize a single page in which consumers can get business information, see business reviews and see what deals the merchant is currently offering.

The new feature rolls out today in a few markets but will be available shortly to everyone.

 Originally published on DrivingSales.com

 

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