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video: Why Car Dealers will always fail at Social Media

joe.pistell

Uncle Joe
Apr 7, 2009
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Dealer Principals, GMs, GSM, and Marketing managers,

If you are a brave soul and wish to re-invent yourself and your company from the ground up, the Video below comes from the Google ThinkAuto 2011 conference, fast forward to the Guy Kawasaki presentation that starts at 10:09, "The Art of Enchantment".

Guy Kawasaki topics present the Secret Formula to Re-invent your Dealership:

  • Likeability
  • Achieve Trustworthiness
  • Bake, Don't eat (OMG, we see the world as eaters!!!)
  • Default to Yes.
  • Perfect your Store (The Totality of the experience... DICEE)
  • ...and more

These topics address the roots of your businesses culture -AND- it's why Social Media is a natural fit to any business that embraces these ideas.

 
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At the 46:07 mark, "If you want to be an enchanter, do not rely on money..."

Rarely is a dealership fueled by ideas. This speaks to nearly everything in Dealership world and puts the F in FAIL on car dealers and social media.

Everything we do is aimed at commissions and commerce. Hell, we even whore out Referrals, we've taught ourselves that bird dogs are needed create more referrals. God forbid that we deliver a fresh and unique experience that will fuel a thousand more referrals than "paying for a hand off".

This speaks to a DR blog post I made back in 2007. The winds of change are among us, enter in…the Game Changers. | DealerRefresh Carsense.com, auctiondirectusa.com, SuzukiofWichita.com, carmax.com and a few others are going down the road less traveled. Brave Souls they are.
 
The Catch 22 is that consumers are not going to forgive dealers for having a culture that's not wired for social media. And even if social media disappears in a year, right now it's an important channel and connector for any business.

Not having a strategy may not a business killer, but having a active strategy may be a determining factor between where a consumer may start their car-buying research.
 
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The Catch 22 is that consumers are not going to forgive dealers for having a culture that's not wired for social media.

SM still changing as what it is but also how we see it. I myself used to friend everyone, no I dont (I check people to see who they are). I'm not too happy now about having co-workers or clients in my FB. Nor I loike friending biz anymore. So in my personal case, SM has changed a lot in just 2 years. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

I think SM will change into something different for biz than what we expect from friends, and the fact that not that long ago a biz had to change from a personal page to a biz page illustrates that there is a need for distinction.
 
After 2 years of avoiding Social Media (while every vendor was foaming at the mouth over it) I finally found a super smart place for FaceBook and my customers. Thank You Google ThinkAuto 2011.
Joe, Do you think implementing Social later than some others hurt you at all? Or were your energies better spent where they were spent over the past two years?
 
I'll be excited to see what Google does with their business pages on +. IF a wide-spread adoption gets them that far.
I don't think I can get through a session on Facebook or Twitter lately without someone mentioning it. Most of my circle is younger (late high school to upper 20s) and skews geeky (eight years on FIRST Robotics Competition teams does that), but I see chatter from people that are both older and not people I'd classify as geeky. Whether it sticks remains to be seen.