According to DMEautomotive’s recent white paper, “The Changing Service Loyalty Landscape,” customer pay service dollars are bleeding away from dealers and to aftermarket providers at a rate of three lost to one gained back. As the chart below shows, younger, tech-savvy consumers are shopping even “harder” but, aftermarkets are having more success in capturing these coveted consumers—especially as they move into their prime spending years.

Auto service customers under 35 years of age consider online appointment scheduling and convenience vital to their overall customer service experience. While these service shoppers are intensely price and convenience driven, they are also very receptive to dealer loyalty programs.

These younger consumers trend toward mobile messaging platforms (text messaging and mobile email) and it makes sense for any successful marketing strategy to incorporate this communication channel to better engage this demographic.

The complexities behind service center selection, consumer communications preferences and the role that loyalty programs play in retaining loyal shoppers, while attracting newer, younger, non-loyal customers was analyzed in our second in the series of white papers, “Marketing Success in a Changing Service Loyalty Landscape.”

Consider these key findings:

• Auto service customers under 35 years of age regard online appointment scheduling and convenience vital.
• These younger consumers trend toward mobile messaging platforms (text messaging and mobile email).
• Redefining the service experience will be necessary if service providers are to remain competitive as customer demographics change.
• Successful marketing strategies will incorporate this communication channel to better engage this demographic.

Fortunately there’s a simple solution that can help you connect with these canny consumers…Yup! There’s an APP for that – Driver Connect, the dealer-branded mobile app from DMEautomotive.

Implementing a dealer-branded mobile app for iPhone, iPad and/or Android platforms, provides convenient appointment scheduling capabilities AND allows you to market directly to those wired consumer’s on their smartphone or tablet. You can also communicate service discounts, specials and monthly sales offers, as well as allow consumers to browse inventory, and access FREE car tools – such as parking assistant, cheap gas locator and more.

As new customers come into the market, and older customers exit, service providers of all types will need to redefine the service experience to retain their best customers and remain competitive.

However, with the extraordinary rise of social media, that model is no longer reliable as a sole method of communication. Consumers are seeking content and interactions that are of value to them and they are then choosing to engage by “pulling” that content. The key is to use marketing science to facilitate a two-way interaction with potential customers, motivating them to seek out your brand. Companies should consider establishing an equilibrium between the two in order to develop successful marketing programs.

Examples of push marketing tactics are below:

• Trade show promotions to encourage retailer demand
• Direct selling to customers in showrooms or face to face
• Packaging design to encourage purchase
• Point of sale displays

Examples of pull tactics are below:

• Word of mouth referrals (increasingly social media outlets)
• Targeted, direct marketing
• Customer Relation Management
• Discounts and promotions

Consumer reviews and word-of-mouth communications are becoming as important as company-driven marketing messaging. Social media is now a daily activity with most consumers investing several hours a month on various social media platforms including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Blogs. Consider, for example, that Facebook users spend on average 15 hours and 33 minutes a month on the site and that more than 250 million people access Facebook with a mobile device.1

Companies need to facilitate consumers’ online social engagement experience. At the very least, some level of participation is necessary. But, in order to do so effectively, you must engage in a meaningful way that creates real value for the consumer. Blogs are an effective platform for creating value. Companies are now using Blogs more and more frequently — rising from 16% in 2007 to 43% in 2012.

Social media is beginning to have a significant impact on the purchase process, especially in the automotive sales and service markets. But having just a Facebook page – does not a social media marketing strategy make. You should consider ALL of the online outlets available as potential areas in which to engage. The biggest area of growth for purchase information was blogs.2 Also, consider two out of five users accessing social media are using their smartphone. A mobile presence will allow your company to be available when the consumer is ready to engage.

Combining a direct mail piece with a QR code that links to your Facebook page, a personalized URL, or microsite with an online video, provides consumers an easy and immediate way to begin a “two-way conversation.” Utilizing more of the marketing tools at your disposal will help you develop more successful marketing programs.

It’s not a question of push OR pull tactics, nor is it a question of push vs. pull. This should not devolve into a tug-of-war. Integrating social media and traditional push marketing strengthens both.

1. http://www.jeffbullas.com/2011/09/02/20-stunning-social-media-statistics/
2. http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2109891/social-media-changing-means-marketing

Gas prices are at a similar high, so car buyers are looking at more fuel efficient options, like the Toyota Prius or Chevrolet Malibu. Car auctions may have been your go-to for a used Prius or Malibu in the past, but every other dealer will be there as well.

So how can you get the best deals? Your customers. Use your database to specifically target which pre-owned vehicles you’d like to stock up on and set into motion a buy back campaign. If you already know all of the individuals who bought a Toyota Camry from your dealership in the last four years, it will be easy to target these cars specifically to buy back. You don’t need to go to an auction, where the prices will go up and up as dealers try to outbid one another; just look at the cars you’ve already sold.

Get your salesman involved, too. If they see a 2007 Chevrolet Malibu drive on the lot, offer an incentive for every appraisal they can get for a potential buy back from the car’s owner. Who knows – your stock of pre-owned vehicles could literally drive themselves onto your lot.

As long as this trend in used cars keeps up, the demand amongst dealers to bolster their pre-owned inventory will be high. So where will you be getting yours from?

But how do you track your clout in social media? You send out your tweets and post on Facebook on a regular basis, but is there a way to know how far this message is really reaching? Is it falling on deaf ears? Luckily, you’re not the only one asking this question. Enter Klout.

Klout is one of the many means to understand how effective your online presence is. By assigning a score between 1-100, with a higher number signifying more influence, Klout can literally quantify your automotive marketing efforts and influence.

One of the factors weighed heavily into Klout scores is your interaction. Are your tweets ever retweeted? Do you often get a “Like” or comment? How many people @message you? All of these play an important role in your overall score. What Klout is saying here is that, when you engage with and are engaged by other influential users, your own influence goes up. They aren’t using arbitrary standards to determine your score – they are using factors which actually make Twitter accounts worthwhile.

Perhaps most helpful is that these scores are not secret. You can find out what other’s Klout scores are to see what they are saying, who they engage with, and then interact with them. When you know these scores, you are able to improve on your own and extend the reach of your own influence online.

While Klout is one of the biggest names in understanding social media influence, there are other avenues you can explore: PeerIndex and even Google Analytics can give you some numbers regarding your online standings.

Social media is not a science, but with the right tools, you can determine the effectiveness of your efforts. No longer do you have to forge blindly into car dealer marketing through social media. You can effectively connect and engage and, most importantly, know where to do so.

We all want our page to be at the top of the results whenever somebody does a Google search and we are likely to hire somebody in car dealer marketing to help do this. In the constantly evolving world of SEO, however, time passes a bit like dog years: a few months in SEO is more like a few years in the real world. It’s important to stay on top of the ever-changing trends.

Although navigating the world of car dealer marketing and SEO can be tricky, knowing some of the most recent changes can make SEO a bit more understandable:

• Backlinking isn’t worth its weight in gold anymore. In the past, a backlink from one site to your own could greatly help in rankings. Then people started buying backlinks; they were everywhere but worth nothing. To avoid this, you can produce high quality content to which people will actually organically link. Simply put- don’t put all your eggs in the backlink basket.
• “Spamming” doesn’t help. Not only has the glut of spam backlinks been caught on to by Google, but now they will punish it. If you have a single profile with which you comment on other blogs for backlinking and you use the same generic comment each time, Google will know. And they won’t be very happy. The same goes for duplicate content. If you have one well written blog with good keyword density and you just post it multiple times, it won’t help any.
• There is a “sweet spot” in keywords for a blog post. It is important to have a primary keyword that accurately describes your blog post and appears multiple times, but there is such a thing as using it too often. Google calls this “keyword stuffing.” How can you get keyword rich blogs without going over the top? Make sure when reading it that the placement of these words actually makes sense. If it’s used every other sentence, it’s probably too much.

You don’t have to be an SEO genius to know what works and what doesn’t. Don’t let your dealership’s blog be ruined by too much backlinking or overusing keywords.

Despite the high level of activity on Facebook, when we asked customers about the social site’s influence on where they chose to service their vehicle, only 12% thought it was important.  Things like their vehicle owner’s manual, service centers and automotive websites beat out the more popular networking sites like Facebook or LinkedIn.  Twitter trailed in at 9%.  While it’s reassuring to know that traditional channels are effective, the gap between usage and influence of digital social channels represents a significant revenue opportunity.  Throw in the exponential growth of social media over time, and it becomes clear that social strategies have cemented themselves as key components of every CRM plan.

Contact DMEa for more insights from our National Consumer Study or to develop an interactive strategy designed for the unique needs of your business.

About DMEautomotive

DMEautomotive provides multi-channel, variable communications for automobile dealers and aftermarket franchises nationwide. Their robust product and service offering includes: data driven, multi-channel acquisition and retention marketing programs, best-in-class campaign reporting, data management and analytics via the Red Rocket Portal, Virtual BDC call applications, and complete on-site mail and email fulfillment services.  Headquartered in Daytona Beach, Fla., DMEautomotive also has major operations in Jacksonville, Fla.

Media Contact:

Kelly Krause

386.271.3204

Kelly.Krause@DMEautomotive.com

Many dealerships already call for users and fans to submit pictures of their vehicle; brand tagging allows this without the call to action. After the purchase of a new car, the owner can take a picture, upload it, and instantly tag the dealership from which they bought it with a message about their new car. After giving their vehicle a wash, a user might be tempted to take a picture, show it off to friends on Facebook and then tag their dealership in it. Once tagged, this photo won’t just be shared with the dealership – it will be shared with all the other fans of the page and anybody who visits it.

GM has already embraced the feature, encouraging fans to upload photos and be the first to tag their brand in the image. Tagging a brand in a photo is a natural means of product placement. There is also a potential to reward brand loyalty and photo tagging, from a simple recognition on Facebook for uploading to giving a prize to the best picture.

When users tag a dealership in their photos, it won’t just provide name recognition: it will provide a direct link to the dealership’s page. Tagging a brand or dealership in a photo could greatly increase the traffic to the page as well as the fan base. If a friend of the user didn’t already know your dealership was on Facebook, they will now.

While this new feature could potentially result in spam photo submissions on a dealership’s page, these can be moderated by an administrator. The benefits of having users tag brands far outweigh the risks that spam poses. Facebook brand tagging holds the power of word of mouth meets the power of social media, and the results have great potential for car dealer marketing.

As a car dealership, are you prepared for this shift in demand to more fuel efficient vehicles? Did you buy these higher MPG models three months ago to have in your inventory for today? It is difficult to predict gas prices, so your fleet of fuel-efficient or hybrid vehicles may be lower than public demand. If this is the case, do you then have enough pre-owned high MPG vehicles instead?

Another solution to cope with the low stock of high MPG vehicles is to offer gas incentives. All dealerships have the same rebates to offer, but not all are offering a gas incentive. If you don’t have the 40 MPG model to offer, offer a gas promotion instead. With the purchase of a new vehicle, you could give a $500 gas card. Such automotive marketing techniques can offset the slight difference in MPGs if you are lacking inventory in more fuel efficient vehicles.

Lastly, are your sales people trained to talk about the benefits of purchasing a more fuel-efficient vehicle? With gas prices potentially verging on $5 a gallon, a car with higher MPG could pay for itself when considering the gas savings it will produce. The true cost of driving includes more than just the monthly payment on a car – it includes the cost for service, oil changes, new tires, gas, and all the other miscellaneous work that goes into a car‘s upkeep. In the end, the fuel-efficient hybrid could be the cheaper option when we look at the true cost of driving.

Geo What?

I’ll try not to get all technical on you but a definition may help.  “Geolocation” means that, thanks to your smart phone or other mobile device, your current (as in relative to time) physical location is identified.  “Geosocial”, on the other hand, is the publication of such information on various social channels that allows and encourages interaction with other people. Cliff Notes version: these applications allow you use your mobile device to check-in at businesses and other places of interest, while simultaneously notifying your friends and other social connections where you are and what you’re doing through a social network.

While many dealerships have jumped on the social media bandwagon by participating on sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, few have incorporated geolocation apps and geosocial networking into their marketing efforts. However, automotive marketing professionals should strongly consider including them…because, as we know, people are influenced by the behaviors, choices and purchases of their friends.  And a growing broadcast tool for such information is the geolocation app.

Using Geolocation Apps at Your Dealership

How can your car dealership use geolocation applications? Many brick-and-mortar companies are incentivizing people to ‘check-in’ to their venue; car dealerships should be no different.  This is because geolocation apps provide your dealership with a real opportunity to affect Sales and Service revenue.  Here are a few thoughts and suggestions for your dealership to include geolocation apps into your marketing:

1. Give a little.

According to a Razorfish study, one of the reasons that people follow brands on social sites is fairly obvious: Access to promotions, exclusive deals and discounts.  Having said that, many geolocation services provide you with the opportunity to reward your dealership’s customers for check-ins.  This functionality allows your dealership to encourage customer loyalty in a new and tech-savvy manner.  How you ask?

Your dealership can provide “rewards” to those individuals who are loyal customers by motivating and incentivizing them through the social web.  Perhaps they’ve stopped by your dealership to have an oil change performed, or maybe even something a lot more expensive was done to their vehicle, or possibly they were visiting your lot a few days later to peruse the new models.  Either way, geolocation applications allow and encourage the customer to check into your dealership to receive not only recognition for being a loyal customer, but also a reward.

Using Foursquare’s badge system, you can reward someone the first time or each time they check in…and provide a much bigger special for the individual who becomes the ‘Mayor’.  Your reward can be as simple as a free upgraded car detail with service.  Some dealerships have devised a system that rewards a customer with a free service after ‘x’ number of visits.  The possibilities are endless!

2. Hey You…Over There…Yeah, I’m Talking to You!

One of the biggest benefits of geolocation apps is the ability to alert individuals of a special when they are within the vicinity of your dealership and check into a nearby business.  So, when Joe or Jane Smith is visiting the breakfast restaurant just around the corner from your dealership, their location triggers the application to notify them of specials in the area.  How great is that?!

Your dealership can offer a special, whether it is a small percentage or dollar amount off (i.e., 10% or $10 off, whichever is greater) to the individuals who bring their vehicle in for an oil change (or whatever service you wish) during select hours.  Hey, the person is literally around the corner…it’s quite possible you could strike them at just the right time…and with the right incentive…to have them swing by your dealership for some service.  Talk about direct automotive dealership marketing potential.

However, geolocation-related offers don’t have to be exclusive for your service department.  Some OEMs (Mazda, Mercedes to name a few) have used Foursquare to offer financial incentives in the sales department as well.  Regardless of sales or service, your dealership can conduct some serious automotive marketing endeavors through these services.

3.  All Hands…Ears and Eyes…on Deck!

Just like many of the other social networking services, your dealership is able to learn from and interact with customers via geolocation apps.  On some sites, Foursquare as an example, your customers are given the ability to leave feedback and make comments.  As part of an online reputation management regiment, your dealership must take the time to review the feedback and learn from it.  Certainly it’s also imperative that you take the time to interact with the customers.  Since many applications allow you to contact and converse with the individuals who checked in, why not ask them how their experience was or if they would recommend it to their friends.  Seriously, make conversation with your customers on these social sites, as it will go a long way in building a relationship.

Frankly, there is a lot more to be discussed with regards to geolocation apps as we’ve just touched on the tip of the iceberg here.  If there is one point I’d like to leave you with, it’s this:  as a business, you must provide a clear and tangible incentive for your dealership’s customers to interact with your brand online and for them to share their personal information (whether physical or behavioral) with you.

Are you using geolocation apps at your dealership?  What’s been your experience thus far?

~ Missy Jensen, Social Media Manager at DMEautomotive

Bio:
Missy designs, deploys and maintains the social media initiatives for DMEautomotive in an effort to increase brand awareness, distribute company and industry news, provide updates on products and services and promote consumer engagement. Missy enjoys the process of learning; researching and watching projects come to fruition!

Prior to her transformation into a web specialist and work with DMEautomotive, she has 10 years of experience in the marketing and communications industry. Missy served as the Director, Handicapping & Communications for a regional golf association and helped successfully launch and maintain a cutting edge technology-based ticket resale program on behalf of the St. Louis Cardinals.

Missy attended St. Lawrence University where she graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BS in Psychology. She also holds a Master’s Degree from Miami University in Oxford, OH. She can be reached at missy.jensen@dmeautomotive.com and check her out on LinkedIn.