The Facebook opportunity for dealers

Last week, AutoExposure launched its new Facebook Business Profile Pages for automotive dealers.  I am incredibly excited about this product as it creates a wealth of opportunities for dealers and allows AutoExposure to flex its creative muscle. 

However, like many businesses, I think dealers are wondering how Facebook and social media will really make a difference to their business. Don’t people just use Facebook to spy on friends and Twitter to stalk celebrities?!

I thought it worth laying out some of the trends surrounding social media and why there is a real opportunity for dealers to capitalise on its potential.

• Facebook is the second most visited site in the UK after Google, and accounts for the most page views in the UK (16.4%) (Hitwise Oct 2010)

Get your business and cars on Facebook and they will be exposed to an enormous amount of eyeballs (if communicated properly)

•  37% of people use social media as part of their car buying process (FlyReaserch Feb 2011

           Because social media is a trusted environment, people often use it as a way of asking questions of friends.  Each of these people becomes a potential customer.

            Building a relationship with users in social media allows you to become part of their decision making

             This number is only going to rise

• A “Like” from a consumer is seen by all of their friends.  The average user has 130 friends

How difficult is it to get a customer to tell people that he endorses your services?  A simple click on “like” means that it will be seen by that customer’s 130 friends. 

Once a customer has liked your page, they are available for you to interact with offers, promotions and other conversations.  (apologies if I use the word “conversation” a lot, but it’s the best way I can think of describing the ongoing engagement with consumers, so different to a simple newsletter)

With Facebook being a closed environment (ie the site tries to keep you within Facebook), it is almost worth thinking of Facebook and the Internet as two separate things.  Just as websites became a new shop window, so too does Facebook (and other social media) allow dealers the chance to add another façade. 

The difference now is that customers can talk back, which increases the need for a professional approach to managing the page.  There are plenty of examples of consumers building negative campaigns against brands, here’s a particularly amusing one http://www.facebook.com/pages/David-Cameron-wants-change-Give-him-30p-and-tell-him-to-Fk-Off/115547365137261

It is better to be part of this process and be in a position to respond professionally.  By inviting consumers to share comments with you, there will be chances to learn about your business, but also to build a personality and relationship with consumers.  Negative feedback is a fact of business, and car dealers are often an easy target given the emotion of the purchase.  But, ignoring the behaviour is dangerous.

Instead, why not lead with offers and promotions for customers who engage with you?  If a customer has remembered your brand through Facebook, there is more chance that they will feel an affinity with you and ignore the competition. 

Remember that anything you post on social media will live forever, so make sure it speaks properly for your business.  Do not confuse your business profile with your personal one and swap banter with mates.  As a business owner, make sure that any administrators of your accounts use a consistent voice that is appropriate to your brand.

Fundamentally though, simply building a page isn’t enough.  With a website, you can get away with not updating it.  With social media, unless you maintain an appropriate level of conversation (ie do not SPAM), you will disappear.  But the reward of interaction is well worth it.

At AutoExposure we have integrated car search tools into the dealer’s Facebook Business Profile Page allowing consumers to not only see about offers, opening times etc, but to actually search for stock.  Our hope is that it means our dealers always have something to talk about and an additional response tool.

The real excitement internally is not with the launch, but with the direction we can take the product, we have loads of ideas and will get lots more.  It will be great to work with our dealers as social media rapidly becomes an important part of the dealer’s media mix.  To badly paraphrase Hot Chocolate; “it started with a like”…

(not wanting to push the sales message too much, but here's an example of our product)