F&I and Showroom, March 2014

The Power of Attraction Da Man has become somewhat of a social media evangelist But its not what you can do its what you can fi nd in social media that has him so high on the marketing medium By Jim Ziegler J anuary was an emotional and physically challenging roller coaster for Debbie and me The month started with my Internet Battle Plan conference Then I had two indealership consulting visits before traveling to New Orleans for the National Automobile Dealers Associations annual convention The month also saw my hometown of Atlanta become paralyzed by an ice storm but that wasnt the worst of it See my January ended with the passing of my mother on Jan 31 And throughout everything including my unexpected trip to Jacksonville Fla for my mothers funeral there was one constant that kept everything in perspective Our expanded family and circle of friends on Facebook Twitter and YouTube were there in real time with support friendship and genuine love Its one of the reasons Debbie and I were able to hit the ground running once the calendar fl ipped to February I guess you can say Ive come to appreciate the power of social media not only in my personal life but my professional life as well And social media has matured from the early days of rock star fan clubs on Myspace to a dynamic interactive community If youve avoided social media marketing perhaps its time you took a hard look at the power of these platforms After all this is where the people are At my most recent Internet Battle Plan in Atlanta Matt Russo a young guy from SocialAutoLeads com approached me He asked if he could present a workshop on how to use Twitter to sell cars Truthfully Twitter 30 F I and Showroom March 2014 is one social media site I still havent fi gured out much less seen successfully used by a dealer to sell cars I gave Matt the last speaking slot on the last day of the conference I was amazed His concept of attraction marketing on Twitter was a total revelation Instead of reaching out and broadcasting advertisements he talked about using the sites geotargeted search feature to fi nd individuals talking about buying a car in your market In fact while Matt was still on stage a young woman from a New York dealership located a customer in her market area that was tweeting about looking for a new car She immediately called her dealership to contact the prospect Not only did the dealership contact the Twitter user it sold and delivered a car to her Ive helped dealers realize tremendous success selling cars on Facebook and YouTube and Im talking concrete measurable immediate results In fact I was one of the pioneers of using self produced videos to sell and brand dealerships The one social network with the most potential however remains Facebook With more than a billion users 38 of whom are U S citizens it astounds me that more dealers havent fi gured out how to use this powerful medium to market and brand their dealerships Facebooks pay per click tool is one of the best laser targeted models to achieve immediate customer response Facebook offers a number of options to advertise boost or promote a specifi c post or fan page Personally I have four fan pages targeting specifi c segments of my friends and followers plus my personal page And when you combine your efforts on Facebook YouTube Twitter and Pinterest under a single strategy you can take advantage of each sites strength Heck with a complete social media marketing plan all I need are those four sites to dramatically increase any dealerships sales The real beauty of Facebook advertising is it allows you to target your ad to the people you want seeing it For instance I can target people who work for a hospital in my town Maybe there are only 100 people on Facebook who work at that hospital Well Facebook will only charge me for clicks from that specifi c group And for an extremely low cost you can structure a discount membership program for employees of that hospital I guess you can say the possibilities are infi nite In recent years Ive become an evangelist of social media marketing mainly because Ive seen it sell so many cars for so many dealers with whom I work But while there are a number of dealers realizing amazing results from using personalized video marketing on YouTube there are still many stores stumbling around in the dark when it comes to social media Hope this article makes a difference and raises awareness of the potential these new marketing mediums offer Keep those emails and calls coming Jim Ziegler is the president of Ziegler SuperSystems Inc and the creator of the Internet Battle Plan conference series To contact Ziegler e mail him at ji m ziegler@ bobit com On the Point