Twitter for Dealerships

Ahh Twitter…

Getting past all the excitement I really think the best use of Twitter is real time interaction with existing customers.

Sure you can “market” with relevant tweets about your industry but “selling” will probably do more harm than good.

Think of Twitter as a real time search engine. Find out what people are saying about:

1. Your Store and their experience. Reach out to those people and thank them or assist them with their concerns. Not only does the customer appreciate the attempt but others may see your proactive approach to issues.

2. Your brand. Point people to correct information, relevant topics, news and the like about your brand. Never assume people just know the 3g Prius is available. Never assume people know the benefits of one product over another. If you can point people to an unbiased review or the like, that goes a long way.

As a rule, Twitter and the like are but one small piece of the puzzle. Dealers must grasp the concept and seize the opportunity to capitlize on all social networking platforms.

In reality, dealers have missed a HUGE part of the puzzle to make this work for them. The foundation. The process of handling this customer and prospect should be prioirty one. Until that is in place and running on all cylinders, then using Twitter and the like will do more harm than good. Read more!

Fewer Leads More Sales

Its common knowledge that leads from your website are the most valuable. The highest closing, the highest grossing. It makes sense, the consumer has, in effect, chosen your dealership as a potential source for their needs whereas third party leads the consumer is more apt to be shopping product.

Knowing this, it makes good business sense to direct traffic to your website vs. just outright buying third party leads.

Or does it?

Traditionally a dealerships thought process has been "give me more traffic and Ill sell more". Good math. Bad logic.

If your dealerships Internet department doesn't have the proper process and headcount for the stores structure, while you may "sell more" you ROI will actually decrease. In many cases more leads will lead to LESS SALES and you can almost guarantee lower gross.

Before you even think about driving more (additional) traffic to your site (or buying more third party leads if you must) you must have the process and people in place to handle what you currently have not to mention the increase in lead volume.

Can your department effectively follow-up for 90 days with the leads you currently have? Do you have dedicated "lost Opportunity Consultants" to work nothing but the 30+ day no contacts? Since 60% of buyers who initially submit a lead end up purchasing after 30 days, and your follow-up is 2 weeks max, you are simply tossing away 60% of your business.

And by "follow-up" I am not talking about your CRM/LMT sending an email every couple of weeks. Do your "Lost Opportunity Consultants" make 100+ phone calls a day?

Before you even think about pushing more traffic to your site, give a serious consideration to managing what you currently have inbound. Manage the ROI for your current individual lead sources and make adjustments to those. Maybe consider reallocating funds your currently spend on ineffective ROI producing third party leads towards headcount or training.

In MANY cases, dealers would sell and MAKE more if they actually REDUCED their inbound lead volume but increased their follow-up.

Once you have effective managing, measurement and process in place, only then will you see the yields of increased lead volume.

RETHINK EVERYTHING Read more!